Fresh hell in Phantasmag
With its faux-photocopied styling and its obsession with the likes of Hellraiser, Friday the 13th, and Freddy Krueger, Phantasmag looks at first glance like a nostalgic tribute to the 20th century’s greatest horror hits. But there’s a strong outsider energy driving this magazine, and as editor-in-chief Lana Thorn explains, “as a queer woman obsessed with horror, mine is the position of an outsider in an outsider’s community.”
She clearly loves her subject, and she dredges the depths of her early experiences with horror to explain how the classics affected her so meaningfully, as well as featuring new works that have crossed her path. She writes most of the pieces herself, but there are also a handful of articles by contributors who share their own outsiders’ ideas about the particular allure of darkness. The result is a strangely lovely, and very personal magazine, which bounces along on a tide of enthusiastic fandom, as well as blood, death and doom, drawing the reader into its passion for the macabre.
