Via CBR, Vault Comics have announced “Heart Eyes,” a romantic horror series by writer Dennis Hopeless, artist Victor Ibáñez, colorist Addison Duke, letterer Simon Bowland, and designer Tim Daniel. Set in a post-apocalyptic world inhabited by Lovecraftian monsters, the book follows Rico, a scavenger in what used to be San Antonio, California, when he meets Lupe, “the girl of his dreams. But how did she get here? And why is she smiling? No one survives out in the street. No one smiles where the monsters lurk.”
The book reteams Hopeless and Ibáñez, who worked together on the 2017 “Jean Grey” series. Hopeless says the series was inspired by a drawing Ibáñez posted online, depicting “a smiling woman surrounded by horrifying monsters. I immediately wanted to know more. Who was this woman? How did she survive Victor’s Lovecraftian insanity monsters? Why the hell was she smiling? Those questions became the seed of the story and the driving mystery of the series. Can we ever really know what’s going on behind someone else’s eyes? And if not, how can we trust anyone?”
The writer adds the creative team “leaned into that isolation and terror” people felt during the start of the pandemic. “Our monsters personify fear, anxiety and paranoia,” he says. “Our traumatized survivors live in terror, hiding in the cracks of what was. And then there’s Lupe.”
“Heart Eyes” #1 will be released on July 27, with a cover by Ibáñez and Duke, and a variant by Michael Dialynas. Head to CBR in the meantime to check those out, and an unlettered four-page preview.
