“All five of these titles are hilarious, scary, action-filled and brilliant. And Pornsak gathered a murderer’s row of literary and artistic talent to bring these visions to life. I love love love these books and I selfishly wanna read more.”—Patton Oswalt (Minor Threats)
The critically acclaimed The Horizon Experiment comic book series, led by Eisner and Harvey Award-winning The Good Asian creator Pornsak Pichetshote, will be collected into a first volume this April. As originally announced by Variety, the series features five unique “pilot” one-shots by all-star creative teams from across entertainment, with stories featuring diverse protagonists inspired by pop culture icons (like James Bond, John Constantine, and Indiana Jones), while exploring popular genre fare from a different perspective.
“The Horizon Experiment is me and some of the most talented people I know seeing what’s possible,” writes Pichetshote in the introduction of The Horizon Experiment, Vol. 1. “Five one-shots co-edited by one of the best editors in comics, Will Dennis, all released monthly and designed to act as pilots for follow-up books if sales merit. Everyone was given the same challenge: Create a protagonist from a marginalized background set in a popular genre where if the background of that protagonist changed, so would your story.”
Co-edited by Pichetshote and Eisner Award-winning editor Will Dennis (Somna: A Bedtime Story, Gideon Falls), the series kicked off with The Horizon Experiment: The Manchurian, written by Pichetshote and featuring illustrations by superstar artists Terry and Rachel Dodson (Adventureman, Harley Quinn), a scintillating thriller full of secrets and scandal, featuring a Chinese super spy inspired by James Bond. The Horizon Experiment series also features stunning connecting variant covers by Eisner Award-winning artist Tula Lotay.
Writer Sabir Pirzada (Dandelion), known for writing on beloved franchises like Marvel Studios’ Moon Knight and Ms. Marvel, teamed with Eisner Award-winning horror artist Michael Walsh (Exquisite Corpses, Universal Monsters: Frankenstein) for the one-shot, The Horizon Experiment: The Sacred Damned, introducing the world to Inayah Jibril, Professor of Ethnography and the Occult. A love letter to classic horror from Dracula to John Constantine, the terrifying tale follows a Muslim exorcist, in a new interpretation of horror tropes.
Tananarive Due and Kelsey Ramsay’s The Horizon Experiment: Moon Dogs one-shot follows a family of Black Lycanthropes of East African descent who find themselves caught in a burgeoning war in Miami when the truth starts to come out that werewolves aren’t just a myth. Co-author of the graphic novel The Keeper, and an acclaimed fiction writer known as the “Octavia Butler of horror,” Due has won an NAACP Image Award, World Fantasy Award, a British Fantasy Award, and much more; Moon Dogs marks her first solo full-length writing endeavor in comics. She’s joined by breakout artist Kelsey Ramsay (Dark Spaces: Good Deeds) in her first Image Comics series.
J. Holtham, an esteemed playwright, TV writer, and producer (The Handmaid’s Tale), joined the project with his first creator-owned comic The Horizon Experiment: Motherf*ckin’ Monsters, co-created by African-American cartoonist Michael Lee Harris, creator of Black Hitler and Choco Leche. The Horizon Experiment: Motherfu*kin’ Monsters is like Evil Dead for blerds, a love letter to Sam Raimi and Edgar Wright set to a Wu-Tang soundtrack. Fans of Bitter Root and Chew will enjoy this meta horror comedy full of quips and gore, in which a nerdy Black kid from Brooklyn and his friends stumble upon demon-worshipping frat assholes trying to take over the world.
Powerhouse comic book writer Vita Ayala (New Mutants, Static: Season One) partnered up with on-the-verge star artist Skylar Patridge (Absolute Power: Ground Zero, Supergirl) for The Horizon Experiment: Finders//Keepers, an action-adventure one-shot that twists the genre in a way that’s never been done before. The comic is a reverse Indiana Jones story that follows Puerto Rican archeology grad student Ines Guarua, who plans to steal an important cultural artifact from a famous museum in order to bring it back home to where it belongs.
The Horizon Experiment, Vol. 1 (Lunar code 0225IM443) will be available at comic book shops on Wednesday, April 16 (FOC date is Monday, March 10). It will be available at independent bookstores(ISBN: 9781534337008) on April 29, 2025, as well as on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-a-Million, Indigo, and Waterstones, and across many digital platforms.