MASTER CARTOONIST JAY STEPHENS HONORS EC COMICS’ GREATEST ICONS WITH ONGOING HOMAGE VARIANTS AT ONI PRESS
From the Creator of DWELLINGS – A New, Continuing Line of Collectible Variant Covers Debuting with EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS #1 and CRUEL UNIVERSE #1
EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS #1 – EC Homage Variant by Jay Stephens
Homaging VAULT OF HORROR #15 by Johnny Craig
PORTLAND, OR (April 10th, 2024) – IF IT BLEEDS, IT LEADS! Following on from an announcement that rocked the comic book industry just a few short weeks ago – the return of the legendary EC Comics with an all-new line of, never-before-seen titles for summer 2024 – Oni Press, in partnership with William M. Gaines Agent, Inc., is proud to present your next look ahead at what awaits for the year’s most unexpected resurrection with a new, continuing line of incentive variant covers from Eisner Award-nominated and Emmy Award-winning artist Jay Stephens (Dwellings).
Slated to first debut on EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS #1 in July and CRUEL UNIVERSE #1 in August, Stephens’ subset collection of “EC Homage” variant covers will continue into the future with a new distinct piece re-interpreting an all-time classic EC cover image across every new EC release from Oni Press. In addition to his ongoing work as with the “EC Homage” line of incentive covers, Stephens will also be prominently featured as a writer in several of Oni’s upcoming EC series, including EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS, CRUEL UNIVERSE, and more yet to be announced.
"EC Comics were dead and buried long before I was born,” said Jay Stephens, ”But when Stephen King and Tobe Hooper’s Creepshow dropped in 1982, shivers ran up my spine that weren’t caused by the delightfully deranged shorts themselves. This… felt… familiar. Like I’d always been here amongst the walking corpses. In the old 1974 copy of the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide I'd acquired from a yard sale, small black and white reproductions of EC horror and sci-fi covers littered the margins of the pages. Nothing more… just enough to KNOW. I didn’t have to wait TOO much longer for a better look… by the time 1990 rolled around, Tales from the Crypt was on TV and the Gladstone EC reprints were choking up my local comic shop shelves. The subversive... shocking... transgressive... banned... and burned-at-the-stake EC horror was back, and I was finally home. Now we get to do one better and dress this cadaver in some new flesh. What could be more fun?"
Jay Stephens is an Emmy Award-winning and Eisner Award-nominated long-time cartoonist and animator at the forefront of comics culture– with three decades of experience in the alt-comics scene he is no stranger to the strange. Stephen’s hit horror series Dwellings, called “genuinely disturbing” by The Toronto Star, is full of murder, possession, and demonology portrayed in a sickeningly sweet style. All three issues of the bloodcurdling bestseller debut May 7th in a gruesome hardcover collection.
“As anyone who has glimpsed his work on DWELLINGS knows, Jay Stephens has a genius-like mastery and understanding of comic book storytelling, art, and design. Small surprise then that he’s also – like many of us at Oni HQ – a fellow EC Comics obsessive,” said Oni Press President & Publisher Hunter Gorinson. “In its heyday, EC produced – through the visionary talents of impossibly huge legends like Johnny Craig, Jack Davis, Frank Frazetta, Wally Wood, and so many more – some of the best and iconic covers to ever emerge from the comics medium. So when it came time to pay tribute to the original EC masters in the pages of EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS and CRUEL UNIVERSE, Jay was the only natural choice, and he’ll be reinventing these seminal images will charm and style all his own for many issues to come.”
Oni Press’ first two new EC titles – EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS #1 and CRUEL UNIVERSE #1, a pair of horror and science anthologies in the classic EC mold – will debut in July and August 2024, respectively, before the publisher introduces more series in genres and formats that will expand the scope and scale of the EC publishing line in ways never before attempted.
In addition to Stephens, Oni’s curated line of EC titles – which will include at least two series on a monthly basis from July 2024 onward in the genres of horror, science fiction, fantasy, and more – will feature contributions from a rotating cast of high-profile comics talents that includes writers Jason Aaron (Thor, Southern Bastards), Brian Azzarello (Batman: Damned, 100 Bullets), Rodney Barnes (Killadelphia), Corinna Bechko (Invisible Republic), Cullen Bunn (The Sixth Gun), Christopher Cantwell (Briar), Cecil Castellucci (Shade the Changing Girl), Chris Condon (That Texas Blood), Joshua Hale Fialkov (The Bunker), J. Holtham (AMC’s The Handmaid’s Tale), Jeff Jensen (HBO’s Watchmen, Green River Killer), Matt Kindt (BRZRKR, Mind MGMT), Sean Lewis (King Spawn), Stephanie Phillips (Grim), Zac Thompson (Cemetery Kids Don’t Die), Ben H. Winters (CBS’ Tracker), and more; artists Kano (Gotham Central, Immortal Iron Fist), Peter Krause (Irredeemable), Leomacs (Rogues), Malachi Ward (Black Hammer: The End), Dustin Weaver (Avengers, Paklis), and more; designer Rian Hughes (The Multiversity); alongside covers from Lee Bermejo (A Vicious Circle, Batman: Damned), Greg Smallwood (The Human Target), J.H. Williams III (Sandman: Overture, Promethea), and more to be revealed in the weeks and months ahead.
EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS #1
EC Homage Variant by Jay Stephens
VAULT OF HORROR #15
by Johnny Craig
CRUEL UNIVERSE #1
EC Homage Variant by Jay Stephens
WEIRD SCIENCE #16
by Wally Wood
EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS #2 EC Homage Variant by Jay Stephens
HAUNT OF FEAR #15
by Johnny Craig
About the Artist
Jay Stephens is a three-decade veteran of the Canadian alt-comics scene, starting out in the early 1990s with the influential creator-owned series' Sin, The Land of Nod, Atomic City Tales, and Jetcat Clubhouse, while also dabbling in licensed comics work like Aliens, Star Wars, Teen Titans, and The Invisibles. Also known for his kids' comic strips, Chick & Dee, Arrowhead, and the syndicated newspaper strip Oh, Brother!, as well as the underground weekly strips, Oddville! and Nod. Jay's side career in film includes working in the Art Department on a few low-budget horror movies, and creating and producing animated television like Jetcat, the Emmy-Award winning Tutenstein, and Cartoon Network's The Secret Saturdays.
About Oni Press
Founded in 1997, Oni Press has a 25-year history as one of the industry’s most respected and acclaimed publishers of award-winning comic books and graphic novels with titles including Bryan Lee O'Malley's Scott Pilgrim, K. O’Neill’s Tea Dragon Society, Cullen Bunn & Brian Hurtt's The Sixth Gun, Maia Kobabe's Gender Queer, Ezra Clayton Daniels' Upgrade Soul, Brenna Thummler’s Sheets trilogy, and many hundreds more. In 2019, Oni Press merged with Lion Forge Comics – the Eisner Award-winning independent comic book publisher founded by Academy Award-winning producer and entrepreneur David Steward II – to create one of the largest, independent libraries of comics content anywhere in media. The Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Group now exists as a publishing subsidiary of Steward’s diversified global media company, Polarity.
The Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Group publishes more than 60 original and licensed graphic novels annually, in addition to an extensive list of periodical comics.
About EC Comics
As the birthplace of TALES FROM THE CRYPT, MAD MAGAZINE, WEIRD SCIENCE, and more of the most influential and celebrated comic series ever published, EC Comics has cemented itself as one of the central nerves of American pop culture with a legacy that spans more than seven decades. From 1944 to 1956, EC – established as "Educational Comics" by founder M.C. Gaines and later rebranded "Entertaining Comics" under the leadership of Publisher & Editor William M. Gaines – led a creative renaissance for the comics industry that, for the first time, elevated the once-derided comics medium into the echelons of English literature and high art. Heralded as "one of the great explosions of vox-pop literature" by Time Magazine and "fiercely honest, politically adversarial, [and] visually masterful" by The Comics Journal, EC's line of comics books - which collectively sold more than 10 million copies annually at their peak – entertained and informed in equal measure, using brilliantly crafted tales of horror, science fiction, satire, and battlefield conflict to critique and subvert America's dark impulses toward violence, racism, inequity, environmental destruction, and war.
Forcibly shuttered by the Comics Code Authority – a pro-censorship group specifically tasked with eradicating EC's illuminating influence from the American comic book industry – in 1956, EC's unique brand of subversive storytelling lived on through the continued success of MAD Magazine, which would fuel American counterculture through the death of Publisher William M. Gaines in 1992. EC's titles and stories have been adapted in a number of media – including the long-running HBO's long-running TALES FROM THE CRYPT franchise of television series and feature films – and continue to be celebrated by multiple generations of comic creators, filmmakers, comedians, and musicians as a seminal influence.
Today, EC Comics' canon of classic stories can continuously be found in print through new editions at Dark Horse Comics, TASCHEN, Fantagraphics, and IDW Publishing. In 2024, EC announced a new partnership with multiple Eisner and Harvey Award-winning publisher Oni Press to produce the first all-new EC Comics titles in nearly 70 years.