Image Comics has announced Houses of the Unholy, a new original graphic novel from Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips — the award-winning duo behind Criminal.
Per Image, Houses of the Unholy arrives in bookstores on Tuesday, August 13 — and in comic shops on Wednesday, August 14. The Portland-based publisher describes the upcoming OGN as a “standalone crime thriller” with a “darker, more sinister” edge than what readers are used to from Brubaker and Phillips.
Check out the cover for Houses of the Unholy — plus two fully-lettered interior pages — below:
What is Image’s Houses of the Unholy about?
“In this new tale, an FBI agent from the cult crime beat and a woman with a past linked to the Satanic Panic are drawn into a terrifying hunt for an insane killer hiding in the shadows of the underworld,” an official synopsis for Houses of the Unholy reads. “This pulse-pounding story asks: can you ever escape your past, or are all your bad decisions just more ghosts to haunt you, wherever you go?”
“Houses of the Unholy is something I’ve been describing as Satanic Panic Noir. It’s somewhere in-between a creepy horror story and a f*cked-up noir, and directly tied to the Satanic Panic craze of the ’80s,” Brubaker said. “The book really speaks to my obsessions with cult horror, and plays with the demonic tropes of classic horror from Hammer to Carpenter to Stephen King. The fear that was everywhere back then has clearly resurfaced, and that made me want to dive back into those dark waters and try to find a Brubaker-Phillips take on noir and horror at the same time.”
The book’s announcement comes shortly after news broke that Amazon MGM Studios’ planned adaptation of Brubaker and Phillips’ Criminal had landed a series order at Prime Video. Brubaker himself will serve as co-showrunner on the series. He will also write its pilot episode.
Houses of the Unholy goes on sale in August 2024 from Image Comics.
