Welcome to 31 Days of Horror Comics, where I will spotlight some of the best horror comics around, as chosen by a bunch of my favorite horror comic writers and artists around!

Today's creator is Martín Morazzo, the artist (alongside colorist Chris O'Halloran and writer W. Maxwell Prince) on the delightfully twisted series, Ice Cream Man...

He and Chris O'Halloran really do such a wonderful job capturing the bizarre stories of the series...

Martín's suggestion is one that was popular with a few other creators who I talked to, including Jae Lee (I just went with another one of Jae's suggestions), namely "The Doll's House," a classic The Sandman story arc by Neil Gaiman and a series of artists (primarily Mike Dringenberg and Malcolm Jones III, but also Chris Bachalo, Michael Zulli, Steve Parkhouse and cover artist Dave McKean)

The main plot of this story is that a young woman Rose Walker finds herself at the center of a sort of dream vortex. Dream of the Endless (Morpheus) might be forced to destroy her to save reality. What he doesn’t realize, though, is that Rose’s current circumstances might very well be part of a sinister plot against Morpheus, in the sense that Morpheus’ devotion to his duty is SO strong that anyone who knows him would know he’d feel obligated to destroy Rose. Thus, that knowledge could be turned against him. But who knows Morpheus that well? That’s a mystery that you’ll have to read the book to discover.

Other notable parts of this storyline is the introduction of the immortal Hob Gadling in a powerful one-off examination of what it would really be like if a guy just could not die. Hob would soon become one of the most popular recurring characters in Sandman.

In addition, we see Gaiman tie in the 1970s Jack Kirby Sandman revamp with the current Sandman series, we see the introduction of a number of characters who live in the same boarding house as Rose (these characters all become much more important in later stories) and we meet another interesting supporting characters, an escaped nightmare named Corinthian, who has become a legend among serial killers.

Corinthian attends a serial killer convention (that Rose accidentally ends up, as well) where Morpheus shows up and delivers some Spectre-level punishment on the serial killer scumbags…

This story, interestingly enough, was the first Sandman story to get collected into a trade, ahead of the opening arc of the series!

Thanks for the suggestion, Martín!