Comic book publisher Oni Press has joined forces with Elijah Wood‘s production company SpectreVision to create High Strangeness, a new pop-up imprint specializing in supernatural comics.
Ahead of L.A. Comic Con 2023, Oni and SpectreVision announced that High Strangeness will be launching in 2025. The upcoming imprint is “[i]nfluenced by real, documented cases of paranormal phenomena dating back to the mid-20th century.” It promises to “surveil the liminal spaces 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.”
Check out Malachi Ward’s teaser artwork for High Strangeness below:
In addition to the folks at Oni and SpectreVision, podcaster Jim Perry is involved in High Strangeness as a creative consultant. Perry will “advise the team based on his extensive knowledge of anomalous phenomena.”
Elijah Wood and co. discuss High Strangeness
“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 SpectreVision co-founder Daniel Noah. “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 studio co-founder 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,” said Oni president and publisher Hunter Gorinson. “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.”
Wood, Noah, Gorinson and Oni Editor-in-Chief Sierra Hahn will be on hand to discuss High Strangeness at the aforementioned L.A. Comic Con. The panel will take place on Sunday, December 3 at 12 p.m. PT in Room 304.
