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E. M. Carroll

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(Redirected from His Face All Red)

E. M. Carroll
Carroll in 2018
Born1983 (age 42–43)
London, Ontario, Canada
SpouseKate Craig
emcarroll.com

E. M. Carroll (born 1983), previously credited as Emily Carroll, is a comics author from Ontario, Canada. Carroll started making comics in 2010, and their horror webcomic His Face All Red went viral around Halloween of 2010. Since then, Carroll has published three books, created comics for various comics anthologies, and provided illustrations for other works. Carroll has won several awards, including an Ignatz and two Eisners.

Career

[edit]
E. M. Carroll created illustrations for 2013 video game Gone Home.

Carroll was educated as an animator. They began drawing comics in 2010.[1]

Webcomics

[edit]

Carroll drew and published their first comic on their website in May 2010.[2] Their third webcomic, His Face All Red, was released on October 31, 2010, and went viral soon after.[1][3][4]

Carroll has continued to publish short horror comics on their website. For their 2014 webcomic The Hole the Fox Did Make, Carroll attempted to create unease using a limited format. This webcomic was made during breaks between other work, and the format facilitated drawing in "small chunks".[5] Another webcomic, Margot's Room, presents the reader with a child's bedroom; clicking on objects in the room presents parts of the story. A poem at the start suggests a reading order, but the comic can be read in any order.[3] Their 2016 webcomic Some Other Animal's Meat was adapted as "The Outside" for the Netflix horror anthology Guillermo del Toro's Cabinet of Curiosities (2022).[6]

As of January 2026, the latest webcomic on their website is A Pretty Place, published in 2023.[7]

Print

[edit]

Carroll's work has been included in a number of comic anthologies, including Explorer: Mystery Boxes, Fairy Tale Comics, Creepy and The Witching Hour.[5]

In 2014, Carroll published Through the Woods, an anthology of four original stories and an adaptation of His Face All Red for the print format.[5][8] According to CBR, it was first announced in 2011 and was to be titled His Face All Red and Other Stories.[2] About adapting a webcomic to print, Carroll said: "I think it might be more successful on the screen, to be honest. Because page turns became really important. With horror comics or any sort of suspense comics, if you have a set up for a scare on the left-hand page and the scare itself on the right-hand page the effect would disappear immediately."[3] Through the Woods won Eisner,[9] Ignatz,[10] and British Fantasy[11] awards.

Carroll illustrated the 2015 graphic novel Baba Yaga's Assistant from Candlewick Press[12] and a 2018 graphic novel adaptation of Speak.[13][14] In 2019, they published When I Arrived at the Castle, a graphic novel which they wrote and illustrated.[15] In 2023, they published A Guest in the House, an adult horror graphic novel, through First Second Books.[16]

Other media

[edit]

Carroll created illustrations for the 2013 indie video games Gone Home[17] and The Yawhg.[18]

Reception

[edit]

Articles at CBR have described Carroll as a "webcomics wunderkind"[2] and "a master of atmosphere and mood."[5] They have praising Carroll's "vibrant colors, exquisite pacing, and genuinely creepy, genuinely bleak stories of murder and monstrousness."[2] The magazine Room said of their work: "Beautiful, yet delicately sinister, fairy-tale comics evoke a feeling of isolation that twists into suspense as the reader clicks and scrolls through a horror story and that lingers in the mind long after the final panel."[3] Paste Magazine called their comic The Hole the Fox Did Make one of the best webcomics of 2014.[19]

Carroll's 2019 book, When I Arrived at the Castle, received positive reviews. The Comics Journal said that Carrol has an "incredible capacity to scare" and that "while there is a moral, Carroll deftly avoids moralizing."[15] A review for WomenWriteAboutComics called it a "dark, delicious fantasy" and said: "It's the kind of story that needs multiple readings, not because it's confusing, but because there's so much to unravel, so much thematic detail to sift through."[20] PopMatters rated it 8 out of 10.[21]

Their 2023 release A Guest in the House was likewise positively received, earning a starred review from Booklist.[22] The Comics Journal hailed the graphic novel as "a resounding success of horror in the medium of comics" that "goes beyond the many preconceived notions of the genre to explore identity, isolation, [and] what it means to belong."[23] The Beat, calling it "one of the best comics of the year," observed a "strong plot with tonal and atmospheric visual choices so subtle, many readers might not know what the cartoonist is up to, not technically, but they sure will feel the effects."[24] A more mixed review from NPR held that the book was "an impressively long and gorgeous volume that delivers an uncanny, wild ride" but that the "mechanics of its plot are a bit more unsteady."[25] The book was listed as one of the "best Canadian comics of 2023" by the CBC[26] and one of the "notable books of 2023" by The New York Times.[27]

Awards

[edit]
Year Nominated work Award Category Result Ref.
2011 Joe Shuster Award Outstanding Web Comics Creator Won [28]
2012 [29]
Doug Wright Award Spotlight Award Nominated [30]
2014 "Out of Skin" Pigskin Peters Award Won [30]
2015 Through the Woods British Fantasy Award Best Comic/Graphic Novel [11]
Ignatz Awards Outstanding Artist [10]
Eisner Awards Best Graphic Album—Reprint [9]
"When the Darkness Presses" Best Short Story
2019 "Beneath the Dead Oak Tre"e Joe Shuster Award Outstanding Cartoonist [31]
2024 A Guest in the House Doug Wright Award Best Comic [32]
Lambda Literary Awards LGBTQ+ Comics Won[a] [34]
Los Angeles Times Book Prize Graphic Novel/Comics Won[b] [35]

Notes

[edit]
  1. ↑ They were one of the signatories of an open letter to Lambda Literary from many of the finalists that issued a "call for the organization to meaningfully support Palestinian liberation."[33]
  2. ↑ In their acceptance speech they called for the Book Prize's host, the University of Southern California, to restore valedictorian Asna Tabassum's commencement appearance.

Personal life

[edit]

Carroll was born in London, Ontario. Their parents divorced when Carroll was in high school. As of 2014, they are based in Stratford, Ontario. They are married to Kate Craig.[1][3]

Publications

[edit]
  • Through the Woods. New York: Margaret K. McElderry Books. 2014. ISBN 9781442465961, OCLC 885365003
  • "Ann by the Bed" (Frontier #6). San Francisco: Youth in Decline. 2014. OCLC 915825979
  • Marika McCoola; Emily Carroll (2015). Baba Yaga's Assistant. Somerville: Candlewick Press. ISBN 9780763669614, OCLC 1003143156.
  • "Beneath the Dead Oak Tree". Leeds: Shortbox. 2018. OCLC 1079067301
  • Laurie Halse Anderson; Emily Carroll (2018). Speak: The Graphic Novel. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. ISBN 9780374300289, OCLC 974448720
  • When I Arrived at the Castle. Toronto: Koyama Press. 2019. ISBN 9781927668689, OCLC 1106371579
  • A Guest in the House. New York: First Second. 2023. ISBN 9781250255525, OCLC 1393169275

References

[edit]
  1. 1 2 3 Randle, Chris (7 August 2014). "Monsters at the Door". Hazlitt. Retrieved 5 November 2020.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Collins, Sean T. (5 December 2011). "Emily Carroll's His Face All Red and Other Stories headed to boookstores via Simon & Schuster". Comic Book Resources. Retrieved 5 November 2020.
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 Hubbard, Taryn (2014). "An interview with Emily Carroll: A Fairy-Tale Teller in the Digital Age". Room Magazine. Archived from the original on 12 October 2014. Retrieved 27 July 2026.
  4. ↑ "emily carroll". LiveJournal. Archived from the original on 2 November 2010.
  5. 1 2 3 4 Dueben, Alex (21 August 2014). "Emily Carroll Walks "Through the Woods"". Comic Book Resources. Archived from the original on 22 August 2014. Retrieved 27 July 2026.
  6. ↑ Berman, Judy (25 October 2022). "Guillermo del Toro Is Rolling Out a Netflix Horror Anthology. Here Are the 2 Must-Watch Episodes". Time. Retrieved 27 October 2022.
  7. ↑ Carroll, E.M. "EM Carroll Art & Comics". emcarroll.com. Archived from the original on 12 February 2021. Retrieved 10 January 2026.
  8. ↑ Woerner, Meredith (17 July 2014). "Exclusive Horror Story From The Absolutely Chilling Through The Woods". io9.
  9. 1 2 Whitbrook, James (11 July 2015). "Here Are Your Eisner 2015 Winners!". io9. Retrieved 27 July 2026.
  10. 1 2 "Your 2015 Ignatz Award Winners!". The Comics Reporter. 20 September 2015.
  11. 1 2 Alverson, Brigid (26 October 2015). "Comics A.M. | Emily Carroll's 'Through the Woods' wins British Fantasy Award". Comic Book Resources.
  12. ↑ "BABA YAGA'S ASSISTANT". Kirkus Reviews. 5 June 2015.
  13. ↑ Lodge, Sally (1 August 2013). "'Speak' to Be Adapted as a Graphic Novel". Publishers Weekly.
  14. ↑ Bilkhu, Joti (4 May 2023). "Laurie Halse Andersen's speak: the graphic novel : creating and resisting aesthetic distancing to discuss the trauma of sexual violence". Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics. 14 (3): 440–452. doi:10.1080/21504857.2022.2152068. ISSN 2150-4857.
  15. 1 2 Hennum, Shea (25 April 2019). "Reviews: When I Arrived at the Castle". The Comics Journal. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
  16. ↑ "A Guest in the House by Emily Carroll". Publishers Weekly. 22 March 2023. Retrieved 9 September 2023.
  17. ↑ Smith, Zack (10 September 2014). "Emily Carroll Takes Us THROUGH THE WOODS". Newsarama. Archived from the original on 13 September 2014.
  18. ↑ Chambers, Becky (31 May 2013). "Rally Your Friends and Face The Yawhg, A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure Game With Artwork by Emily Carroll". The Mary Sue.
  19. ↑ Jackson, Frannie (17 December 2014). "The 20 Best Webcomics of 2014". Paste Magazine.
  20. ↑ Brinks, Melissa (23 May 2019). "When I Arrived at the Castle is a Dark, Delicious Fantasy". Women Write About Comics. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
  21. ↑ Gavaler, Chris (4 March 2019). "Pussycats, Lesbian Vampires, and the Blood-Splattered Erotica of Emily Carroll's 'When I Arrived at the Castle'". PopMatters. Retrieved 28 February 2021.
  22. ↑ Hutley, Krista (July 2023). "A Guest in the House". Booklist. Retrieved 28 July 2026.
  23. ↑ Bies, Sadia (8 October 2024). "A Guest in the House". The Comics Journal. Fantagraphics. Retrieved 11 January 2026.
  24. ↑ Quaintance, Zack (27 October 2023). "GRAPHIC NOVEL REVIEW: A GUEST IN THE HOUSE is a stunner". The Beat: The Blog of Comics Culture. Superlime Media. Retrieved 11 January 2026.
  25. ↑ Oksman, Tahneer (28 August 2023). "'A Guest in the House' rests on atmosphere, delivering an uncanny, wild ride". NPR. Retrieved 11 January 2026.
  26. ↑ "The best Canadian comics of 2023". CBC Books. Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. 11 December 2023. Retrieved 11 January 2026.
  27. ↑ "100 Notable Books of 2023". New York Times Book Review. New York Times. 21 November 2023. Retrieved 11 January 2026.
  28. ↑ "2011 Nominees and Winners". The Joe Shuster Awards. 18 June 2011.
  29. ↑ Boyd, Kevin A. (15 September 2012). "The 2012 Joe Shuster Award winners". The Joe Shuster Awards.
  30. 1 2 "Past Winners". Doug Wright Award.
  31. ↑ MacDonald, Heidi (16 September 2019). "2019 Joe Shuster Awards winners including Zdarsky, Kerschl, Carroll and Variant Edition". The Beat. Retrieved 27 June 2025.
  32. ↑ "Stratford author Emily Carroll wins 2024 Doug Wright Award for best comic". CBC Books. 13 May 2024.
  33. ↑ Schnelbach, Leah (11 June 2024). "An Interview With Three Finalists for the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Speculative Fiction". Reactor. Retrieved 28 July 2026.
  34. ↑ "2024 Winners". Lambda Literary. Retrieved 11 January 2026.
  35. ↑ Gelt, Jessica (19 April 2024). "L.A. Times Book Prize winners named in a ceremony filled with support for USC valedictorian Asna Tabassum". Los Angeles Times. California Times. Retrieved 11 January 2026.
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