Comics
Review: “Beautiful Darkness”
Drawn and Quarterly’s “Beautiful Darkness” carries itself with a certain innocent whimsy that makes all of the savagery within its pages a harsh experience that cannot be missed. It’s an experiment in horror. A twist on the concept of bleak survival but offered to the reader in the most storybook of fashions. It will leave you scarred and amused. I guarantee you’ve never experienced anything quite like it. Fabien Vehlmann & Kerascoët will change the way you look at fairytales and horror forever.
WRITTEN BY: Fabien Vehlmann & Kerascoët
ART BY: Fabien Vehlmann & Kerascoët
PUBLISHER: Drawn and Quarterly
PRICE: $22.95
RELEASE: February 25, 2013
A book like this doesn’t come around very often. You can read it numerous times, and with each successive read you’ll discover new ways to be repulsed by the human spirit.
The story follows Aurora. She’s the makeshift leader of a cavalcade of little joyous beings. Her group must evacuate their home into the volatile environment of the forest floor. These tiny creatures were actually inside the head of a little girl who now lies dead in the grass. The mini characters don’t see death. They just see a series of challenges and a wild new world to explore.
Fabien Vehlmann & Kerascoët paint the body of the dead girl in haunting detail. You’ll be baffled as you watch young Aurora and her wee pals pile from the dead body as if nothing has happened. It’s almost charming. Every challenge of survival is met with rosy optimism and naivety. This feeling never goes away. Even when the book begins to deal with incredibly dark concepts, the charm of idealism never fades.
Which is the book’s greatest strength and horror. These fairytale creatures are capable of unspeakable evil. They carry out murders with the help of song or take up residence in the hollowed out skull of the long deceased little girl. It’s all communicated with a casual optimism that makes it all the more chilling.
The art compliments the tone. With beautifully painted watercolor panels that never shy away from even the most ghastly details. There is a haunting beauty that is created which becomes impossible to resist. Everything that your looking at is beautiful, but everything you are experiencing is downright horrendous.
As these joyous creatures spend more time in the outside world they are corrupted into monsters. They turn on each other with smiles, and become jaded at the drop of a hat. Despite all of this Aurora tries to escape it all. She tries to rise above, and does her best to remove herself from the darkness. Yet, the darkness consumes everything.
Fabien Vehlmann & Kerascoët have achieved something with “Beautiful Darkness” that I’ve never experienced before. They have created a truly melancholic horror book that offers something beautiful. For all intents and purposes this book pleases the eyes and disheartens the soul. It’s an odd reading exercise that you won’t soon forget, and its joyfully dejected tone doesn’t make much sense. Yet, the entire thing works gracefully like a dance with death. I’ve read it twice now, and I fear what a third reading will do to my psyche.
Rating: 4.5/5 Skulls.
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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