“Cartoons about illnesses and disabilities (mental and physical) have increased significantly over the past two decades, as people have recognized the immediacy of the form and its diagrammatic ability to express realities and sensations that are difficult to express in other ways. The ability of comics to diagram, that is, to represent, show, and convey objects in space and time, is useful to the authors of different kinds of stories.”
-Why Comics by Hilary Shute
Comics have an amazing ability to move seamlessly between the imaginary or figurative and the real. When we read comics, we take for granted that the gagging character might not actually be green, even if we see a green-faced sailor. This may not seem surprising to someone who reads a lot of comics, but the ability to look at what’s depicted on the page one way and realize that “in reality” it could be another way is truly special. This alchemy of comics allows us to depict people’s inner experiences in a way that no other medium can.
Deep Dark Fears, a quirky yet creepy swipe comic by Fran Krauss, is a perfect example of this singular power. The series follows a simple four-panel manga format. The first to third frames are the setup, and the fourth frame is the punchline. But rather than being a gag, this setup explains the unsettling foundation upon which the irrational fears revealed in panel four are built.
Deep Dark Fears installments from August 2025
The fears are all irrational, like worrying that you’ll walk out the door naked without realizing it if you wear baggy pants all the time, or that your heart will pop out of your body and bounce while you’re running, but each strip has an undercurrent of very real anxieties. The horrors in Deep Dark Fears are far from ridiculous. Instead, they are secrets exposed, embarrassing phobias exposed in comic form. This format means you can’t mindlessly skip to the end, as long as you’re reading the manga on Instagram rather than Tumblr. Deep Dark Fears has to be read with a sense of dread, slowly building in intensity, each panel rationalizing the next until it inevitably reaches a horrifying conclusion.
“Deep Dark Fears” recalls Justin Greene’s 1972 book “Binky Brown Meets the Virgin Mary,” one of the earliest examples of graphic memoir and mental illness in comics. This work reveals the author’s childhood struggle with OCD. In Binky Brown, the protagonist Binky becomes convinced that the rays of sin emanating from his limbs must be kept away from depictions of the Virgin Mary at all costs. This story is notable from the point of view of manga theory not only for its length, form, and thematic novelty, but also for demonstrating the ability of manga to outwardly portray the inner reality of humans. A modern example of the graphic novel medium is Zoe Thorogood’s 2022 book Lonely at the Center of the Earth. In this work, Thorogood’s various mental states, including his depression, become embodied characters with whom Thorogood interacts as he moves through the world.
In both works, as in Deep Dark Fears, the reader understands that the characters’ mental reality is not indicative of their literal physical reality. “Cartoons can make visible both the external features of a state and the internal cognitive and emotional features that are difficult to convey accurately otherwise,” says Shute. The short nature of the Deep Dark Fears strip makes it difficult to classify it as a definitive “anxiety comic,” but whatever that may be, it has an undeniable ability to humanize the often unsettling horrors.
Deep Dark Fears installments from August 2025
The series draws attention to the fact that it is very much human-drawn, with a watercolor style that mixes colors and pops outside the lines, and a style of ink brush strokes and lettering. The way the watercolor paper is scanned emphasizes the paper material and fibers rather than erasing them completely, making each horror increasingly specific and empathetic. Unlike other series that focus on anxiety, such as Alison Bechdel’s Dykes to Watch Out For, Deep Dark Fears is soothing rather than disconcerting. Although the art style is cozy and often creepy, the ending is never gruesome and, given the subject matter, there is a surprising lack of faces of fear, pain, or anger.
The creators of the series are soliciting horror submissions from readers on Tumblr, but none of the strips say whether they’re “real” or fake, but the fact is, it doesn’t matter. Just as the distinction between horror and reality is rendered meaningless by the comic format, so too is the distinction between fiction and nonfiction. Deep Dark Fears acknowledges that the fears within each of us are legitimate, but even in a sea of anxiety, the series remains an island of calm and serenity.
Something like this:
Like loading…
