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Oni Press Reveals Its Most Vicious Valentine’s Yet with Gut-Wrenching Romance from Michael W. Conrad, Melissa Flores, Sarah Gailey, Jenna Cha, Ryan Kelly & More!
PORTLAND, OR (October 21, 2026) – Roses are red, violets are blue, death comes for all … and that means you, too! 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 lift the veil on Tortured Hearts 2 #1 – our next tenderly terrifying tome of romance gone dangerously awry hitting store shelves everywhere in January!! Just a few weeks before Valentine’s Day, the infectiously infamous EC Comics is putting it all out there with our latest 56-page splatter de spectacular celebrating heart-ripping, artery-spurting tales that’ll really get your blood pumping! New relationship got you down? Marital woes weighing too heavy? Here’s some free advice: Sometimes you just need to cut things off—so better start hacking, heh heh!
Join us as we officiate this year’s crop of tenderly terrifying tales with a robust cast of hopelessly deranged romantics left waiting at the altar: Michael W. Conrad (Wonder Woman), Melissa Flores (Mighty Morphin Power Rangers), Sarah Gailey (Eat the Rich), Malachi Ward (Black Hammer), Ryan Kelly (Stranger Things), Sami Kivelä (The Forever Home), Jenna Cha (The Sickness), and more surprise blind dates!
We demand justice for the jilted! Get ready to be lovelorn, lonely, and lusting for blood as we grab St. Cupid’s arrow and start twisting in EC’s most frantic collection of sinful symphonies yet! Accept your most volatile valentine of all time when Tortured Hearts 2 #1 arrives in comic shops everywhere on January 27th – featuring horrifically heartbreaking covers from Dustin Weaver (Avengers), Reiko Murakami (Nightmare Country), Shawn McManus (Fables), and Patricia Martín (Transformers)!
EC Tortured Hearts 2 #1 (One-Shot)
Written By: Michael W. Conrad, Melissa Flores, Sarah Gailey & Malachi Ward
Art By: Jenna Cha, Ryan Kelly & More
Cover A By: Dustin Weaver
Cover B By: Reiko Murakami
EC Homage Variant (1:10) By: Shawn McManus
B&W Artist Edition Variant (1:20) By: Dustin Weaver
Archive Edition Variant (1:50) By: Patricia Martín
On Sale: January 27, 2027
Price: $8.99
Format: 56 Pages | FC
About Oni Press
THE LOUDEST THING IN COLOR SINCE ’97. For nearly 30 years, Oni Press has carved a distinctive path as one of the world’s most respected and acclaimed publishers of award-winning comic books and graphic novels, including Bryan Lee O’Malley’s Scott Pilgrim, Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, Cullen Bunn & Brian Hurtt’s The Sixth Gun, Brenna Thummler’s Sheets trilogy, Jay Stephens’ Dwellings, Ezra Clayton Daniels’ Upgrade Soul, LySandra Vuong’s Covenant, 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 roster of periodical comics for globally recognized properties including Adventure Time, Biker Mice from Mars, Choose Your Own Adventure, Cult of the Lamb, EC Comics, Murder Drones, Rick and Morty, and more.
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.