By Jon Gorga
This past Friday afternoon at New York Comic-Con, Oni Press revealed some key books from its 2027 lineup during a panel cheekily subtitled “The Loudest Thing in Color Since 97.” As the panel’s title suggests, 2027 is the 30th anniversary of Oni Press and it has started the celebration early!
With Oni having recently acquired the license to publish comics starring Archie Andrews and the rest of the Riverdale gang, president and publisher Hunter Gorinson revealed a bit of the behind-the-scenes story of the corporate genesis behind this new vision of the world of Archie. He said, “I’ve gotten to know a lot of people at Archie over the years… and sometimes it’s my job as publisher to just ask super obvious questions. ‘What do you think if we publish Archie and Sabrina the Teenage Witch?’ and they said, ‘What would that look like?’ and we started bouncing ideas around and lo and behold!”
There are already two titles in this line: Archie and Sabrina: The Teenage Witch. And they are soon to be joined by Archie in Hell in November.
An intriguing item among wildly intriguing items is the news that Michael E. Uslan is debuting a new comics incarnation of a Revolutionary War-era character that he said, “scared the shit out of me when I was a kid!” It’s Doctor Syn, the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, created by British novelist Russell Thorndike for a stageplay in 1910 and adapted to the literary page as well as to film, television, and audio-dramas sporadically ever since. Uslan claims, “There is an absolute link from Syn to The Shadow to Batman back to Syn.” because they share the burden of a secret identity and “that element of violence against something that they represented as evil, to their minds.”
Uslan, Oni, co-writer Steven S. DeKnight, and artist Sebastián Cabrol are betting that comics readers will agree and give “a comic-book mini-series… the equivalent of a Quentin Tarantino alternative history movie.” that will also make you “feel like you’re reading a Marvel comic from the 1970s” a fair try. The new series will be available in January.
Finally, Oni unveiled more about what is potentially the weirdest comic-book revival of 2027: Fletcher Hanks’ absolutely unhinged character Stardust the Super Wizard will return to fight all manner of evil as the star of Citizen: Stardust, the first ongoing comic book for the character since (gulp!) January of 1941! Though this time, he is at first merely an actor who played Stardust in a series of Hollywood films that never existed in our real world. Somehow, actor Barclay Flagg finds himself transformed into the all-powerful Stardust the Super Wizard for real.
Writer Dave Baker described the character as Superman but with absolutely no sense of “truth, justice, American way, dignity, hope, optimism and just callously was into punishment.” Publisher Gorinson promised, “it’s not going to be like anything else on the stands.” With art from the incomparable Malachi Ward, Citizen: Stardust is scheduled to run as a full 12 issue maxi-series starting in April.
Oni Press is really looking back to the Golden Age of Superhero Comics for inspiration in the winter and spring of 2027, the dawn of its 30th year looking to produce some pretty darn good comics.
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