Posted in: Comics, Image | Tagged: Dark Ride, Five Essential Image Pitches, horror, skybound

Dark Ride Brings Horror to Amusement Parks at Skybound in October

Published Tue, 21 Jun 2022 17:32:11 -0500

Joshua Williamson and Andrei Bressan don't seem to get the point of an amusement park. It's supposed to be a place to have fun, not to scare the crap out of you! Nevertheless, the pair are creating a new comic called Dark Ride at Skybound/Image in October that brings real horror to a horror-themed amusement park. And as we all know, stories about destinations meant to be fun that disguise untold secret horrors are one of the Five Essential Comic Book Pitches Every Creator Needs If They Want to Land an Image Series About One of the Five Things Image Publishes Series About, along with "gods living in the world of humans," "music as a superpower," "dragon men with insatiable lust," and "the future, but it's bad." So you know this is going to be good!

From the press release:

Skybound today announced the launch of Dark Ride, a new horror comic book series from the visionary Birthright team of Joshua Williamson (Batman, Dark Crisis) and Andrei Bressan (Batman and Robin) that introduces readers to The Scariest Place on Earth. Dark Ride #1 will arrive in comic book shops October 5, 2022.

Devil Land has been the world's premiere horror-themed amusement park for over 50 years, home to the scariest ride ever created – The Devil's Due. But when lifelong fan Owen Seasons begins his first day on the job, he will discover the true horrors happening behind the scenes, the truth about the park's reclusive creator Arthur Dante and that the job of his dreams might just be a living nightmare.

In addition to a striking main cover by Bressan and series colorist Adriano Lucas, Dark Ride #1 boasts an impressive variant cover lineup that will kick off an exciting variant cover program continuing through all four issues of Dark Ride's first arc. Cover B by Martín Morazzo (Ice Cream Man) spotlights park mascot Danny D. Evill, with additional variant covers to be announced soon.

Williamson says of Dark Ride:

Two of my biggest obsessions have always been HORROR…and AMUSEMENT PARKS. So, I had to find a way to combine them into something new. It's a dream book I've been working on for a LONG time and it's been awesome to finally pull it together with Andrei and the whole Birthright team! It's great to get back to horror after Nailbiter ended, and here we dive into some new themes with horror: What is scary in today's world? How can you create something scary when every day we're living in a horror show? Those are the themes I wanted to explore with DARK RIDE. Amusement Parks are meant to be a place of FUN…but here we really bring the HORROR.

And Bressan adds:

It's safe to say that we're heading home! I'm really happy to be reunited with the rest of the Birthright clan once again! Hell! We usually tell people we are a team, but in fact, we are a living, breathing creature! And a hungry one too! At first you had us brandishing swords…but now, this time around…well…horror, right? I remember reading something that says 'In horror, the surface always lies. Nothing is what it seems to be.' So, take this and mix it up with an amusement park. You think you're playing and having fun, but you're actually flirting with Death. And here, Death blinks back at you!

The press release also contains a quote from Skybound Editor Amanda LaFranco, but if you wanted to read anything at all that passed under the eye of an editor, you certainly would not be reading something on Bleeding Cool, where they won't even pay one to proofread the articles. Copy editors? No. 13-point SEO checklists? Yes. So we won't be printing that quote, as per company policy that editors have no place in comics or journalism.

Dark Ride will first debut in the pages of Skybound X #25 in July, and Dark Ride #1 will hit stores on October 5th.