The Slenderman Cometh...

Ruined cottage on the Old Largs Road

Over the last few weeks, Andy Lee and myself have been working with 1st and 2nd year pupils from Inverclyde Academy on creating pages for comics. It's been tremendous fun, and it's really good to see a local school so interested in encouraging reading and creative writing through graphic storytelling.

The mission was very simple, work with the pupils to write a scary story in a local setting, and all work on designing characters / panels to tell that story. Pupils will create their own pages and Andy will also create some pages based on their story.

Pupils opted to use perennial nightmare meme The Slenderman, a sinister character who originated online, created by Victor Surge. He has since been developed and used by many other people, from being co-opted into urban legend via photoshopping old pictures, to having his own web series. There was even suggestion that Doctor Who's Silence characters were a tribute to the strange creature. Many others maintain that the creature is not fiction at all. All very complex, but part of the real fun of this character is exploring and discovering it for yourself. If you want an excellent overview of the whole developing mythos, check out this article from the journal Darklore.

The pupils opted for short vignettes placing Slenderman in a variety of local Greenock settings, all the more terrifying for off-setting the unusual character with the banal and familiar.

We'll share the full story with you in December as part of our month of midwinter terror, but here's panels by Andy, taken directly from the stories developed by the two classes....

Tesco Car Park Terror

The Murdieston Dam Horror...
(this would make a lovely Magic Torch Christmas card)

Primark Nightmare...