Pornsak Pichetshote Mixes It Up With A Five One-Shot Series, ‘The Horizon Experiment’
by Olly MacNamee
Eisner and Harvey Award-winning creator Pornsak Pichetshote (The Good Asian and Infidel ) is set to produce a series of five one-shots featuring characters from marginalized communities across a variety of genres under the umbrella title of The Horizon Experiment. And to help bring his stories to life he’s working with creators from across the media landscape.
Accompanying this news was Pichetshote’s explanation behind his vision for the series:
“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. 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. Each team of creators have had different approaches—all of them have knocked me out, and I couldn’t be more proud that the end result is five very unique books, all connected by the same ambitious spirit.”
The first one-shot will be The Horizon Experiment: The Manchurian, by Pichetshote with art by the incomparable Terry and Rachel Dodson (Adventureman, Harley Quinn) and co-edited by Pichetshote and Will Dennis (Descender, Gideon Falls), “a thriller featuring a Chinese super spy inspired by James Bond.” Subsequent one-shits in the series will come out monthly after that. The whole five-issue series will feature connecting variant covers by Eisner Award-winning artist Tula Lotay.
Also upcoming is a one-shot by Pakistani-American writer Sabir Pirzada, (Moon Knight, Ms. Marvel), and artist Michael Walsh called The Horizon Experiment: The Sacred Damned. Plus, Pirzada also debuting his first Image Comics graphic novel Dandelion on June 19th.
“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 book follows a Muslim exorcist, in a new interpretation of horror tropes.”
Following that is multi-award winning writer Tananarive Due and artist Kelsey Ramsey’s The Horizon Experiment: Moon Dogs, “which 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”.
The fourth one-shot is called The Horizon Experiment: Motherf#cking Monsters, a story of “a nerdy Black kid from Brooklyn and his friends stumble upon demon-worshipping frat assholes trying to take over the world in this love letter to Sam Raimi and Edgar Wright, set to a Wu-Tang soundtrack.” This penultimate one-shot comes from the all African-American creative team of writer J. Holtham (playwright, TV writer, and producer on the Emmy-winning The Handmaid’s Tale) and cartoonist Michael Lee Harris (Black Hitler, Choco Leche).
And then there’s The Horizon Experiment: Finders / Keepers by writer Vita Ayala and artist Skylar Patridge. “A reverse Indiana Jones adventure that follows archeology grad student Ines Guarua, who steals artifacts from museums to return them to their native cultures.”
The Horizon Experiment: The Manchurian #1 will be out on Wednesday, September 25th from Image Comics.
