Everybody's afraid of something snakes or spiders, God or the Devil, death or life. The list seems to unravel into infinity, spiraling into the abyss.

Is there hope for humankind? Monsters the size of skyscrapers terrorize the mainland. Psycho-killers lurk in the shadows with glistening blades and cracked smiles. Salivating shape-shifters tap bony fingernails against first-floor windows. Reduced to the point of irrelevance, once-powerful men now cower behind reinforced doors rimmed with deadbolts.

In the nine gloomy tales of "Filthy Beast: Fiendish Lullabies," come face to face with undersexed fish-monsters, hard-drinking demons, superhuman ninjas, incompetent werewolves and other absurd antiheroes. Hope, it seems, has joined the...