In Your Skin: Out in Stores Now

There has been a lot of news since we last spoke, and a lot of work done, which is partly what kept me from being able to blog about it. However, more on that in the next few days.

Today’s post is about one thing.

In Your Skin #1 is out today, April 22nd, available wherever your favourite comics are sold! (At least in the US, UK, Canada, and other countries connected to the direct market network.)

Permit me once again to tell you about this labour of love.

In Your Skin is a body horror comic serialised over four issues, published by Image Comics, produced by Tiny Onion, drawn by Som, coloured by Francesco Segala with Gloria Martinelli, designed by Dylan Todd and Courtney Menard, edited by Eric Harburn, with consultation by Allison O’Toole, and written and lettered by me.

Here’s the quick pitch for the series:

Priyanka is a Bollywood uber-fan obsessed with film star Ayesha Sen. She’s watched her movies over and over, and knows her dances beat for beat. But after a once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet her idol goes wrong, and Ayesha announces her impending retirement, Priyanka decides that if Ayesha is not going to live the life she’s supposed to, Priyanka would happy to take over.

In Your Skin emerged from my long-standing fascinating with fandom, celebrity culture and parasocial relationships, and explores what happens when an obsession with your idol goes too far.

This book has been cooking in my head for many years – I narrated the first version of this to a friend in 2019, left it alone in the pandemic, picked it back up in 2023, and have been steadily working on it ever since. In 2024, James Tynion IV and Tiny Onion pitched me their Artists-in-Residence programme, and part of our deal was to get together and produce a comic written by me. This is that comic.

In that time, it’s gone through many iterations, and once Som joined the project, it became its own thing, made anew through collaboration. This isn’t the book that was in my head back then, and I wouldn’t have it any other way – it’s better, richer and more fully formed because of what Som has done with it.

It’s a book I’m very proud of – not just because it’s beautifully drawn, coloured, and designed. I have been working full-time in comics for almost 15 years now, and this feels like the fruition of those 15 years. As happy as I am with the final product, it’s the collaboration that I’m really proud of – all these talented people coming together to make something I simply couldn’t have made on my own, and wouldn’t have wanted to. It has been a privilege working with this team, and with everyone at Tiny Onion, to make this happen.

When I turned 35, I’d promised myself that I’d write and produce a full-length comic – a book – by the age of 40. I’m a year late getting to the end of it, but the happier for it. There will be more comics, but this is the first of them.

When you go to the store to get the book, you will have a choice of four covers.

There’s Cover A by Som, which you can see above.

Below, you can see Cover B by Maria Llovet, Cover C by Anand RK, and Cover D by Tula Lotay.

We are very proud of the talented folks we’ve managed to line up for the variants. Casting variants is an incredibly fun part of the job, and I have been constantly delighted by the variations people have come up with on the concept and on our characters.

Finally, here are some of the very nice things critics and pros have been saying about the book:

“The best body horror stories use the body as a means to explore questions about identity, society, and sensuality. Bidikar and Som understand this perfectly, delivering a carefully crafted tale of desperation wrought by societal pressures. Pressures that can only find release by escaping through the flesh.” – Lonnie Nadler (The Sickness, Little Nightmares)

“In Your Skin feels both tense and comfortably dreamlike somehow, like waking from a nightmare you are desperate to return to. The ethereal art and poetic writing keep drawing you in until it’s too late to look away. This book haunts.” – Matthew Rosenberg (If Destruction Be Our Lot, We’re Taking Everyone Down With Us)

“A wonderful dive into fandom and horror by way of Bollywood, this first issue is both gorgeous and unsettling. Aditya has been known for years as one of the industry’s greatest letterers and now he’s proving he’s also one of its greatest writers.” – Chip Zdarsky (Sex Criminals, The White Trees)

“It’s brilliant, risky, sexy, grotesque both in body horror and the disturbing psychology of extreme fandom, it’s filled with beautiful gestures and characters and struggles. It’s like nothing else in comics.” – Deniz Camp (20th Century Men, Absolute Martian Manhunter)

“It’s a joy watching both Adi and Som create something with such ambition and a distinct voice! I want more comics like these.” – Ram V (Blue in Green, New Gods)

“This one had me at page one. Just the art would have been enough, but the themes of celebrity, inferiority, and pedestalization are ones I’m already passionate about, and I’m eager to see them further explored […]. And, of course, the lettering is on point.” – Clayton Cowles (The Power Fantasy, Batman)

“It is grotesque and beautiful; disturbing and sexual. […] The book has shades of David Lynch in how it creates unease, though I pause before I bring up his name. Most art that invokes Lynch is not as thoughtful in its choices as this comic is.” – Dan Watters (Batman: Dark Patterns, Coffin Bound)

“A visceral, horrific story that cuts to the core of obsession and celebrity with gorgeous, haunting art and a deftly crafted, incredible debut from Aditya Bidikar as a writer.” – Frank Barbiere (The Author Immortal, Five Ghosts)

“This is a powerful showing for both Som and Aditya Bidikar as future household names for comics.” – Gatecrashers

“In Your Skin has a great momentum and sets up what feels like it could be one of the most unsettling body horror comics we’ve seen in a while.” – Comicbook.com

“The strength of the book is simple: you can’t look away. […] Stylish, unsettling, and genuinely fresh.” – The Comic Book Yeti

I was asked in one of the interviews we’ve done about this book what my ambition for the book is. I want it to sell well enough that everyone on the team feels their time was well-used. But that’s a technical matter. What I really want is for someone who reads it to come out of it a different person. That’s possibly more ambitious, but I think, when creating a work of art, aiming for any less is a waste of everyone’s time.

So my hope is that you will give In Your Skin a chance, and find yourself changed by it.