SDCC 2023: Vault Announces New Horror Series ‘Something Crawled Out’ From Son M & MadCursed
by Tony Thornley
Just announced at San Diego Comic-Con, this October Vault Comics asks what lengths you’ll go for someone you love, in their new horror title Something Crawled Out. The title promises to blur the line between good and evil.
Written by Son M., drawn by Cas ‘MadCursed’ Peirano, colored by Vittorio Astone, lettered by Jim Campbell, and designed by Tim Daniel, Something Crawled Out will hit store shelves in October, 2023.
The Midwest is the backdrop for Something Crawled Out, where Edith “Eddie” Miller has no grand plans or great prospects. She spends her days sleeping in and her nights working shifts at a gas station. But when her younger sister fails to come home, Eddie unearths a web of missing girls and rotting bodies. The police prove useless, so Eddie teams up with her best friend, Rainer, in a desperate hunt to find her sister. The only thing is—Eddie believes her best friend might be the Devil himself.
“Love is a violent thing. I’ve always been obsessed with the inherent connection between brutality and beauty, and the way we express our relationships in different ways” says Son M. “Something Crawled Out is about two desperate people trying to save someone they love, and thus committing unspeakable acts of violence onto others along the way. I’ve always wanted to write horror that was so tied to expressions of the Final Girl trope, mixed with the active presence of the Hunter. Rather than reacting to the tragedies around her, Eddie is constantly causing devastation in her desperation to find her sister.”
MadCursed adds “Reading the Something Crawled Out scripts, I was immediately drawn to the devilish aura surrounding the characters. I really enjoy stories where the arc isn’t always self-improvement, but rather, self-destruction. There’s a violence in a lot of these characters in Something Crawled Out and a lot of the circumstances they face bring it out in terrible ways. And yet, despite all the horrors happening, you still find yourself rooting for them. You want them to win.”
Son M continues “Working with MadCursed is a dream! There’s a ton of really nuanced expressions of love vulnerability in this story, and MadCursed expresses these dynamics beautifully. Plus, they really know how to nail having both incredibly hot characters (wink wink nudge nudge), comedic moments, and extreme, unforgivable acts of gory violence. What more could I ask for????”
MadCursed concludes “I’ve always wanted to draw comics, ever since I was a kid, and now here I am, doing it! Something Crawled Out is just the beginning. There’s going to be more from us in the future, we’ve got a long way to go. And that’s a promise.”
“We live in an undeniably dangerous world,” adds editor Der-shing Helmer, “and the notion of civilized society is often our shield against it. Something Crawled Out removes the veneer of civility and asks the reader, if nobody else was around to see, how far would you go to protect your own against monsters? The answer is darker than you might imagine…but aren’t you desperately curious to see the true face you’ve been hiding all along?”
Something Crawled Out #1 is available for preorder now and will hit stores in October, 2023.
