Can we defeat fear by illustrating it?

Via Tumblr, Fran Krause crowd sourced confessions of people’s deep, dark fears and turned them into short watercolor panels, using the fear as a caption. This collection of those fears begins as black comedy and quickly reveals its terrifying core. It is almost philosophically instructive to read through Deep Dark Fears: what do you recognize in yourself? Where do you recoil? What seems silly? Krause’s art elevates even the mundane fear into a panel worth perusing, often adding layers and interpretations of the fears and enriching the original words. Maybe not a light read but a worthwhile read with the lights on.

Deep Dark Fears

A devilishly funny collection of comics that explores our most gruesome, hilarious, and bizare fears – and the dangers lurking around every corner. We all have strange, irrational fears–from seeing ghosts in the bedroom mirror to being sucked into a mall escalator or finding yourself miles below the ocean’s surface on the deck of a sunken ship. In Deep Dark Fears , animator, illustrator, and cartoonist Fran Krause brings these fears to life in 101 vividly illustrated comics inspired by his wildly popular web comic and based on real fears submitted by online readers. Deep Dark Fears reveals a primal part of our humanity and highlighting both our idiosyncrasies and our similarities.