Stories from the underground. Made without permission.

Cranial Core Comics is an independent comic book publisher created by writer and musician Phil Swanson as a home for horror, crime, dark fiction and stories rooted in the underground culture that shaped him.

The idea behind Cranial Core is simple: make the books we want to read.

That means adult comics. Strange comics. Violent, funny, uncomfortable and sometimes deeply personal stories. No shared universe required. No superheroes necessary. Just good stories, distinctive artwork and complete creative freedom.

Phil has been writing longer than he has been making music, although music ultimately occupied several decades of his creative life. His work with bands including Vestal Claret, Hour of 13, Sumerlands, Solemn Lament, Seamount and others took him through the international heavy-metal underground and created a network of artists, musicians, labels and independent creators around the world.

Writing was always waiting in the background.

The first Cranial Core release, The Missing Girl, began as a script in 2011, inspired by ideas that originally appeared in Phil's music. After several attempts to bring the project to print over the years, it was finally resurrected and became the book that launched Cranial Core Comics.

Lilly, our second release, goes back even further. Originally written in the late 1990s as a screenplay for a short student film, it was recently pulled from the archives and adapted into a comic script.

Mouse goes back further still. First written in the late 1980s as a screenplay, it is now being rewritten as a novella—the first proper prose book to be released through Cranial Core Co-Op, our book-publishing imprint.

That long road helped define what Cranial Core would become.

The next step is LUCI-FERN: The Lycanthropic Bitch, the first comic created specifically for the current Cranial Core vision rather than resurrected from an earlier script.

Rather than chasing trends or trying to recreate modern mainstream comics, Cranial Core draws from the things that made independent comics exciting in the first place: horror, exploitation films, underground music, crime fiction, punk and metal culture, and the adult comics of the late '80s and '90s.

There's an obvious affection for another era here, but these aren't nostalgia pieces.

They're new stories told from the perspective of someone who was actually there.

The Missing Girl explores heavy metal, murder and the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. Lilly moves into supernatural and body horror. LUCI-FERN mixes lycanthropy with the underground metal world. Mouse goes somewhere different again—a coming-of-age story drawn from memories of youth, friendship and the moments that stay with us long after they're over.

And then there's Nobody's Heroes, a heavy-metal crime noir originally written as a screenplay in the 1980s. The long-term goal is to finally bring it to life as a full-color graphic novel.

Different stories. Different artists. Same core philosophy.

Cranial Core works directly with independent artists to bring each project to life and publishes the books independently, in the formats that best suit the story—from small digest editions and limited printings to larger collected editions.

There isn't a grand plan to become the next giant comic-book company.

The goal is much simpler:

Write the stories. Find great artists. Make cool books. Put them into people's hands.

After decades spent in underground music, Cranial Core Comics is just the next chapter.

And we're only getting started.