It’s time to draw the curtains, curl up by the fire and enter the sinister world of that master of the English ghost story, M.R. James. Just make sure that you’ve locked the back door. As an academic medieval historian (of the sort often featured in his stories), he turned his back on Victorian schlock-horror sensationalism, in favour of a subtler form of creeping shivers and uncanny fear that has guaranteed the endurance of his supernatural tales. In the ninety years since his death, the spirit of M.R. James has inspired countless acts of homage, not just in literature but in television and film. Now writers Leah Moore and John Reppion have extended that influence into the graphic-novel form with Ghost Stories of an Antiquary: The Compendium, a collection of eight powerful adaptations of his most famous and spine-chilling tales. Reimagined in a wide variety of graphic styles by Aneke, Kit Buss, Al Davison, Meghan Hetrick, George Kambadais, Abigail Larson, Fouad Mezher, and Alisdair Wood, this anthology hauntingly evokes the singular dread of what James himself simply called “the ominous thing”...