You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a horror comic in this post-30 Days of Night, post-The Walking Dead age. Meanwhile, there's a bustling alt-horror ... well, "scene" and "movement" probably aren't the right words, but there are plenty of those comics and cartoonists out there.

But are any of them, y'know, actually scary?

Blogger Curt Purcell of The Groovy Age of Horror has endeavored to answer that question -- long a topic of debate among comics readers, many of whom are skeptical that comics really can hang with movies or prose for their sheer power to frighten -- by rounding up thoughts on the topic from a variety of horror and comics creators and commentators. These include cartoonists Richard Sala (Peculia) and Josh Simmons (House); CRwM of the provocative horror blog And Now the Screaming Starts; Kimberly Lindbergs of the movie-focused Cinebeats; Karswell of the pre-Comics Code horror-comics blog The Horrors of It All; and (ahem) yours truly. The roundtable was inspired by a post from Richard Cook at The Hooded Utilitarian, so be sure to check that out, too.

Where do you stand on scarybooks?