Super Creepshow #1 reimagines classic superhero tropes, featuring ‘creepified’ versions of Spider-Man and super-speed. In this interview, we discuss how writer Kieron Gillen depicted a story that starts off with a spider bite… and spirals into a body horror on the scale of David Cronenberg’s The Fly.
Creepshow is one of the most popular and beloved horror anthologies of all-time. It all began back in the ’80s with the original movie, directed by genre legend George A. Romero (of zombie movie fame) and written by Stephen King. The movie spawned a sequel, and of course, later on was revived in Greg Nicotero’s TV series on Shudder. The series would make its natural progression into the comics medium through Image Comics/Skybound in 2019, garnering a dedicated audience of its own.
Creepshow spinoff series Super Creepshow is exactly what the title suggests — it takes superhero elements and tropes and truly ‘creepifies‘ them. Super Creepshow #1 features stories from legendary comic writers Kieron Gillen (Young Avengers, Darth Vader) and Ryan North (The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Fantastic Four). We’ve interviewed both, but in this article, we’re focusing on Gillen’s wonderfully grotesque story.
Gillen’s story certainly had our spider-senses tingling. It’s the perfect opener to Super Creepshow. And yet, this story was not Gillen’s first choice. He had a project that was long gestating, but such a story turned out to be a little too big to be told in the Creepshow format. “It’s a funny one – I actually had pitched another idea first,” he said. “A story I had for a very long time. However, after we agreed we were doing it, I realised it was too big to fit everything in the space, and if I was going to do it, I find a
place to fit the idea. I withdrew the pitch – this is very rude! – and so not to leave them in the lurch had to think about something. So I walked outside and thought… What would Adrian Tchaikovsky do?”
Armed with a degree in Applied Biology, Gillen decided to put it to good use. “I have science training,” he says. “Sometimes it shows up. When I’m desperate.”
What followed was a gruesome body horror story that keeps things very Creepshow. It takes Spider-Man influence, following a teen who gets bitten by a spider and experiences extreme physical changes. But as opposed to cool superpowers, it quickly turns grotesque. “I suspect The Fly is a bigger influence. This is very much Cronenberg does The Fly, in terms of how I describe it. I am of an age where The Fly got under my skin. Thankfully, not literally.”
“Really, it came from something I think when reading those early Ditko issues – how people talk about how horrible Spider-Man is. Now, we see Spider-Man… but they clearly don’t. Doing a story about the horror of that kind of archetype, right?”
For Gillen, one of the biggest highlights from working on this story was his collaboration with Rossi Gifford (Wonder Woman: Black & Gold). This was their first collaboration, and it worked out perfectly. “She’s a dream,” Gillen said. “She handled the horror perfectly, but nailed the Archie-meets-Dazed-and-Confused seediness of the teen scenes too. The story needs both. I hope we get a chance to work together down the line, as she’s absolutely my jam.”
Super Creepshow #1 releases on March 18, 2026. Pick up your copy here.
