(W/A/CA) John Kenn Mortensen Gruesome, spindly figures gather outside a house, then spirit away a dreaming youth, bed and all. The stage is set for 32 skin-crawling poems imagining various children?s nightmares, all with sequential illustrations by Danish horror master Mortensen.His eerie visions fade to black at the edges, like a dreamer unable to shift their focus, and inspire delicious terror all by themselves. Similarly, the short poems each evoke a distinct sense of dread for the sleeping imagination to expand upon; together, the words and pictures conjure a nightmarish world tinged with pitch black humor. The sequences splay across double-page spreads, evoking Edward Gorey gone grand scale, and grand guignol.For those of a nervous disposition, read in bright sunlight. For those in search of a nervous disposition, take two before bed.

(W/A/CA) John Kenn Mortensen Freestyle wrestler The Sledgehammer has never met defeat, not at the hands of Painkiller, Handsome Jens, Fezzik the Giant or the Angel of Death. But over the course of 80 pages, Danish illustrator John Kenn Mortensen’s surreal black and white graphic novel will take Sledgehammer to the limits of reality, to show that he’s motivated by far more than hubris—it’s also love.Mortensen’s first English-language graphic novel delivers on the promise that his delightfully macabre books of illustration had previously made to readers around the world. With his spidery black-ink style, reminiscent of Edward Gorey’s gothic line, we’re taken to a world in which heavy metal mixes with the WWE by way of The Seventh Seal and Faust.