The Displaced #[nn]

History

Writer Ed Brisson publicly stated that The Displaced was a concept he had been developing for more than fifteen years before it reached print, describing it as simultaneously a Twilight Zone-style sci-fi mystery and a deeply personal story rooted in his childhood in Oshawa, Ontario — the real Canadian city the series fictionally erases. BOOM! Studios paired him with Italian artist Luca Casalanguida (previously known for Regarding the Matter of Oswald's Body and James Bond tie-in work), colorist Dee Cunniffe (Crossover, Barnstormers), and letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (The Blue Flame), with the project announced in November 2023 and issue #1 hitting comic shops on Valentine's Day 2024. The series ran five issues (February–June 2024), concluding as a complete, self-contained story under BOOM!'s main studio imprint.

Trivia · 8 facts

• First issue (The Displaced #1) published February 14, 2024 by BOOM! Studios; the complete limited series ran five issues through June 19, 2024.
• Written by Ed Brisson; interior art by Luca Casalanguida; colors by Dee Cunniffe; letters by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou — a fully creator-assembled team with no Marvel or DC editorial involvement.
• The series is set in and around the real city of Oshawa, Ontario, Canada — Brisson's actual childhood home, lending the story an autobiographical geographic layer unusual in genre comics.
• The Displaced #1 sold out its initial print run quickly enough that BOOM! Studios announced a second printing (with new cover art by Casalanguida and Cunniffe) to arrive March 13, 2024, concurrent with issue #2.
• Issue #1 featured variant covers by Declan Shalvey and Andrea Sorrentino, plus retailer incentive variants (1:10, 1:25) and a special ComicsPRO exclusive black-and-white virgin variant — a wide variant program typical of BOOM!'s high-profile launches.
• The series' central premise — 170,000 residents of Oshawa vanish without a trace, erased from everyone's memory, with a handful of survivors who are themselves slowly being forgotten — introduced characters Emmett and Gabby as the primary protagonists across the run.
• A mysterious character named Harold, introduced early in the series, is depicted as aware that the Oshawa disappearance was not the first such event, with other cities implied to have similarly vanished from history.
• No adaptation (film, television, or collected edition) had been publicly announced as of the series' completion in June 2024; no reprints beyond the #1 second printing were confirmed in available sources.