40 Years Later, Hellraiser Returns For Big New Era

Clive Barker’s Hellraiser first shocked audiences nearly forty years ago when it hit movie screens in the fall of 1987. In 2027, the franchise is celebrating the anniversary of that milestone debut by launching “a new era of suffering.” The Hellraiser mythos is getting a new update, but it is not a sequel to the 2022 film reboot, which didn’t live up to the original, nor is it the television series that has been rumored for years.

Hellbound Hearts is the latest Hellraiser comic series, coming from publisher Boom! Studios. It is reportedly going to be an ongoing series, and according to Boom!, in addition to unleashing hell every month, the comic is going to do its best to live up to the first Hellraiser, and its literary source material, in an important way that its many sequels have never come close to.

More than just serving up gore, Hellbound Hearts is going to ask questions like “Why do we crave pain?” and “Why do we find horror beautiful?”

Hellraiser Turns 40 In 2027; Celebrate The Gamechanging Horror With The New “Hellbound Hearts” Series

1987’s Hellraiser was Clive Barker’s own adaptation of his novella, published the year before, The Hellbound Heart. The new Boom! Studios comic series takes its title from the book, but its visual style is straight out of the film, and it seems dead set on being a worthy continuation of the latter.

Here’s the full synopsis for the series, from Boom!:

New creators! New series! New HELLRAISER!

Horror guru Mike Costa (TV’s Lucifer) and artist Jan Bazaldua (Loki) kick off a new direction in Clive Barker’s gripping Hellraiser mythos!

A new era of suffering begins! It’s been 40 years since Clive Barker introduced the world to new realms horror and sensation. Now, in 2027, Hell is closer than ever. A desperate group of friends — scarred, flawed, and totally unprepared for what’s about to happen — are trying to keep the Puzzle Box from ever being opened again. But there’s more than one Box out there now, and an infinite amount of sex, violence, pain, and desire for them to fall prey to in this new ongoing series.

This series is going to look deep into our souls and ask us to confront uncomfortable questions about the nature of humanity. Why do we crave pain? Why do we find horror beautiful? What is it in our souls that runs hiding in a closet every night?

New creators! New series! New HELLRAISER!

Horror guru Mike Costa (TV’s Lucifer) and artist Jan Bazaldua (Loki) kick off a new direction in Clive Barker’s gripping Hellraiser mythos!

A new era of suffering begins! It’s been 40 years since Clive Barker introduced the world to new realms horror and sensation. Now, in 2027, Hell is closer than ever. A desperate group of friends — scarred, flawed, and totally unprepared for what’s about to happen — are trying to keep the Puzzle Box from ever being opened again. But there’s more than one Box out there now, and an infinite amount of sex, violence, pain, and desire for them to fall prey to in this new ongoing series.

This series is going to look deep into our souls and ask us to confront uncomfortable questions about the nature of humanity. Why do we crave pain? Why do we find horror beautiful? What is it in our souls that runs hiding in a closet every night?

The idea of a “scarred, flawed, and totally unprepared” group of protagonists is promising. The pitfalls of the many Hellraiser sequels, and indeed, almost every major horror franchise from Halloween to A Nightmare on Elm Street, have been the result of focusing too much on lore, rather than cultivating strong characters beyond their iconic antagonists. Hellbound Hearts has the potential to avoid that mistake.

That isn’t to say the series won’t have plenty of opportunities to play with the mythology of the Cenobites, the Lament Configuration, and the rest of the wild ideas that have come from even the bleakest, cheapest Hellraiser installments. Yet the series will be truly successful if it can make readers care about its cast of new characters, before inflicting gruesome suffering on them.

Hellraiser Has A Long History Of Comics; “Hellbound Hearts” Aims To Be The Best, And Scariest, Yet

The Hellraiser movies have historically been hamstrung by their budgets. The scope of the horrors they have been able to depict has always remained limited. Comics are the ideal alternative medium for Hellraiser, at least in theory. And that theory has been tested going all the way back to 1989, when Epic Comics (an imprint of Marvel) launched a Hellraiser series that ran for twenty issues. Epic continued to publish Hellraiser comics intermittently through 1994. Like the films, some are more memorable than others.

Boom! Studios acquired the franchise’s rights in 2011, and has put out a number of Hellraiser comics of its own in the fifteen years since, as well as reprinting Epic classics. In time for the 40th anniversary of the first movie, which proved to be a pivotal moment in horror, Hellbound Hearts is here to try to top them all, and become the best Hellraiser story of its generation.

Hellraiser: Hellbound Hearts #1 debuts January 6, 2027 from Boom! Studios.