James Tynion IV's Tiny Onion Launches Its Own Publisher With Crying Eye Press

James Tynion IV's production company Tiny Onion already has its hands in a little bit of everything - creator-owned books running through Dark Horse, Dstlry, Image, and BOOM! Studios, a graphic novel line with Random House's Inklore imprint, and a recent first-look deal with Blumhouse Atomic for film and TV. Now it's adding one more lane: its own in-house press, called Crying Eye Press, led by Tiny Onion's design director Courtney Menard.

The debut release is Crumbs: A Very Bad Elf, a Christmas horror comic written by Tynion with art by Jensine Eckwall. The story actually started life as a shorter piece in Dstlry's holiday anthology Through the Boughs before getting expanded into its own standalone issue, with each original panel blown up to fill a full page. It previewed at New York Comic Con, and it's not going through comic shops at all - Crying Eye is selling it directly through Tiny Onion's own store, with gold foil stamping and gilded page edges.

Menard's pitch for why the press exists: it lets Tiny Onion sell boutique, direct-to-consumer books without stepping on the toes of the publishers it already works with, and without taking on the printing and shipping overhead of running a traditional small press. No other Crying Eye titles have been announced yet, but the studio is teasing more on the unsettling side of its catalog going forward - think cryptids, ghosts, and occult horror.

Source: Bleeding Cool