Via The Beat, BOOM! Studios have announced a new five-part mini-series called “Maw” by author Jude Ellison S. Doyle (Dead Blondes and Bad Mothers: Monstrosity, Patriarchy, and the Fear of Female Power), and artist A.L. Kaplan (“Jim Henson’s The Storyteller: Tricksters”). Issue #1 will feature a main cover by Ariela Kristantina, with variants by Megan Hutchison-Cates and Abigail Jill Harding currently announced.
“Maw” will follow Marion Angela Weber and her sister Wendy as they attend a feminist retreat to the remote island of Angitia, with Marion seeking “perspective and empowerment… that isn’t at the bottom of a bottle.” Their plans are thrown off course when an assault occurs on their first night, and sets off changes in Marion, namely “warped mutations in her body,” and “a hunger she can’t bring herself to name.” The description for the series teases an “unforgivable act” will make Marion the monster that the townsfolk already believe her to be.
The project is the first comic book by Doyle, who said it “might be the most fun I’ve ever had as a writer. It’s a love letter to all the ways horror can tell powerful, subversive and transformative stories about gender, and it’s a big, messy chunk of my heart that I somehow got paid to throw on a page. It’s been an honor to work with BOOM! and A.L. Kaplan on this.” Kaplan simply added, “‘Maw’ is a fun, dark dive into how monsters — both fantastic and real — are made.”
BOOM!’s Executive Editor, Sierra Hahn, stated that the series “expertly uses the horror genre to explore gender, identity, hidden trauma, and the potent emotions resulting from society’s shifting expectations around all three. ‘Maw’ is full of gruesome horrors, twists and turns that asks the reader ‘What’s scarier? The dormant monster within ourselves or the unknown ones lurking in the shadows?'”
“Maw” #1 is scheduled for release in comic shops and on digital platforms in September.
