Oni Press is pacting again! This time its with Elijah Wood’s SpectreVision production company, and the project is a “pop-up” imprint that will debut in 2025, High Strangeness.
This new imprint is influenced by real, documented cases of paranormal phenomena and explores the unknown and liminal spaces in ways that are weird, eerie and just plain unsettling.
Co-founded by Wood and Daniel Noah, SpectreVision is the production company behind such projects as Panos Cosmatos’ Mandy, Ana Lily Amirpour’s A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Adam Egypt Mortimer ‘s Daniel Isn’t Real, and many more.
The comics will be “where reality, hallucination, science and mythology give way to cosmic wonder and existential terror, bending perception far beyond the bounds of traditional science fiction and horror.”
“Accounts from experiencers of the paranormal suggest a vast, interconnected narrative unfolding at the farthest reaches of human experience – from UFOs, to cryptid sightings, to patterns of synchronicities that point to an invisible architecture underlying our reality,” said Noah in a statement. “As an experiencer myself, I know firsthand that the world of high strangeness can have profound implications. We’re galvanized to explore this remarkable space with our partners at Oni.”
“Comics feel uniquely suited to explore this wide-ranging spectrum of paranormal phenomena, utilizing the limitless possibilities of the medium to give shape to the often gaussian accounts of what cannot be explained through traditional means,” added Wood.
“Over the past decade, so many members of the Oni team and greater comics community have been inspired and influenced by SpectreVision’s extraordinary body of work. Together, we share a mutual fascination with the extremities of human understanding – where aliens, poltergeists, demons, fairies, and other entities all seem to extend like fingers from a hidden hand,” chimed in Hunter Gorinson, President & Publisher of Oni Press. “Through the uniquely powerful lens of comic storytelling, we intend to tell an array of stories exploring these multiple manifestations, but rooted in the same common understanding: Reality is thin around the edges . . . and if we press hard enough in exactly the right places, it just might shatter.”
Podcaster Jim Perry is joining the projects as a creative consultant to help connect with the world of the unknown. He hosts the critically acclaimed audio documentary podcast, Euphomet. And to top it all off they have a teaser image by Malachi Ward, who is himself no stranger to the uncanny – The Beat approves!
It all sounds like a spine-tingling experience! And unexplained phenomenon remain an topic of high interest among comics readers and beyond.
Oni has been adding to it’s array of publishing partners of late; in October they teamed up with Nacelle Press for a whole new universe, the Nacelleverse.
High Strangeness gets its kickoff this weekend at ComiCon LA on a panel featuring SpectreVision founders Wood and Noah, Gorinson, and Oni Editor-in-Chief Sierra Hahn on Sunday, December 3rd at NOON PT in Room 304. For more details, visit ComicConLA.com.
