IDW Dark Adds ‘You'll Never Leave This Place Alive’
IDW Dark revealed You'll Never Leave This Place Alive, a horror mystery from co-writers Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing and artist Heather Vaughan, arriving October 14.
Phoebe Joplin grew up inside a sealed-off community her parents helped build, raised alongside her friends to be sharper and stronger than anyone outside its walls, with nothing to distract or endanger them and nothing kept from view. That picture holds until graduation night, when one of the group dies in a way that shouldn't be possible. As Phee starts tugging at the threads of the life she was handed, what she uncovers is worse than anything she feared, since the place she thought was a refuge turns out to be a cage no one walks away from once they learn the truth.
You'll Never Leave This Place Alive #1 is on sale October 14, 2026, with a Cover A by Heather Vaughan, a Cover B set by Alex Eckman-Lawn, an IDW Goes Dark variant (Cover C) by Morgan Beem, and retailer incentive variants by Joshua Hixson.
"We're deconstructing a feeling that seems universal these days; our elders have a death grip on their power, without any intention of giving it up to the generations that come next," stated Kelly. "YNLTPA is about growing up with the limitless potential of the future... and realizing how much it's a lie we've been fed to keep us under the yoke of the past. Bringing this brutal experience to life is our artist and co-creator, Heather Vaughan, who brings an incredible amount of humanity to our cast. But it's in our youthful leads that Heather's art really shines - you are going to fall in love with these young people, even as they go through the worst experience of their lives. What we've all crafted together is going to be tragic, painful, but above all else, sincere - with a future so uncertain, there's only one thing we can trust: you'll never leave this place alive."
"YOU'LL NEVER LEAVE THIS PLACE ALIVE is in many ways a spiritual successor to our last creator-owned horror, The Principles of Necromancy - a dive into the promise and consequence of playing god with the blood of innocents," commented Lanzing. "But the Hivemind book this reminds me of most is Clayface - One Bad Day. This is a deeply human story with intensely raw emotions - five best friends and their five mysterious parents, tearing one another apart for the promise of some impossible glory that's waiting just beyond their darkest actions. We're thrilled to be bringing this story to life with our long-time partner in crime, editor Heather Antos, at IDW Dark - and we're particularly excited to give our Clayface fans a new, brutal and emotional horror made just for them."
Senior Group Editor Heather Antos described the book as a story about discovering that the monsters in question are the people who raised you, calling the series layered, brutal, and emotional, and pointing to the room it gives Vaughan to take the art somewhere both haunting and personal.
