Warning: contains a preview of The Conjuring: The Lover #1!
An unholy presence targets a college student in The Conjuring: The Lover, a prelude to the highly anticipated upcoming film The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It. The first in a five issue miniseries, The Conjuring: The Lover #1 will also mark a few other significant firsts. Along with being the Conjuring Universe's first foray into comics, it will be the first issue of DC Comics' new horror imprint. The new 17+ imprint will simply be labeled DC Horror, and will provide a home for horror comics apart from DC's other adult imprint Black Label.
The miniseries will be co-written by The Conjuring 2 screenwriter Daniel Johnson-McGoldrick and Rex Ogle (Flashpoint: The World of Flashpoint). Bringing the terror to life will be the series artist Garry Brown (Babyteeth, X-Force). Adding to the fear factor of the series will be backup stories that uncover the origins of various haunted items from Ed and Lorraine Warren's artifact room. Rounding out the first issue will be a backup by DC Comics superstar Scott Snyder (Batman, Justice League) and Denys Cowan (Hardware, The Question: The Deaths of Vic Sage).
The Conjuring: The Lover will follow Jessica, a college freshman reeling from poor grades and a regrettable romantic encounter. Much worse, though, is the inescapable feeling that she's being watched. Her stalker manifests in ways worse than she can imagine as she discovers the horrors of the evil that lurks in the shadows. The true strength of the the Conjuring Universe lies in something often lacking in the horror genre: character-driven storytelling. The writers of the series are keen to keep the spirit of the franchise going by using the horror elements of the story as a device to explore the turmoil in Jessica's life. In an interview for SyFy, Johnson-McGoldrick explained:
Sometimes it feels to me like Conjuring movies are sort of like the supernatural almost becomes a manifestation of the strife that the characters are experiencing in real life. So [in The Lover] you introduce this character of Jessica who's having all these problems, cause she doesn't want to be away at school, and she has these secrets that she's keeping, and it's manifesting in our story as the supernatural element.
In the same vein as other offshoots of the primary Conjuring series like The Nun, the comic will explore an evil force's history before ever encountering the formidable paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren. Speaking to SyFy, Johnson-McGoldrick said, "In the context of the film, Jessica's story is a precursor to what's happening to the main character, the cursed person in the film, Arne Johnson. All the things that are happening to Arne Johnson, they all happened in the past." It's a terrifying proposition that emphasizes how intense things are likely to get in the comic, as the series will set up the film by showing fans what the malevolent force of The Devil Made Me Do It is truly capable of.
The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It, the eighth installment in the the Conjuring Universe, hits theaters and HBO Max on June 4, 2021. Giving fans a few days to read the first issue of the miniseries before watching the movie, The Conjuring: The Lover #1 comes out on June 1, 2021. With a creative team well versed in bone-chilling storytelling, the series is set to bring the ominous, heart pounding aura of the films to the page, as well as adding more unsettling lore to this smash horror universe.
Source: SyFy
