'Heard' #1 Is Now Available for Pre-Order!

Heard, my new survival thriller comic book series, arrives October 21 from Keenspot and Ex Posse—and Issue #1 is available for pre-order now!

Heard is now available in four different covers!

Some stories take a long road to reach their audience. Heard has certainly been one of mine.

I'm incredibly excited to share that Heard Issue 1, the first installment of my four-issue survival thriller comic series, is now available for pre-order from Keenspot and participating comic book retailers nationwide, ahead of its October 21, 2026 release!

Heard is a project that began more than six years ago as a feature screenplay inspired by my experiences raising my son Ethan. Since then, it has won screenwriting competitions, gone through multiple development incarnations, been announced in The Hollywood Reporter, transformed from a screenplay into a comic book and brought together an extraordinary team of artists and collaborators from around the world.

There were moments along the way when I wasn't sure exactly how the story would reach this point. That's part of what makes finally holding Heard Issue 1 in my hands so meaningful.

From the 'Heard' Screenplay to Comic Book

I first wrote Heard in 2020, imagining a survival thriller centered on Owen Mayfield, a nonspeaking autistic boy who gets kidnapped during a family camping trip in the Montana wilderness and must rely on his extraordinary memory, ingenuity and determination to survive.

The screenplay quickly began gaining momentum. It won the Drama Genre Grand Prize at the Shore Scripts Feature Screenplay Contest and later finished as Second Runner-Up in the ScreenCraft Feature Competition, among numerous other honors.

Then came the development that completely changed the trajectory of the project.

In 2021, HEARD won the Grand Prize of the Script2Comic Contest, a competition designed to identify screenplays with the potential to become both comic books and feature films. The win was announced in The Hollywood Reporter, and suddenly a story I had imagined entirely as a movie had an opportunity to take on another life on the comic book page.

That began another journey altogether. The project's original development path ultimately wasn't the right one for Heard. Sometimes moving a project forward means being willing to change course. Instead, I moved forward independently, determined to build the comic the way I envisioned it and find the right home for it.

The Hollywood Reporter Article about Heard winning the grand prize of Script2Comic.

Building the 'Heard' Team

One of the most important steps came through fellow Script2Comic winner and friend Frank J. Kim, whom I had the pleasure of finally meeting in person at San Diego Comic-Con in 2022. Frank recommended that I connect with veteran comic book creator and editor Andrea Lorenzo Molinari—an introduction that changed everything.

Andrea came aboard as editor and helped me navigate the process of adapting a feature screenplay into a four-issue comic series, assembling an international creative team and ultimately bringing Heard from script pages to finished comic pages.

Illustrator Joe Bocardo gave Owen, his family and the wilderness their visual identities, bringing a gritty, expressive energy to the series. Sergio Morfe provided colors, while veteran comic creator Juan Torres (El Torres) handled lettering.

Our Issue 1 variant covers brought even more artists into the Heard family: Hugo Petrus, along with Luca Panciroli and Manoli Martínez.

After years of development, Heard ultimately found an amazing publishing partnership with Ex Posse and Keenspot, giving the series a path into comic shops nationwide while also reopening exciting possibilities for the story beyond the page, including its potential future as a feature film.

'Heard' – A Story Inspired by My Son

For all of the contests, development meetings, artwork and publishing milestones, the reason Heard exists has never changed. My son, Ethan Pickering, inspired it, while my amazing wife, Lindsay Kaye Pickering—herself now an administrator-level school psychologist for all of Riverside County—provided her professional expertise and many of the early story foundations. When I began writing the original screenplay, I drew heavily from my experiences as Ethan's father: the ways he communicates, the things he notices that others might miss, his incredible memory and the experience of learning that communication and understanding can take many different forms.

At its heart, Heard is about Owen and his father, Stephen. It's a riveting thriller, but also a family drama about a father learning how to truly hear his son. That distinction matters to me. Owen may be nonspeaking, but he has a rich inner world, intelligence, humor, fear, courage and agency. Putting a character like him at the center of a suspense-driven comic book adventure was an opportunity to bring greater neurodiversity to genre storytelling while still delivering the kind of propulsive survival thriller I've always loved.

I wanted the authenticity to come from lived experience while never losing sight of the fact that Heard is first and foremost a story designed to grab readers, move them and keep them turning pages.

Some voices can't be silenced.

Image of my son, Ethan Pickering, the inspiration for Owen Mayfield in Heard.

Four Covers for 'Heard' Issue 1

Issue 1 will be available in four collectible cover editions, each offering a different interpretation of the story: 1) Main Cover – Joe Bocardo. The haunting blue-toned image of Owen, the Montana wilderness reflected across him as crime-scene tape cuts across the composition.

Main Cover A.

2) Variant Cover B – Hugo Petrus. A menacing glimpse of the human danger waiting in the wilderness, juxtaposed against Owen and his family below.

Variant Cover B. 3) Variant Cover C – Hugo Petrus. Connecting Cover. The first installment of a special four-part connecting-cover series, which will continue across all four issues of HEARD.

Variant Cover C.

4) Variant Cover D – Luca Panciroli (pencils and inks) & Manoli Martínez (colors). Holofoil Flip Cover. A special flip-effect cover presenting two visual states of Owen confronting the ominous figure looming over him.

Variant Cover D.

Together, the four covers capture different pieces of Heard: isolation, family, danger and survival.

'Heard' Begins October 21!

Heard Issue 1 officially arrives in comic shops on October 21, 2026, kicking off a four-issue limited series, with new issues scheduled to follow every other month. Issue 2 arrives in December.

But you don't have to wait until October to reserve a copy. Heard Issue 1 is available for pre-order now! Pre-order HEARD directly from Keenspot at: https://keenspotshop.com/collections/comic-books/ex-posse Or at participating comic book retailers nationwide.

After six years, countless drafts, unexpected turns, difficult decisions and an extraordinary amount of artwork and collaboration, Owen's journey is finally about to begin. I can't wait for you to hear him.

Thanks for reading! Please offer your thoughts in the comments section below.