Mad Cave Studios is lining up a winter YA horror original. Listen, a 200-page graphic novel from the publisher’s Maverick imprint, arrives in bookstores and comic shops on Dec. 15, and AIPT has an exclusive first look.
Brian Hawkins writes, Sandra Maria Perea draws, Rebecca Nalty colors and Chas! Pangburn letters. The story follows Xiara Jackson, a teenager trying to rebuild after a car accident kills one of her best friends and leaves her with significant hearing loss. She leaves prep school, moves back in with her parents, and then starts hearing a humming frequency nobody else can detect.
That hum pulls her toward a former storm chaser studying cymatics — visible patterns made by sound — and toward a string of suspicious deaths around town. Xiara has to decide whether the sound that found her can also help her stop the next one. “I wrote Listen from a very personal place and so part of reading Listen will be experiencing how horror helps to heal,” Hawkins said.
Hawkins works as a writer and educator. Perea, based in Sevilla, Spain, has drawn for Blue Ocean Entertainment, Titan Comics and Z2 Comics. Together they are using supernatural mystery as a way to talk about bereavement and the long middle of recovery, not just the night of the crash.
The paperback is priced at $16.99. Direct-market retailers have a final order cutoff of Nov. 23, and Mad Cave is taking preorders through shops, bookstores and Maverick’s site.
Horror comics have had a busy European and indie autumn, from Bonelli’s Dylan Dog 40th anniversary plans to a wave of original graphic novels aimed at younger readers who already live online with true-crime audio and ghost stories. Listen is Mad Cave’s bid to meet that audience in December, with enough page count for the mystery to breathe and a FOC early enough for shops to test a YA horror original without guessing blind.
