First Look: EC Comics’ OUTLAW SHOWDOWN #1 Paints the Town Red in October!
Oni Press Proudly Presents a Look at the First in an All-New Series of Giant-Sized, 56-Page EC Comics Genre Specials – Featuring John Arcudi, Christopher Cantwell, David Lapham, Tony Moore, Ann Nocenti & More!
COVER A BY LEE BERMEJO
PORTLAND, OR (August 27, 2025) - 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 present your first look inside EC OUTLAW SHOWDOWN #1 – a 56-page slab of sawdust celebrating revenge and retribution on the lawless frontiers of the Old West, as told in the immortal EC Comics tradition! The first in a new series of super-sized EC Comics genre specials – from prehistoric survival to crime and punishment in epochs far beyond our own – OUTLAW SHOWDOWN #1 is 56 pages of hot lead and cold hearts … so place your wagers before Oni Press and EC Comics paint comic shops everywhere blood red on October 22nd!
Gunfighters, scoundrels, butchers, and bandits—they’ll all join us here to draw down on fate itself as coffin-bound creators John Arcudi (B.P.R.D.), Sebastián Cabrol (The Seasons Have Teeth), Christopher Cantwell (Out of Alcatraz), David Lapham (Stray Bullets), Tony Moore (The Walking Dead), Dan McDaid (Shazam!), and Ann Nocenti (Daredevil), rain hellfire and fury from the holsters on their hip.
Here, for the first time, Oni Press and EC Comics can reveal a peek through the saloon doors to what awaits inside OUTLAW SHOWDOWN #1 with a sly gander at two surefire-hit stories: “Fire in the Hole” by Eisner Award nominee Tony Moore and “The Cure” by comic legends Ann Nocenti & David Lapham.
Plus: As if you need any more gold to add to your ledger… Saddle up for a newly remastered and authentically restored tale from the EC Comics vaults by EC icons Harvey Kurtzman and Jack Davis—authentically restored back to the closest possible approximation of its original coloring for the first time in seven decades by colorist Iñaki Azpiazu!
On October 22nd, OUTLAW SHOWDOWN #1 fires on all cylinders with a wanted-dead-or-alive cast of the coldest cover artists this side of the Mississippi, including Lee Bermejo (Joker), Tony Moore (The Walking Dead), Ladrönn (Cable), Shawn McManus (Fables), and Rian Hughes (The Multiversity)! A blood-stained, power-burned milestone in EC history awaits this October – only in OUTLAW SHOWDOWN #1!
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EC OUTLAW SHOWDOWN #1
WRITTEN BY JOHN ARCUDI, CHRISTOPHER CANTWELL, TONY MOORE, ANN NOCENTI & MORE
ART BY SEBASTIÁN CABROL, DAVID LAPHAM, DAN McDAID, TONY MOORE & MORE
COVER A BY LEE BERMEJO
COVER B BY TONY MOORE
COVER C BY LADRÖNN
EC HOMAGE VARIANT (1:10) BY SHAWN McMANUS
B&W ARTIST EDITION VARIANT (1:20) BY TONY MOORE
B&W ARCHIVE EDITION VARIANT (1:50) BY RIAN HUGHES
BLANK SKETCH VARIANT AVAILABLE
ON SALE OCTOBER 22nd, 2025 | $8.99 | 56 PAGES | FC
IOC: 8/30/2025
FOC: 9/29/2025
“FIRE IN THE HOLE” INTERIORS BY TONY MOORE
“FIRE IN THE HOLE” INTERIORS BY TONY MOORE
“FIRE IN THE HOLE” INTERIORS BY TONY MOORE
“FIRE IN THE HOLE” INTERIORS BY TONY MOORE
“THE CURE” INTERIORS BY DAVID LAPHAM
“THE CURE” INTERIORS BY DAVID LAPHAM
“THE CURE” INTERIORS BY DAVID LAPHAM
“THE CURE” INTERIORS BY DAVID LAPHAM
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 & 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 10 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 the long-running 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 70 years.