Comics
Exclusive Behind The Scenes Look At ‘Echoes’
Before Joshua Fialkov was penning the pages of DC’s hit I, Vampire series, he wrote a little series for Image Comics alongside Rahsan Ekedal called Echoes. This book is horrifying, and scares you in ways you couldn’t imagine. Brilliant artist, Rahsan Ekedal, offered BD an exclusive look behind the scenes of Echoes. After the jump, Ekedal takes you through the entire creative process, from full scripted pages, to layouts, to final lettered pages, plus some insightful commentary that you won’t find anywhere else. If you’re looking to get into the comics industry, either as a writer or artist, you’ve just struck gold my friend.
Echoes follows the story of Brian Cohn as he battles with schizophrenia. Unfortunately for Brian, the meds don’t solve all his issues as he discovers that he has inherited his father’s serial killer instincts. It’s an intense ride down a blazing road of insanity that will remain ingrained in your mind long after you’ve read the final page. The trade is available in stores now, and it comes highly recommended. Read on for the skinny
Pages 7 and 8 from the first issue are still one of my favorite little scenes from the series. On this page, Josh set me the challenge of conveying a very common moment in horror films – a dark, threatening figure appears behind the hero, then disappears right before the hero turns around. This a ‘scare’ moment in film, something that (hopefully) makes the audience jump a little. However, on the page, it’s a lot harder to actually surprise the reader. I could have simply placed Brian in the foreground of the panels, and had the dark figure pass behind him in the background. But I found that there was no scare, no shock in simply replicating that sort of cinematic shot. When I reversed the “camera”, and placed the shadowy figure in the foreground with Brian framed by the dark doorway, I found that it forced the eye to see Brian first, then the dark figure second, providing that little moment of “cinematic” shock for the reader.
I also like page 8 because it’s where I began to introduce the darkness as a character. Taking some inspiration from Edvard Munch, of course, I gave all of the shadows throughout Echoes quite a bit of texture. They literally are a visual stand-in for Brian’s mental health. They are tumultous, volatile, and may or may not contain horrors lurking just out of sight. In this scene, Brian’s paranoia makes him believe there may be a person or something sitting there in the darkness. And that delusion is only broken by the violence of his watch alarm, expressed by Troy Peteri’s brilliant lettering and the little Kirby-esque explosion in the final panel.
These 32-panel double-page spreads became one of the hallmarks of the series, and I this one from issue 4 is my favorite, and I think probably Josh’s favorite as well. It’s all about memory versus truth. Brian (in his therapist’s office, revealed in the following pages) is recalling his father showing him an old print of the 1903 Alice in Wonderland silent film, while explaining his rough philosophy of life to his young son. Through the filter of Brian’s suspicions (that his father may have been a serial killer), and possibly distorted memory, this father-son moment becomes threatening and even terrifying. To help convey that, I went through the 1903 film frame by frame, picking the most intense images, and then twisting them just slightly to be even more threatening and disturbing. It’s how Brian remembers it. But is it truth?
Comics
‘You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive’ – IDW Dark’s Next Horror Comic Will Make You Question Reality
Five friends. Four houses. One perfect life. Bloody Disgusting is excited to exclusively announce You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive, a brand new horror comic from IDW Dark.
From Eisner-Nominated writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, and rising horror artist Heather Vaughan, You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive is described as a “paranoia-laced, socially-conscious, horror mystery that will leave you questioning reality, and reveal that this crafted world is more of a nightmare than the idealistic dream they were expecting.”
Phoebe Joplin has never questioned the world her parents built: a secluded community where she and her friends were raised to be smarter, stronger, and better than anyone else. No distractions. No dangers. No secrets. Until the night of their graduation.
When one of them dies under impossible circumstances, Phee starts to pull at the edges of her perfect life—and what she finds is something far more terrifying than she ever imagined.
Because this place isn’t a sanctuary. It’s a cage. And no one who discovers the truth ever leaves it alive.
Collin Kelly & Jackson Lanzing (Batman – One Bad Day: Clayface, Star Trek: The Last Starship) co-write the upcoming IDW Dark horror comic, featuring art by Heather Vaughan.
Jackson Lanzing said in a statement to Bloody Disgusting, “You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive is in many ways a spiritual successor to our last creator-owned horror, The Principles of Necromancy – a dive into the promise and consequence of playing god with the blood of innocents. But the Hivemind book this reminds me of most is Clayface: One Bad Day. This is a deeply human story with intensely raw emotions – five best friends and their five mysterious parents, tearing one another apart for the promise of some impossible glory that’s waiting just beyond their darkest actions. We’re thrilled to be bringing this story to life with our long-time partner in crime, editor Heather Antos, at IDW Dark – and we’re particularly excited to give our Clayface fans a new, brutal and emotional horror made just for them.”
Adds Collin Kelly, “We’re deconstructing a feeling that seems universal these days; our elders have a death grip on their power, without any intention of giving it up to the generations that come next. YNLTPA is about growing up with the limitless potential of the future… and realizing how much it’s a lie we’ve been fed to keep us under the yoke of the past. Bringing this brutal experience to life is our artist and co-creator, Heather Vaughan, who brings an incredible amount of humanity to our cast. But it’s in our youthful leads that Heather’s art really shines – you are going to fall in love with these young people, even as they go through the worst experience of their lives. What we’ve all crafted together is going to be tragic, painful, but above all else, sincere – with a future so uncertain, there’s only one thing we can trust: you’ll never leave this place alive.”
“Some horror stories are about monsters in the dark. YNLTPA is about realizing the monsters raised you,” previews Senior Group Editor Heather Antos. “Working with Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly on this series has been a dream in the darkest possible way. They’ve built a story that’s layered, brutal, and deeply emotional, and every issue gives artist Heather Vaughan opportunities to push the art into places that feel both haunting and deeply personal. Some horror comics will keep you up at night…this is one that will stick with you for years to come.”
The first issue of You’ll Never Leave This Place Alive goes on sale October 14, 2026! Make sure to pre-order at your local comic shop by September to guarantee a copy.
Exclusively check out the various covers for Issue #1 down below.
IDW Publishing’s horror imprint IDW DARK features comics like A Quiet Place: Storm Warning, Smile: For the Camera, The Exorcism at 1600 Penn, Beneath The Trees Where Nobody Sees, The Twilight Zone, Event Horizon: Dark Descent & Event Horizon: Inferno, and more.
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