An Overview of Deep Dark Fears

Are you ready to confront fears you didn’t even know you had? You’re in for a treat then! In this article, we will take a deep dive into the world of Deep Dark Fears, the oddly relatable and utterly fascinating webcomic. Find out more about its creator and the type of niche it explores.

Enter Fran Krause

Fran Krause is the man behind this successful webcomic series. Krause doesn’t have a background in comics and his Deep Dark Fears was in fact him testing the waters of the comics world. If you ask us, he hardly looks like an amateur.

Krause was born in Utica, New York, and he has had a passion for art ever since he was a little boy. He recollects taking art classes in school, as well as extra night classes at a local college.

Krause graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design with a BA in animation. One of his projects at college was an animated short called Mister Smile (1999), which was a fan favorite at the Ottawa International Student Animation Festival that also received critical acclaim and managed to win first place in its category.

Krause later also got an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College.

In-between these prestigious degrees, Krause worked as an animator and story artist for Blue’s Clues, Little Einsteins, Saturday Night Live, and Superjail. Apart from that, he has created two pilots for Cartoon Network, Utica Cartoon, and Upstate Four.

Deep Dark Fears

With such a rich portfolio, Krause was destined to succeed in his new venture – webcomics. He first got the idea when he worked with James Kochalka. Kochalka is a famous artist and comics creator, who, with the help of Krause, wanted to adapt some of his works into animation.

Krause was impressed by the medium of comics and how they allowed you to tell a story in a few panels. He also liked the fact that comics leave a bit to the reader’s imagination in comparison to animation. It’s no wonder why Marshall McLuhan called comics “a cold medium”.

Krause, who was teaching art at the time, noticed that his students were using Tumblr and decided to give it a go. He found out that Tumblr was a positive place where artists could share their creations, so he found his platform and now he only needed to find his topic.

Krause shares that he has a lot of irrational fears and thought he might turn them into comics. He sat down and wrote 30 of them on a piece of paper and then began drawing them, hoping to produce a weekly series.

Krause quickly gained followers, but he was a bit concerned that his fears, no matter how many, would eventually run out. Luckily for him, fans started sharing their own fears, perhaps thinking the material was submission-based.

Krause then began drawing his fans’ irrational fears and apparently had enough to last him years. He still does it to this day, which is incredibly cool, and if you want to see your deepest darkest fears drawn beautifully by Krause, you can submit them here.

Krause has also published two collections of Deep Dark Fears so far. The titular one, called Deep Dark Fears, in 2015, and the second one called The Creeps in 2017.

What Makes the Webcomic Successful

Initially, Krause just wanted to have some fun, while exploring a new artistic medium. He thought his fears were funny and obscure, but he found out he thought wrong. People found them not only entertaining to read, but also very relatable. Krause was pleasantly surprised and he kept discovering new relatable fears once he began drawing submissions.

Even if you don’t share a specific fear on Deep Dark Fears, you can’t help but feel a sense of relatability. It’s probably because we all have our secret fears, thing we can’t even describe as fears, but thoughts we have daily, so we feel empathetic to other people’s phobias and by association, to our own.

Krause utilizes the four-panel structure, which is highly effective in getting his point across. The fear is explored in the simplest of terms and it usually leaves a bitter taste in one’s mouth that doesn’t leave you for some time. The dreamy quality of the comics is reinforced by the lovely watercolor illustrations that resemble our favorite picture books as children.

Favorite Fears

In this section, we will post some of our favorite Deep Dark Fears comics. In order to keep up with the topic of oddly relatable fears, we will pick the ones that we personally relate to the most. Please don’t use them against us!

1. Ringtones when you’re all alone.

I feel like we can all relate to that. Perhaps we should try to be better friends?

2. Is that you?

A comic straight from nightmare factory that we have probably experienced as children.

3. Crossing the same river twice

And let’s end this article with a big cup of existential dread. Thank you for reading!