The Displaced #3

History

The Displaced originated as a deeply personal project that writer Ed Brisson first began developing around 2008, inspired by a growing sense of disconnection from Oshawa, Ontario, where he had lived until age fourteen. He pitched an early version — then simply called Oshawa — to a publisher in 2011, but that collaboration dissolved over creative differences, leaving the story dormant on his hard drive for over a decade. When BOOM! Studios finally brought the project to market in February 2024, Brisson assembled artist Luca Casalanguida (whose work on Lost Soldiers had impressed him), colorist Dee Cunniffe, letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou, and editor Elizabeth Brei to realize the concept he described as both a Twilight Zone-style sci-fi mystery and a meditation on media's tendency to move on and forget its victims. The series launched to strong enough retail demand that BOOM! Studios ordered a second printing of issue #1 before issue #2 even shipped.

Trivia · 8 facts

• Written by Ed Brisson with interior art by Luca Casalanguida and colors by Dee Cunniffe; Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou served as letterer across the series.
• Released April 17, 2024 by BOOM! Studios as the third chapter of a five-issue limited series.
• The issue's central narrative development reveals backstory for Harold, a mysterious older survivor, and introduces the possibility that entire towns have vanished before — expanding the series' mythology beyond the single Oshawa incident.
• Issue #3 makes explicit the moral split among survivors: a faction has begun exploiting their social invisibility to commit crimes, while others refuse, creating the factional conflict that defines the back half of the miniseries.
• The issue shipped with four cover editions: Cover A by Luca Casalanguida, Cover B by Declan Shalvey, a 1:10 retailer incentive black-and-white virgin variant by Casalanguida, and a 1:25 virgin variant by Vincenzo Riccardi.
• The series is set in the real city of Oshawa, Ontario — Brisson's actual childhood hometown — grounding its supernatural premise in genuine autobiographical geography.
• The Displaced is published under BOOM! Studios' main imprint alongside other creator-owned titles such as Something is Killing the Children and BRZRKR.
• The premise — that survivors of Oshawa's disappearance are progressively erased from others' memories as well — was described by Brisson as a metaphor for media's cycle of attention and abandonment of disaster victims.

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Variants (3)