Steve Orlando and Steve Foxe are at it again at Aftershock, with Party & Prey, a new OGN coming this fall with art by Alex Sanchez, colors by Jauncho! and lettering by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. It goes on sale this October.
The story is described as a taboo-breaking queer thriller, with many twists and turns:
Alan is used to being ignored by younger guys, so he hardly believes his luck when lithe, handsome Scott makes a move on him in the crowded gay club. But there’s a wolf on the dance floor tonight, and he’s hungry for fresh prey…
Although there are an increasing number of queer comics out there, Party & Prey sounds a lot darker than most of them, something Orlando and Foxe acknowledge. “There is a very valid, important time and place for affirming, uplifting queer stories, and both of us Steves thankfully get to work on a lot of those, too,” they said in a statement. “But there’s also a need for queer creators to be able to tell other kinds of stories, even those with difficult content or challenging going things to say about the community itself. That’s not to say the book is about gay misery or suffering—far from it, by the time you reach the last pages—but readers who pick up PARTY & PREY are going to find a thrill ride that isn’t afraid to ask some difficult questions.”
Aftershock sent along more quotes from the Steves on what the book is about:
“It’s tough to talk about PARTY & PREY without giving away some key plot details you really shouldn’t know until you’re about 30 pages in, but we’ll do our best: this thriller is about an older gay man named Alan who meets a younger man named Scott at a nightclub and takes him home. The book wouldn’t be a horror-thriller if that summed it all up, though, and there’s much more to this hookup in the making than is immediately obvious…
On a broader level, PARTY & PREY was a chance for the two of us as queer men to tell a grimy, taboo-testing horror story that centers LGBTQ+ men while also addressing the wolves in sheep’s clothing that exist within the community, as well as the way indifference and hate outside of the community can enable those wolves to run wild for far too long. We want to intrigue, we want to offer a wealth of representation, and also admit that we’ve got work to do within the community. When you’ve got a story full of queer folks of all kinds, no character has to be perfect, and that’s when we can get into the provocative storytelling that makes horror so great.”
Foxe and Orlando also wrote the YA graphic novel Rainbow Bridge for Aftershock’s new YA line, a very different project:
“It’s really a fun fluke of timing that PARTY & PREY comes out just a few months after RAINBOW BRIDGE, because it’d be difficult to find two more different books. While RAINBOW BRIDGE found us Steves channeling an emotionally honest fantasy/adventure story about a boy and his dog, everything stays firmly in the PG range. PARTY & PREY, on the other hand, is a hard R or maybe NC-17, and was a chance for us to explore the darker underbelly of a community we’re both very proud and grateful to be a part of, using some of our favorite horror/thriller storytelling tools. Loving something doesn’t mean ignoring when it’s got some issues to work on, and we’re playing that out in PARTY & PREY as a horror-thriller.”
And here is a preview:
Party & Prey OGN / $17.99 / 112 Pages / Color / 10.06.2021
Writers: Steve Foxe & Steve Orlando
Artist: Alex Sanchez
Colorist: Juancho!
Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou
Cover: Alex Sanchez w/ Jose Villarrubia
