... at least, as far as I know. Give me a shout if I've been creepin' you out on a regular basis with my eerie insights.

In a nice bit of conicidencing, most of the comics that I bought yesterday and have gotten around to reading (*cough*) have some spooky overtones. Or undertones. Or whichever tone it is when the book is all about being spooky, and I guess that a fair numbe rof my regular purchases are all about that. Zatanna No. 6, for example, continues the tale of her rumble with the demon Mammon, and what's spookier than a straight-up demon from Hell? And have I mentioned The Bulletproof Coffin lately? Issue 5 (of 6!) of that just came out, and it remains full of the kind of surreal, vaguely disturbing stuff that would have had the Young Johnathan raptly freaking out and makes Old Johnathan just plain happy. Seriously, this is a fantastic comic. And of course Creepy No. 4 came out this week, if you want a comic that's going to be overt about it.

Big news! Action Comics No. 864 features the return of Neil Gaimen's version of Death to the DCU proper! Unless that happened recently already and I missed it! Really, it's the fact that this might herald the return of such fun types as John Constantine and the ever-lovin' Swamp Thing to the super-hero-style comics that they were birthed from that makes me happy - it's the contrast between the grim Vertigo types and their four-colour counterparts that makes for some really terrific stories.

Even better, though, is the fact that this is a comic about Lex Luthor coming to terms with having died (spoiler: Lex Luthor will not be dead in the next issue), and hot damn does Paul Cornell not continue to nail the characterization of one of my very favourite super-villains. I can't really go into the whats and hows of the tale without ruining it, but that won't stop me from declaring that it is pretty much perfectly delightful.

And speaking of perfectly delightful, how about Hellboy/Beasts of Burden: Sacrifice, which not only features a Jill Thompson-endered Hellboy, but has that Hellboy team up with the titular Beasts in an in-continuity adventure that clears up, like three or four of the mysteries left hanging from the last BoB miniseries. As witnessed a couple of weeks ago with the Masks and Monsters collection, I love me some Hellboy crossover, but I don't know that I ever expected to see one as satisfying as this. Plus this is a big issue for Puggs, my very favourite of the Beasts. If you don't mist up a bit over his last couple of panels then you are a monster. A monster, I say.

And the final spooky book in my pile, issue 2 of Billy the Kid's Old-Timey Oddities: the Ghastly Beast of London. If you're any kind of fan of The Goon or the original Billy the Kid's Old-Timey Oddities series then you're probably already reading this or at least calmly waiting for the trade. If not, well... unless you have an absolute aversion to anything of a bizarre nature in your comic books you should at least give this one a flip through in the store. Kyle Hotz has done an amazing job with the art on this series - it's detailed without becoming illegible and horrific without, you know, looking horrible. And of course there is the continuing delight to be found in the absolutely irredeemable character of Billy the Kid. Such an ass.

And that is that. WoOoOoOoOOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoOoo....