Benjamin HC Spotlight

 

 

What happens when we die? Is it the end? Or is death a doorway to a new beginning? 

When Benjamin awakens in a motel room, he cannot remember how he got there. The manager attaches little cosmic significance to someone slipping into a room like a stowaway on the ship of life. But when the clerk sees the man raving about people speaking into Psy-Tac Intercommunicators, his thoughts drift back to his father's favorite author. 

Marcus is an easygoing guy. He's sufficient intrigued to take the stranger under his wing. But did the man write all the science fiction novels his father collected? And if so, how did Benjamin J Carp return from dead?

Here's all the info from Oni Press:

 

BENJAMIN HC

WRITTEN BY BEN H. WINTERS ART BY LEOMACS COVER BY CHRISTIAN WARD IN ONE L.A. MOTEL ROOM, A COSMIC QUEST IS ABOUT TO BEGIN . . . 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. 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, Ghostlore) 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. $24.99 | 104 PGS. | FULL COLOR | ON SALE MARCH 11, 2026

 

Thanks to Oni Press and Superfan Promotions for providing a review copy.

 

For additional insights on Benjamin HC from the author, see my Benjamin HC Solicit. 

 

Event Horizon: Dark Descent #1 Review

 

 

Writer: Christian Ward

Artist: Tristan Jones

Colorist: Pip Martin

Letterer: Alex Ray

Editor: Nicolas Niño

Cover Artists: Jeffrey Alan Love, Christian Ward, Martin Simmonds, Joshua Hixson & Rob Carey

Publisher: IDW

Price: $4.99

Release Date: August 20, 2025

 

Dr William Weir isn’t in Hell. But he’s haunted and doesn’t know how to move on. Since his wife’s death, William has dreamed of Claire every night. Somehow, his nightmarish penance inspires him. General Anderson urges him to take time off, but William wants to return to work. Can he correct the problems plaguing the Gravity Drive? And what will happen when they launch the Event Horizon into space? Let’s leap into Event Horizon: Dark Descent #1 and see!

 

Story

Like William, Dr Jennifer Kwan mourns someone she lost. As she gazes out the viewport of the Event Horizon, Jennifer remembers how an argument ruined their relationship. Her friend Nia lightens her spirits and refocuses Jennifer upon the momentous event awaiting them. Jennifer can’t wait to activate Dr William Weir’s Gravity Drive and travel to Proxima Centauri in the blink of an eye.

 

In Event Horizon: Dark Descent #1, William and Jennifer aren’t the only people hurting. As Jennifer and Nia gather for a briefing, death casts a shadow over all of them. But perhaps it’s worst for William, who remains back home. Only it’s not home anymore. Now, it’s a void, an empty place he inhabits when not at work. William regrets how he devoted his life to science instead of sharing it with his wife.

 

In Christian Ward’s story, past and present intermingle. Like anyone who has lost a loved one, William sees his wife daily. Instead of reliving memories, Claire interacts with him, suggesting clues to impasses, and giving him the support he never gave her. Claire urges him to cross the barrier between his realm and hers, so their reunion can be complete.

 

Event Horizon: Dark Descent #1 follows William, Jennifer, and Nia’s journeys as the Event Horizon prepares to fold space. As the crew struggles to cope with the traumas in their past, each will take their private horror into the void. No one suspects how the darkness of this unexplored realm will magnify their fears.

 

Art

Tristan Jones magnifies the brokenness of the characters’ lives with dots, circles, ink blotches, and fragmented lines. Each person’s face becomes a roadmap of grief, or a pin cushion of sorrow. As Jennifer rests her hand on the viewport, a face stares back at her, even after she turns away. Heavily inked hull frames corridors with riblike supports and hanging conduits. The crew works beneath an arched ceiling, where Jennifer and Nia join them. Captain John Kilpack sits at the center of the audience gathered before one arch of the crypt-like room. They regard Jennifer with indifference, boredom, and a hint of fear. Only Nia smiles, her body language demonstrating camaraderie and excitement.

 

Pip Martin contributes a palette of limited colors that enhances the detailed art in Event Horizon: Dark Descent #1. Green, purple, and gray dominate William’s scenes, while red enlivens his horrific thoughts. The blue-gray ship resembles a person leaping into space with a swan dive, the big head staring into the unknown. Beige, blue, and green dominate interior scenes, while the yellow-green light of monitors reflects off the crew and the interior. Pink and red brighten the background and later adorn the foreground of a dramatic confrontation. The red harkens back to when William discovered his wife’s body, and how he sees her now.

 

William shares his thoughts with white uppercase letters in dark-gray boxes. Black uppercase letters fill white dialogue balloons, while Latin words are italicized. Words grow bold for intonation and when introducing crew via light-gray boxes. White block letters locate us in time and space, while sound effects signal ship functions and tragedy. Yet, ever William’s companion and ours, Claire’s bold white words haunt black dialogue balloons bordered with scarlet. Thanks to IDW for providing a review copy.

 

Final Thoughts

Event Horizon: Dark Descent #1 is a powerhouse prequel that honors Resident Evil director Paul WS Anderson’s unforgettable 1997 cosmic horror movie.

 

Rating 9/10

 

For more cover art see my review at Comic Book Dispatch. 

Benjamin HC Solicit

 

At San Diego Comic-Con, president Hunter Gorinson and editor-in-chief Sierra Hahn hailed Ben H Winter's story as one of the strongest pitches they had ever heard. Ben described his character, Benjamin J Carp, as a curmudgeonly, obnoxious man. As he seeks answers to his strange rebirth, what he discovers prompt more questions about his existence. You may not like Benjamin J Carp. Yet he has an odd ability to charm people. And as he grapples with his situation, Ben H Winters assured readers that we would root for him.

Here's all the info on this upcoming hardcover edition from Oni Press: 

BENJAMIN HC ADVANCE SOLICIT

WRITTEN BY BEN H. WINTERS ART BY LEOMACS COVER BY CHRISTIAN WARD IN ONE L.A. MOTEL ROOM, A COSMIC QUEST IS ABOUT TO BEGIN . . . 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.     (Left to right) Hunter Gorinson, Sierra Hahn & Ben H Winters     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, Ghostlore) 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. ON SALE MARCH 11th, 2026 | $24.99 | 104 PGS. | FC IOD: 9/27/2025 FOC: 2/16/2026           Thanks to Oni Press for sharing this advance solicit with us.

Blade Runner 2019 Omnibus Solicit

 

COVER: Direct Market - Christian Ward  (MAR250282)

This series was a welcome return to the Blade Runner universe. Yet its debut was tinged with sadness. Actor Rutger Hauer, who starred as the replicant Roy Batty in Ridley Scott's immortal film, died two days after the release of Blade Runner 2019 #1. Still, the series proved far more than a sequel, as it opened the door for more stories to be told in a future first glimpsed by Philip K Dick. 

Here's all the info from Titan Comics:

 

BLADE RUNNER 2019: THE COMPLETE SERIES OMNIBUS

(W) Michael Green and Mike Johnson

(A) Andres Guinaldo

HC, FC, 336pp, $49.99, On Sale: September 3, 2025

 

An in canon comic series set in the world of Blade Runner - co-written by Michael Green, the co-screenwriter of Blade Runner 2049.

 

LAPD’s best Blade Runner and detective, Aahna ‘Ash’ Ashina, has been assigned to investigate the mysterious disappearance of Isobel and Cleo Selwyn, the wife and daughter of business tycoon, Alexander Selwyn, a close personal friend of Eldon Tyrell.

 

Collects - Blade Runner 2019: Los Angeles, Off-World and Home Again, Home Again.

 

Here's another cover option:

 

COVER: Regular - Ben Oliver (MAR250281)

 

 

Blade Runner Tokyo Nexus #1 Review

 

Writer: Kianna Shore

Artist: Mariano Taibo

Colorist: Marco Lesko

Letterer: Jim Campbell

Editor: David Leach

Creative Consultant: Mellow Brown

Cover Artists: Christian Ward; Andy Belanger; Mariano Taibo & Marco Lesko; Fernando Dagnino; Paul Pope & Lovern Kindzierski; Blank;

Publisher: Titan Comics

Price: $3.99

Release Date: July 31, 2024

 

Stix was supposed to meet Mead in a poor Tokyo district. But he is late, forcing her to confront a protection racket alone. When a gang member flashes a gun, Mead gets a meat cleaver in her leg. Can Mead still trust her replicant partner with her life? Or is her partnership with Stix on the rocks? Let’s leap into Blade Runner Tokyo Nexus #1 and find out!

 

Story

Thankfully, Stix arrives in the nick of time. But Mead is unhappy. After she gets patched up, she lets him know that his commitment to their partnership is fading. His response? When a job offer materializes, Stix walks, forcing Mead to investigate alone.

 

Sayo may be naïve about her family’s business in Blade Runner Tokyo Nexus #1. Or is she pretending she doesn't know her family is involved with the Yakuza? Either way, it's a dangerous situation to enter alone. But the girl's concern seems genuine, so Mead agrees to investigate the disappearance. While she seeks out the missing woman, Stix helps his friends. Like many private detectives, their activities often take them into poorer communities. But in Stix’s case, he spends more time among the illegal replicants: the synthetic people who fought for Humans yet were banned from Earth.

 

While Mead and Stix's partnership slowly fractures, a new organization threatens Tyrell's dominance in manufacturing Replicants. In Kianna Shore's story, a group of former Tyrell employees have founded Cheshire. It's not a company that operates in the open. Nor are its business practices ethical. The scientists view Replicants as their creations, to be altered or destroyed in the name of efficiency and productivity. Worse, the Replicants the scientists build are improvements based on Tyrell’s designs. And Tyrell made Replicants to go to war.

 

Blade Runner Tokyo Nexus #1 fills a gap in franchise history between Blade Runner Origins and Blade Runner 2019. Like all the Blade Runner stories, it’s a tale of race and class warfare that questions the definition of what it means to be Human. The story asks if partnerships like that of Ash and Freysa or Deckard and Rachael are inevitably doomed. In a world of inclusivity, it tests our willingness to look past external differences, discard labels, and accept all people as equals. The debut issue tackles PTSD among veterans and asks if we are capable of evolving. In an age when people employ gaslighting and guilt to achieve desired results, Kianna Shore ponders what makes Humans so superior.

 

Art

Mariano Taibo’s tall, graceful buildings display an elegance not found on the streets. Those well-off wander grass and tree-lined sidewalks.

Crime and inadequate medical care ravage the malnourished poor. Business-like Mead and Styx stand out among the street thugs and civilians in casual attire. But their trench coats hide more than business suits.

 

Marco Lesko heightens a street fight by contrasting green with orange and red in Blade Runner Tokyo Nexus #1. As a chef prepares sushi for anxious patrons like Stix, yellow surrounds Mead’s glass as she downs her green drink and returns it to the counter. The glass reflects a partial silhouette of her partner’s demolished jubilance. As the partners sit beneath a yellow display and brown banners, perhaps the orange tinge coloring Sayo reminds Stix of the blood he recently spilled.

 

As Mead and Sayo converse and visit Miyuki’s apartment, Jim Campbell fills dialogue white balloons with black uppercase letters and shares Mead and Stix's lowercase musings in colored narrative boxes. The words rarely embolden for emphasis and never enlarge. Giant letters emphasize the enhanced abilities Stix hides in public and announce a police spinner descending to apprehend a troublemaker in riot-ravaged Tokyo. Thanks to Titan Comics for providing a copy for review.

 

Final Thoughts

As two Private Detectives, one Human and the other a Replicant, get drawn into a brewing war involving the Yakuza, Tyrell, and a new supplier of bootleg Replicants in the poor neighborhoods of Japan in Blade Runner Tokyo Nexus #1, a still figure on a green slab asks, "What are little girls made of?"

 

Rating 9/10

 

For more cover art see my review at Comic Book Dispatch.

The Deviant #1 Review

 

Writer: James Tynion IV

Artist & Colorist: Joshua Hixson

Letterer: Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou

Cover Artist: Joshua Hixson; Dani; Andrea Sorrentino; Sean Phillips; Christian Ward; Bermejo

Publisher: Image

Price: $5.99

Release Date: November 15, 2023

 

Christmas shopping reminds Michael that he can’t wrap Christmas presents. His friend Derek agrees: he’s terrible at it. Why does this bother Michael so much? Let’s ring in the holiday season, peer inside The Deviant #1, and find out!

 

 

Story

In 1973, Randall Olsen played Santa Claus in a department store. When a worker forgot her keys and returned after hours, she found Eddie groaning and bleeding in Randall's chair. Cops raided Randall's barn, where they found two boys. The police also found photos of the boys who portrayed elves in Randall's store. He's been in prison ever since.

 

 

 

Michael is a comic book writer. He interviews Randall in search of a story. Randall insists that he only photographed the boys. If so, who hurt Eddie and killed the boys? Who was the axe-wielding Santa the cops spied near Randall's "Murder Barn?" And why did Randall have a barn in the country if he lived in the city?

 

 

In The Deviant #1, James Tynion IV comments on the state of the comic book industry. He tackles societal views on homosexuality from a historical and contemporary perspective. He also shares the storyteller’s search for truth. Randall seeks answers to who he is. He desperately wants to know where he fits in. Or does he?

 

 

Art

Joshua Hixson’s art in The Deviant #1 evokes a 1970s department store through interior design, clothing, and a cash register. Glimpses of blood trickling down from Eddie's eyes and the mutilated boys adorned like a Christmas tree are shocking but not grotesque. Light touches of lavender suggest background displays while Derek clutches Michael's hand. Yet the most haunting of all remains the moment when the searching officer falls into the snow, and his flashlight reveals the blood-splattered, axe-wielding department store Santa Claus.

 

 

 

Giant white letters introduce the dates and locations of scenes in The Deviant #1. Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou’s black uppercase letters in white dialogue balloons are easy to read. Eddie's groans look organic and rounded. The Deviant Killer's grunts are sharp and angular. Were they clawed into panels by an animal or cut into scenes with the edge of a blade?

 

Thanks to Image Comics for providing a copy for review.

 

Final Thoughts

A comic writer seeking a key to his past finds affinity with a condemned killer in The Deviant #1.

 

Rating 8.4/10

 

To preview interior art see my review at Comic Book Dispatch.