Image Comics Collects ‘A Haunted Girl’ Which Deals With Mental Health Issues Through Horror

by Olly MacNamee

Co-writers and father-daughter team Ethan Sacks (Star Wars: Bounty Hunters) and Naomi Sacks and artist Marco Lorenzana (Incredible Hulk) are collecting together their horror/fantasy miniseries A Haunted Girl, for Image Comics. A series, and now collection, exploring “real-world mental health struggles through a fantastical lens.”

As well as collecting the original miniseries. this new collected trade paperback will also include an AFSP guide to suicide prevention resources, as well as a guide from the American Psychiatric Association (APA) on free therapy access options. Both organizations contributed sensitivity reading to ensure the depictions of mental health were authentic.

Here’s a reminder, and preview, of the series:

“In A Haunted Girl, readers meet Cleo, a 16-year-old adopted Japanese-American whose anxiety and depression drives her to suicidal thoughts, is fresh out of the hospital and trying unsuccessfully to reintegrate back into her old life. What she doesn’t know is that her real struggles are just beginning as she finds herself encountering an increasingly terrifying succession of ghosts. Is she losing her grip on reality… or is the explanation much, much worse? A Haunted Girl channels terrors—both otherworldly and real-life—that come with anxiety and depression.”