Growing up, I wasn’t a fan of horror stories. As a young kid who was scared of the jungle gym and constantly imagined the sound of a chainsaw whirring under his bed, monsters like Jason and Freddy felt all too much and all too real for me on a day to day basis.

But as I’ve grown older, I’ve come to appreciate the power of great horror. Recent films like Get Out and The Purge have proven that the genre has a unique capacity to exaggerate the darkest parts of our psyches, giving those mental monsters literal form and thus pulling them out into the light. And in that vein of timely horror stories comes Infidel, a new Image Comics series about an “American Muslim woman and her multiracial neighbors who move into a building haunted by entities that feed off xenophobia.”

Written by former Vertigo editor Pornsak Pichetshote, drawn by Aaron Campbell, colored and edited by José Villarrubia, and lettered by Jeff PowellInfidel boldly asks the big question that hangs over the American psyche in 2018: is the idea behind the great melting pot a failure? Are we destined to give into our inner demons, gravitating towards tribes and hating “the other?”

In this special audio interview, join me as I speak to Pichetshote and Campbell about the terrific debut issue of Infidel #1, out in stores today. We discuss the ideas that inspired the story and how the team created the terrifying visual style of the comic. For those who’ve already read the issue, we’ll take a spoiler-filled deep dive into some cool visual hints and secrets you might have missed.


Infidel #1 is available in stores and on digital platforms now.

Background music for the show provided by:

“Eternal Terminal” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

1 COMMENT

  1. Thanks for posting your audio interview, Alexander. I picked up Infidel #1 in my weekly stack on a whim. I hadn’t heard much about it, but the interior art looked really strong. Glad I’m on this ride from the start.

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