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Celebrated Thai American comic book creator Pornsak Pichetshote is launching The Horizon Experiment, a series of five one-shot comic books.
Each one features original protagonists from marginalized backgrounds set in a popular genre and inspired by pop culture icons. Each character’s unique background allows the stories to go into new directions.
Pichetshote is the creator of Eisner and Harvey Award-winning “The Good Asian” and “Infidel” books. Both are in different stages of development as TV series. He was also a star editor at DC’s Vertigo imprint, working on titles including “The Sand Man” and “Swamp Thing.”
“I’m fascinated with taking popular genres, like horror and noir, and seeing what they’d look like from diverse perspectives—I explored this in my Image Comics books Infidel and The Good Asian. But, I’ve been limited to my own experiences. So, for The Horizon Experiment, I decided to use the same mentality but open it up to other people, inviting some of the most talented people I know to work on it,” said Pichetshote.
Each one-shot is the equivalent of a pilot for a new creator-owned series, with the potential of continuing should there be demand for more. They are co-edited by Pichetshote and acclaimed editor Will Dennis (“Descender,” “Gideon Falls”).
The series kicks off with “The Horizon Experiment: The Manchurian,” written by Pichetshote and featuring illustrations by top artists Terry and Rachel Dodson (“Adventureman,” “Harley Quinn”), a thriller featuring a Chinese super spy inspired by James Bond.
Image Comics will release “The Horizon Experiment: The Manchurian” will release on Sept. 25. The four other four one-shots will be released one-by-one on a monthly basis. Connected cover art will be supplied by Eisner Award-winning artist Tula Lotay.
The others include: “The Horizon Experiment: The Sacred Damned,” by Pakistani-American writer Sabir Pirzada (“Moon Knight,” “Ms. Marvel”), and who will be debuting his first Image Comics graphic novel “Dandelion” next week. “The Sacred Damned” is a love letter to classic horror and follows a Muslim exorcist, in a new interpretation of horror tropes.
Tananarive Due (“The Keeper”) will launch “The Horizon Experiment: Moon Dogs.” It follows a family of Black Lycanthropes of East African descent who find themselves caught in a burgeoning war when the truth starts to come out that werewolves aren’t just a myth.
J. Holtham, a producer on “The Handmaid’s Tale,” will launching his first creator-owned comic “The Horizon Experiment: Motherf#cking Monsters.” It is pitched as involving “a nerdy Black kid from Brooklyn and his friends who stumble upon demon-worshipping frat assholes trying to take over the world,” and as “a love letter to Sam Raimi and Edgar Wright, set to a Wu-Tang soundtrack.” He is joined on the project by African-American cartoonist Michael Lee Harris, creator, writer, and artist of “Black Hitler” and “Choco Leche.”
“The Horizon Experiment: Finders / Keepers” marks the return of Vita Ayala “X-Men,” “Wonder Woman,” “Star Wars”) to creator-controlled comics. The one-shot will be a reverse “Indiana Jones” adventure that follows an archaeology grad student who steals artifacts from museums to return them to their native cultures.
“ ‘The Horizon Experiment’ is me and some of the most talented people I know seeing what’s possible. [..] Everyone was given the same challenge: Create a protagonist from a marginalized background set in a popular genre where if the background of your protagonist changed, so would your story. The results are books about: a Chinese James Bond, a Muslim John Constantine, a family of werewolves with East African descent, an ‘Evil Dead’ for black nerds, and a reverse ‘Indiana Jones’ story,” said Pitchetshote. “Because ‘The Horizon Experiment’ is just that, an experiment, we don’t know if this will work. But when things like this do work, it’s because people who love it love talking about it.”
