Phantom on the Scan: Cullen Bunn’s Lovecraftian Spiderweb of Horror

Phantom on the Scan's Connection to Bunn's Other Works

There’s a particular flavour to a Cullen Bunn horror comic book. You don’t just read it. You inhale it like toxic smoke, and then you spend the next few days coughing up fragments of your own sanity.

Phantom on the Scan fits right into that dirty, delicious mold. But more than that? It’s basically the keystone in Cullen Bunn’s unofficial horror-verse — that sprawling, gooey web of terror he’s been weaving across publishers like AfterShock, Boom! Studios, Image, and Dark Horse.

Phantom on the Scan is a psychic horror gut punch, where every telepath is a walking time bomb waiting to detonate in blood and madness. Matthew Jordan, a man haunted by the accidental death of a child, discovers he's just one in a grim lineup of broken psychics - all victims of shady experiments from Cortez Laboratories. Their powers are killing them slowly, but something far worse is stalking them fast: a parasitic predator born from their collective trauma, feeding on their minds and leaving behind psychic carnage.

As the survivors scramble for answers, they peel back the corporate rot only to realise they were never patients - they were fuel. Cortez engineered their suffering to create this unstoppable psychic vampire, and now there’s no running, no hiding, no salvation. Matthew makes a desperate stand to cage the nightmare, but in true Cullen Bunn fashion, there’s no clean victory here. Trauma doesn’t die. It festers, it feeds, and it waits - gnawing at the walls of your mind long after the last page turns.

This isn’t just another spooky story. This is Bunn doing what Bunn does best: pulling apart the meat and bones of human fear and reassembling it into something that stares you down from the corner of your room at 3AM.

Let’s connect the dots between Phantom on the Scan and Cullen Bunn’s other works.

Phantom on the Scan - Front Cover

Cullen Bunn’s Signature Moves (a.k.a. His Serial Kill List of Horror Tropes)

Before we play Six Degrees of Psychic Horror, let’s lay the groundwork. Every Cullen Bunn horror comic shares the same blood type:

• Power comes with teeth, and it always bites you back.

• No clean heroes. Everybody is either complicit or doomed.

• Trauma isn’t subtext - it’s the damn monster.

• Endings leave you hollow, like something crawled out through your ribs.

• Science isn’t salvation - it’s the spark that burns it all down.

Phantom on the Scan isn’t an exception. It’s the rule on steroids.

The Empty Man - The Big Brother of Psychic Apocalypse

The Empty Man is a full-blown apocalypse wrapped in plague-ridden paranoia, where the infection isn’t just in your blood - it’s burrowed straight into your thoughts. Victims spiral from hallucinations to violent madness before the void cracks them wide open, leaving behind nothing but meat puppets for the abyss. But behind this so-called "virus" is something far more sinister: an ancient, cosmic predator gnawing at the seams of reality. Cults rise like rot from a corpse, worshipping The Empty Man with blood sacrifices and whispered gospel, eager to spread the sickness to every corner of humanity.

As ex-agent Jensen and her partner Langford investigate a missing girl tied to the plague, they tumble headfirst into a maelstrom of cultist madness and creeping cosmic horror. Melissa, the missing girl, isn’t lost - she’s the living mouthpiece for The Empty Man’s arrival. No matter how hard they fight, the deeper truth gnashes at their sanity: belief itself is the contagion, and the more they try to stop it, the faster it spreads. By the final, brutal crescendo, the world is swallowed whole, cults feast on despair, and the Empty Man emerges as a god of thought-plague, devouring everything in its wake.

Sound familiar?

Because the predator in Phantom on the Scan is the spiritual sibling of The Empty Man plague. They both feed off human weakness and paranoia like they’re snacking at an all-you-can-eat buffet.

Cortez Labs and the original psychic experiments? Basically, a science-backed version of the cult from The Empty Man - both unleash a psychic time bomb and hope nobody notices the ticking.

If The Empty Man is a cosmic horror shotgun blast, Phantom on the Scan is the surgical drill going straight for the frontal lobe.

Harrow County - The Rural Gothic Cousin

Harrow County is a Southern Gothic symphony of blood and bone, where young Emmy Crawford discovers she’s not just a farm girl - she’s the living legacy of Hester Beck, the town witch burned alive generations earlier. The land whispers to her, the haints crawl from the shadows craving her command, and her own town folk, rattled by their sins, tighten their nooses in fear. As Emmy wrestles with the monstrous inheritance festering in her veins, she’s forced to choose between becoming the witch they fear or forging her own path through the muck of old curses and restless dead.

Her nightmare gets an upgrade when her venomous sister Kammi enters the fray, eager to seize Harrow County’s haunted throne. What follows is a brutal, magic-soaked power struggle of siblings, haint armies, and townsfolk choking on their buried crimes. Emmy fights not just for survival but for the soul of Harrow County itself, sacrificing everything to break the bloody cycle. But in true Bunn fashion, the land never forgets, and even with Emmy’s sacrifice, Harrow’s horrors continue to fester beneath the surface - patient, hungry, and eternal.

But peel back the Southern Gothic skin, and you’ve got the same Phantom on the Scan skeleton:

• A protagonist bound to supernatural horror by blood and legacy.

• Powers they didn’t ask for.

• A constant tug-of-war between control and corruption.

Matthew Jordan and Emmy from Harrow County are kindred spirits. Both inherit monstrous power. Both are forced to wrestle with it. And both stories remind you that power, no matter how “natural,” comes steeped in old sins.

Swap the Harrow County cornfields for collapsing city streets, and you’ve got Phantom on the Scan in a different zip code.

Regression - Bunn’s Dirtiest, Most Personal Horror

Regression is Cullen Bunn at his most unhinged, a maggot-crawling descent into rot and ruin. Poor Adrian just wanted to silence the screaming visions gnawing at his sanity - but digging into past-life regression cracked open something ancient and vile. Turns out, his former self was Gregory Sutter: an occult sadist neck-deep in cult madness, murder, and worm-riddled theology. Now, Adrian’s trapped in a waking nightmare, blacking out while Sutter’s hunger hijacks his body, and a death cult sharpens its knives, eager to crown their maggot prince once more.

As Adrian spirals, the line between man and monster liquefies. He fights the rot clawing through his mind, but every step forward is a tumble deeper into the cult’s writhing embrace. Sanity curdles, flesh rebels, and by the time Adrian realises he’s not the victim - he’s the vessel - it’s already too late. Regression is a symphony of decay, a filthy hymn to body horror, identity collapse, and the grim inevitability of being devoured by your own worst self.

Sound familiar again?

Phantom on the Scan is Regression’s psychic twin - both stories trap their leads in a hall of mirrors filled with screaming faces from their past. Both feature protagonists who think they’re hunting answers but discover they’re just running in circles inside their own damn head. And both give you that creeping itch like something’s burrowed under your skin.

Regression is a downward spiral, Phantom on the Scan is a psychic self-detonation.

Bone Parish - Crime Noir with a Side of Necromancy

Bone Parish turns New Orleans into a necromantic playground, where the hottest drug on the street is Ash - a powdered cocktail of human remains that lets users mainline the memories and skills of the dead. The "Winters" family sits on this grim empire, running Ash like a family-run cartel, but every high comes with a horrifying price: the dead don’t like being used. Rival gangs close in, corporate sharks smell blood in the water, and the family’s own greed feeds a rising tide of supernatural backlash.

As the Ash trade spirals out of control, the Winters dynasty fractures from within. Betrayals, supernatural possessions, and cartel warfare pile up like bodies in an unmarked grave. What started as control over death becomes a curse they can’t escape, as the ghosts in the powder fight to reclaim the living. By the final page, the empire is buried under its own sins, and Ash lingers in the air like a malignant fog - hungry for the next soul foolish enough to inhale it.

It’s Bunn’s supernatural cartel saga, where snorting the dead gets you high and haunted in equal measure.

What ties it to Phantom on the Scan is the parasitic nature of power:

• In Bone Parish, you burn through souls for power.

• In Phantom on the Scan, you burn through your own soul just to survive.

• Both comic books love showing you the slow rot that comes with addiction to supernatural force.

The predator in Phantom on the Scan is basically the cosmic version of a cartel kingpin - consuming anyone foolish enough to feed it.

Swap the back-alley deals for psychic nosebleeds, and you’ve got a match.

The Unsound - Madness in a Box

The Unsound drags you kicking and screaming into Saint Cascia Psychiatric Hospital, where fresh-faced nurse Ashli Granger quickly realises her new job is less healthcare and more hell-portal concierge. The patients riot in orchestrated chaos, the staff wear eerie masks like they’re part of some twisted masquerade, and the walls themselves seem to pulse with malevolent intent. As Ashli is swallowed by the asylum’s labyrinthine guts, reality fractures - blending industrial nightmare with body horror, where sanity isn’t just fragile, it’s practically extinct.

As Ashli plunges deeper, she discovers a blood-soaked legacy that binds her to the madness of Saint Cascia itself. This isn’t random chaos - it’s her inheritance, a destiny wrapped in shrieking insanity. Cullen Bunn and Jack T. Cole conjure a relentless fever dream of dread, with no heroes, no salvation, just a suffocating descent into existential terror. By the final page, you’re left hollowed out, twitching, and unsure if the real asylum was in the comic - or your own mind all along.

Phantom on the Scan has that same intimate, locked-room panic.

Both comic books trap their characters inside the architecture of their own minds - where every exit is another doorway to something worse.

The Unsound is your mind on hellfire. Phantom on the Scan is your mind on collapse.

What Phantom on the Scan Proves About Bunn’s Horror Brain

If you stack these comic books side by side, Phantom on the Scan feels like Bunn cracking his knuckles and saying:

“Let’s do them all at once.”

• Hive mind body horror from The Empty Man? Check.

• Inherited doom from Harrow County? Check.

• Hallucinatory descent from Regression? Check.

• Soul-eating addiction from Bone Parish? Check.

• Madness as architecture from The Unsound? Check.

It’s a greatest hits album, but played at ear-bleeding volume.

More importantly, Phantom on the Scan feels like a culmination of his career-long obsession with this one central theme:

The real horror isn’t out there. It’s what’s already inside you - waiting to hatch.

Final Shot: If Cullen Bunn Ever Did a Crossover Event…

Imagine this:

• The predator from Phantom on the Scan locked in psychic combat with The Empty Man plague.

• Emmy from Harrow County stepping into Matthew’s shoes, armed with rural witchcraft.

• The drug lords of Bone Parish trying to smuggle psychic essence like contraband.

• The asylum from The Unsound as the battleground.

It’d be a bloodbath of existential horror.

And we’d buy the oversized hardcover in a heartbeat.

Bottom Line?

Phantom on the Scan isn’t just Cullen Bunn doing what he does best.

It’s him taking all the twisted lessons from his other horrors and splicing them into a psychic Frankenstein’s monster of paranoia, gore, and existential dread.

If you love Bunn’s horror work, Phantom on the Scan isn’t optional reading. It’s the mainline injection.