Posted in: Comics, Comics Publishers, Current News, Oni Press | Tagged: comicspro, Dave Hill

Oni Press Announces Dave Hill's Own Blood Will Be In Dark Regards #1

]Oni Press announces that Dave Hill, Hunter Gorinson and Karl Bollers's own blood will be in Dark Regards #1 variant cover

Dave Hill and Artyom Topilin's new comic book for Oni Press, Dark Regards #1, will feature a 1:50 human blood variant cover illustrated by Dave Hill himself and printed with ink that contains the blood of writer Dave Hill, series editor Karl Bollers, and Oni President & Publisher Hunter Gorinson. At ComicsPRO, Hunter Gorinson said, "This comic is based on a true story from Dave's life. In the early 2000s, he perpetrated one of the first viral hoaxes on the internet by posing as a 16-year-old lead singer of a black metal band from Gary, Indiana, that taunted Norwegian black metal labels so badly they wanted to come to the US and murder him in the city of Gary Indiana. This is like Wayne's World meets The Big Lebowski. You do not have to be into Heavy Metal to appreciate this book, in the same way, you didn't have to be into bowling to appreciate The Big Lebowski, but it is absolutely f—ing hilarious."

"I started the original Witch Taint emails purely to entertain myself late at night while sitting around in my underwear," said Dave Hill. "I never intended for anyone else to ever see them. But eventually I showed a couple friends and soon after there was an entire website dedicated to the emails at theblackmetaldialogues.com, where suddenly the whole world could read them. That led to me talking with Malcolm Gladwell about Witch Taint on his podcast. The next thing I know, I'm in the back of some strange van where some guy is jabbing my arm so he can put my actual blood into a comic book about the whole thing. My life is a mess."

"As every die-hard comics fan and retailer knows, the four members of KISS notoriously mixed their blood into the ink of their Marvel Treasury Edition in 1977," said  Hunter Gorinson. "Ever since I first read about that in a letter column in Wizard Magazine in 1993, I have been looking for a copy … and waiting, patiently biding my time, until Oni Press would be presented with a series so extreme, so hilarious, so incalculably hardcore as to warrant the same treatment. Now, Dave Hill and Artyom Topilin are on the cusp of fulfilling that prophecy with DARK REGARDS #1 – and, through the dark power of multiple Non-Disclosure Agreements, we have figured out how to do the near-impossible: put real-life human blood into a comic book cover."

Indeed, in 1977 Marvel Comics published a magazine-format full-color comic book, titled A Marvel Comics Super Special!: Kiss presenting the band KISS as superheroes. Blood from each band member was drawn by a registered nurse, witnessed by a notary public, and poured into the vats of red ink used for printing the comic at Marvel's Borden Ink plant in Depew, New York. However, it was later rumoured that due to a mix-up, the red ink was actually used for a print run of Sports Illustrated magazine instead.

"Two decades ago, Dave Hill and his first band set out to rock their high school auditorium in a fury of heavy metal hellfire. They failed miserably. Years later, Dave has made a new life for himself as a rising star in the New York comedy scene—a career where getting laughed at on stage is the entire point and not just a tragic consequence. But when Dave's metal ambitions are reawakened by the über self-serious "satanic" genre of Norwegian black metal, Dave creates a ridiculously hyperbolic alter ego and a band to match that, together, reignite the spark of his forgotten rock 'n' roll fantasy. But when Dave's internet-fueled rumors of Witch Taint—a metal band "so extreme that you must remove all sharp objects from the immediate area" when their music is played—spreads all the way to Europe, his story will spiral dangerously out of control as Norway's most extreme black metal butchers come to reap their revenge . . . and put everything and everyone Dave holds dear in the crosshairs (of their axes, which, truth be told, don't actually have crosshairs, but, hey, it's a metaphor)."

DARK REGARDS #1
WRITTEN BY DAVE HILL
ART BY ARTYOM TOPILIN
COVER A BY ARTYOM TOPILIN
COVER B BY ANDREW KRAHNKE
FLYER VARIANT (1:10) BY SCOTT SUGIUCHI
ALBUM COVER VARIANT (1:20) BY BRIAN LEVEL
HUMAN BLOOD VARIANT (1:50) BY DAVE HILL
ON SALE MAY 13th, 2025 | $4.99 | 32 PAGES | FC
IOC: 3/27/2025 FOC: 4/21/2025

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