SDCC 2023: ONI PRESS PRESENTS INVASIVE

There’s been some disappointment over the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes preventing actors and other talent from attending San Diego Comic-Con 2023, where they’d usually participate in panels, signings, and other interactions with fans. But if there’s any silver lining to that grey cloud, it’s that the convention now has a golden opportunity to get back to its roots and something it does better than anyone else: shine a renewed spotlight on COMICS!

Among the distributors pushing hot new properties on four-color pages, prolific publisher Oni Press has several new series and surprises on tap for SDCC, one of which includes INVASIVE, a four-issue miniseries being billed as a “radical new experiment in horror” from Cullen Bunn and Jesus Hervas. What makes it so radical? Let’s let Oni Press president Hunter Gorinson offer some insight:

"INVASIVE might very well go down as Cullen Bunn's ultimate statement on what the horror comic can and should be. As both a mystery and meditation on the addictive nature of power, INVASIVE is one of the most compelling, thought-provoking, and genuinely rattling projects that I have ever had the privilege to shepherd forward,” said Gorinson. “We can't share too much for fear of spoiling what Cullen and Jesús have planned, except to say this: No matter what you think ... you are not ready."

Backing up a bit, we should have probably asked first, what’s the story about? Here’s the official synopsis, which is also a bit of a teaser to whet the appetites of hungry horror hounds:

In an underground hospital secretly operating deep beneath the streets of a major metropolis, a radical new addiction has taken hold. Once inside its grip, there are no rules, no oaths, and no taboos too deep to not to be broken. The scalpel is their tool, and the alleys are their operating theater...and, together, a new class of surgeon is bent on piercing the final threshold of accepted medical orthodoxy one incision at a time. Beyond excess, beyond ethics, beyond science .. .a delicate and excruciating new discipline is about to be born: the art of flesh. Help us discover it, won't you?

Much more about INVASIVE and its terrifying new experiment in pain will be revealed in the months ahead. Until then, Eisner Award nominee Cullen Bunn has a something to add on the series, followed by a first look at a few of artist Jesus Hervas’ character designs, which showcase a sample of the style in store.

“INVASIVE is a thing of nightmare. For me, literally,” sys Bunn. “The initial seed of the idea sprang from a terrifying nightmare that startled me awake in the dark. While developing the idea, I was beset by even more nightmares. And while writing it? You guessed it. Nightmares. It's a book that worries and haunts me, and I think it represents a bit of a signpost in the road of my approach to horror in general. I believe that in the years to come, it will be thought of as one of my most disturbing stories.”