The line between fan and more is a good one, and it’s clear how great the space is (and what that “above” even means) that Something Is Killing the Children and exquisite corpse studio Tiny Onion’s latest project, launching this April, explores. The first issue also launched the manga writing career of acclaimed letterer Aditya Vidhikaru.
Bidikar will be joined by Som, an up-and-coming artist in the body horror comic series In Your Skin, who will be handling writing and lettering for the series (the latter includes a new font designed purely for comics). This is his debut as a solo writer, the result of Tiny Onion’s artist-in-residence program, which also includes Jordy Bellaire (Exquisite Corpses) and Tyler Voss (You’ll Do Bad Things). The series is designed by Dylan Todd and Courtney Menard, with coloring by Francesco Segarra in collaboration with Gloria Martinelli. Edited by Eric Harburn.
In Your Skin, described by publisher Image Comics as a “spooky, erotic and perverse story” that will appeal to fans of The Substance, Perfect Blue and David Cronenberg, is about Priyanka. With Bollywood superfan and idol Ayesha Sun announcing her retirement, Priyanka thought it might be time for her to take over in a way that perhaps few could imagine.
“I have been fascinated by Bollywood since I was a child, because unlike everyone else around me, I never understood its appeal,” Vidhikar told Popverse in a statement. “Bollywood has been the soundtrack of Indian life. As an anthropologist, I’ve seen people fall in love with Hindi films, worship movie stars, and twist their lives into the romance they felt in the movies, only to have a rude awakening when reality doesn’t match the logic of the stories they grew up with. ‘In Your Skin’ is my attempt to engage with the strange beast of Bollywood: the culture of celebrity, identity, consumption and performance.Bollywood is a fucked up place.But the worst thing that can happen is to be left out.”
Tiny Onion founder James Tynion IV said in his own statement, “Aditya Vidhikar is one of my favorite collaborators, and as Tiny Onion’s first artist-in-residence, we’re excited to share his debut series as a writer with the pleasure of making your skin crawl. We’re excited to help bring it back to life in all its glory. Along with Som and Francesco Segarra’s incredible talent, In Your Skin is a raw, unflinching horror story about fame and fandom that these creators have come to know.”
The series will be released by Image Comics on April 22nd. But if you can’t wait that long, you can get an exclusive glimpse of the first issue’s interior in the gallery below.
