by Jarrod Jones. In Razorblades, the new anthology from James Tynion IV and Steve Foxe, comics and horror go hand in glove. Then they reach for a knife. And grip it.
Razorblades is a creator-owned hub for artists looking to probe the darker avenues of their minds. Over 70 pages in length and featuring appropriately eldritch work from such celebrated creators as Tynion, Tini Howard, Alex Paknadel, Jen Hickman, Isaac Goodheart, Zac Thompson, Matthew Rosenberg, Jen Bartel and so many more, it’s not surprising that when it launched in July its scandalously limited print run sold out in hours.
Rejoice and recoil; Razorblades has returned and you can purchase the second issue right now. “We’ve been doing a tremendous amount of legwork for the last three months to make sure we were ready for this launch, today, so that we can get our magazine into the hands of as many horror fans as we can muster,” Tynion said in the official press release. “To that effect, and in celebration of Halloween, we wanted to give people a chance to buy in to the full year of Razorblades: The Horror Magazine.”
With the creeping arrival of the quarterly magazine’s second issue, Tynion’s Tiny Onion Studios has made available a subscription program for the more avid horror readers out there who’d prefer to enjoy its particular brand of shocks and nightmares every season of the year.
Here is how the launch of Razorblades issue #2 breaks down:
- Print copies of Razorblades #2 can be pre-ordered now through ReadRazorblades.com for $15 plus shipping.
- To enjoy a subscription to this quarterly magazine, which will include print copies of Razorblades #2 through Razorblades #5 (and will also feature “a special reprint of Razorblades #1 featuring a new cover from Sirenhead creator, Trevor Henderson”), click this and have $60 ready to rock.
- Printed editions of Razorblades #1 & #2 will ship November 2020.
- New issues of Razorblades will drop every three months after November 2020.
- There is a Premium Subscription of Razorblades available for $80 (including shipping), which provides “postcard-size prints with each issue, a collector’s box, and exclusive Razorblades enamel pins.”
- Preorders for print editions are available now until midnight Halloween, because that’s how things are done in Razorblades terror-tory.
- All digital editons are pay-what-you-like, but be generous; this is some prime-time comics you’re about to get on the cheap.
- Subscriptions are a limited-time offer, so act now. Like, RIGHT NOW.
“This all started as a simple dream of how to best create a platform to spotlight all of the incredible creators in the world of horror comics and horror illustrations, and let them loose,” Tynion continued. “To bring together creators from every corner of our medium, and build something forward-looking and frightening.”
Tynion & Foxe’s Razorblades, borne from “their mutual love of horror anthologies like Steve Bissette’s Taboo,” has both the creator bonafides and drive to begin that long, daunting reach to recapture Taboo‘s most singular contribution to comics: laying the first cobblestones for Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell’s From Hell. I can’t say they’ll ever hit those dizzying heights. But consider the passion on display in these first two issues. Razorblades is aiming horror towards a different frontier, where the possibilities become too innumerable to consider.
“I know it’s cliché to say, but RAZORBLADES #1 really was a labor of (exceptionally gory) love,” Foxe added. “James and I swung hard to put the magazine out in the best possible way, and we’re taking all the lessons we learned in that process to heart, so we can swing even harder with each subsequent issue. And it does feel especially appropriate, of course, that this second issue comes out right in the shadow of Halloween, at a time when almost all of us could use a frightening escape from too-terrifying real life.”
To reiterate: Razorblades #2, which boasts a cover by House of Penance and Little Bird artist Ian Bertram and Something is Killing the Children colorist Miquel Muerto, is available now through ReadRazorblades.com.
Name your price, turn the lights low, freak yourself out on what is easily the most exciting horror anthology comics has seen in ages.
