Oni Press is aiming to really break the internet, in more ways than one, with the Dark Regards #1 release.
The publisher has dropped the trailer for Dark Regards #1, the first issue of a true story that can only be told through a comic book because it’s just that wild. Dave Hill, comedian, writer, satirist, and musician reveals in Dark Regards #1 a tell-all tale about his double life in 2004 living as his alter ego Lance, the lead singer and sole member of a Satanic black metal band called Witch Taint. While Hill has touched upon it before in a 2018 interview with Malcolm Gladwell, this is the first time people will finally know all the details about the years-long internet hoax which “accidentally touched off an international trail of mayhem that included kidnappings, attempted human sacrifice, and the vandalizing of the last freestanding Bob’s Big Boy restaurant in the Midwest.”
Illustrated by Artyom Topilin (Cruel Universe, I Hate This Place), Dark Regards #1 will also feature the cover artists Andrew Krahnke who illustrates COver B, Scott Sugiuchi who illustrates Flyer Variant (1:10), and Brian Level for Album Cover Variant (1:20). And get this: Dark Regards is going to get even darker because the first issue will feature a highly limited, 1:50 “Human Blood Variant” cover illustrated by Dave Hill, printed with the ink of the actual human blood of Hill, series editor Karl Bollers, and Oni President and Publisher Hunter Gorinson.
Oni Press describes Dark Regards #1 as below:
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).
Priced at $4.99 with 32 pages, Dark Regards #1 releases on May 13, 2025.
Check out the trailer below!
Dark Regards Trailer_v3_music-edit-3DD
Source: Oni Press
