John Kenn Mortensen – författare

Gruesome, spindly figures gather outside a house, then spirit away a dreaming youth, bed and all. The stage is set for 32 skin-crawling poems imagining various children's nightmares, all with sequential illustrations by Danish horror master Mortensen. His eerie visions fade to black at the edges, like a dreamer unable to shift their focus, and inspire delicious terror all by themselves. Similarly, the short poems each evoke a distinct sense of dread for the sleeping imagination to expand upon; together, the words and pictures conjure a nightmarish world tinged with pitch black humor. The sequences splay across double-page spreads, evoking Edward Gorey gone grand scale, and grand guignol. For those of a nervous disposition, read in bright sunlight. For those in search of a nervous disposition, take two before bed.

Freestyle wrestler The Sledgehammer has never met defeat, not at the hands of Painkiller, Handsome Jens, Fezzik the Giant or the Angel of Death. But over the course of 80 pages, Danish illustrator John Kenn Mortensen's surreal black and white graphic novel will take Sledgehammer to the limits of reality, to show that he's motivated by far more than hubris - it's also love. Mortensen's first English-language graphic novel delivers on the promise that his delightfully macabre books of illustration had previously made to readers around the world. With his spidery black-ink style, reminiscent of Edward Gorey's gothic line, we're taken to a world in which heavy metal mixes with the WWE by way of The Seventh Seal and Faust.

John Kenn Mortensen's pen is full of wonderfully creepy monsters which crawl onto sticky yellow note pads when darkness falls. Here we have collected some of the best monster drawings in a delectable hardback edition.

In the wintry season, when we all delight in joyful thoughts of family, presents, and sugarplums, we mustn't forget that the night is dark and full of terrors. Thankfully, bold adventurers Benni Bodker and John Kenn Mortensen have journeyed far and wide to comb through ancient tomes, listen to folk tales, and spy upon loathsome lairs to catalogue the most frightful creatures of the netherworld that appear around Christmastime. A Christmas Bestiary is an essential guidebook to all the horrors that await us during the darkest time of the year, from common creatures such as Baba Yaga and the Krampus to the less encountered (but quite deadly) Yule Wight and Gryla. Bodker's brief text entries include the lore and background of each creature, plus handy info such as danger level that will help you survive (but no guarantees!). Mortensen's gothic, pen-and-ink renderings bring these bone-chilling beasts to life on the page. Eerie, playful, and practical, A Christmas Bestiary is the perfect collection for the ones who love - or fear - the things that go bump in the night.