The Skin You're In by Ashley Robin Franklin

For better or worse, the bodies we inhabit are our homes. But despite the old adage, home isn't always the safest place to be…

Within these pages, Ashley Robin Franklin leads you through the corridors of the uncanny in eight horror comics that are just begging to get under your skin. Whether set in the arid desert or the rain-soaked forest, these stories reveal the fallibilities of flesh that lurk just beneath the surface. A strange desert flower offers an intoxicating balm to grief, a group of friends invoke an old tale by the campfire, and outside a remote farmhouse, something miraculous and terrible falls from the night sky. Bodies are found, lost, celebrated, borrowed, haunted — and irrevocably changed.

The Skin You're In is the definitive collection of Ashley Robin Franklin's horror comics, showcasing her skillful exploration of queer horror and the ways in which our bodies, relationships, and environments affect us straight to the bone. The book collects all her previously published work, such as One Million Tiny Fires and Fruiting Bodies, as well as five never-before-seen comics, including the 100-page graphic novella Contest Winner. It's all packaged in a deluxe fabric-bound hardcover with foil accents. Just be warned: you might want to read this collection with the lights on.

---

“A profound collection of original and imaginative horror. By focusing on the natural world, Franklin finds unique ways of exploring the unnatural, mining existential fears in ways that are deeply moving. I loved it." – Chuck Tingle, Camp Damascus

“In The Skin You’re In, the darkest parts of the natural (and supernatural) world creep in through the holes we make in ourselves. Insidious roots enter us through our strained friendships, our relationship with social media, the stress of our day-to-day lives, blossoming and growing until we are changed in ways both horrifying and wonderful.” – Trevor Henderson, Scarewaves

“Franklin’s intimate chamber pieces recall the blood-soaked melodrama of Emily Carroll and Junji Ito, as well as Stephen Gammell’s illustrations from Alvin Schwartz’s Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark series. Though the vignettes are not explicitly interconnected, the often-queer themes and repeated visual and thematic elements suggest a shared universe—where mysterious plants and fungi act both as metaphor and looming threat to the existential joys and terrors of the human body. It’s a tantalizing new entry in the queer horror canon.” – Publishers Weekly

---

Hardcover; 376 pages; 7" x 9"; ISBN: 979-8-88620-041-6; SRP: $39.99; Release date: 11/13/24