The #1 New York Times bestselling author Charles Soule (Eight Billion Genies, The Lucky Devils, Star Wars, Daredevil) re-teams with dynamo artist Will Sliney (The Rise of Kylo Ren, Spider-Man) for the upcoming action/horror series The Cold Witch. This five-issue miniseries will join Hell to Pay and The Bloody Dozen in the ‘Shrouded College’ shared universe of titles and launch this May from Image Comics.
As with each ‘Shrouded College’ series so far, The Cold Witch #1 Cover C will include a special, individually numbered collector’s “Hell Coin.”
“Seeing the Shrouded College universe grow with each new story has been one of the great joys of my writing career. Building this horror-adventure saga from scratch alongside Will Sliney, finding ways for each new chapter to be amazing on its own but part of the larger whole… and seeing fans start to understand what we’re doing and come on board… it’s the best,” said Soule. “The Cold Witch is our third chapter after Hell to Pay and The Bloody Dozen, and this is where the pieces really start to come together for the larger story. It’s a revenge piece set on the frozen steppes with cool folklore horror elements, and I think it’s our best yet. Lean, mean, and paced like lightning, it’s both a great starting point if this is your first Shrouded College story and a fantastic return to the universe if you’re already a fan.”
The Cold Witch promises fans an icy horror tale of revenge and dark sorcery set in frozen Siberia and is perhaps best described as John Wick—but with zombies! It follows the tale of a woman wronged who goes to truly desperate lengths to avenge her murdered love.
Sliney added: “Charles is really pushing me on this one with his scripts. While this book still delivers the high-stakes action and supernatural spy escapades we’ve come to expect from the Shrouded College, this time, our collaboration plunges even deeper into the shadows. The Cold Witch doesn’t just flirt with horror—it embraces it fully, dragging us into something far more chilling and unrelenting. Violet’s journey is one of pure, ice-cold revenge, and every step she takes is more ruthless than the last. There’s no turning back for her, and as I bring her story to life on the page, I find myself drawing things that send shivers down my spine. What she’s doing… and what I have to illustrate to capture it… is some of the most unsettling, eerie, and downright terrifying work I’ve ever tackled. This book isn’t just dark—it’s pitch black, and I can’t wait for readers to step into the cold with us.”
Soule and Sliney’s ‘The Shrouded College’ is an interconnected set of seven adventure/horror stories that will be published in comic and graphic novel formats over the next several years. Taken together, they tell the stories of various characters enlisted to become secret agents fighting a supernatural cold war on the side of the Shrouded College, a down-and-out organization on the edge of destruction. It was announced that “The Shrouded College is in the works as a TV series after Seth MacFarlane’s Fuzzy Door and UCP secured the rights. The project is in active development at the Peacock streaming network…[Soule and Sliney] will exec produce the project alongside MacFarlane, Erica Huggins and Rachel Hargreaves-Heald for Fuzzy Door.”
The Cold Witch #1 will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, May 14: and will also be available across many digital platforms, including Amazon Kindle, Apple Books, and Google Play.
