How many titles are published each month, by all publishers? How many of those are horror?

Avatar publishes horror comics every month. Devil's Due also. They're drawn like crap because I think they don't pay their artists. One guy I know is awesome and did work for them and rushed 75% of it cause they never paid him anything. They're also pretty gory. There's like 20092019 zombie comics you can buy in full color right now.

Wildstorm has Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. They were meant to be ongoings but they've switched to minis cause they aren't selling. Both are gory. Though well, these days gore in comics isn't hard to find...

QUOTE: I didn't realize that there was a Showcase for House of Mystery.  I will have to check that out.

There are two volumes of Showcase Presents House of Mystery out so far Brian.

Dark Horse, Boom Studios, and Oni all put out horror comics or quasi-horror (horror mixed with other genres).  Hellboy, BPRD, and the Goon are published by Dark Horse.  Boom Studios has produced various one shots and limited series.  Oni published the Marquis by Guy Davis.  Slave Labor Graphics produces several "pop goth" series.  Gloomcookie by Serena Valentino and various projects by Ted Naifeh (like the various Courtney Crumrin books).  Neither are strictly horror, but use a lot of the tropes and setting.  "Dark Fantasy" may be a better term.

I think what killed horror comics in the 70s and 80s are that most horror comics stayed very close to the old versions of monsters - Dracula wearing a cape, the Universal monsters - while horror in literature and movies were much more innovative.  Anne Rice was changing the way vampires were depicted, Steven King was doing interesting things with the genre, and Hollywood moved on to slasher movies.  Comics, however, appeared to stay stuck in the past.

Later on, when Marvel and DC began to be more innovative in horror, their publsihed comics suffered from the curse of being too tied into their superhero universe.  While the "Horror Hero" (Spectre, Ghost Rider, etc) is an old favorite of the genre, horror elements have to be presented in a very specific way so it does not overturn the flavor of superheroes.  Thus the horror itself is subverted.

As an example, let's look at Cthon and the Darkhold in the Marvel Universe.  That has a very horror feel, but when the Avengers can show up and beat them, it undermines the terror of Cthon opposed to the way Cthulhu would be treated in stories about the Cthulhu Mythos.  Integrating the 70s horror titles into the mainstream Marvel Universe just did not work out well.

The original versions of the horror monster, the Wolf Man/Dracula/Frankenstein trinity, is some of the most powerful iconic imagery known to man, in any decade. Marvel was supremely smart in "Marvelizing" the Universal Monsters without losing what made them so popular to begin with.

MONSTER OF FRANKENSTEIN suffered, like Marvel's TARZAN, from being too willing to be literal with the material. Using the Frankenstein Monster within the context of a changing millenium would have been much cooler than throwing him into the 1970s, after people weren't riveted by the Monster's adventures in old Transyltucky.

WEREWOLF BY NIGHT was fantastic, but suffered from the restriction of trying to have every plot point center on the three days when the moon is full, per month. This plagued the Hulk comic until Stan Lee gave up on that Banner by day, Hulk by night thing. Jack Russell should have transformed into the Werewolf  by other means, in order to save the stories from creaky plotting.

MAN-THING by Steve Gerber is flat out brilliant, as was his TALES OF THE ZOMBIE, which I considered both the premiere horror comics of the decade, better even than TOMB OF DRACULA.

Others:

Tomb of Dracula is by far my favorite horror comic of all time.

I also like to occasionally read reprints of Tales From the Crypt and other EC horror titles from the 50s.