Category Archives: Horror Art

Horror Street: Happy Day of the Dead 2025!

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Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

A couple weeks back, I hopped on the #7 subway line and headed out to Flushing, a well-known Queens neighborhood in the eastern part of the borough, to visit Flushing Town Hall. My original goal was to check out a comics-themed exhibition, Comics in the City: Sequential Art Is… (which closed October 20), but then I learned there was another exhibition running—one that might be of interest to horror fans…

MexFest 2025: Day of the Dead/Rituals of Resistance is an art exhibition that, according to FTH, celebrates “Mexican culture in NYC—present visual works for a multidisciplinary exhibition honoring Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead). This year’s MexFest theme, Rituales de Resilience (Rituals of Resilience), centers around memory, cultural ritual, and ancestral connection.”

There were, of course, other pieces than what you see here—some poetic, some spooky, some subtly political, and all worth giving a look to.

MexFest 2025—which is free to attend—ends November 30, so visit the Flushing Town Hall website for more information.

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, a Beetlejuice sighting, the beast called Queens’thluhu, the scarifying Ghoulmobile, the regal Griffin, the Spooky Forest, and the Demon Door!

(Photo © Steven A. Roman)

Horror Street: It’s Showtime!

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Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

With the Spooky Season in full effect right now, and today being the Monday the 13th (yes, okay, I know it’s not Friday, but…close enough for horror, right?), who better to drop in on than that ghost with the most, the one and only Beetlejuice!

I stumbled across the cinematic supernatural superstar this past summer, while wandering the streets of East Williamsburgh, in Brooklyn—a very popular industrialized neighborhood rich in street art. (I’ll have other pieces to show from that area in future Horror Street entries.)

There’s a good chance you’ll still be able to find BJ haunting East Williamsburgh—as temporary as mural art tends to be, sometimes the really good ones can remain untouched and unchanged for years. So, go hunt down that pesky ol’ ghost; be sure to tell him Lydia Deetz sent you!

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, the beast called Queens’thluhu, the scarifying Ghoulmobile, the regal Griffin, the Spooky Forest, and the Demon Door!

(Photo © 2025 Steven A. Roman)

Horror Street: The Tree Man of Long Island City

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Happy Summerween, and welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

Back in October 2018, I was wandering the streets of Long Island City, Queens, and came across a mural on display at William Cullen Bryant High School. For the most part, the mural was composed of friendly images and uplifting messages to inspire the students…but then there was that one freaky-looking figure.

The Tree Man.

Is that his real name? Only the artist would know. But given TM’s toes are like roots, and a tree seems to be growing out of the mouth in his stomach, I figure it’s as good a name as any for this nightmarish high schooler.

I don’t know if the Tree Man is still lurking about the school—in all likelihood the murals have been changed one or more times in the past seven years, as murals are apt to do—but should you find yourself crossing paths with the Tree Man of LIC, don’t get too close to his stomach…that thing’s got a nasty appetite!

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, Where the Gene Wilder Things Are, the beast called Queens’thluhu, the scarifying Ghoulmobile, the regal Griffin, the Spooky Forest, and the Demon Door!

Horror Street: Fairyland

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Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

Our latest entry comes from 2009, taken during one of my wanders through Long Island City, the eastern area of Queens, NY, that became a booming area for the real estate industry, as high-rise apartment buildings have sprouted up all over what used to be an industrialized neighborhood (with more on the way!).

What you see here is one of the many constantly changing murals that used to decorate 5Pointz (formerly the Phun Phactory), a mecca for graffiti artists from around the world whose talents were on display from street level to rooftop. The site was a run-down (but still in-use) factory that artists had moved into over time, starting in the 1990s. But by 2013, the building owner had plans to tear it all down and construct apartment buildings, which led to attempts to preserve 5Pointz as an artistic landmark and a lawsuit against the owner. Bottom line? He won, the artists lost, and today you’ll find an immense, high-rent apartment building also called 5Pointz where the original Phun Phactory once stood.

Well, this is one of the reasons I photograph murals like Fairyland—you never know if it’ll be there tomorrow! Graffiti may be a temporary artform, replaced by another artist’s work or ruined by unnecessary tagging, but tearing down the building it was on is a lot more permanent.

The fairy and her urban-fantasy landscape might be long gone from the Horror Streets of LIC, but the Internet will never forget her…

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries, like the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, and the Spooky Forest!

Horror Street: Long Island City Demons, 1990s

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Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

Our latest entry goes waaay back, to the early 1990s, during one of my wanders through Long Island City, the eastern area of Queens, NY, that’s become all the rage for real estate developers in the last decade or so, with high-rise apartment buildings springing up in what used to be an industrialized neighborhood (which explains how Queens recently became listed as one of the most expensive “cities” in America, rent-wise!).

But before the area was transformed into a place to be, it was a place to avoid…because it was roamed by graffiti demons!

I don’t recognize the characters, but they look inspired by either Japanese anime, or video games (or maybe a ’90s animated series?); looks really good, though. (I apologize for the quality of the photo, but back then I was using disposable cameras loaded with actual film, which was processed by a local pharmacy. Stone Age photography!) And, as often happens with street art, the next time I passed through that area, maybe a year later, the mural was gone, replaced by someone else’s art.

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries, like the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, and the Spooky Forest!

Horror Street: Happy Halloween!

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Welcome to another installment of Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

Today, in honor of Halloween, we have on display a little demon artwork for your enjoyment: the eerie New York Oni, a fantastic mural I came across during my wanderings in Long Island City, Queens, way back in 2016.

The oni is a cave- and mountain-dwelling demon found in Japanese folklore that doesn’t just like to kill wayward travelers, it likes to eat them, too (would that make them distant cousins of Leatherface from The Texas Chain Saw Massacre?). For more information on these devilish creatures, check out this entry at Yokai.com.

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries, which include such sights as the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, the regal Griffin, and even a trip to the Ghostbusters firehouse!

Have a safe and happy Halloween!

That Time Pan Cover Artist Bob Larkin Met The Meg

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Out in movie theaters right now is Meg 2: The Trench, the follow-up to the surprisingly popular 2018 giant-shark movie in which action star Jason Statham (The Fast and the Furious and Expendables franchises) fought two megalodons; this time, he’s got a whole aquarium full of giant underwater monsters to battle!

You know who else has had an encounter with a megalodon? Our friend Bob Larkin, who’s spent a four-decade career painting all manner of colossal beasts from beneath the sea—as well as from outer space!—in a host of covers and movie posters for just about every publishing house and film studio. 

Doc Savage, Dazzler, Star Wars, Star Trek, The Savage Sword of Conan the Barbarian, Piranha, Night of the Creeps, Humanoids from the Deep, and Godzilla are just some of the painted images you’re already familiar with, even if you didn’t know they were Larkin’s work. He’s been an inspiration to artists like Joe Jusko and Alex Ross. Around these parts, Bob was the cover artist of my Pan novels Blood Feud and Blood Reign. 

Bob’s connection to The Meg is that he was a cover artist for one of the printings of The Trench, author Steve Alten’s follow-up novel to his 1997 bestseller Meg: A Novel of Deep Terror, and the basis for Statham’s Meg 2: The Trench—which means Bob got to paint a giant shark!

What you see here are the original painting and its final printed version. As to why the book has a reversed color scheme, Bob explained it this way to me:

“[The original painting] is what the art director and author wanted: an all-white shark with big teeth, in color. But then they decided to make the shark negative with the red eye; I couldn’t understand why. Scarier? They’re both scarier, to a degree.  I did the painting in 1999 and didn’t sign it, like a lot of my rush covers.”

Impressive, right? But like I always like to say, it’s not just his painting skills that are impressive—Bob’s also an amazing pencil artist, as evidenced by the StarWarp Concepts art book that showcases his work. Cue the shameless plug!

The Bob Larkin Sketchbook is a collection of some of Bob’s incredible pencil drawings, and what you’ll discover when you see them—behind that eye-catching cover featuring Ms. Zwieback—is how wide-ranging his subjects are. Sci-fi, horror, Westerns, pulp adventure, crime fiction, movie merchandise, even wrestling stars—as we say on the book’s back cover, there really is little that he hasn’t painted. 

The sketchbook also features three pieces created especially for it: the Pan-portrait cover art; a portrait of Patricia Savage, the fightin’ cousin of pulp fiction’s top-tier adventurer, Doc Savage, the Man of Bronze; and a two-page spread in which Doc faces off against another Golden Age crimefighter—The Shadow!

The Bob Larkin Sketchbook is available in print and digital formats. Visit its product page at StarWarp Concepts for ordering information.

Horror Street: Happy 90th Anniversary, King Kong!

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Welcome back to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

Today’s subject is the one and only King Kong, who celebrates his 90th anniversary today. It was March 3, 1933, when Kong made his big-screen debut with the worldwide premiere in New York City of his soon-to-be-classic film. The creation of movie producer Merian C. Cooper and author Edgar Wallace, brought to stop-motion life by effects master Willis O’Brien, King Kong went on to become a worldwide cultural icon that inspired generations of Monster Kids who grew up to be directors, writers, and special-effects creators.

He’s also inspired artists, as you can see here. It was in September 2021 that I first came across this graffiti mural in Long Island City, Queens, but a recent check last week showed that it’s still there. It’s an incredible piece of art, don’t you think?

It’s the work of Calicho Arevalo, a Colombian-born mural artist who arrived in New York in 2018 to share his artistic gifts. In this Third Rail interview with Arevalo, you can learn a great deal about his background and check out some photos of the Kong mural in progress.

Kong’s popularity also inspired the folks at Pan’s publisher, StarWarp Concepts, to add the story of the king of the simian monsters to their line of Illustrated Classics, joining Edgar Rice Burroughs’s sci-fi adventure A Princess of Mars, J. Sheridan Le Fanu’s vampiric love story Carmilla, and the Brothers Grimm’s childhood tale Snow White.

King Kong is a republication of the 1932 novelization of the original movie classic. Written by Delos W. Lovelace, based on the story by Edgar Wallace and Merian C. Cooper and the screenplay by James A. Creelman and Ruth Rose, it includes scenes that didn’t appear in the final cut of the film—including the notorious “spider pit” sequence in which Kong’s human pursuers are attacked by horrific arachnids and insects. The SWC version features six original black-and-white illustrations by comics artist Paul Tuma, whose work has appeared in the pages of The Twilight Zone, Paul Kupperberg’s Secret Romances, and Bloke’s Terrible Tomb of Terror.

Not familiar with the beauty-and-the-beast story of Kong and his “love interest,” Ann Darrow (who was played in the 1933 original by the queen of the scream queens, Fay Wray)? Well, here’s our edition’s back-cover copy to bring you up-to-date:

Ann Darrow was a down-on-her-luck actress struggling to survive in Depression-era New York when she met moviemaker Carl Denham. He offered her the starring role in his latest film: a documentary about a long-lost island—and the godlike ape named Kong rumored to live there. Denham needed a beauty as a counterpart to the beast he hoped to find, and Ann was the answer to his prayers.

Mystery, romance, a chance to turn her life around, even the possibility of stardom—to Ann, it sounded like the adventure of a lifetime! But what she didn’t count on were the horrific dangers that awaited her on Skull Island—including the affections of a love-struck monster…

King Kong (the 1932 novelization) is available as a digital exclusive, so visit its product page at StarWarp Concepts for ordering information.

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries: the Brooklyn Vampire, Jason Voorhees, and many more!

Horror Street: Happy Friday the 13th (Part 1)!

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It’s the first of two Friday the 13ths this year—today and, appropriately enough, in October, right in the heart of Spooky Season. And since it isFriday the 13th, there’s no better time than right now to post the latest addition to Horror Street, my ongoing journey in search of awesome yet spooky graffiti art on the streets and little-traveled corners of New York City!

Jason Voorhees, the murderous, hockey-mask-wearing star of the Friday the 13th movie franchise—including my favorite entry, Freddy vs. Jason—in which he goes toe-to-toe…er, machete to finger-knives with Freddy Krueger of Nightmare on Elm Street fame—is the subject of this piece of graffiti art that I came across in 2021, in a dead-end street (how appropriate!) in the East Williamsburg area of Brooklyn. I don’t know who the artist is—I can’t make out the signature—but the piece was too good notto take a picture of it!

Stay tuned for further installments of Horror Street—there’s plenty of macabre graffiti art to be found on the streets of New York, if you look in the right creepy places! And be sure to check out my previous HS entries, which include such sights as the Brooklyn Vampire, the demonic D-Rod, and the regal Griffin!