Tag: Oni Press

Dennis Culver + Ramon Bachs will bring ‘Sectaurs’ back to comics at Oni Press

The three-issue series set in the Nacelleverse begins in October.

Oni Press has announced the creative team for Sectaurs, a three-issue miniseries coming this fall that’s part of their Nacelleverse line-up.

Unstoppable Doom Patrol writer Dennis Culver will team with X-Men: Blue artist Ramon Bachs on a new series featuring the characters from the 1980s toy line, which are now owned by the Nacelle Company. It joins Roboforce and Biker Mice from Mars in the shared universe now being published by Oni.

“I’m beyond thrilled to help Nacelle and Oni reinvent Sectaurs for the 21st century,” Culver said. “The Warriors of Symbion are like nothing you’ve ever seen before in comics. It’s Game of Thrones, but with BUGS instead of dragons!”

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Dustin Weaver designs three new ‘hosts’ for Oni’s EC Comics revival

‘… it’s just such a treat to draw characters so unabashedly wicked.’

As EC Comics continues its climb out of the grave, publisher Oni Press has revealed a trio of faces that will serve as “hosts” for the revived horror line — The Grave-Digger, The Tormentor and The Grim Inquisitor.

They’ll make their debut next month in Epitaphs from the Abyss #1, the first double-sized issue of the anthology. It will feature contributions from Brian Azzarello, Chris Condon, J. Holtham, Stephanie Phillips, Jorge Fornes, Phil Hester, Peter Krause, Vlad Legostaev and more, and in between those stories, you’ll find appearances by EC’s new “torturous trio,” as designed by Paklis creator Dustin Weaver.

“Usually a big part of designing characters is costuming, but in looking back at the original Tales From the Crypt comics, it’s clear that the most important and defining features of the horror hosts are their ghoulish faces,” the former Avengers and Star Wars artist said. “It’s all about the faces, and with these modern host designs I wanted to carry on that tradition.”

Check out the three new faces on Weaver’s “Horror Host” variant cover:

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Cullen Bunn + Christopher Mitten enter ‘The Autumn Kingdom’ this fall

An author and his family discover a dark fantasy kingdom in the new miniseries coming from Oni Press.

Sept. 4 may technically still be summer, but autumn is coming early this year. Oni Press has announced The Autumn Kingdom, a new miniseries by horror masters Cullen Bunn and Christopher Mitten, will launch on that day.

The Autumn Kingdom is about an author and his family who head to an isolated cabin in Sweden so he can finish his latest dark fantasy novel, only to land in one themselves. The miniseries is colored by Francesco Segala and lettered by Taylor Esposito.

“The words ‘The Autumn Kingdom’ have been written in one of my oldest journals for decades,” Bunn said. “Over the years, I’ve returned to them again and again. I knew I wanted to tell a dark fantasy tale about the fairy realms. I just wasn’t sure what that story might be until I stumbled onto the idea of Sommer and Winter, a pair of young sisters who find themselves alone, facing the forces of a supernatural realm. Their lives—and the lives of their parents—are on the line. Thank goodness they’ve discovered a nasty, death-dealing blade that seems to hunger for the blood of elves and trolls and goblins. Sommer and Winter are thrown down a violent path from which there may be no escape. No matter what, they won’t get through this journey unscathed and unchanged.”

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Oni Press will tell us how to get to ‘Sesame Street’ this August

Joey Esposito and Austin Baechle bring Grover back to comics for a four-issue miniseries.

Everything’s A-OK down at Oni Press, which announced a partnership with Sesame Workshop to bring Big Bird, Grover and the gang back to comics.

The four-issue Sesame Street: Grover Lends a Hand miniseries will begin in August, by writer Joey Esposito and artist Austin Baechle.

“We are incredibly excited and grateful to be able to partner with the incomparable Sesame Street, who has been at the forefront of children’s education since its inception in 1969,” Editor Megan Brown said. “As someone who grew up with the likes of Big Bird, Elmo and more, it’s been a joy to be able to enter this world and add to its comics legacy. We hope that readers of all ages will enjoy the wonderful and heartwarming antics of Grover, Bert & Ernie, The Count, Cookie Monster and all the other residents as they take a trip down Sesame Street!”

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Slugfest | Spawny returns to kill off … Spawn?

Plus: News and announcements on ‘Uncanny X-Men,’ ‘Gilt Frame,’ Godzilla, Blacksad, ThunderCats and more.

Slugfest is a roundup of cool announcements about projects coming to a shelf near you that we haven’t otherwise covered. Hit the links for more information.

McFarlane Productions has been on a roll introducing Spawn into various genres, and this summer they’ll return to the world of humor and satire with Spawn Kills Every Spawn. Like the previous Spawn Kills Everyone and Spawn Kills Everyone Too, this comic features the tiniest Spawn, Spawny, deciding to kill another set of comic characters — the Spawn universe.

Written by John Layman and illustrated by Rob “Sketchcraft” Duenas and colorist Robert Nugent, the five-issue miniseries sees Spawny arrive at a Spawn convention filled with Spawns from around the multiverse, all of whom are more popular than him. So he decides to become the most popular by eliminating the competition.

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Quick Hits | Rest in peace, Jeffrey Veregge

Plus: news on Robert Beerbohm, layoffs at Marvel, Source Point Press, Scott Dunbier, Joshua Cotter, Earth-2 Comics and more.

Jeffrey Veregge, the award-winning Native American artist and writer whose work appeared in Marvel’s Voices: Indigenous Voices, on comics covers and at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, has passed away at the age of 50. Zack Davisson shared the news on social media late last week, while Jeffrey’s wife Christina confirmed it and said he died of a heart attack after a long battle with lupus.

“For 1025 days he fought lupus like the superhero we knew him to be,” her post reads. “The strength, faith, determination and courage he showed while being in the hospital for a total of 925 days was an inspiration to us all. He fought so hard for his family and his 3 children who were his absolute pride and joy. He will be missed more than words can express. This world was a better place because of him.”

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Slugfest | X-Men, Terminator, ‘Galaxy of Madness’ + more

Today’s round-up includes news and announcements on ‘Life of Wolverine,’ Gatchaman, the Energon Universe, ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ and more.

Slugfest is a roundup of cool announcements about projects coming to a shelf near you that we haven’t otherwise covered. Hit the links for more information.

Marvel has revealed the cover and more details on the highly anticipated new X-Men title by Jed MacKay and Ryan Stegman, which is part of the bigger X-Men: From the Ashes line that follows the end of the current Krakoa era.

The new title will feature Cyclops leading a team that handle “explosive mutant-specific issues without restrain,” with the first threat being “an existential new enemy that rises out of the remains of Orchis.”

Both MacKay and Stegman are happy to be here.

“Taking on the X-Men is always a daunting prospect, but I’m extremely psyched to take this team of mutants back into the world with Ryan,” MacKay said. 

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Oni’s ‘Cult of the Lamb’ comic crowfunds more than $200K on its first day

The campaign will run on Kickstarter through April 11.

Earlier today Oni Press launched a Kickstarter for a new Cult of the Lamb comic, based on the video game of the same name. Within six minutes, the campaign hits its measly $10,000 goal, and a few hours later was well over $200,000 in pledges.

If you’re not familiar with Cult of the Lamb, it’s a roguelike crossed with a social simulation game — kind of like if Hades and Animal Crossing had a baby, and that baby let you run your own cult. Your character is Lamb, who begins the game being resurrected by an ancient deity and then begins gathering his followers and exploring dungeons. It’s a clever, addictive game that is both super cute and disturbing at the same time. The game’s deveklopers, Devolver Digital and Massive Monster, recently released new DLC for the game, Sins of the Flesh.

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Smash Pages Q&A | Lara Pickle on ‘I Feel Awful, Thanks’

With Pickle’s debut graphic novel arriving this week, we spoke about her inspiration, drawing from her own mental health experiences when creating the story and more.

I Feel Awful, Thanks is the debut graphic novel by Lara Pickle, a Spanish-Romanian artist and storyteller whose work thus far has been more in the video game and animation arenas, for places like Netflix and Nickelodeon. The graphic novel arrives in stores this week and is published by Oni Press.

From the outside, I Feel Awful, Thanks looks like what you might expect from a YA fantasy graphic novel, featuring witches, magic and dragons and. But the story addresses some serious issues around mental health, something Pickle experienced herself. It’s about a witch named Joana who has secured her dream job with a coven in London, so she relocates and discovers the reality of city life is not so idyllic.

I spoke with Pickle about the graphic novel, pulling in her own experiences into the story and some of the fun design choices she made while creating it.

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Smash Pages Q&A | Murewa Ayodele + Dotun Akande on ‘Akogun: Brutalizer of Gods’

The creators of ‘I Am Iron Man’ discuss their new Yoruba-influenced barbarian tale, which Oni Press will release in April.

Murewa Ayodele and Dotun Akande made a splash on their native continent as the founders of Collectible Comics NG, their own Nigeria-based comics studio, and as the creators of comics like My Grandfather Was a God. They then broke into the U.S. market first with New Men from Action Lab, followed by several stories for Marvel, including the I Am Iron Man miniseries.

Their latest project is Akogun: Brutalizer of Gods, which Oni Press will publish next month. It’s an oversized three-issue miniseries that combines their love for Western comics and animation like Conan the Barbarian and Samurai Jack with Yoruba mythology, bringing an African lens to the traditional sword and sorcery tale.

“According to Yoruba mythology, we were all made by a drunk god, and during one of his drunken stupor, he made horrific monsters also. The first of the gods to visit this new, twisted world was the erratic god of war,” Ayodele said. “When we discovered this little bit of our culture’s mythology, we knew we wanted to tell a gritty fantastical story set in this primordial African world — a world of barbarous violence, monstrous creatures, and gods who give in to primal, destructive urges.” 

I spoke with both creators about the new series, their love for mythology and comics, and more. My thanks to both of them for their time.

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Visit a town cast in eternal darkness in Lambert + Sharpe’s ‘The Night Mother’

Jeremy Lambert and Alexa Sharpe’s new graphic novel will arrive in October from Oni Press.

Oni Press will cozy up to The Night Mother, a new graphic novel by Jeremy Lambert, writer of Doom Patrol, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Goosebumps and more, and artist Alexa Sharpe, who has worked on Lumberjanes, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and more. They’re joined by letterer Becca Carey for the dark fantasy.

The story is set in a seaside town cast into perpetual night when the sun disappears, where Madeline Tock lives in the local graveyard and talks to the dead — and prepares to battle the Night Mother for the soul of her town.

“The Night Mother is a supernatural snow globe world of the unknown where a frightened Madeline Tock must learn to trust herself in a place of warped expectations. A place where the dead can whisper and the woman from the moon gathers their souls in her lantern,” Lambert said. “We all have our own crucible when we are younger… a pressure cooker of fears, loves and discoveries… when we learn about who we are along with the many shadows that follow us. This is Maddy’s.”

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EC Comics will return this summer

Oni Press has announced a publishing partnership that will bring new EC material to print for the first time since the 1950s.

EC Comics, the notorious and influential publishing house from the 1950s headed up by William Gaines that was at the forefront of Dr. Fredric Wertham’s campaign against comics, will return as an imprint of Oni Press this summer.

Oni Press has partnered with William M. Gaines Agent, Inc. to bring Entertaining Comics, or EC Comics, back from the dead. The publisher of Tales from the Crypt, Two-Fisted Tales, Weird Science and more has not published new comic books since the 1950s — with MAD Magazine, probably their most famous publication, being the exception.

“There are few things more sacred to the canon of comic book history – and global pop culture – than EC Comics. The company’s audaciously inspired sensibilities have continuously echoed through nearly all facets of entertainment – like pieces of shrapnel embedded in American imagination,” said Oni Press President and Publisher Hunter Gorinson. “It’s both a huge honor and immense responsibility to be entrusted to work alongside the Gaines family in inhabiting EC’s indomitable spirit for a new generation. At a moment when we find ourselves confronting the same reactionary forces – injustice, inequality, and of course, censorship – that EC challenged head-on, we intend to write a new and powerful chapter that honors and expands one of the most important legacies the comic book medium has ever produced.”

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