Comics
[Rotting Retro Review] “Echoes”
Joshua Hale Fialkov’s new series “The Bunker” with Joe Infurnari is currently killing it online. Proving to change the way creator owned comics are approached and distributed while also being a damn fine science fiction story in its own right.
Fialkov’s roots lie in horror. “Echoes” is a chilling story of a man who finds out that his father suffering from Alzheimer’s disease is a murderer. This deathbed confession shakes the protagonist’s entire world. Resulting in a finely crafted story that deals with mental illness, gruesome murders, and the fear of becoming what we dread most.
Brian Cohn isn’t a simple man. He is schizophrenic, expecting his first child, and now dealing with the revelation that his father was a serial killer. He is tormented by this news in fascinating ways. Brought to life by Rahsan Ekedal’s chilling black and white art that will have you questioning your own sanity with incredibly complex page layouts.
“Echoes” is a story about the danger of our own expectations.
WRITTEN BY: Joshua Hale Fialkov
ART BY: Rahsan Ekedal
PUBLISHER: Minotaur Press/Top Cow/Image Comics
PRICE: $19.99
“Echoes” is a tightly scripted series. Each chapter twists and turns the story. Brian constantly wades though his own psyche. This journey proves to be compelling with every page. The immense similarities he shares with his father push him to believe he is becoming a monster. So when a little girl disappears in the second chapter he has no doubts the transformation has already begun.
Brian enters a winding narrative of maddening self-doubt. Fialkov takes the time to steep his writing inside Brian’s complex and fractured mind. Fleeting moments of doubt combats the fear that he did commit this crime. The horror of it all comes through doubting your own beliefs about this man. Did he do it? Is he capable of this? Was his father’s dying confession actually a self-fulfilling prophecy?
The answers to these questions come hard and fast through the five chapters of “Echoes.” Brian’s personal journey of madness never lets up for a moment. The gruesome reality he faces manifests itself in a variety of disgusting ways.
Rahsan Ekedal deserves major props for his work on this book. The opening pages show the fantastic lengths Ekedal is willing to go to in order to throw the reader into Brian’s madness. Several small panels permeate the two page spread on page two and three that are divided by Brain’s figure in the foreground. The result is wildly unnerving. If the script makes you feel lost in a sea of wild thought than the art will have you drowning.
The details within the more ghastly elements of the story will send a chill down your spine. The dolls, oh sweet Jesus those dolls. Ekedal shows the intricate detail of the murders through these horrible creations. The visions manifested by Brian’s mind serve as a haunting juxtaposition to the dull world around them.
Fialkov weaves his tightly knit narrative around the concept of children. The idea of murdering children is only the beginning. The story is much more about a very real fear that most all of us face at some point in our lives: who will our children grow up to be?
“Echoes” has some real fun with this idea by taking it to the extreme. The story will always keep you guessing and have you take a long hard look at your own life. What you’ll find will scare the living fuck out of you. Easily making it one of the finest horror comics you’ll read in a while.
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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