Seven Years in Darkness: Year One: Apprentice Yearbook

The Academy of Black Magic has opened its doors for the first time in 200 years and its halls call to a new class of students. Seventy-two children are conscripted to the Academy of Black Magic for seven years where they’ll study the dark arts in a setting devoid of the sun. Only seven will live to see the daylight again.

Joseph Schmalke is a comics creator, writer, and illustrator residing in Westbrook, Maine. Joe is the artist and writer on several comic book titles including SEVEN YEARS IN DARKNESS, WE DON’T KILL SPIDERS, CHERRY BLACKBIRD, THE INFERNAL PACT, PHANTOM STARKILLER, THE ELECTRIC BLACK, and MURDER HOBO. You can find his work featured on variant covers for Image comics, Boom! studios, Vault Comics, and others. He also contributed to A Sound of Thunder’s IT WAS METAL graphic novel anthology, the album artwork for THE KRIMSON KULT, and the upcoming comic book series Queen of Hell.