The Weather Outside is Frightful: 13 Chilly Horror Comics To Read By The Fire

When it comes to winter set horror comics, this series, which is about a horde of ravenous vampires descending en masse on an Alaskan town where the sun won't rise for 30 days (which inspired the 2007 film of the same name ), is a seminal one. The eerie and unsettling tale features a large cast of fascinating human and vampiric characters.

One of the best ways to experience this story is via 30 Days of Night Deluxe Edition Book I. It collects Niles and Templesmith's initial tale, sequels that follow the survivors, and a final story that brings the action back to the Alaskan town of Barrow.

If you're like me and you're still upset that Guillermo del Toro never got to do his epic adaptation of H.P. Lovecraft's sprawling, arctic, cosmic horror story, At the Mountains of Madness, then you need to seek out this brilliant manga adaptation. It's a story about an arctic expedition terrorized by both the vast, desolate landscape they're exploring and the secret history of tentacled, godlike alien beings they uncover there.

Tanabe's adaptation of At the Mountains of Madness is available in two softcover volumes published by Dark Horse Comics. The company also sells a deluxe edition hardcover that collects the entire story in one volume.

Another great aspect of wintry horror is that it's often holiday horror as well. So, you have fascinating and striking contrasts like holiday lights faintly illuminating a dark, desolate night and the vibrant crimson of blood spilled upon a blanket of fallen snow.

In The Deviant, James Tynion IV and Joshua Hixson employ those visuals for a pitch black tale of holiday horror that combines elements of the slasher and psychological horror subgenres.

Deviant is the story of a troubled writer interviewing a man convicted of unimaginable atrocities against several young men on a snowy Milwaukee night in 1972 while dressed as Santa Claus. Fifty years later, the killer still maintains his innocence, and as the Christmas season approaches, the killings begin again. The complete series is available in two trade paperback collections from Image Comics.

This 47-issue Image Comics series was recently adapted for TV by Syfy/Peacock. It's a different type of zombie series where the recently deceased of a small town come back to life, not to eat brains, but to try to reclaim the lives they lost.

The government responds by quarantining the town until the mystery of the “Revivers” is explained. What follows is a long-form tale of nuanced characters, body horror, supernatural mysteries, and phantasmagorical beings. The bulk of the story is set in winter, too, which adds to the book's isolated feel.

The entire Revival series is collected in a massive compendium. It's also all available as a series of hardcover and trade paperback collections.

This 1953 set story begins in the snowy hell of a Russian gulag, where the grueling prisoner work detail is building a highway in Siberia. It then follows three escaped prisoners into an even more infernal environment: the desolate, deadly Arctic tundra surrounding the prison.

There, it becomes a story about the abominable things people do to survive a wintry wasteland and the fiendish, possibly fantastical entity drawn to their dark deeds. The entire four-issue miniseries is available in one trade paperback from IDW Publishing.

This four-issue miniseries from Panick Entertainment brings the folk horror of The Wicker Man to a Norwegian ski resort where a young boy is abducted by a mysterious cult that's infiltrated the resort and the surrounding town. The boy's parents are offered a chance to save their son, but to do so, they must commit a monstrous deed: abduct another child to take their son's place.  

How far will the parents go to save their son? Who is watching them? And what is the shadowy cult after? These are the questions that have fueled the first three issues of this series. The fourth and final issue dropped December 3. Your local comic shop might still have copies of the individual issues or be able to order them. A collected edition will most likely be released in the first quarter of 2026.

Our next holiday horror offering is a seasonal anthology featuring a diverse collection of tales set in the snow and other environments. It contains five stories: a Hallmark holiday-style special with a folk horror twist and elements of You're Next, a modern day take on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, a tale of a monstrous holiday creature, a horror comedy inspired by the cult 1964 film Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, and a dark take on a holiday tradition.

This 72-page one-shot comic hit stores on December 3. Your local comic store and online retailers might be able to get you a copy of last year's installment of Dread the Halls , which featured comic stories by Hart, Ryall and several of the artists involved with this year's issue.

This Oni Press comic, inspired by Plaid Hat Games' horror board game Dead of Winter, reads like a mash-up of Good Boy and The Walking Dead. Its titular character is Sparky, a former TV show stunt dog who's out to help his humans survive a bitterly cold winter and a zombie apocalypse.

The entire four-issue miniseries is available in a single trade paperback.

This 90-page original graphic novel from Dark Horse Comics is one part Scream style meta horror and a meditation on trauma and PTSD. It follows a woman named Denise Stokes, who survived a brutal, hibernal massacre as a teenager that killed all her friends; a slaughter that would go on to inspire a popular franchise of slasher films.

Years later, she's been able to rebuild her life. Still, everything she's done will be imperiled because the anniversary of the killings is about to fall on the day of a massive blizzard. The deceased man who tried to kill Denise, all those years ago, is starting to appear in multiple places.

One of the more enjoyable aspects of the holiday season for horror fans is learning about all the monstrous folklore creatures that come out to prey on “the naughty” during the long, dark, snowy nights of December. In this three-issue, gateway, horror-fantasy series from Oni Press, an army of those legendary creatures descends upon a small Pennsylvania burg obsessed with Christmas. The only ones that can stop these malevolent marauders are the kids who unwittingly unleashed them upon their town.

As of this writing, two issues of Yuletide have been released. The third and final issue is slated for December 17. A graphic novel collection should follow in 2026, and a film adaptation has been optioned for development by Gale Anne Hurd's Valhalla Entertainment.

This five-issue miniseries from Marvel's line of Alien comics takes place several years after the disaster at Hadley's Hope that was chronicled in James Cameron's 1986 film Aliens. It's set on a remote, arctic moon and follows a team of scientists who discover something buried in the ice. This discovery puts them in the crosshairs of the ruthless mega corporation, Weyland-Yutani, but the real danger comes when their discovery thaws and wakes up. 

The entire series is collected in Alien by Shalvey and Broccardo Volume 1: Thaw. Alien by Shalvey and Broccardo Volume 2: Descendant is a collection of the sequel series that follows one of the survivors of Thaw.

This five-issue miniseries from Image Comics isn't actually set during winter, but it's just as chilly as any of the other books on this list. That's because it's about a man searching for his missing wife and daughter. His investigation leads him to a small island community plagued by a series of icy deaths and restless spirits, spirits that seem to be connected to his daughter. The entire series is available in one trade paperback collection.

Some haunted house stories are plagued by the fact that the entire situation could be remedied if the protagonists just got out of the house. But what if that house is your only sanctuary from a roaring blizzard and enemy soldiers?

That's the setup for this comic series set during World War II's Battle of the Bulge. It follows a squad of US soldiers who take shelter from a snowstorm in a mysterious mansion. Once inside, reality begins to tear asunder as exits disappear and rooms morph. In order to escape, they'll have to uncover the manor's secrets and survive a mysterious presence intent on sewing seeds of madness, panic, and paranoia.

The House was originally published as a seven-issue digital miniseries. Dark Horse later collected the entire tale in a trade paperback, but it appears to be out of print. The collection is still available as an e-book, though.