Oni Press revealed today a new three issue prestige format series from Eisner Award nominated writer Tyler Crook and artist Emily Schnall, sending two desperate teenagers into a Nevada Territory mine that is hiding something considerably worse than a disappointing ore yield. The Father, The Son, and the Holy Ghost Mine #1 lands in comic shops on February 3, 2027.
Set on the Western frontier in the mid 1800s, the story follows runaway orphans Buck and Toby, who leave behind the walls of the institution where they became brothers to chase their fortune at the Holy Ghost Mine, a silver stake deep in the Nevada hills. The dig is run by the eager but inexperienced Henry Gaines, acting on behalf of his father Harlan, who claims to have perfected a technique for extracting unusually pure silver. When the crew arrives at a mining camp sitting in the middle of a vast salt flat, they instead find empty barracks, a dead mine shaft, and a frantic Harlan desperate to send them away before it is too late.
“The Father, The Son, and the Holy Ghost Mine started with a simple question: what if, instead of selling your soul to the Devil, you found a way to sell other people’s souls?” Crook said in the announcement. “From there the story evolved to become an exploration of friendship, family and ambition.” Schnall, describing the book’s look, said she aimed to capture “the awe of all these vast, wild landscapes” along with “equal parts hopeful adventure and dread going into the Holy Ghost Mine.”
Oni Press is billing the three issue limited series, extra sized with 30 story pages per chapter, as a meeting point between the grim frontier of There Will Be Blood and the demonic bargain at the centre of The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus. Each cardstock covered issue will also include backmatter with process art and historical reference material. Covers are credited to Crook, Schnall, Anand RK and Noah Bailey, with a silver foil variant by Crook priced separately. Issue one carries a cover price of $6.99 for 40 pages.
No preview art had surfaced publicly as of this writing, so the eerie, salt flat dread Schnall describes will have to stay a matter of imagination until Oni Press shares pages closer to release.
