In this review of Super Creepshow #1, the Creep provides us with two freakish tales of super powers gone horribly, HORRIBLY wrong.
Super Creepshow #1
Writers: Kieron Gillen
Artists: Rossi Gifford
Main Cover: Simon Parr
Variant Covers: Carmine Di Giandomenico, Andrea Milana, Derek Charm, Rossi Gifford
Page Count: 32 pages
Release Date: March 18, 2026
This review contains spoilers
The first story of Super Creepshow #1, “Creeping”, shows two high school slackers, Marcus and Beth. While out at a cabin one night, doing some drugs together, Marcus is bitten by a spider. He tosses its corpse outside.
Over time, he notices that he’s starting to feel weird, seeing some physical changes: acne that seems to merge, apparent constipation…he’s wondering if it’s the ‘shrooms that did it. Nope. It was the bite, as he’s turning into a man-spider. He kills a guy that was bullying him and goes off into hiding.
But Beth finds him, he bites her…and it turns out she actually rather likes the new him. She starts to transform, as well, and they move in together. In the throes of their newfound arachno-freak passion, she eats him.
Weeks later, scientists find the spider that caused it in the first place…as well as Beth and her ungoldy number of spidery freak-babies.
The second story in Super Creepshow #1 main cover by Simon Parr (Skybound/Image Comics) is “Speed Freak”, which starts off with two high school outcasts (Ron and Betty) having a discussion about superpowers, and which would be better between flight and invisibility. Ron takes a third option: super speed. He’s sure that’d make him much like a god, and that he’d use the power for good.
The next morning, he finds a mysterious ring under his pillow, tries it on…and finds that his speed wish came true! As promised, he uses this new gift to do some good: preventing a store clerk from being shot during a robbery, pulling a dog out of the way of a truck…and then his bully Aaron comes along. He intends some relatively harmless vengeance…but then Aaron escalates things and so does Ron.
Ron then goes on to target every single one of his and Betty’s tormentors, dumping them off in front of her house. But when he tries to remove the ring…he can’t. It’s fusing with his finger.
As Betty and her parents look on at Ron’s handiwork in horror, Ron breaks into their house, kills her parents, scrawls messages all over the walls about how nobody would hurt her again and that he loves her (and at least one cry for help).
He goes around to make sure there’s nobody else left that could hurt Betty, all while she’s both traumatized and doomed.
So, when it comes to various superpowers, I’m one of those that tends to find myself thinking of how things could go wrong with them. And this title certainly delivers. Superheroes/superpowers and horror are two things that can definitely work well together, and I appreciate that they’ve expanded “Super Creepshow” from just a one-off special to at least one full volume, because there’s so much that can be explored in that vein.
And as befitting of an issue #1 of a superhorror title, we’ve got glorious bastardizations of a couple of classic heroes’ origins. Like what if the spider bite jumped much more into body horror, without going the 100% realism route (which would likely involve radiation poisoning)? Or what if the Flash lost control of the switch between normal speed and enhanced (and became extremely overprotective)?
Going into the artwork for both of these stories, both styles are done well. “Creeping” has a sort of classic, old-school vibe with its colors and textures. Also, love how the cover homages the first appearance of Spider-Man before the first story riffs on Spidey’s origin story. The cover would have worked no matter which route the first story took and driven home the point that, yep, we’re reading a superhero-themed horror comic. But it leads so well into that first story.
The second tale has a more modern look to it, with slightly brighter coloration. And the way Hyperspeed is portrayed is a nice visual. The world outside of Ron’s unnaturally fast form becomes a blue monochrome, like it’s all frozen except for him. Also, Ron’s design (before he loses his glasses and eventually his humanity) sort of reminds me of some iterations of Peter Parker, which…not sure if it’s intentional, but it works.
As for the writing in Super Creepshow #1, I’m not sure which story I like better. “Creeping” ends with the girl Marcus had been pursuing surviving, living her best human-spider life (much to the detriment of anyone unlucky enough to become a snack). And the fact that she seems to love Marcus’s new self…it doesn’t feel like a standard: “I’ll accept you no matter what” declaration so much as it makes me wonder a bit about her taste in reading (monster romance is definitely a genre unto itself). Plus, the introduction of drugs to the narrative is a classic horror element, and I enjoy the fact that Marcus’s first thought when his mutation begins is: “Wow, this is one hell of a drug trip”. It feels like the most natural response to the onset.
“Speed Freak”, meanwhile, makes it clear that Ron cares about Betty. Also, picked up on a slight homage to Archie Comics with the character names, with “Ron” being one of Veronica’s nicknames, and Betty Cooper’s first and last names being split between both leads. It helps to sort of invoke a classic vibe…before Ron finds the ring and it all goes speeding downhill.
Narratively, it’s interesting to see Ron’s desire to keep his best friend/crush safe spiral into an obsessive, downright homicidal (or rather, genocidal) protectiveness. He might be trying to keep her from starving, as well, but both of them are alone right now. Even if he ends up bringing food for her, there’s a strong possibility that that Hyperspeed may shorten his lifespan. Plus, the isolation is definitely going to drive her to insanity.
Final Thoughts
Super Creepshow #1 is off to a running start. We’ve got two really well-done stories that show the darker side of superpowers, with two styles of expressive artwork. Though any arachnophobes may want to approach this one with caution.
