Spooktoberfest Special: The Greatest Horror Comic Ever

Ever since the heyday of EC back in the fifties, comics have had a pretty solid relationship–Wertham aside–with the horror genre, and as we enter the final stretch to Halloween, my thoughts have fallen onto the high points of the genre.

Whether it’s the historically inspired chills of From Hell or Torso, the thrills of action-horror like Hellboy, the genuine creepiness of Japanese titles like Mail, or a dozen others, horror comics have given us some amazing reads. But there’s one thing that blows them all away.

I am referring, of course, to this:

 

Dr. McNinja #8: Revenge of the Hundred Dead Ninja

 

For those of you who aren’t familiar with it, I’ll sum up: The Adventures of Dr. McNinja is a webcomic about a doctor who is also a ninja, and is thus torn between his desire to heal and his need to kill. As you might expect from the title, he has adventures along with his gorilla receptionist, Judy, and his sidekick, a twelve year-old gunslinger named Gordito who grew a handlebar moustache through sheer force of will. It is also the greatest thing ever.

Seriously, at this point, words can’t really capture the way I feel about what Christopher Hastings, Kent Archer and Carly Monardo are doing over there, but rest assured that my heart has developed boners for it, mostly thanks to things like this:

 

 

King Radical. The most radical man in the radical land. I don’t think I’m overselling things here when I say that as far as achievements in sequential art go, The Adventures of Dr. McNinja makes Watchmen look like bullshit.

But anyway, back to “Revenge of the Hundred Dead Ninja.”

Under normal circumstances, I’d offer up a more detailed summary, but since you can just head over there to read the entire series for yourself, I’ll just hit the highlights. All you really need to know is that in the previous story–which has the amazing title of “D.A.R.E. to Resist Ninja Drugs and Ninja Violence”–Dr. McNinja ended up killing a bunch of guys who were jacked up on drugs that gave them artificial ninja abilities. And in this story, they come back from the dead.

With a zombie clone of Ben Franklin.

To breakdance.

 

 

Okay, so technically I think that’s actually popping and locking, and even more technically, that only happens in a dream sequence, but the part about the ninjas (and Ben Franklin’s clone) coming back from the dead?

 

 

Fortunately, Cumberland–under the direction of their ex-astronaut mayor–has a plan in place for just such an occurrence: Dr. McNinja will kill them all, a process that involves a gorilla ramping over a pile of flaming automobiles in a 2007 Honda Accord while the Doctor holds onto a grappling line.

 

 

Clearly, this is the single greatest use of the undead in modern fiction.

At least until #8, where Dr. McNinja fights Dracula.

On the moon.

FOR REAL.

 

 


 

BONUS FEATURE: Dr. McNinja Answers the Hard Questions

 

 

So awesome. So, so awesome.

30 thoughts on “Spooktoberfest Special: The Greatest Horror Comic Ever

  1. If I weren’t already a daily reader of McNinja (Yes, it’s a MWF comic. I reread it the other four days just to fully comprehend the awesomeness, just in case I didn’t fully appreciate it on the first reading), you would have just sold me on it.

    That said, there’s a part of me that almost thinks this issue doesn’t quite stack up since the issue before it had a giant ninja with chainsaw nunchucks and the one after featured hand-to-hand combat against the king of the vampires on the moon and what can possibly match up to those two things? And then I see Doc and Judy high fiving in front of the explosion and that part of me shuts the hell up.

  2. Dr. McNinja is pure 201% awesome. There is no substitute.

    KNIFE-EYE ATTACK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

  3. Its important to remember in all this talk of Dr. McNinja vs. Dracula that Gordito and the rest of the McNinja family were fighting a ghost wizard. In a submarine. And that Mom McNinja is the most hardcore person EVER. Cause seriously, FUCK Sophie’s Choice…

  4. Anyone who doesn’t like The Adventures of Doctor McNinja is a tricky lobster man.

    There. I said what needed to be said on this matter. I accept the consequences of my actions.

  5. The guys who do Dr McNinja are the heir-apparant to Jack Kirby. Page for page, they’re as crazy as anything the King produced.

  6. Even MORE technically it’s the dance from Thriller.

    I don’t have Vol. 2 yet, but I have Vol. 1 with a McNinja sketch by Hastings on the inside front cover … and that’s gotta count for something.

  7. Y’know with so many reliable sources sugesting Ben Franklin’s partie to the current Zombie Crises its hard not to be swayed. Ok, two sources, but Dr. McNinja and Scud Disposable assasin are both too awesome not to be true.

  8. Even MORE technically, it’s the dance from Thriller AS ALREADY SPOOFED by Jamie Hewlett in the video for Gorillaz’ CLINT EASTWOOD.

    Are bodypopping zombie ninja more or less awesome than bodypopping zombie gorillas? Such questions could drive a man insane…

  9. Scholarly question: Which is more kick-ass: Dan McNinja’s version of the Knife-Eye Attack, or the Ghost Wizard’s?

  10. Dr. McNinja is my Halloween costume for this year, it’s going to kick all kinds of ass.

  11. Dr. McNinja is so beyond awesome the English language doesn’t have words for it. I think I fell in love with it in a purely platonic fashion when I read the sequence where Dr. McNinja surfed the robot Dracula down from the moon and proceeded to give the moon the finger with both hands. Which wound up looking like he was doing that at a mother and her baby.

    And Dan McNinja’s line of “I WILL SMACK YOU SO HARD YOUR GRANDCHILDREN WILL BE MENTALLY DISABLED” made me laugh so hard I nearly lost my job.

  12. I’m pretty sure Scud: The Disposable Assassin beat Dr. McNinja to Zombie Ben Franklin AND Zombie Dinosaurs by a good ten years or more.

    Of course, the true classics can bear repetition.

  13. Ohmigod — my favorite comics blogger links my favorite webcomic (sorry Dr McNinja, but I’m talking about Dinosaur Comics)!? My heart has developed many, many boners over this.

  14. I’ll shamefully admit I haven’t kept up to date on my McNinja comics, but I love the issue where the rest of the McNinja family comes by for dinner, and we learn the origin of the ninja/pirate rivalry. And how ninjas came to Ireland.

  15. I’m probably in the minority, but I find Dr. McNinja and it’s whole “endless barrage of awesome” gimmick kind of tiresome.

    Though in fairness I have recently begun yelling at kids to get off my lawn. Maybe there is a correlation.

  16. i keep trying to keep up with this comic but its exhausting. you get worn out from the ‘awesome’

  17. Yeah, it sucks trying to keep up with the awesome. And finding joy in life, that gets old after a while. And what’s all this I hear about people not carefully regimenting their laughing?

  18. I owe you several big favors, Chris, for first introducing me to Dr. McNinja last year. I got to meet Chris Hastings at San Diego Comic Con this past summer, and I expressed concern that now that Dr. McNinja had surfed a robot Dracula back to earth after fighting Dracula in his secret moon fortress, it was going to be hard to make Dr. McNinja any more fucking awesome. He allowed that it WOULD be hard.

    But then he gave us a mafia led by a biker named King Radical whose purple giant uses psychic powers to fight a competing mafia led by a lobster man. So I think we’ll be okay.

  19. “…as far as achievements in sequential art go, The Adventures of Dr. McNinja makes Watchmen look like bullshit.”

    I could see this being a quote on the cover of a future printed edition.