There’s a certain New Jersey thread running through punk, emo, and comics that never really snapped—it just kept changing shape. That’s where Open Caskets, the new graphic novel from Neil Sabatino and Shaun Simon, comes in. On the surface, it’s a surreal horror-comedy about a support group of misfits sharing their stories. Underneath it is something more specific: two writers reconnecting after a shared history that traces back to the same underground scene that helped define the early My Chemical Romance era.
Sabatino and Simon were both founding members of Pencey Prep, the New Jersey emo-punk band fronted by Frank Iero before his time in My Chemical Romance. Pencey Prep existed in that pre-breakout ecosystem of basement shows, cramped venues, and word-of-mouth circuits—where bands didn’t feel like “bands” so much as overlapping communities trying to figure out what the next version of themselves looked like.
That overlap is the important part. The same scene that produced Pencey Prep also fed directly into the creative orbit that would later explode with My Chemical Romance, and it’s no accident that Shaun Simon’s later work lands so naturally in that world.
Simon would go on to become a key collaborator with Gerard Way, co-writing the Eisner Award Nominee The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys, expanding the universe tied to the Danger Days era. It wasn’t just a musician dabbling in comics or a writer tagging along with a rock star—it became its own language, where music narratives bled directly into graphic storytelling.
He also worked with Mikey Way on additional comic projects, further cementing that strange, persistent bridge between New Jersey punk DNA and modern alternative comics storytelling.
Now, Open Caskets pulls those threads back together. It reunites Simon with Sabatino, not as nostalgia, but as continuation—two writers who started in the same rehearsal-room ecosystem and ended up building entirely different creative lives before looping back into collaboration.
The book itself leans into a darker, stranger tone: Charles Addams meets Tim Burton-style humor, horror edges, surreal absurdity, and a core setup built around a support group of misfits each unloading their personal realities. It’s equal parts character study and twisted anthology—more emotional than it first appears, more chaotic than it initially lets on.
Timing-wise, the release lands in a way that feels almost intentional: Open Caskets arrives June 30, just days after the 25th anniversary edition of Pencey Prep’s Heartbreak in Stereo on June 26. One is a look back at the recorded past of that scene, the other is a sharp turn forward into its mutated present.
Between the two, the connective tissue is still the same: a New Jersey creative network where music, comics, and storytelling keep folding into each other, long after the original bands came and went.
