PORTLAND, OR (JUNE 15, 2026) – HEAVY IS THE HEAD THAT WEARS THE CROWN . . . UNTIL THE KING GETS IT LOPPED OFF! Oni Press, the multiple Eisner and Harvey Award-winning publisher of groundbreaking comics and graphic novels since 1997, and William M. Gaines Agent, Inc. are proud to announce CRUEL KINGDOM 2 #1 (of 6)! Welcome, traveler . . . back to the blood-drenched ramparts of ye olde EC Comics that yearn for MORE tales of sadistic sorcery and malevolent magic! Yes, draw your sword and start swinging, because CRUEL KINGDOM lives again this September with an ALL-NEW volume of fatal fantasy, told in the immortal EC Comics manner by a magnificently malicious cast of all-star storytellers!
In this CRUEL KINGDOM, there is no “happily ever after” . . . and sometimes the witch hunter becomes the hunted in the end, heh heh! Come, warm yourself by the pyre as vengeance-fueled writers David M. Booher (Canto), Matt Bors (The Toxic Avenger), and Jude Ellison S. Doyle (Dead Teenagers) turn the screws in tandem with axe-wielding artists Ryan Kelly (Lucifer), Lukas Ketner (Count Crowley), and David Lapham (Stray Bullets) to extract answers the burning question of every knight and squire: Must every wizard’s tower also have an executioner’s dungeon buried down below? At EC Comics, we say “YES, OF COURSE! NOW PROCEED WITH THE BEHEADING, YOU FOOL!”
Plus: Cower in fear as upcoming issues of EC Comics’ latest six-issue exercise in “black magic gone good” prepares to feature even more writers and artists with ogre’s taste for blood and bone, including John Arcudi (B.P.R.D.), Ramón F. Bachs (Star Wars), Sarah Gailey (Magic for Liars), Sami Kivelä (The Forever Home), Curt Pires (Fireborn, Super Mondo Mega Mutts), SOM (Crocodile Black), Alison Sampson (Department of Truth), and more!
If you thought the Dark Ages were scary, just wait for the return of EC Comics’ carnage-strewn ode to high fantasy and low blows in CRUEL KINGDOM 2 #1 (of 6) – storming the ramparts of your local comic shop on September 2nd with covers from legendary artists Mark Buckingham (Miracleman), Yanick Paquette (Batman Inc.), Shawn McManus (Fables), and Rian Hughes (The Multiversity).
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Cruel Kingdom 2 #1 (of 6)
Writers: David M. Booher, Matt Bors, & Jude Ellison S. Doyle
Artists: Ryan Kelly, Lukas Ketner, & David Lapham
Cover A: Mark Buckingham
Cover B: Yanick Paquette
Homage Variant (1:10): Shawn Mcmanus
B&W Artist Edition Variant (1:20): Yanick Paquette
Archive Edition (1:50): Rian Hughes
Blank Sketch Variant Cover Available
On Sale: 9/2/26
$4.99 | 32 Pages | FC
About EC Comics
As the birthplace of Tales from the Crypt, MAD magazine, Weird Science, and more of the most influential and celebrated comic series ever published, EC Comics has cemented itself as one of the central nerves of American pop culture with a legacy that spans more than seven decades. From 1944 to 1956, EC—established as “Educational Comics” by founder M.C. Gaines and later rebranded “Entertaining Comics” under the leadership of publisher and editor William M. Gaines—led a creative renaissance for the comics industry that, for the first time, elevated the once-derided comics medium into the echelons of English literature and high art. Heralded as “one of the great explosions of vox-pop literature” by Time magazine and “fiercely honest, politically adversarial, [and] visually masterful” by The Comics Journal, EC’s line of comics books—which collectively sold more than ten million copies annually at their peak—entertained and informed in equal measure, using brilliantly crafted tales of horror, science fiction, satire, and battlefield conflict to critique and subvert America’s dark impulses toward violence, racism, inequity, environmental destruction, and war.
Forcibly shuttered by the Comics Code Authority—a pro-censorship group specifically tasked with eradicating EC’s illuminating influence from the American comic book industry—in 1956, EC’s unique brand of subversive storytelling lived on through the continued success of MAD magazine, which would fuel American counterculture through the death of publisher William M. Gaines in 1992. EC’s titles and stories have been adapted in a number of media—including HBO’s long-running Tales from the Crypt franchise of television series and feature films—and continue to be celebrated by multiple generations of comic creators, filmmakers, comedians, and musicians as a seminal influence.
Today, EC Comics’ canon of classic stories can continuously be found in print through new editions at Dark Horse Comics, Taschen, Fantagraphics, and IDW Publishing. In 2024, EC announced a new partnership with multiple Eisner- and Harvey Award–winning publisher Oni Press to produce the first all-new EC Comics titles in nearly seventy years.
About Oni Press:
Founded in 1997, Oni Press has a 25-year history as one of the industry’s most respected and acclaimed publishers of award-winning comic books and graphic novels with titles including Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim, K. O’Neill’s Tea Dragon Society, Cullen Bunn & Brian Hurtt’s The Sixth Gun, Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, Ezra Claytan Daniels’ Upgrade Soul, Brenna Thummler’s Sheets trilogy, and many hundreds more.
In 2019, Oni Press merged with Lion Forge Comics – the Eisner Award-winning independent comic book publisher founded by Academy Award-winning producer and entrepreneur David Steward II – to create one of the largest, independent libraries of comics content anywhere in media. The Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Group now exists as a publishing subsidiary of Steward’s diversified global media company, Polarity.
The Oni-Lion Forge Publishing Group publishes more than 60 original and licensed graphic novels annually, in addition to an extensive list of periodical comics.
