This June, Oni Press Proudly Presents a Sci-Fi Icon’s Unlikely Return to Existence in a Prestige Format Limited Series That Questions Reality Itself – Featuring Covers by Christian Ward
IN ONE L.A. MOTEL ROOM, A COSMIC QUEST IS ABOUT TO BEGIN… Oni Press, – the multiple Eisner and Harvey Award-winning publisher of groundbreaking comics and graphic novels since 1997 – is proud to reveal BENJAMIN #1 (of 3) – the FIRST ISSUE of an ALL-NEW, PRESTIGE FORMAT limited series from Edgar Award nominee and Philip K. Dick Award winner Ben H. Winters (EC’s Cruel Universe, The Last Policeman Trilogy) and rising star Leomacs (EC’s Epitaphs from the Abyss, Basketful of Heads) unraveling the mystery behind the inexplicable second life of the brilliant author who imagined our desperate future, but never imagined he’d become part of it . . .
“Winters and Leomacs have made the indie darling of the year with BENJAMIN–an off-beat adventure of an unlikely duo finding common ground over the pursuit of not only truth, but reality,” said Oni Press Editor-in-Chief Sierra Hahn. “It’s rich, heartfelt, hilarious and at times tragic in its examination of one of the greatest diseases Americans are facing today: loneliness. I could not put this script down and then Leomacs brought the world to life in imaginative and exhilarating new ways. We have something truly special here.”
More than just a writer, more than just a science-fiction icon, Benjamin J. Carp was a cultural revolutionary. Over the course of 44 novels and hundreds of short stories — including the counterculture classic The Man They Couldn’t Erase — Carp pushed the boundaries of literary respectability for the sci-fi genre and his readers’ perception of reality itself . . . until decades of amphetamine abuse and Southern California excess finally ended a mind-bending career that always just escaped mainstream success. He died in 1982.
Until 2025 . . . when Benjamin J. Carp awakens, alive, in a burned-out motel on the fringes of Los Angeles. He remembers dying. He knows he shouldn’t exist. Is he a dream? A robot? A ghost? A clone? A simulation? In his own time, Carp pondered all of these scenarios through his fiction—and, now, as he treks from Studio City to Venice Beach and onward into the paranoid sprawl of 21st-century Los Angeles, he will be called to investigate his greatest mystery yet: himself.
Ben H. Winters is the Edgar Award and Philip K. Dick Award-winning novelist of The Last Policeman trilogy and Underground Airlines, as well as the creator of CBS’s #1-rated hit television series Tracker and a former writer for FX’s acclaimed Marvel science-fiction series Legion. BENJAMIN will mark Winters’s full-length comics debut, fresh off his appearance as one of the principal writers behind Oni’s best-selling resurgence of the acclaimed EC Comics line, where he has been featured regularly in the pages of Cruel Universe, Shiver SuspenStories, and Cruel Kingdom.
“I grew up reading a lot of science fiction, writers like Philip K. Dick, Samuel Delany, William Gibson, all that gorgeously weird stuff,” said Winters. “I’ve always favored sci-fi that digs into the basic existential quandary of life—like, what are we doing here? How did we get here, and where do we go? I thought how fun and funny it might be, if a writer who had spent a career trying to figure out what existence means, woke up decades after his own death. Unless he’s a clone. Or a robot. Or a dream.”
“The result is quite literally a journey of self-discovery, although you should note that the fact that the character and I have the same name is just a coincidence,” Winters insisted. “BENJAMIN is a bit of a mystery story, a bit of a caper, and—believe it or not—a story of friendship. And/or violent death.”
“I love quirky and stimulating characters that allow me to draw a range of emotions and fun situations,” said Leomacs. “BENJAMIN is a treasure trove of emotions. Just imagine waking up one day and realising you shouldn’t be where you are because you shouldn’t even be alive. Benjamin is funny and tragic, he’s smart but needs to catch up with the world. Drawing Benjamin is creation as much as it is discovery and it’s incredibly fun to do!”
In the tradition of Philip K. Dick’s A SCANNER DARKLY and Thomas Pynchon’s INHERENT VICE comes a uniquely fascinating and hilariously deranged excursion into the metatextual nexus where existence and oblivion, past and future, genius and madness, and glitter and grim reality all meet just beyond Hollywood Boulevard.
Presented in a prestige, ad-free format with 30 pages of story content and premium cardstock covers on every issue, BENJAMIN #1 will materialize in comic shops everywhere on June 18, 2025 with hallucinatory covers by multiple Eisner Award winner Christian Ward (Batman: City of Madness, Spectregraph), acclaimed interior artist Leomacs (Joe Hill’s Refrigerator Full of Heads), and visionary artist Malachi Ward (Black Hammer Reborn).
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BENJAMIN #1 (OF 3)
WRITTEN BY BEN H. WINTERS
ART BY LEOMACS
COVER A BY CHRISTIAN WARD
COVER B BY LEOMACS
COVER C BY MALACHI WARD
VARIANT (1:10) BY CHRISTIAN WARD
ON SALE JUNE 18th, 2025 | $5.99 | 32 PGS | FC
IOD: 4/24/2025
FOC: 5/26/2025