Lettering Legend Richard Starkings Resurrects EC COMICS' Iconic Leroy Style for EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS and CRUEL UNIVERSE at Oni Press
Eisner Award-Nominated Letterer of BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE and MARVELS, ComicCraft Co-Founder Joins EC’s Star-Studded Resurgence at Oni Press
RICHARD STARKINGS
PORTLAND, OR (May 23, 2024) – THIS SUMMER, EC COMICS IS RETURNING WITH A VENGEANCE AT ONI PRESS – AND, THOUGH THE TIMES MAY HAVE CHANGED, THE LETTERING REMAINS THE SAME! Oni Press is proud to announce that Eisner Award-nominated and legendary letterer Richard Starkings will be joining the groundbreaking publisher’s upcoming resurrection of the notorious EC Comics line in the pages of July’s EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS #1 and August’s CRUEL UNIVERSE #1 to redefine EC’s iconic “Leroy” lettering style for the new millennium.
Over the course of a four-decade career, Richard Starkings has helped define the visual aesthetic and instantly recognizable iconography of the comics medium with contributions to hundreds of series across thousands of issues, including seminal works like Alan Moore & Brian Bolland’s BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE, Kurt Busiek & Alex Ross’ MARVELS, Jeph Loeb & Tim Sale’s BATMAN: THE LONG HALLOWEEN and DARK VICTORY, and Brian Michael Bendis & David Finch’s NEW AVENGERS. Starkings is also an accomplished creator in his own right with his long-running Image Comics series ELEPHANTMEN earning multiple Eisner Awards nominations since its debut in 2006.
Said Starkings, who, naturally, lettered in his own quote:
Starkings joins a long list of pre-eminent comics talents in shepherding EC’s resurgence forward at Oni, where he will be contributing to EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS and CRUEL UNIVERSE alongside writer 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 (Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale), Jeff Jensen (HBO’s Watchmen, Green River Killer), Matt Kindt (BRZRKR, Mind MGMT), Stephanie Phillips (Grim), Zac Thompson (Cemetery Kids Don’t Die), Ben H. Winters (CBS’ Tracker), and more; artists Tyler Crook (Harrow County) Kano (Gotham Central,Immortal Iron Fist), Peter Krause (Irredeemable), Klaus Janson (The Dark Knight Returns), Leomacs (Rogues), Malachi Ward (Black Hammer: The End), Dustin Weaver (Avengers, Paklis), Caitlin Yarsky (Black Hammer Reborn), designer Rian Hughes (The Multiversity); and cover artists 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.
At Oni, Starkings has been tasked with recapturing the regimented form, grit, and texture of one of EC Comics’ most instantly recognizable traits: the publisher’s iconic “Leroy” lettering style – so-named for the mechanical lettering apparatus utilized by EC in the publisher’s 1950s heydey in lieu of hand lettering.
“We’re taking great pains to bring the power and intensity of EC’s genius-level storytelling conventions into 2024 without making them an exercise in nostalgia or slavishly reverential to how things might have been done in decades past. That being said, there was one classic EC detail that we knew needed to be preserved: The original Leroy lettering style, which still make EC’s stories – even when reduced down to a single panel – immediately recognizable at a distance. Knowing that we have a legendary talent of Richard Starkings’ caliber overseeing this vitally important aspect of the creative process behind EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS and CRUEL UNIVERSE is both an honor and a true joy,” said Oni Press President & Publisher Hunter Gorinson.
EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS #1 COVER A BY LEE BERMEJO
EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS #1 COVER B BY ANDREA SORRENTINO WITH DAVE STEWART
It all begins EC Comics surges out of the grave with a jugular-pounding, 40-page horror milestone on July 24th in EPITAPHS FROM THE ABYSS #1 – featuring four self-contained exercises in adrenaline from Brian Azzarello (Batman: Damned) and Vlad Legostaev (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles), Chris Condon (That Texas Blood) and Peter Krause (Irredeemable), J. Holtham (Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale) and Jorge Fornés (Batman), and Stephanie Phillips (Harley Quinn, Grim) and Phil Hester (Green Arrow), and more deadly surprises — including the first glimpse of EC’s new cast of horror hosts . . .!
CRUEL UNIVERSE #1 COVER A BY GREG SMALLWOOD
CRUEL UNIVERSE #1 COVER B BY J.H. WILLIAMS III
And then . . . Two short weeks later on August 7th, bizarre tales of time and space enter our dimensional plane on CRUEL UNIVERSE #1 – featuring 40, all-new pages of destructive wonder with cosmic implications from the irradiated imaginations of Hugo Award nominee Corinna Bechko (Invisible Republic, The Space Between) and Caitlin Yarsky (Black Hammer: Reborn), Chris Condon (That Texas Blood) and Jonathan Case (Green River Killer), Eisner Award nominee Matt Kindt (BRZRKR, Mind MGMT) and Kano (Immortal Iron Fist), and Edgar Award winner Ben H. Winters (CBS’ Tracker, The Last Policeman) and Artyom Topilin (I Hate This Place)!
IN 2024, THE MOST NOTORIOUS NAME IN TERROR IS BACK! EC COMICS LIVES AGAIN AT ONI PRESS!
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