Last week, I interview writer Ben H. Winters, writer of the upcoming comic miniseries Benjamin, debuting this summer from Oni Press. (You can read the whole interview here!) Benjamin follows the titular character, a counterculture science fiction writer who addressed the big questions of the nature of reality and who we really are. Benjamin ends up living his own musings when he wakes up in 2025 with clear memories of dying in 1982.
Joining Ben H. Winters is the brilliant artist Leomacs, who’ll bring all the modes of storytelling and emotion necessary to tell this sort of wondrously weird and introspective tale. I interviewed Leomacs recently about rendering the world of Benjamin, collaborating with Ben H. Winters, bringing emotion to a character in such a unique situation, and what he would do if he was in the protagonist’s predicament. As I said in my piece on Mr. Winters, Leomacs’ art is so surreal, but never at the expense of story and never without grounding the energy of the book with deep pathos. The preview pages of Benjamin alone give me a hitch in my chest that wants me to keep traveling further into this unsettling, gorgeous book.
Benjamin #1 cover B by Leomacs
FreakSugar: How did you become involved the book Benjamin?
Leomacs: I worked on some short stories published by Oni Press, one of which was scripted by Ben H. Winters, and I think they thought I was a good fit to draw Benjamin. I’m so glad they asked me because it’s great fun to draw!
FS: I asked this of Ben as well: Your preview art is so surreal and grounded at the same time. I’m in love with it. What is your collaboration like?
L: Thank you for your feedback here. The collaboration is actually really straightforward, I’m following the script that is so imaginative and on a practical level, for me, also very exhaustive and well written, so I just have to let my mind elaborate and create what is on the script. I guess when I send the pages over, if Ben has any notes, I just have to adjust things a little.
FS: Following up on that, how do you approach the scripts? How do you depict loneliness on the page that feels real without hitting you over the head with it?
L: Excellent question! I do a lot of prep work. A lot of character study. In this case I needed a face that could convey a large range of emotions. Ben was also very specific in the script, and that helps a great deal. Once I think I have nailed the facial features, and I realise I have a face that can emote all the ranges we need, I think about the poses, the gestures, mannerisms that help create the way a character communicates with body language as well as facial expressions. Loneliness is not necessarily harder or easier to draw than other expressions, because in comics you need to encapsulate a moment that is the before or after of something else and there is always a progression, while at the same time what you are looking at, in a single panel, is a fixed moment in time. I hope this makes sense. Loneliness needs some emptiness, before and after, I guess. So that space, that panel, when you see the depth of where the character’s mind has gone, feels real. It’s a beat in the narrative.
FS: I also asked this of Ben: If you woke up years after your death, with full knowledge of dying like Mr. Carp, what is the first thing you would do?
L: Well, that is a very scary thought. I would probably try to find my bearings and stay put as much as possible. Unlike Benjamin who lets his energy ooze out of him. After working out where and when I am, I’d probably try to find people from my family and try to work out why I am back. But really, that is a very scary thought.
FS: In the press release for the book, you talk about all of the things you’ve been able to explore while working on the comic: comedy, tragedy, bewilderment. What’s been your favorite part of working on the book so far?
L: I enjoy that this story is a bit trippy, it has some surreal moments, but it’s also grounded. So, it’s fun to draw someone who is laughing in a panel, and in the next he’s taken a licking for being so wild and is hugging the tarmac. This story has its own pace, its own rhythm.
FS: If you had a final pitch for Benjamin, what would it be?
L: Final as in there wouldn’t be any after this? Hmm…. How many lives can a man live, and how many times can a man die? Some might say many, even within a single lifetime, but someone else might like to take things rather literally.
Benjamin #1 goes on sale Wednesday, June 18, 2025, from Oni Press. Final order cutoff for issue #1 is Monday, May 26, 2025.
From the official press release about the series:
IN ONE L.A. MOTEL ROOM, A COSMIC QUEST IS ABOUT TO BEGIN… Oni Press, – the multiple Eisner and Harvey Award-winning publisher of groundbreaking comics and graphic novels since 1997 – is proud to reveal BENJAMIN #1 (of 3) – the FIRST ISSUE of an ALL-NEW, PRESTIGE FORMAT limited series from Edgar Award nominee and Philip K. Dick Award winner Ben H. Winters (EC’s Cruel Universe, The Last Policeman Trilogy) and rising star Leomacs (EC’s Epitaphs from the Abyss, Basketful of Heads) unraveling the mystery behind the inexplicable second life of the brilliant author who imagined our desperate future, but never imagined he’d become part of it . . .
“Winters and Leomacs have made the indie darling of the year with BENJAMIN–an off-beat adventure of an unlikely duo finding common ground over the pursuit of not only truth, but reality,” said Oni Press Editor-in-Chief Sierra Hahn. “It’s rich, heartfelt, hilarious and at times tragic in its examination of one of the greatest diseases Americans are facing today: loneliness. I could not put this script down and then Leomacs brought the world to life in imaginative and exhilarating new ways. We have something truly special here.”
More than just a writer, more than just a science-fiction icon, Benjamin J. Carp was a cultural revolutionary. Over the course of 44 novels and hundreds of short stories — including the counterculture classic The Man They Couldn’t Erase — Carp pushed the boundaries of literary respectability for the sci-fi genre and his readers’ perception of reality itself . . . until decades of amphetamine abuse and Southern California excess finally ended a mind-bending career that always just escaped mainstream success. He died in 1982.
Until 2025 . . . when Benjamin J. Carp awakens, alive, in a burned-out motel on the fringes of Los Angeles. He remembers dying. He knows he shouldn’t exist. Is he a dream? A robot? A ghost? A clone? A simulation? In his own time, Carp pondered all of these scenarios through his fiction—and, now, as he treks from Studio City to Venice Beach and onward into the paranoid sprawl of 21st-century Los Angeles, he will be called to investigate his greatest mystery yet: himself.
Ben H. Winters is the Edgar Award and Philip K. Dick Award-winning novelist of The Last Policeman trilogy and Underground Airlines, as well as the creator of CBS’s #1-rated hit television series Tracker and a former writer for FX’s acclaimed Marvel science-fiction series Legion. BENJAMIN will mark Winters’s full-length comics debut, fresh off his appearance as one of the principal writers behind Oni’s best-selling resurgence of the acclaimed EC Comics line, where he has been featured regularly in the pages of Cruel Universe, Shiver SuspenStories, and Cruel Kingdom.
“I grew up reading a lot of science fiction, writers like Philip K. Dick, Samuel Delany, William Gibson, all that gorgeously weird stuff,” said Winters. “I’ve always favored sci-fi that digs into the basic existential quandary of life—like, what are we doing here? How did we get here, and where do we go? I thought how fun and funny it might be, if a writer who had spent a career trying to figure out what existence means, woke up decades after his own death. Unless he’s a clone. Or a robot. Or a dream.”
“The result is quite literally a journey of self-discovery, although you should note that the fact that the character and I have the same name is just a coincidence,” Winters insisted. “BENJAMIN is a bit of a mystery story, a bit of a caper, and—believe it or not—a story of friendship. And/or violent death.”
“I love quirky and stimulating characters that allow me to draw a range of emotions and fun situations,” said Leomacs. “BENJAMIN is a treasure trove of emotions. Just imagine waking up one day and realising you shouldn’t be where you are because you shouldn’t even be alive. Benjamin is funny and tragic, he’s smart but needs to catch up with the world. Drawing Benjamin is creation as much as it is discovery and it’s incredibly fun to do!”
In the tradition of Philip K. Dick’s A SCANNER DARKLY and Thomas Pynchon’s INHERENT VICE comes a uniquely fascinating and hilariously deranged excursion into the metatextual nexus where existence and oblivion, past and future, genius and madness, and glitter and grim reality all meet just beyond Hollywood Boulevard.
Presented in a prestige, ad-free format with 30 pages of story content and premium cardstock covers on every issue, BENJAMIN #1 will materialize in comic shops everywhere on June 18, 2025 with hallucinatory covers by multiple Eisner Award winner Christian Ward (Batman: City of Madness, Spectregraph), acclaimed interior artist Leomacs (Joe Hill’s Refrigerator Full of Heads), and visionary artist Malachi Ward (Black Hammer Reborn).