Bad Dreams in the Night

by Adam Ellis

Like a graphic novel version of Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark , this collection of original horror tales is packed with urban legends, terrifying twists, and delightfully haunted stories by one of the biggest stars in webcomics. Each story will make you scream for more!

A new take on a classic format, Bad Dreams in the Night is an updated, illustrated take on the horror anthologies the author grew up with as a kid, such as Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and In a Dark, Dark Room . These self-contained stories grew rapidly in popularity among the author's online audience, and even inspired production of a motion picture from Buzzfeed Studios and Lionsgate Films. Filled with spine-tingling, pulse-increasing tales of mystery and supernatural occurrences, this book of never-before-seen comics will be the perfect gift for people who love  Black Mirror  and  Stranger Things  and listened to podcasts like  Welcome to Nightvale  and  Rabbits. 

Genres: Horror, Graphic Novels, Comics, Short Stories, Fiction, Fantasy, Graphic Novels Comics

256 pages, Hardcover

First published April 16, 2024

About the author

Adam Ellis is a 25-year old artist, blogger and reluctant hipster who lives in New York. When he isn't illustrating for his site, he does freelance design for comic book publishers. He also hates tomatoes and can't do long division.

Reviews

[Alexander Peterhans · Rating 2 out of 5]

The long and the short of it: great art with really quite poor writing.

The stories are full of clichés, are very tropey and don't take any risks. Ideas are okay, but not well thought through, and never evolve into something actually surprising or scary. But the real shame is, there are tons of story inconsistencies. Like, quite basic stuff. An editor should've easily been able to catch these.

(Picked up a review copy through Edelweiss)

[MagretFume · Rating 3 out of 5]

Thank you Andrews McMeel Publishing for providing me with an ARC.

This is a good collection of short light horror stories.
The stories are interesting, the art is very clean and cute and the rhythm is just right. Nothing too graphic.

Unfortunately, it didn't really click with me, but it's still a nice read.

[Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was interested in this book as I’ve read and enjoyed some of the author’s horror comics via Instagram. While those are typically adaptations of other people’s stories, usually from reddit posts and Twitter threads, the eleven stories here are all original. (Aside from one, a riff on the 19th-century story best known as ‘The Green Ribbon’ and recently reinterpreted by Carmen Maria Machado in ‘The Husband Stitch’.)

Highlights include the urban legend vibes of ‘Bus Stop’; the moody, Junji Ito-lite ‘Butter Corn Ramen’; and the punchy modern ghost story ‘Viola Bloom’. The longer comics work best, and I also found them more effective when framed as a personal experience of the narrator, which takes the edge off anything that seems inconclusive. Shorter pieces like ‘Forest Fruit’ and ‘Hangnail’ hinge on visual punchlines; I’d call these dark jokes more than ‘horror stories’. Others have great setups – ‘Better Kate Than Never’, ‘Murder Party’ – but don’t do anything truly unexpected with them.

My main problem with Bad Dreams in the Night – and I realise this may sound nitpicky to some – is that little knowledge or appreciation of contemporary horror seems to have gone into it. Instead, it’s inspired more by a combination of old children’s books and the sort of ‘this really happened to me!’ stories people post online in the hope of creating a viral creepypasta. This is reflected in the author’s notes accompanying each story, some of which take away from the effect. Reading the explanation for ‘Green Ribbon’, you’d think Ellis was the first person to conceive of telling this story from the woman’s perspective. One note starts with the words ‘not too much to say about this one’ – in which case, surely it’s better not to have a note at all.

So, I liked this perfectly well but it’s all quite insubstantial. I’d perhaps consider buying it as a gift for someone who doesn’t usually read horror – and to be fair, I think that’s probably who it’s aimed at anyway! If you enjoyed this and are looking for more short horror stories in graphic novel format, I’d recommend Emily Carroll’s Through the Woods.

I received an advance review copy of Bad Dreams in the Night from the publisher through Edelweiss.

[Megu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very entertaining anthology with a strong vibe of online creepy pastas, I've been a fan of Adam Ellis webcomics for quite some time, but I never got a chance to properly read his horror stories. I'm not sure if all of those compiled in this volume were published online before, but I really enjoyed reading them all at once. They reminded me of the old days of the internet, when you browsed forums at night to give yourself chills from creepy stories pasted there. I wouldn't say that all chapters had the same impact, a few endings were rather flat, but I loved the Halloween-like atmosphere of it (I wish I read it around September). The last story was probably my favorite - properly scary with an absolutely creepy ending.

[Mallory · Rating 4 out of 5]

This graphic novel collection of short stories was a fun read. I really liked the art work and felt like it completely enhanced the stories. The explanations of the stories and where the inspiration came from were less interesting for me. It’s always interesting to know how inspiration struck but it almost took a little bit of the edge of the story. These are very clean and not graphic stories. More in line with R. L. Stine’s books than Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. I was hoping for a little more from the stories, I thought the ideas were great but I thought most of them could have been developed just a little more. But I loved the twist of adding the art work and really thought it added to the stories. My favorite story was Me and Evangeline at the Farm, but I also really enjoyed The Bus Stop. Overall I enjoyed most of the stories.

[Coral · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well, I'm actually surprised and disappointed to be giving less than stellar feedback. I'm familiar with Adam Ellis's comics from Reddit and have always adored them. I had a whole plan in my head to make a post on Reddit and talk about how he has a new book coming out since he's an /r/comics darling, but I don't think I should at this point. Unfortunately, I have a few problems with this set of comics, some are easily fixable, so I'd encourage the publisher and author to possibly consider them.

First, the explanation after each story is unnecessary and diminishes the experience. If you have to explain the point, why bother with the comic in the first place. Also, while the artist of course has inspiration and intent behind their piece, the greatest part of art is the interpretation on the part of the consumer. Otherwise, your reader doesn't connect with it as organically and naturally as they might. They don't take away their own personal meaning, just the author's.

Secondly, a few of these stories were really unoriginal. The Green Ribbon is just the Green Ribbon combined with Bluebeard's Wife. Hangnail (if the initial story really was created by Adam Ellis) was way too prevalent to be interesting this time around. Viola Bloom is just a story about chain mail and has been done so, so many times.

Evangeline, Butter Corn Ramen, Forest Fruit and Little House in the Sea were more original but predictable and kind of boring. Murder Party was preachy. True Crime and Horror fans are definitely going to overlap, and I think it will turn those readers off, but hey, if that's the point, that's the point.

Milk Door, Bus Stop, Better Kate than Never were great, but I thought Milk Door especially was ruined by the explanation at the end.

All in all, I think I've realized that while I like Adam Ellis's art, I don't really like his writing. I'm most familiar with his comics that portray 2-sentence horror stories and those are written by other users on reddit. I think my suggestion would be asking/paying those users for their concept and creating a book of those. The lack of originality was just... saddening.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

[Heather K (dentist in my spare time) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I'm a huge fan of this illustrator/author, and I follow him on Instagram religiously. I bought this in hard cover, and I don't regret it at all. There were some stories that I've seen before, but I was appropriately spooked in the best of ways.

[Jessii Vee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love a spooky little book with gorgeous illustrations & the stories themselves reminded me of the ones we used to hear around the campfire as kids.

[destiny ♡ howling libraries · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was such a fun collection of stories! I've always loved Adam Ellis' comics, and I remember being ecstatic when he announced that he was putting out this book. Despite being known more for his funny content, Adam's life-long love for scary movies and stories shines through in this; he pays homage to some really fun older tales while also putting a fresh new spin on them, and his completely original ideas are great, too. A few of these felt like comic versions of r/nosleep stories (in a good way), which has made me realize I need that to become a reality at some point. I loved this and will definitely be grabbing a finished copy for re-reading purposes at some point!

Thank you to the publisher for the gifted copy! All thoughts are honest and my own.

✨ Content warnings for: violence, gore, death, body horror, entrapment, a brief recounting of a homophobia-fueled harassment campaign that was carried out against the author

———
bookstagram | booktok | blog | storygraph

[Mae ❀ Paper Rêveries · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 bad dreams out of 5

I have mixed emotions about this one, and I think it mainly stems from having read each of the author's ending story notes.

Ellis explains the origin of every chapter in this horror anthology, and most times I felt it removed the magic of the moment. The perfect example of this is during The Green Ribbon, a story which I had never heard of before. I won't spoil the rest, but it made the entire premise very underwhelming.

My favourites were Butter Corn Ramen, Little House in the Sea, and Viola Bloom. Had the rest of the stories been as unsettling as these three, perhaps the author's notes wouldn't've mattered as much.

[alexis · Rating 2 out of 5]

The author note after each story really sucks out what little life still exists in here.

[Debbie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve followed Adam Ellis’ comics on Instagram for years, and have always enjoyed his art style and punchy storytelling.

Overall this book was fine, but I felt like several of the concepts would have benefitted from being much more fleshed out. Many of the stories felt lacking and ended too abruptly, not giving you enough time to truly sink into the horror feeling he was trying to evoke.

I get that his niche is mostly in short-form stories for consumption on social media, but even then, these comics felt like key buildup was edited out or never developed. And a fair amount of the endings were expected and cliché.

[Alex(Books-In-A-Storm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was amazing. Scary and I need more. I loved it so much.

[Dana · Rating 2 out of 5]

Absolutely loved the art, but the writing was not on par with it whatsoever. I've known Adam Ellis's work for a while now and think he is a great artist with an amazing sense of flow and layout, and Bad Dreams in the Night shows how capable of a visual artist he is. Writing-wise, I think the stories should have been edited much much more though. The spooky reveals/twists are often cliché and more reminiscent of Reddit two-sentence horror stories than actual carefully crafted narratives. The build-up likewise is almost always non-existent, Butter Corn Ramen probably being the worst offender - there is no gradual shift that allows the character and reader to feel and express the terror at the body horror transformation, the guy is just done after two pages without spending any time on his descent into addiction or his bodily changes. Others lack both build-up and punchline, such as Better Kate than Never, which could've been such a fun concept but fell completely flat and didn't make any sense whatsoever. Too many stories felt like they had no point, such as Me and Evangeline at the Farm and Forest Fruit. By far the strongest ones were Murder Party and Viola Bloom (the latter being highly unoriginal, but still working well with the presentation); Milk Door was also fairly fun and I generally liked the urban legend-feel of Bus Stop, but that's pretty much it.

I ADORE horror anthologies and really wanted to love this, but I honestly think the stories should have been streamlined far far more. They read more like bad to mediocre creepypastas than anything else.

- ARC provided by NetGalley -

[Stephanie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was very surprised by this comic book. I saw this title in passing and thought it was interesting, because it plays on the vibe of numerous famous pieces of horror literature and media. It really does feel like watching Stranger Things or reading a Goosebumps book. The art style is different going from story to story. I thought that was very cool how the artist/author applied modern comic art techniques as well as older ones, in addition to taking on the anime style of manga comics as well. Very creative, and the effect kept things interesting because I wanted to see what the art would be like next. Also, the inspirations for this author's stories are intriguing. He includes a little blurb after each comic. These blurbs made the comics even better. This author has a dark sense of humor, which I always appreciate in horror writers and artists. I hope he decides to continue going down this road and opts to publish future comics because I really enjoyed them, and I think flash horror comics should totally be a thing. Like The No Sleep Podcast, but a comic book.

[Yamini · Rating 4 out of 5]

Developed by a beautiful artist this book consists of multiple unhinging short stories that exist on the periphery of our everyday lives. The author has transformed the most ordinary circumstances into something creepy and peculiar.

I did have fun reading them and though one of them was a little too much to see (The Butter Corn Ramen), I consumed the rest of the book at a devastatingly fast speed. Viola Bloom was my favourite with its spooky vibe and a neverending loop. Read this book if you are looking for little doses of dreadful tales that keep you pondering late at night.

Thank you @this_is_edelweiss @andrewsmcmeel and @adamtots for the e-ARC.
Genre: #horror #graphicnovel
Rating: 4/5 ⭐️

[Victoria · Rating 4 out of 5]

Once again an author proves that a graphic novel can be scary. These are all short little nightmares that are scary! I don’t think I’ll forget this anytime soon. I wish I could read it again for the first time and I’m jealous of those that can!

Thank you NetGalley, Andrews McMeel Publishing and Adam Ellis for letting me read this eARC in exchange for an honest review.

[Kyra Leseberg (Roots & Reads) · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5 stars
A solid collection of short horror stories in graphic novel format, inspired by the '90s classic Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark.
Standouts for me were: Green Ribbon, Better Kate Than Never, and Murder Party.

[Komal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Was it scary? no
A bit creepy? yes
Definitely has the potential to induce some creative nightmares. 💀

Some stories were predictable but this GN is all about vibes. It has a nostalgic quality to it.
I absolutely loved the witty commentary that Adam gave after every story.

The artwork is spectacular and you can't help but walk down the memory lane back when "Goosebumps" and "Are you afraid of the dark" were part of our daily lives. 👻

Music recommendation - No hang-ups by Jocelyn Pook

[Ari · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thank you NetGalley and Andrews McMeel Publishing for this ARC.

This was a very entertaining anthology. As a fan of horror, I've come across some terrifying stories and some that carry a more nostalgic and cozy vibe. This book possessed the latter. "Viola Bloom" and "Butter Corn Ramen" stood out for me among the rest in a wonderfully unsettling way, and the art work is beautiful.

[Niki · Rating 3 out of 5]

**Thank you to NetGalley for giving me a free copy of this book to review. All opinions are my own.**

I've been Adam Ellis' fan for years and years, especially the horror stuff he's been doing lately, so I JUMPED on the opportunity to read this book. I read this in one sitting, and it was good- but not great.

The art IS great throughout, but the stories were a lot more predictable than I expected (and than the stories Adam usually posts on Instagram) It's like he chose the 'safest' ones for this release to play it safe for a mainstream release; but I don't think the world needed yet ANOTHER Green Ribbon reimagining, or r/nosleep creepypasta style 'This actually happened to me!' stories (though Adam did go viral about one of those, the 'Dear David' story). Maybe that's just me.

[disz · Rating 4 out of 5]

⭐️ 4 stars

What a good horror graphic novel!!! It's giving me a scary and thrilling feeling after reading it. There are 11 stories, each with a good plot and beautiful art. I highly recommend this as a short horror book that you can read in one sitting.

[Final✘Girl✘Magick · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went in with this with no expectations and only with the knowledge that this was a tribute to the 80', 90's, Scary Stories To Tell In The Dark and In A Dark Dark Room. Some of my favorites! I throughly enjoyed this. I felt like a kid again, laying in bed, staying up late at night reading this and kicking my feet. I giggled in some parts and other parts I was like, "Oh, so that's where this is going." But in a good way. This is definitely for adults so despite it being a little tame, it's not too gorey, but don't give this to children. Lol I really enjoyed the authors personal spin on The Green Ribbon. And his notes at the end of each comic. This was a fun little read.

[Elke · Rating 5 out of 5]

This comic collection of horror stories was so much fun to read! The mix of revived classic horror themes you may have already heard of (but surely not this way!) and fresh ideas was entertaining and never failed to surprise me. I can't even say which one is my favorite, because all stories were great in their own way. Scary, shocking and humorous - I had a really good time with this book. Recommended!

[Cookie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I enjoyed it sooo much! I really love Adam Ellis' webcomics so I was quite excited when I found this book. The stories are scary stories like "it happened to my cousin's neighbor's friend's soccer teacher" – the kind we would tell each other as kids in the dark during sleepovers.

I loved the vibe, the humor, the illustrations and especially the nostalgia! Each story ends with a few sentences about why he wrote it.

Loved. It.

This will be my yearly Halloween read.

[Emily Carter-Dunn · Rating 3 out of 5]

2.5 rounded up. Great art, but most stories were rushed and needed a lot more development.

[Virginja ↢ 99% imp · Rating 3 out of 5]

1. Me and Evangeline at the farm. 3/5
The set up is cool but the ending is very predictable

2. Milk door. 5/5
This short story has a panel that chilled my blood.

3. Butter corn ramen. 4/5
It would probably be a 5/5 if I hadn’t already read it years ago when it was first posted.

4. Green Ribbon. 2/5
It wasn’t scary nor was the ending surprising.

5. Forest Fruit. 2/5
Way shorter than the rest. The concept was interesting, but the execution left a lot to be desired. The paneling was very flat and the abrupt ending didn’t leave enough time for the horror to set in.

6. Bus stop. 3/5
Good story but not really a horror one.

7. Hangnail 4/5
Body horror at its finest.

8. Better Kate than never. 4/5
This was probably the best concept out of all these short comics; unfortunately, this needed more pages to fully hit. Adam has made 30/40 pages zines in the past, I think he should have saved this one for a longer comic.

9. Little house in the sea. 2/5
I had already read this, it is more a weird comic than a horror one.

10. Murder party. 1/5
Weakest story in the entire collection. It isn’t horror, it isn’t even thriller: it’s a critique to true crime podcasts, which I think has no place in a horror collection.

11. Viola Bloom. 3/5
Not much to say, this one was horror but I didn’t feel any tension. Viola wasn’t scary enough.

[Manon (bookswithonno) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started reading this at 1 AM and finished it in one sitting. It is now 2 AM and I won’t be able to sleep…. Why did I think it was a good idea to read horror in the middle of the night?

I do recommend reading this one if you’re into horror! It’s a horror graphic novel anthology with 11 short stories. Some were definitely more creepy than others, but all stories left me feeling disturbed (especially the last one). I really liked that the author has included a short paragraph at the end of each story, explaining where the inspiration for the story came from and what the story tries to convey.

Thank you to Andrews McMeel for the e-ARC.

[Angustia⋆Cósmica · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've had a fondness for Adam Ellis since the very first comics of his that I read, I think it was in That One Site era back then.
And then he rocked everyone's s*it with Dear David. That was such a great era for horror comics, especially on Twitter and whatnot. Ever since I've kept an eye out for his horror stuff, so I was over the moon when I found this book on the wild.

As expected, I LOVED IT.
The little background stories for each comic after each ended was the cherry on top. I love knowing the artistic process that goes into the author's head so this was an extra delight to get!

The twist on the Green Ribbon story was PERFECT.
Looking forward to more horror coming his way!

[Logan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.5 rounded up. This was a fun collection of spooky shorts! I’ve enjoyed Adam’s work for a long time, so I’m excited to read his next horror short(s) installment “Let Me in Your Window” (the title of which is another Kate Bush lyric).