John Carpenter’s Real-Life Nightmare Inspired His First Original Graphic Novel [Exclusive]

Image via Storm King Comics Published Sep 17, 2026, 5:00 PM EDT Hannah has been writing about horror, sci-fi, and all things nerdy since 2021. At Collider, she covers news and conducts interviews, along with contributing features that dive deep into genre storytelling and why it works. If there’s something lurking in the shadows, she’s probably already writing about it if she's not too busy watching a tape from her VHS collection. Sign in to your Collider account John Carpenter has spent decades giving audiences nightmares through movies like Halloween, The Thing, and Prince of Darkness. His latest horror story, however, began with one of his own. John Carpenter’s Cathedral, the new graphic novel from Storm King Comics, grew from an unusually detailed dream involving an abandoned Los Angeles cathedral, a portal to the underworld, and creatures capable of turning their victims inside out. Carpenter developed the project alongside Sandy King and Sean Sobczak, with artwork by Federico De Luca and Luis Guaragna. The graphic novel follows LAPD detective Christine Adams as the investigation into her father’s gruesome death leads her beneath the cathedral and into a conflict that has been unfolding for generations. In an interview with Collider's Hannah Hunt, King revealed that Carpenter’s dream contained nearly the entire journey, but transforming it into a graphic novel required the team to interrogate every detail of what he had seen. According to King, Carpenter rarely experiences dreams with such a complete narrative, but Cathedral was different. He woke up with a beginning, an ending, and a linear story vivid enough that he immediately began discussing it with Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davies, his longtime musical collaborators. Their first instinct was to turn the dream into an album, but the project soon expanded to include a graphic novel capable of giving Carpenter’s nightmare a visual form. King told Collider: “He had a fully realized, linear dream, which rarely happens. He was so surprised himself that he had this dream that he talked to the boys about it, and they decided they should do an album of it. That’s where it started. Then they decided that there should be a graphic novel to go with the album.” Collider Exclusive · Horror Survival Quiz Which Horror Villain Do You Have the Best Chance of Surviving? Jason Voorhees · Michael Myers · Freddy Krueger · Pennywise · Chucky Five killers. Five completely different ways to die — if you're not smart enough, fast enough, or self-aware enough to avoid it. Only one of them is the villain your particular set of instincts gives you a fighting chance against. Eight questions will figure out which one. 🏕️Jason 🔪Michael 💤Freddy 🎈Pennywise 🪆Chucky TEST YOUR SURVIVAL → 01 Something feels wrong. You can't explain it — you just know. What do you do? First instincts are the difference between the survivor and the first act casualty. ALeave immediately. I don't need to understand a threat to respect it. BStay quiet and observe. If I can see it, I can understand it. If I can understand it, I can avoid it. CStay awake. Whatever this is, I am not going to sleep until I feel safe again. DConfront it directly. Fear grows in the dark — I'd rather know what I'm dealing with. ECheck everything, trust nothing. The threat might be closer than I think — and smaller. NEXT QUESTION → 02 Where are you most likely to find yourself when things go wrong? Setting is everything in horror. Where you are determines which rules apply. ASomewhere remote — a cabin, a campsite, off the grid and away from people. BA quiet suburban neighbourhood where nothing ever happens. Except tonight. CIn my own head — the most dangerous place of all, depending on what's already in there. DWherever children are — because something about this place attracts the worst things. ESomewhere ordinary — a house, a toy store, a place where the last thing you'd expect is a threat. NEXT QUESTION → 03 What is your most reliable survival asset? Every survivor has a quality the villain didn't account for. What's yours? APhysical fitness — I can run, I can swim, I can outlast something that relies on brute persistence. BSpatial awareness — I always know the exits, the hiding spots, the fastest route out. CPsychological resilience — I've faced my worst fears before. They don't have the same power over me. DEmotional steadiness — I don't panic. Panic is what gets you caught. EScepticism — I don't underestimate threats because of how they look. Size is irrelevant. NEXT QUESTION → 04 What kind of fear is hardest for you to fight through? Knowing your weakness is the first step to not dying because of it. AThe unstoppable — something that will not stop, cannot be reasoned with, and is always getting closer. BThe invisible — a threat I can feel but can't locate, watching from somewhere I can't see. CThe psychological — something that uses my own mind and memories against me. DThe unknowable — something ancient, shapeless, that feeds on the fear itself. EThe mundane — a threat so ordinary-looking that no one will believe me until it's too late. NEXT QUESTION → 05 You're with a group when things start going wrong. What's your role? Horror movies are brutally clear about who survives group situations and who doesn't. AThe one who says "we need to leave" first — and means it, even when no one listens. BThe one who stays quiet, watches the others, and figures out the pattern before anyone else does. CThe one who holds the group together when panic sets in — because someone has to. DThe one who asks the questions nobody wants to ask — because ignoring them gets people killed. EThe one who takes the threat seriously when everyone else is laughing it off. NEXT QUESTION → 06 What's the horror movie mistake you're most likely to make? Honest self-assessment is a survival skill. Denial is not. AGoing back for someone — I know I shouldn't, but I can't leave them behind. BAssuming I'm safe once I've found a hiding spot. That's when it finds me. CFalling asleep when I absolutely cannot afford to. Exhaustion is its own enemy. DLetting my curiosity override my instincts — I always need to understand what I'm dealing with. EDismissing the threat because of how it looks. That's exactly what it wants. NEXT QUESTION → 07 What's your best weapon against something that can't be stopped by conventional means? Every horror villain has a weakness. The survivors are always the ones who find it. AThe environment itself — I use the terrain, the water, the geography against it. BPatience — I wait, I watch, and I strike at the one moment it doesn't expect. CLucidity — if I can stay in control of my own mind, it loses its primary weapon. DCourage — facing it directly, refusing to run, taking away the fear it feeds on. EImprovisation — I use whatever's at hand, however unconventional. Creativity over brute force. NEXT QUESTION → 08 It's the final scene. You're the last one standing. How did you make it? The final survivor always has a reason. What's yours? AI kept moving. I never stopped, never hid for too long, never let it corner me. BI figured out the pattern before anyone else did — and I used it against the thing following it. CI stayed awake, stayed lucid, and refused to give it the one thing it needed most. DI stopped being afraid of it. And the moment I did, everything changed. EI took it seriously from the start — and I never once made the mistake of underestimating it. REVEAL MY VILLAIN → Your Survival Odds Have Been Calculated Your Best Chance Is Against…Your instincts, your strengths, and your particular way of thinking under pressure point to one villain you actually have a fighting chance against. Everyone else — good luck. Jason VoorheesJason is relentless, but he is also predictable — and that is the gap you would exploit. He moves in straight lines toward his target. He doesn't strategise, doesn't adapt, doesn't outsmart. He simply pursues. Your ability to keep moving, use the environment, and resist the panic that freezes most victims gives you a genuine edge. The Crystal Lake survivors were always the ones who stopped running in circles and started thinking about terrain, water, and distance. You think like that. Which means Jason, for all his indestructibility, would face someone who simply refused to be where he expected. Michael MyersMichael watches before he moves. He is patient, methodical, and almost impossible to detect — until it's too late for anyone who isn't paying close enough attention. But you are paying attention. You notice the shape in the window, the car parked slightly wrong, the silence where there should be sound. Michael's power lies in the invisibility of ordinary suburbia — the fact that nothing ever looks wrong until it already is. Your spatial awareness and instinct to map every room, every exit, and every shadow before you need them is precisely the quality Laurie Strode had. You are not a victim waiting to happen. You are someone who already suspects something is wrong — and acts on it. Freddy KruegerFreddy wins by getting inside your head — using your own fears, your own memories, your own subconscious as weapons against you. That strategy requires a target who can be destabilised. You are harder to destabilise than most. You've faced uncomfortable truths about yourself and you haven't looked away. The survivors on Elm Street were always the ones who understood what was happening and chose to face it rather than flee from it. Freddy's greatest weakness is that his power evaporates in the presence of someone who refuses to give him the fear he feeds on. Your psychological resilience — the ability to stay grounded when reality itself becomes unreliable — is exactly the quality that keeps you alive here. PennywisePennywise is ancient, shapeshifting, and feeds on terror — but it has one critical vulnerability: it cannot function against someone who genuinely stops being afraid of it. The Losers Club didn't survive because they were braver than everyone else. They survived because they faced their fears together, and faced them honestly. You ask the questions others avoid. You look directly at what frightens you rather than turning away. That directness — the refusal to let fear fester in the dark — is Pennywise's worst nightmare. It chose the wrong target when it chose you. You are exactly the kind of person whose fear tastes like nothing at all. ChuckyChucky's greatest advantage is that nobody takes him seriously until it's already too late. He exploits the gap between how something looks and what it actually is. You don't have that gap. You take threats seriously regardless of how they present — and you never make the mistake of underestimating something because of its size or appearance. Chucky relies on surprise, on the delay between recognition and response. You close that delay faster than almost anyone. Your instinct to treat every unfamiliar thing with appropriate scepticism — rather than dismissing it because it seems absurd — is the exact quality that keeps you breathing. Against Chucky, not laughing is already winning. You are very good at not laughing. ↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ John Carpenter’s Dream Became a “Game of a Thousand Questions” Image via Storm King ComicsImage via Storm King ComicsImage via Storm King ComicsImage via Storm King ComicsImage via Storm King ComicsImage via Storm King ComicsImage via Storm King ComicsImage via Storm King ComicsImage via Storm King ComicsImage via Storm King Comics Carpenter’s written account of the dream provided approximately 10 pages of material for what would become a roughly 120-page story. While the central nightmare was already present, King and Sobczak still had to determine who its characters were and why readers should follow them into the darkness. “You kind of go, ‘Okay, now you have to sit down and answer some questions. Who is this lead woman? What was her background? What was her father to her?’” King said. “In order to do fantasy, in order to go into some other realm, you have to ground it in reality. You have to make your characters as well-rounded as possible so that people attach to them before you can push their imaginations into the insane.” That process extended to everything from the cathedral’s history to the precise mechanics of its monsters. A detail that feels perfectly natural inside a dream can produce considerably more questions once it has to exist on a comic book page. The team had to determine whether the eyes hanging from trees could watch Christine, what kind of ancient presence could have existed beneath Los Angeles for centuries, and how previous generations might have contained it. “It becomes a game of a thousand questions,” King explained. “‘Explain in more detail to me what you have in your head.’ I’ve spent decades rummaging around in John’s head, so I can pretty much interpret what he’s saying to me.” Even with that familiarity, Carpenter remained closely involved as King and Sobczak expanded his original outline. She recalled him listening to their conversations from across the room and interrupting whenever their interpretation began drifting away from what he had imagined. “He would be listening to us from across the room, kind of going, ‘No, no, no, that’s not it,’” King said. “I’d go, ‘Okay, care to explain?’ Then we just got more and more clarified on what it was.” 'Cathedral's Final Girl Had To Be Strong Enough To Survive Carpenter’s Nightmare Image via Storm King Comics At the center of Cathedral is Christine, a detective whose pursuit of her father’s killer becomes inseparable from a much older supernatural war. King explained that the character reflects Carpenter’s longstanding interest in strong women and the internal forces that push them forward. “He’s very big on female characters and their strengths,” King said. “What do they represent? What is inside them that drives them? In her case, she was very close to her father. It’s why she became a policeman.” Christine’s discovery of her father’s body gives her investigation an intensely personal dimension, but revenge is not her only motivation. She also needs to understand what could have committed such an impossible act and prevent it from escaping into the city above. “She’s partly driven by vengeance and partly driven by righteousness,” King explained. “Enough that she sacrifices part of herself, and yet is triumphant in the end when you think she’s had it and the demon has bested her.” King considers Christine’s ending a victory, even if destroying the central demon does not eliminate everything lurking beneath Los Angeles. The portal remains open, and the smaller creatures encountered throughout the graphic novel are still loose. As King put it: “She blew up a demon. I mean, come on.” Those surviving creatures leave enough room for Cathedral’s world to continue, but King said the team did not build an extensive mythology beyond what appears on the page. Carpenter’s dream carried Christine through her escape, so that is the story they chose to tell. Any return to the cathedral may require another trip into his subconscious. “I’m sure if we set our minds to it and John had more dreams about it, we’d dive into it,” King said. “But his dream went that far, including her escape. His dream was pretty complete. That’s what we bit off, and that’s what we attempted.” The larger demon may have been defeated, but the smaller creatures encountered throughout the graphic novel are still running loose. When Collider suggested that their survival could pave the way for an entire story about hunters tasked with cleaning up the remaining threat, King was immediately entertained by the possibility. “I don’t know if there are demon exterminators that want to face those spiny, bitey things,” King laughed. For now, Christine may have escaped the cathedral, but someone still has a serious pest problem waiting in Los Angeles. John Carpenter’s Cathedral is available now from Storm King Comics. King and the Storm King team will also bring exclusive Cathedral bundles to New York Comic Con, featuring variant covers and special editions of the accompanying album from Sacred Bones Records. Get a free trial of Audible here.