‘Pretty Hate Machine’ Review: When Grief Grows Teeth

Some horror comics ease you in. Pretty Hate Machine does not. This one grabs you by the collar in its opening pages and doesn’t let go for five issues straight, and you know what? That’s exactly the kind of horror comic I want more of.

The Team Behind the Terror

Pretty Hate Machine is co-written by Ryan O’Nan and Tim Seeley, and it’s worth pointing out right away that this is actually O’Nan’s first comic book. That’s kind of wild given how confident the writing feels. O’Nan has spent most of his career as a TV writer, with credits on Legion, Skins, Queen of the South, and Wu-Tang: An American Saga, and he’s currently writing for CBS’s Tracker. He also wrote and directed the indie film Brooklyn Brothers Beat the Best back in 2012, and published his debut novel, Winders, in 2021. Tim Seeley, on the other hand, needs no introduction if you’ve been reading comics for any length of time. We already know him from Revival and Godzilla, and from many other series we loved, including Rogue: The Savage Land and Imaginary Fiends, so we already knew he had horror down cold before this one even came out. We trusted him completely walking into this.

Paolo Armitano handles art on the first issue, setting the tone before Hank La Marca takes over for the rest of the run. La Marca has a prior credit on The Christbearer, but Pretty Hate Machine feels like his first real showcase on a bigger stage, and it shows just how much horror suits him. Colorist Roman Stevens, a Berlin-based illustrator also known for his work on Absolute Batman, and letterer Dave Sharpe, round out a team that clearly understood the assignment from page one.

What Is Pretty Hate Machine About?

Thomas is already barely holding it together after his father dies suddenly, and things get worse when his mother starts leaning on his uncle for support in a way that doesn’t sit right with him. That’s when a monstrous kid named Luther shows up, knives instead of hands, a mouth full of shark-like teeth, insisting that Thomas’s father didn’t die by accident at all, and that everyone comforting Thomas is lying straight to his face. Thomas is left choosing between two versions of the truth: the people around him who tell him grief just takes time, or a demon dragging him through a spiral of conspiracy, violence, and revenge to expose the rot underneath his own family. What he eventually finds is far worse than anything he expected going in.

A Horror Movie in Comic Form

I was hooked from the very first pages, and I mean that literally, three kids finding their own bodies hanging in the woods with a message demanding Thomas by name is such a strong way to open a comic. It plays like a horror movie cold open rather than a typical first issue, and that’s exactly what got me excited early on. Once Thomas actually meets Luther and watches a cop get murdered right in front of him, I knew this book wasn’t going to ease off, and it never really does.

What kept me coming back every month was how the paranoia just kept compounding. I never fully trusted anyone around Thomas, and I loved that the story made me question the same people he was questioning, his mother, his uncle, even his friends. Then there’s the twist involving his father’s past, and I have to be careful here because it’s genuinely one of the better gut-punches I’ve read in a horror comic all year. I won’t spoil what it is, but I can say it hit me harder than I expected going in, it’s not just a shocking reveal for shock’s sake, it’s actually devastating for Thomas as a character, and that’s what elevated the whole series for me. That’s the moment this stopped being just a fun, bloody horror comic and became something with real emotional weight behind it.

The finale delivers on everything the series built up to. It’s bloody, it’s mean, and there’s a sequence near the end with real Junji Ito energy that I’m still thinking about. Without spoiling how it wraps up, Thomas gets pushed right to the edge of one final, devastating act, and I found the way it all resolves genuinely satisfying, exactly the kind of ending a series this intense deserves.

The Art That Makes It Hit Harder

Paolo Armitano sets the tone in the first issue, but once Hank La Marca takes over on art, the book’s creep factor goes up considerably. There’s a rawness to his linework that makes the violence feel less choreographed and more like something spilling out of control, which fits a story that’s fundamentally about grief curdling into something monstrous. Combined with Roman Stevens’ colors, which shift from muted domestic tones into something much bloodier as the story escalates, the art carries just as much of the horror as the script does.

Final Thoughts

Pretty Hate Machine is one of the most confident horror debuts I’ve read in a while, especially knowing it’s O’Nan’s first time writing comics at all. It’s violent, emotional, and genuinely unsettling in a way that earns its scares instead of relying on shock alone. With the trade paperback out October 27, 2026, this is a great time to catch up before it’s everywhere.

FAQ

Is Pretty Hate Machine worth reading? Yes. It’s a brutal, emotionally grounded horror series that earns its twists instead of relying on shock value alone.

Do you need to read anything before Pretty Hate Machine? No. It’s a standalone five-issue miniseries with no required reading beforehand.

Who is writing and drawing Pretty Hate Machine? Ryan O’Nan and Tim Seeley co-write the series, with art by Paolo Armitano on issue 1 and Hank La Marca on issues 2 through 5, colors by Roman Stevens, and letters by Dave Sharpe.

Is Pretty Hate Machine a one-shot, miniseries, or ongoing series? It’s a five-issue miniseries, running from April to August 2026.

When is the trade paperback out? The collected edition is out October 27, 2026.