This January, writer Adam Smith (Long Walk to Valhalla) and artist Bob Quinn (Kill Your Darlings) pull back the curtain on 1950s Hollywood in Hide Nor Hair, a new six-issue DC Vertigo limited series about movie magic, stolen credit, a monstrous found family, and the brutal lengths one overlooked artist will go to protect the creatures she brought to life.
Working on Galaxy Pictures’ creature features from inside the famed Leonard family’s special effects house, Mallory Headley creates the masks behind monsters like the Thing from the Muck, Baba Yaga the witch, and Koschei the vampire. The monsters become stars. The Leonards get the credit. Mallory remains largely invisible.
Hollywood knows Mallory Headley’s monsters. It just doesn’t know Mallory Headley.
And Mallory knows something Hollywood doesn’t: the masks are alive.
When the masks are violently taken from her, Mallory sets out to bring them home, beginning a fantastical and brutal path of vengeance through the shadows of 1950s Hollywood.
“It’s equal parts intensely frightening and exciting when someone asks you to go out on an artistic limb,” said Bob Quinn, “to find parts of yourself and what you do that you didn’t know were there, and to do it all in front of an audience. I tried bizarre techniques, invested in obscure tools—did you know you can ink with burlap?—and pushed myself in directions I probably never would have had it not been for this book. I sincerely hope you enjoy reading it as much as we enjoy creating it.”
“It’s a very special look into what it’s like to be an artist,” added Quinn, “to be alive, to find out what you’re made of.”
Hide Nor Hair blends old-Hollywood glamour and creature-feature fantasy with noir, mystery, and visceral horror as Mallory searches for her stolen family and confronts a world that has spent years overlooking both her talent and her creations.
“We talked a lot about it being noir-y, being a mystery,” said Adam Smith. “But there’s some really gruesome action stuff in here that I had never written before, and it was really wonderful to see Bob do it.”
For Quinn, Mallory’s struggle for recognition is inseparable from the act of making art itself.
“We put poor Mallory through the wringer at every opportunity,” said Quinn. “So much of this book is about her either not getting credit for that journey and that effort… or struggling just to do it. Because that’s all you’re trying to do at the end of the day as an artist: understand both yourself and the world around you.”
For Smith, Hide Nor Hair also speaks to what DC Vertigo has meant as a home for stories where the strange and frightening can reveal something deeply human.
“Making this book with Bob, Lucas, and Andrea has been everything I love about creating comics,” said Smith. “Seeing all the characters come to life so vividly and beautifully is, without question, why the comic book medium is so perfect for this kind of story. We wanted to celebrate the strange and beautiful in a way that felt true to us. And I couldn’t be happier that, in doing so, Hide Nor Hair gets to contribute to Vertigo’s storied history. As a particular sort of comics fan, it is absolutely flooring, and I could not be more grateful and excited.”
“I sincerely hope you all love Mallory and her pals as much as I do,” added Smith. “Like all good friends, they came along right when I needed them, and I can’t wait to share them with you!”
Take a look at new preview pages from issue #1 below:
Hide Nor Hair #1, written by Adam Smith with art and a main cover by Bob Quinn and lettering by Lucas Gattoni, arrives at participating comic book shops and digital retailers on January 6, 2027. Issue #1 also features variant covers by Reiko Murakami, Jasmine Darnell, and Niko Henrichon. The 40-page debut issue is $3.99 US, with card stock variants available for $4.99 US.
A Look Ahead at Hide Nor Hair
The six-issue DC Vertigo limited series publishes monthly from January through June 2027 and will be collected in October. Take a first look at artwork from upcoming issues of Hide Nor Hair.
For the latest information on Hide Nor Hair, DC Vertigo, and more, visit the official DC website at dc.com and follow DC on social media.
