Jim Mahfood. Artist/Writer on Wha... Huh? and Classic 40 Ounce.
"Ronald Reagan."

Tom Peyer. Author on Spider-Man: House of M and The Authority.
"Nearly everything. I remember watching Plan 9 From Outer Space on TV and being scared. Plan 9 From Outer Space! Also, I went to Catholic school; nothing could be as scary as the idea of suffering in Hell for eternity just because I committed some stupid sin. Back then, I could drive myself crazy thinking about it."

mc chris. Rapper, the recently released 'Eating's Not Cheating'; voice actor, MC Pee Pants on Adult Swim's 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force'; and writer/voice actor, Hesh on 'Sealab 2021'.
"nightmares, falling, the dark you know the usual."

Tad Williams. Author of Shadowmarch: Volume 1 and The War of the Flowers.
"Puppets, especially Mr. Punch. I deliberately "lost" a children's encyclopedia that had him on the cover of the "P" edition (for "Puppets"). Also, there was a mechanical baker or butcher display figure at the Farmer's Market near where I lived when I was about three -- he tick-tocked from side to side -- that I loathed. One day I found that he'd fallen down from the shelf and broken. I felt as though my worst enemy had keeled over dead. Victory!"

Geoff Johns. Author on Infinite Crisis and JLA/JSA: Virtue and Vice.
"The Invasion of the Body Snatchers from the 70's. I saw it on
television one night and my brother and I were like, 'How are the
good guys going to win this one?' And then they didn't!! It ended
and it was the first time I saw good guys lose."

Steven Brust. Author of The Gypsy and Sethra Lavode.
"Work."

Tim Truman. Grimjack co-creator and writer/artist of Wilderness.
"In my bedroom in Dunbar, West Virginia, when I was in the first grade, my bed was positioned beside a window that looked out on a little concrete patio at the back of our house. The patio light was right beside my window, and for some reason mom usually left it on all night. I would lay awake all night waiting for someone (or something!) to peek into my window-- and knowing that when it happened, I'd see them perfectly.

I was also really scared of the third floor in my Uncle Delbert's house in Jodie, mainly because my cousins Joe and Tom, who wre about ten or twelve years older than us, had told us that here were ghosts up there! When my sisters and I grew up we realized that they just told us that to keep us from going upstairs and messing with their stuff."

Patton Oswalt. Comedian ("Feelin' Kinda Patton") and writer of JLA: Welcome to the Working Week.
"The thought that, decades into my future, someone named Ben Affleck
would have a movie career."

Ed Brubaker. Author on Captain America and Catwoman
"The Wicked Witch in the Wizard of Oz movie. Even when she was a guest of Mr. Rogers I got scared when they said it was her and made my mom turn off the TV."

Michael Moorcock. Author of The White Wolf's Son: The Albino Underground and the upcoming The Vengeance of Rome: Between the Wars.
"What scared me most as a kid was Richard Matheson's I AM LEGEND, which I couldn't stop reading even though I was doing it in the dark. When the flashlight battery ran out, I started burning paper in the fireplace just to give me enough light to go on reading. This atmosphere, created by the flaring and dying fire, made it all the worse for me."

John Ostrander. Grimjack co-creator and Star Wars writer.
"The nuns at my RC school. This is pre-Vatican II nuns. I'm serious."

Justin Gray. Writer of Hawkman and the upcoming Jonah Hex.
"There was this guy we called the highway man, he was a homless guy who wandered up and down a stretch of road for years, collecting garbage, usually talking to himself, dirty hair, duct taped shoes...the whole deal. So one day my friends and I, idiots that we were we followed him. We must have walked behind him for a few miles before he turned off the road and into the woods. Of course we were idiots and continued to follow him. He lived in what I guess you can call a shack but wasn't much more than some boards pretending to be walls holding up a roof. He disappeared inside and we kept creeping closer and he comes flying out of the shack swinging something. He threw a dead possum at us and we ran like hell. I thought he was going to kill us, but now it's pretty funny."

Beau Smith. Creator of Wynnona Earp and columnist of "Busted Knuckles" at Silver Bullet Comics
"I was always afraid that... whatever I was in line for was gonna run out before I got there. I was afraid of being the first one n the family to fall asleep at night. The reason being, if I did I couldn't depend on my younger brothers to protect us from any monsters that might bust into the house. So I always made sure I was the last to fall asleep."

Neil Gaiman. Writer of Sandman, 1602 and the recently published novel, Anansi Boys.
"The dark."

Chip Zdarsky. Writer and artist of Prison Funnies
"The knowledge that Warren Ellis was somewhere out there in teenage form."

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