Casual sex.  Eating Disorders.  Bizarre Hazing Rituals.

All horrible, slanderous stereotypes associated with sorority sisters.  And all sadly true.  Modern sorority life deserves a serious, sensitive and mature description.

Thankfully, that's not how I tackle sororities in my original graphic novel HAZED.

The question I asked most often about is: why is a guy known for superhero comics like GROUNDED tackling such a touchy subject for women, especially in such a dark comedic way?

The answer to that begins with another question.  When I first set foot on the campus of Duke University as a college freshman, I couldn't help be captivated by the women who arrived with me.  They weren't just stunning.  They were smart and funny, everything I wanted and wanted to be (well, I didn't want to be a girl, but you get the idea).

And then the fraternities came, with their cattle drives – marathon phone sessions where they randomly called the hottest women in the "face book" (at that time, kids, face books were actual books, printed on paper, and you had to walk uphill both ways in the snow to get them) to invite them to closed parties.  Suddenly, the women in our dorms disappeared to parties we weren't yet invited to, only to reappear after making the walk of shame the next morning.

There was something different about them when they came back.  Not just their disheveled clothes.  Their attitudes.  And when sorority rush came…things only got worse.  Their big sisters stripped them down and used lipstick to circle what little fat they had on their bodies.  They started purging themselves to the point where the dorm drains got clogged and the plumbers had to be called in.  All this before finals.

So I found myself asking the following question: How is it the smartest women in the country, who have so much going for them besides their looks, shifted their priorities so that the most important thing in their life was how desirable they were to the opposite sex?

Hazed is my politically incorrect, brutally honest but hopefully painfully funny way of answering that question.  It's sick and twisted but hopefully poignant as well.   Enjoy this exclusive free preview (the first of five chapters drawn by the incomparable Robbi Rodriguez).  Feel free to let me know what you think below, and stay tuned to the Image Comics MySpace profile for more details. And of course, hit your local comic retailer and buy the book when it comes out. It only gets wilder and crazier from here.

Mark Sable
Writer/creator HAZED