Nothing is ever quite as it seems in this deeply sinister slow-build gothic horror comic, already a huge Webtoon hit and soon to be a major Disney+ series.

It’s 1935 in Seoul, Korea, and struggling artist Yun Iho has been commissioned by the elderly, reclusive Madam Song Jeonghwa to paint an updated portrait of her. When Iho goes to pick up the art supplies from the previous artist’s room, he finds an ominous note tucked between paint tubes: “Do not finish the portrait.”

When he actually meets Madam Song, he finds her to be startlingly young and beautiful, yet she asks him to paint her as though she were eighty. What could it all mean? Listening to her seemingly unrelated stories about a spate of unsolved murders in Shanghai that happened long before Iho was born does little to allay his confusion.

In a slowly unfolding revelation, each panel drenched in more dread than the last, Iho learns that no artist has ever left Madam Song’s hotel alive. He starts to suspect the horrifying truth of what she is, and what, exactly, she might be capable of. . . .

Volume 1 collects episodes 1-20 of the Webtoon comic Delusion.