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The Nightmare Brigade Review: Gothic Dreamscapes, Hidden Traumas, and Why You Can’t Look Away

In The Nightmare Brigade, a gothic YA graphic novel series, a team ventures into surreal dreamscapes to confront hidden fears and uncover long-buried truths. Across four volumes, it blends psychological thrills with rich, expressive art.

The Nightmare Brigade Book One Cover — **Buy volume one on Amazaon USA here.**

Papercutz

Nobody is safe from their bad dreams in The Nightmare Brigade. This graphic novel series, written by Franck Thilliez and illustrated by Yomgui Dumon, quietly blew me away when I stumbled on it a few months ago. What begins as a story about battling nightmares quickly reveals a deeper question: Who has the right to mess with someone else’s dreams?

At the center is Professor Angus, the mastermind behind a secretive psy-ops program. His mission? Rescue kids from recurring nightmares and reshape the dream worlds where their fears live. Though Angus created the program, the story truly belongs to Estevan—a lost boy with no memory of where he came from. While those around him don’t seem troubled, readers are left in the dark—and that mystery lingers across all four volumes. It isn’t ignored, just… deferred. And the deeper you read, the more you wonder whether the truth is something even this hero can handle.

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Not Just An Epic Scoop for Richard A. Hamilton’s Upcoming Tales of Wonder. It’s a Techtiv Too!

Richard A. Hamilton and Marco Matrone’s latest work is now out in bookstores, and if you love young adult graphic novels set in a post apocalyptic world, this one is for you! And we got info on Mad Cave Studio’s next project featuring this author.

TECTIV VOL. 1 Book Cover by Richard A. Hamilton — **Available to order on Amazon USA**

Fans of Richard A. Hamilton’s work in the graphic novel front will be thrilled to read Tectiv Vol. 1: Noirtopia, a new series about Bingo Finder looking at lost texts to inspire her to search for her missing best friend. But to solve this mystery, this young lady must fight for her own life and uncover a conspiracy within this fragile civilization.

Reading the preview offered through Google Books shows this author knows the genre completely, and he brings readers into the world like they’ve very lived in. The way the characters come alive is fantastic, and in what I sensed from Finder, she’s discovered the Library of Alexandria! Well, the place isn’t big, but that’s the sense of awe I got when looking at those pages illustrated by Marco Matrone.

I’ve always enjoyed everything Hamilton brings to any world, whether it’s from another creator’s work or not. Where he shines the most is when he gets to develop his own universe!

Continue reading “Not Just An Epic Scoop for Richard A. Hamilton’s Upcoming Tales of Wonder. It’s a Techtiv Too!”

Surviving The City Can Be Rough. In Volume 3: We Are the Medicine What’s Examined is Based on Real Life.

In this graphic novel series, Surviving the City, isn’t just about how one culture is dealing with colonialism, but rather with how many other lives can get affected at the same time.

HighWater Press
Spoiler Alert

Some knowledge of what the graphic novel series, Surviving the City, wants to educate is required to acknowledge what the latest instalment Volume 3: We Are Medicine, hopes to heal. Ever since the news about finding a mass grave of children near a former residential school in Kamloops broke out in 2021, there were a lot of protests and finger pointing. The world blamed people in prominent positions of power of the atrocity. Even now, the after-effects are still ongoing. Some reconciliation has happened since, but what’s presented here as fiction is coming true in the real world after reading “Chief says grave search at B.C. residential school brings things ‘full circle’” from the Kelowna Capital News.

This story by Tasha Spillett (pictured above left) makes up the backdrop where Miikwan and Dez are thinking about their futures. This author/educator/public speaker strives for a world where multiculturalism is embraced and everyone is treated with compassion. It’s basically what Gene Roddenberry envisioned for Star Trek, and everything Sisko would fight for when he travelled back in time and became part of the protests for equal rights in “Past Tense, Parts One and Two (Deep Space 9).”

In this story, these youths want to make the world a better place. They will soon graduate, and instead of figuring out what to wear for their last prom, these two indigenous teens change their plans and want to help after this news broke out. These are wonderful kids. Even Dez, the protagonist from the first two books, gets involved! After her own dealings with “The System,” how she deals with authoritarianism is important too. Continue reading “Surviving The City Can Be Rough. In Volume 3: We Are the Medicine What’s Examined is Based on Real Life.”

Could There Be A New Series in the Works with Sorce: Birth of Echo?

Readers of young adult fiction might want to explore what Sorce: Birth of Echo entails as it concerns a teen hearing voices in his head.

Sorce: Birth of Echo Book Cover Release Date: June 25th, 2024

Encyclopocalypse Publications, known for B-movie film novelizations, horror fiction, and nonfiction, will release it’s first young adult novel by new author Casey Truly. Sorce: Birth of Echo is a thrilling adventure mixing epic fantasy with science fiction. A preview of this book’s first chapter can be found at this author’s webpage, and what’s presented is a style rarely used–it’s a tale told using the first person point of view!

From the Press Release:

While others have been working and studying hard for the coming semester at Sirrus, a college where students learn to master the mystical powers of the Sorce, Charlie has neglected his two best-friends and spent most of his time with his girlfriend, Laurie.

Now, two years later, in the midst of trying to reconnect with those ol pals and and making new ones, Charlie finds there’s a growing shadow that follows him. It’s a voice in his head that isn’t his own. When that sound is something sinister by nature that wants him to kill, he better know where his moral compass is! This conspiracy will involve him and the ones he loves in an adventure, that’s hopefully not too Harry Potter.

Just what’s going on in the bowels of this college and with a man who once attended this post secondary institution will no doubt concern who lives and died within this space. It’s an adventure that Charlie may not survive, and wouldn’t that be a twist?

Paperback pre-orders in the USA are available through
encyclopocalypse.com. All direct pre-orders, including

the eBook, will ship 2 weeks prior to release date.

Looking at Lockwood and Co from a Realistic Paranormal Investigator’s Perspective

What we see from Lockwood and Co is in how often they fail to understand the needs of a ghost who was once human.

Now playing on Netflix

Lockwood and Co has a ghastly problem. They can’t put a stop to the numerous hauntings around London alone. That is, nobody wants to help this supernatural problem-solving agency since they are like the black sheep of the industry. They are not ghostbusters, and nor are they an offshoot organisation similar to the Society for Psychical Research.

In this world wonderfully conceived of by Jonathan Stroud, these ghosts have an agenda. They want to harm the living but I’m wondering if they’re united or just separately acting out. The five books Netflix plans to adapt will show what the plan is. I haven’t read them, but after watching the first season, I feel the need to.

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Don’t You Forget About Me in Fearbook Club

Marco Matrone’s art gives Fearbook Club a feel of an Archie comic. School’s out for some, but for others, they’re trapped. He portrays these ghosts The Sixth Sense-style.

Aftershock Comics
Available to order on Amazon USA

Fortunately, nobodyis serving detention in Richard A. Hamilton’s graphic novel Fearbook Club. Whit Garcia is the new kid in middle school. He doesn’t gave friends. His concerned principal offershim a place at Yearbook club sincehe loves takingphotos. This lad has a talent for gettingsnaps of ghostly figures too, something he tries to rationalise as dirt or anomalies of light.

It’s a detail I appreciate is in how careful Whit is with his “paranormal investigation.” He goes digging and discovers this school’s history says it all. For decades, youths have been disappearing. The reason they’re hiding is that they’ve been chased there, bullied by their peers (from various eras), and all of that has created a Freddy Krueger-like character who dampens their spirits. It doesn’t allow them to leave, and it’s the type of traditional horror trope which makes those tales truly terrifying!

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