Ben H. Winters Unveils Mind-Bending Sci-Fi Comic ‘Benjamin’ – A Must-Read!

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In high school, Ben H. Winters went to see Total Recall, a loud Arnold Schwarzenegger sci-fi action blockbuster directed by Paul Verhoeven. When he noticed it was based on a story by Philip K. Dick, he decided to seek it out and read it.

His reaction was one of “Whoa,” as he recalls. “So that’s where this stuff is coming from,” he thought. It became his gateway into classic and heady science fiction from not just Dick but authors such as Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlin, Kurt Vonnegut and others.

“The guys were preoccupied with the idea what it meant being humans, what is meant to be alive,” he notes. “All of these trippy and deep and unsettling questions of the human condition become folded into these wild stories.”

Now Winters is paying homage to these authors with Benjamin, a three-issue prestige limited comic book series from Oni Press, the publisher known for the Scott Pilgrim graphic novel series. Leomacs, who drew DC’s Joe Hill-penned horror mini-series Refrigerator Full of Heads, is the artist on the science fiction mystery title, whose first issue will hit stores June 18.

The tale tells of Benjamin J. Carp, a (fictional, it must be said) science fiction icon who wrote 44 novels and hundreds of shorts stories, including the counterculture classic The Man They Couldn’t Erase. His abuse of amphetamines and Southern California excess kept him from achieving mainstream success, and his career ended with his death in 1982.

In 2025, Carp awakens in a charred motel on the outskirts of Los Angeles. He recalls his death. He doubts his existence. Could he be a dream? An artificial entity? A spirit? A clone? A digital simulation? Carp contemplated these possibilities in his novels.

Cark will embark on a journey from Studio City to Venice Beach, continuing through the sprawling and paranoid landscape of modern-day Los Angeles. His mission is to unravel his biggest mystery yet – himself.

It occurred to him that a person who had dedicated their life and profession to these questions might pass away, only to return and unravel the enigma of their existence. He found this notion intriguing,” he explains.

“It’s my own fun and reverential of tone of these stories,” Winters continues. “Benjamin Carp is one of these writers like Dick, Ray Bradbury, Heinlein. It’s my way of tipping my hat as a contemporary writer to writers who dug into things we’re still digging into.”

Oni Press editor in chief Sierra Hahn describes the book as “rich, heartfelt, hilarious and at times tragic in its examination of one of the greatest diseases Americans are facing today: loneliness. I could nod put this script down, and then Leomacs brought the world to life in imaginative and exhilarating new ways.”

Winters’ prose work, specifically his The Last Policeman trilogy and revisionist history Underground Airlines, has won him an Edgar Award and, ironically, in light of this comic’s topic, a Philip K. Dick Award. He did TV work, working among other’s on FX’s Marvel series Legion, before going to create Tracker, the CBS procedural that has been the number one show on broadcast for the past two seasons. And while he has contributed a story or two to Oni’s reboot of the EC Comics anthology comics, Benjamin is his full-length comic debut.

When asked about his transition into comic writing, he explains that it combines the best aspects of both fiction and TV writing. He states, “It’s like directing while you write because you are visualizing the experience and deciding what each page will look like.

Check out a preview of some unlettered and uncolored interior pages and covers from Benjamin below.

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2025-03-17 23:38