Tag: Oni Press

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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Grab your sunscreen and prepare for a ‘Toxic Summer’

Derek Charm unleashes toxic waste and subhuman monstrosities on an unsuspecting beach town.

Oni Press and Derek Charm will present a “nightmare beach party” in May with the launch of Toxic Summer, a three-issue, oversized miniseries.

Charm, whose work has appeared in Howard the Duck, Jughead, The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, Star Wars Adventures and many more, will write and draw the series about two friends whose jobs as lifeguards go horribly wrong.

“Inspired by classic beach movies, gross out teen horror, Mad Magazine, and my own insane friendships, this is a story that has been cooking for some time,” Charm said. “I couldn’t ask for a better home for it than Oni Press, or better collaborators than [editor] Bess Pallares and [letterer] Frank Cvetkovic.”

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Oni’s first NacelleVerse miniseries, ‘RoboForce,’ will debut in April

Melissa Flores and Diogenes Neves will bring the toy line to the printed page in a new miniseries.

Oni Press has revealed more details about RoboForce, the first miniseries spinning out of their NacelleVerse #0 one-shot that arrives in March.

Melissa Flores and Diogenes Neves, both of whom are working on the one-shot, will helm the RoboForce miniseries as well. It’s based on the Robo Force toyline from the 1980s, which was revived by Toyfinity about 10 years ago. Nacelle purchased the rights to make toys, comics and a new animated program from Toyfinity in 2021.

“We’re going on a heist! Working with Nacelle and Oni Press to create an original prequel to the RoboForce animated series in comic form has been an incredible adventure,” Flores said. “This miniseries will dive deeper into Maxx 89 and Detonator’s complicated relationship, showing us their true motivations and state of mind as they figure out their place in futuristic Chicago. It will be an action-packed three issues that will complement the upcoming animated series perfectly. You won’t want to miss it!” 

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Oni will publish a collection of Boulet’s observational cartoons

‘Boulet’s Notes: Back in Time’ will bring comics from the cartoonist’s popular blog to the United States.

Oni Press will collect several of famed French cartoonist Boulet’s comics in a hardcover volume next year. Boulet’s Notes: Back in Time will pull from Boulet’s blog, where he has regularly posted comic strips and observational comics for the last two decades.

“Boulet’s improvisational, imaginative, and insanely creative comic strips have been a key part of the world of webcomics since he started posting them online way back in the early 2000s,” said translator and editor François Vigneault. “This new collection, featuring a curated and newly translated selection of his work from the early years, is truly a ticket back in time to the start of the webcomics era!”

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Oni’s NacelleVerse comics will launch in March

‘NacelleVerse’ #0 will kick things off, followed by ‘Roboforce,’ ‘Biker Mice from Mars’ and more.

One of the more interesting and perhaps surprising announcements at New York Comic Con came from Oni Press and the Nacelle Company, who own the rights to various toy lines from years past, including Biker Mice from Mars and Sectaurs. Now all those different characters will come together to form a shared universe.

Oni will publish a line of comics based on this new shared universe, starting in March with NacelleVerse #0 by writer Melissa Flores and artists Diogenes Neves and Francis Portela. That’ll be followed by three-issue miniseries for Roboforce, coming in April, and Biker Mice from Mars, coming in July. Sectaurs and Power Lords will follow sometime after that.

“I’m very excited that we’ll be launching the NacelleVerse with comic books that will set up all the characters, worlds and plot lines that will be unfolding over the next five years as our series come to life,” said Nacelle Founder and CEO Brian Volk-Weiss.

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Oni Press announces four new titles for 2024

“Oni 2024” will bring new comics from Olivia Cuartero-Briggs, Zac Thompson, Roberta Ingranata, Chris Condon and more.

Following their partnership announcement with the Nacelle Company, Oni Press heads into New York Comic Con by announcing several new miniseries that will land the first months of 2024, dubbed “Oni 2024.”

Including Invasive by Cullen Bunn and Jesús Hervás, which was announced in San Diego this summer, the initiative begins with five new titles “that will fully embrace the potential of the comics medium to invert, collide and reinvent the foundational genres of horror, science fiction, crime, fantasy and beyond throughout the new year.” More titles are planned for subsequent months.

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Oni Press + the Nacelle Company team for a new line of comics

The Sectaurs, Power Lords, Robo Force and more will return as part of a connected universe next year.

Oni Press and the Nacelle Company have announced a line of comics based on old toy and animation properties, including the Sectaurs, Biker Mice from Mars, Robo Force and more.

The Nacelle Company has been gathering up these properties since they were formed in 2017, with the idea to turn them into new cartoons, toys, films, podcasts and, now, comic books and graphic novels. Some of them appeared in comics decades ago as tie-ins to the original toy line or cartoon, back in the 1980s and 1990s when deregulation led to a huge influx in toy lines supported by animated shows that were as much ads for the toys as they were stories abut the characters. And in some cases, maybe more so. (Box Brown’s excellent The He-Man Effect tells the story of that particular era really well). Nacelle revealed several of the toy revivals at this year’s Toy Fair.

“Toys and comics have a long and storied history of mutual admiration and cross-collaboration. From Transformers and Micronauts to G.I. Joe and ROM, some of the most impactful comics stories ever told have drawn inspiration from the world of toys. Alongside our partners at Nacelle and our amazing cast of creators, we’re working to craft the next chapter in that time-tested legacy,” said Oni Press President and Publisher Hunter Gorinson. “Having seen firsthand Nacelle’s exciting and ambitious plans for the future, I know toy fans and comic readers alike are going to have a lot to look forward to in the Nacelleverse.”

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Oni announces a third ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ graphic novel

Stephanie Phillips and Dani Bolinho bring ‘Forecast from Stonehenge’ to comics.

Oni Press will release a third Choose Your Own Adventure adaptation next year by Grim writer Stephanie Phillips and Dani Bolinho, who drew the first CYOA adaptation.

Forecast from Stonehenge, based on the prose novel by R. A. Montgomery, follows Journey Under the Sea and Eighth Grade Witch. And like the other novels and graphic novels in the series, it gives the reader the opportunity to choose what happens next at certain points in the story.

“I was excited to help bring a choose your own adventure story to comics and expand the audience of readers who get to experience this fun and unique format,” Phillips said. “As a kid, I loved CYOA stories because they allowed me to take an active role in the story being told, and thanks to Dani Bolinho’s art I think readers will absolutely feel like they are being pulled into the world of Forecast from Stonehenge.” 

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Matt Lesniewski’s ‘Faceless and the Family’ kicks off from Oni in November

Visit an alien world where an exile seeks redemption with the help of his found family.

Matt Lesniewski is always doing something unique in comics, whether we’re talking about his OGN The Freak or his work with Matt Kindt on Crimson Flower. Oni Press has announced Lesniewski’s next project, Faceless and the Family, which is about an exiled wanderer on an alien planet seeking redemption.

“I’m really happy to have found the perfect publisher in Oni, who are going the extra mile to showcase Faceless in the best possible way,” said Lesniewski. “This comic has taken me more time and effort than any of my previous ones, and I hope it shows. If you like super detailed art, black and white comics and just general weirdness, then this will be a treat!”

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Lee + Li lead an ‘Army of One’ at Oni Press

The graphic novel will land in stores next March.

Writer Tony Lee and artist Yishan Li will team up for Army of One, a new graphic novel coming from Oni Press next year that spotlights one hero’s journey through the multiverse.

Announced at this year’s San Diego Comic Con, the story’s origins go back as far as the 2016 SDCC, when Lee pitched the idea to Li of a story about a girl who finds out that she came from the shard of a sorceress whose body was shattered into the pieces that formed the multiverse.

“When we pitched this, multiverse stories in comics were rare, but now they’re ten-a-penny,” said Lee. “But over the years, the story changed and grew as we progressed deeper into it; it became less about the worlds, and more about the loneliness of a character while surrounded by others, and how even one person can create a revolution. Finishing the third book in the series during a global pandemic really brought that home, and after four years wait since it was first announced, I can’t wait for people to finally see the journeys of Carrie and her fellow Shards, as they try to fulfill a prophecy given by an unreliable narrator!” 

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