AfterShock’s bloody horror-satire “Maniac of New York” is set to return for another round of slicing and dicing. The team of writer Elliott Kalan, artist Andrea Mutti and letterer Taylor Esposito are reuniting for “Maniac of New York: The Bronx is Burning,” picking up with a new chapter in the saga of the seemingly unkillable Maniac Harry.
Following Harry’s deadly attack on the subway in the first volume, Detective Zelda Pettibone and mayoral aide Gina Greene have lost the support of the city and the trail of the killer. Of course, it’s only a matter of time before he reappears and strikes again, and this time the action is moving from the high-speed train to a high school in the Bronx.
The new series offers more of a look at a New York City that has fully accepted the mass murderer as an inevitable price of doing business. “The new arc, ‘The Bronx Is Burning,’ will give us more glimpses of how Maniac Harry has really insinuated himself into the fabric of New York life: copycat criminals, school Maniac drills, rap lyrics,” Kalan said. “We’ll also be following the Maniac into parts of the city we haven’t seen before, culminating in a huge scene at a public event that I’ve been wanting to include ever since the first series and which I can’t wait to see Andrea draw.”
While volume one of the series took inspiration from Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan and The Taking of Pelham 123, Kalan says the new arc has fewer overt movie influences. “With ‘Maniac’ Vol. 2,” he said, “a lot of my thinking was in trying to broaden the landscape of the series. Vol. 1 spent so much time in the subway, but New York is a whole world, with lots of spaces we don’t get to see in movies too often: schools, bodegas, stadiums. The places New Yorkers go, and where the Maniac is bound to follow.”
The series will feature covers from Andrea Mutti, and an incentive cover from Jonathan Luna for the first issue. “Maniac of New York: The Bronx is Burning” #1 lights up the shelves on December 1. You can check out a first look at the issue, and the covers from Mutti and Luna, below.
