Dig into R.L. Stine's The Graveyard Club

R.L. Stine is looking to bring his particular brand of YA horror to a whole new town. The Goosebumps and Fear Street architect will always have Shadyside, but he's now building a new town to terrify in a series at BOOM! Studios.

The comic company announced plans for The Graveyard Club, with stories penned by Stine and drawn by Carola Borelli set in the cemetery-encircled town of Graves End. Navigating the place can be a tricky situation, but it gets much worse for high school student Parker West after a seemingly innocuous joke ticks off the wrong person and puts him and his friends in harm's way.

"In The Graveyard Club graphic novels, the teens hang out in the graveyard–because it might be the safest place in town," Stine said in the press release. Their town is surrounded by graveyards. And swarms of red-eyed bats come swooping out every night. And that’s just the BEGINNING of the horror! I’m having a lot of fun with this series!"

Borelli worked on Spider-Woman and Wasp at Marvel as well as the murder mystery The Deadliest Bouquet at Image Comics and a series of horror comics at Archie starring the likes of Betty and Darkling.

"All the best stories start with, 'It was a quiet town where nothing ever happened,' and this one is no different," Borelli added in the release. "A group of teenagers and a graveyard are the ingredients for a crazy story that will keep you on the edge of your seat!"

Stine came to prominence in the 1980s and 1990s by way of the Point Horror teen books, the middle grade horror Goosebumps titles and his own young adult series set around that boulevard of broken dreams known as Fear Street. The former spawned the Fox kids series of the same name that ran from 1995 through 1998. In 2015, a Goosebumps film came out starring Jack Black as Stine and featured a small army of characters from that series including the stars of books like The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena, Night Of The Living Dummy and so many more. It was followed by Goosebumps 2: Haunted Halloween, both of which are excellent gateway horror films.

Since then, it seems like Stine might be more popular than ever. Leigh Janiak helmed a trio of excellent Fear Street movies for Netflix:1994, 1978 and 1666. Another entry in the series, Prom Queen, was just announced last month. And last year, a new Goosebumps series debuted on Disney+.

In that time, Stine has also moved into the realm of sequential storytelling. In 2019 he wrote a Man-Thing mini at Marvel and also launched the middle grade graphic novel scare series Just Beyond at BOOM! That series also inspired a one-season anthology series on Disney+. Stine and BOOM! clearly enjoy working together given this recent announcement as well as Stuff Of Nightmares which hit in 2022.

The first issue of The Graveyard Club hits book stores on Sept. 17 and comic book shops on the following day.