Multi-hyphenate writer-comedian-actor-musician Dave Hill (Tasteful Nudes) and breakout artist Artyom Topilin (I Hate This Place) have a treat for comic readers in the form of Dark Regards, the “shockingly true, terrifyingly hilarious and only modestly exaggerated” tale of how one stand-up comedian almost broke the Internet and started an international incident that almost wiped Gary, Indiana, off the map. Intrigued? You should be, and we've got an exclusive excerpt of the entire first chapter of the graphic novel to celebrate the soft cover officially landing in stores today, March 25.
Dark Regards is inspired by Hill's actual email exchanges with a Norwegian black metal record label some years back in which he “pretended to be a teenager named Lance who had an extremely extreme black metal band called Witch Taint while also working at Subway and living with his mother.” Legend.
A full logline reads:
Two decades ago, Dave Hill and his first band set out to rock their high school auditorium in a fury of heavy metal hellfire. They failed miserably. Years later, Dave has made a new life for himself as a rising star in the New York comedy scene—a career where getting laughed at on stage is the entire point and not just a tragic consequence. But when Dave’s metal ambitions are reawakened by the über self-serious “satanic” genre of Norwegian black metal, Dave creates a ridiculously hyperbolic alter ego and a band to match that, together, reignite the spark of his forgotten rock ’n’ roll fantasy.
But when Dave’s internet-fueled rumors of Witch Taint—a metal band “so extreme that you must remove all sharp objects from the immediate area” when their music is played—spreads all the way to Europe, his story will spiral dangerously out of control as Norway’s most extreme black metal butchers come to reap their revenge . . . and put everything and everyone Dave holds dear in the crosshairs (of their axes, which, truth be told, don’t actually have crosshairs, but hey, it’s a metaphor).
Dark Regards soft cover goes on sale today via Oni Press. Strap in and scroll on on for our official reveal of the first issue.
