Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Oni Press | Tagged: Eljah Wood, High Strangeness

Elijah Wood & Oni Press Launch Vertigo Comics Rival, High Strangeness

There are rumours DC Comics is relaunching its horror/fantasy imprint Vertigo but it looks like Oni Press and Frodo may beat them to it.

Published Fri, 01 Dec 2023 10:59:48 -0600

by Rich Johnston

Last updated Fri, 01 Dec 2023 11:02:28 -0600

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Article Summary

Oni Press and Elijah Wood's SpectreVision debut High Strangeness imprint.
Rival to DC's Vertigo, the imprint explores paranormal phenomena in comics.
Film-influenced: Mandy and A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night cited.
The imprint to launch in 2025, with details expected at LA Comic Con.

"Pop-Up" imprints are quite the fashionable enterprise, with examples such as Gerard Way's Young Animal and Joe Hill's Hill House imprints garnering a fair degree of notoriety and success for DC Comics in recent years. Now there is a new imprint entering the fray: High Strangeness, a new "pop-up" imprint from Oni Press formed in collaboration with actor-producer Elijah Wood and writer-producer Daniel Noah's production company SpectreVision. There are rumours that DC Comics is looking to relaunch its horror/fantasy imprint Vertigo in 2024 or 2025, it looks like Oni Press and Frodo may beat them to it.

Known for such acclaimed and genre-bending feature films, including Panos Cosmatos' Mandy (starring Nicolas Cage), Ana Lily Amirpour's A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, Adam Egypt Mortimer's Daniel Isn't Real, the collaboration will mark the SpectreVision's first foray into comics and graphic novels.

Dedicated to telling stories that "surveil the borderlands of paranormal experience," the High Strangeness imprint is described as being "influenced by real, documented cases of paranormal phenomena dating back to the mid-20th century" with series that bend "perception far beyond the bounds of traditional science fiction and horror."

Said Elijah Wood, SpectreVision founder and Frodo… "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 founder Daniel Noah, who has himself spoken extensively about his own firsthand supernatural encounters: "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. 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."

Aside from the teaser image featuring Malachi Ward with design by Tom Muller, Oni and SpectreVision are being tight-lipped on the exact creators and series involved, but the imprint is slated to debut in 2025, so expect news to follow in the months ahead…or as soon as this weekend's High Strangeness panel at LA Comic Con, where Wood and Noah will join Oni Press President & Publisher Hunter Gorinson and Editor-in-Chief Sierra Hahn on Sunday, December 3rd at 12 noon PT in Room 304.

Said Hunter Gorinson, who, coincidentally, today marks one year since his appointment to the role of President & Publisher, "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. 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."

The High Strangeness imprint marks the latest in a string of announcements for Oni Press, who unveiled multiple new series in recent weeks under the Oni 2024 banner, including Invasive by Cullen Bunn & Jesus Hervas, Jill and The Killers by Olivia Cuartero-Briggs & Roberta Ingranata, Cemetery Kids Don't Die by Zac Thompson & Daniel Irizarri, Night People by Barry Gifford, Chris Condon, Brian Level, Alexandre Tefenkgi, and more, and Akogun: Brutalizer of Gods by Murewa Ayodele & Dotun Akande. That news followed shortly on from the recent unveiling of a new deluxe Scott Pilgrim 20th Anniversary box set overseen by creator Bryan Lee O'Malley and a new line of NacelleVerse series inspired by toy and animation favorites (including Biker Mice from Mars) to be written by Power Rangers stalwart Melissa Flores.