Portland, the mid-1990s slump and a list built on books the founders wanted to read, 1997–2004.

Oni Press was started in Portland, Oregon, in 1997 by Joe Nozemack and Bob Schreck. Wikipedia says the pair set out to publish comics and graphic novels they would want to read themselves, in the belief that sequential art could tell almost any kind of story. The name is a borrowing from Japan: Wikipedia, citing the company’s own FAQ, says it comes from oni, the ogre demons of Japanese folklore.

Nozemack described the starting point in an interview with Willamette Week, published by Jay Horton on 11 January 2018 as the company marked its twentieth anniversary. He said he was working in retail at the time, after the mid-1990s slump in comics, when the medium was treated as a collectible and dominated by superheroes. He still thought comics were a strong storytelling form, and said the aim was to make the books he thought should exist: “not too arty and alternative but also not so heavy-genre and nerd.” He told the paper he had been just as keen from the start to publish children’s comics, even though he did not read them himself, and that lead roles for female characters had been a deliberate plan.

The partnership changed twice in the opening years. Wikipedia says Schreck left in 1999, leaving the company owned by Nozemack and the editor Jamie S. Rich, and that after Rich left in 2004 Oni was owned by Nozemack, James Lucas Jones and Charlie Chu. Wikipedia also records that the company described its subject matter with the phrase “real mainstream”, a term coined by Stephen L. Holland of the UK comic shop Page 45, meaning thrillers, romance and realistic drama of the kind found in other media, and that Oni largely kept away from superhero titles.

Film, a new imprint, a twentieth year and a merger with Lion Forge, 2005–2019.

Screen work became a strand of the business. Willamette Week listed the films Whiteout, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Atomic Blonde as based on Oni books, the last adapted from the original graphic novel The Coldest City, and Nozemack said Scott Pilgrim was the project on which Oni was involved as a producer. Wikipedia says the company’s Los Angeles film and television unit, Closed on Mondays, was headed by Eric Gitter until the two sides parted in 2015, after which Oni set up Oni Entertainment. In 2016 it added Limerence Press, an imprint for adult and sex-education comics.

Licensing was approached through the people behind each property. Nozemack told Willamette Week that Oni preferred working with creators directly, citing a book built with Stephen Colbert from a comedy sketch about an unpublished science fiction novel, Invader Zim with Jhonen Vasquez, and Rick and Morty, for which Jones said Oni asked Justin Roiland and Dan Harmon whether they wanted comics before approaching Cartoon Network. The same interview marked a handover: Jones was moving from editor-in-chief to publisher in 2018, and Wikipedia says Nozemack became founder and chief financial officer in a January 2018 reorganisation.

The merger came a year later. ICv2 reported on 8 May 2019 that Polarity, the parent of the St. Louis publisher Lion Forge, was merging Lion Forge with Oni, that Polarity would own a majority share of the combined company, and that the Oni team, without Nozemack, would run publishing from Portland. ICv2 said Polarity had been set up by Lion Forge chief executive David Steward II and that its president Edward Hamati arranged the deal; it quoted Nozemack saying Oni was started “to publish comics and graphic novels that would appeal to a diverse group of readers.” Wikipedia says the merged business is the Oni–Lion Forge Publishing Group and that Lion Forge, founded in 2011 by Steward and Carl Reed, became a largely dormant name while Oni stayed in front. Polarity has owned a majority of Oni since 2019.

A three-letter word from Japanese folklore, kept through a merger.

In European comics, much of a publisher’s identity is carried by the album itself. A series usually appears as a run of hardback volumes of the same size, with a number on the cover and the spine, so that a reader can see at a glance which volume comes next and where the gaps are. Shelved side by side, those spines form a band of repeated elements: the series title, the volume number and a small publisher mark, often in the same position from one book to the next. Over years of publication, that row becomes a kind of signage, and changing the spine design halfway through a series is a decision that readers notice. Collected editions and anniversary reissues then add a second layer, with a different trim, a slipcase or a uniform cover treatment that sets them apart from the original volumes.

Imprints extend the same logic across a whole catalogue. A house that publishes children’s albums, adult graphic novels, translated manga and illustrated books will often give each line its own name, symbol and spine style, so that booksellers can file them in the right section and readers can follow a collection rather than a single title. In a bookshop, the mark has to work in one colour, at a few millimetres, beside artwork that changes with every cover. At a comics festival or trade fair, the same mark is scaled up on banners, signing tables and catalogues. For designers, the useful approach is to treat the publisher mark, the imprint marks and the spine grid as one system, planned for both the shelf and the stand.

New leadership, new imprints and a new distributor ahead of a thirtieth year.

The current leadership took shape after 2022. Wikipedia says Hunter Gorinson was appointed publisher and president of the group in December 2022 and that Sierra Hahn became editor-in-chief in February 2023. Publishers Weekly, reporting on 8 October 2025, described David Steward II as chairman of the Oni–Lion Forge Publishing Group and chief executive of Polarity, and noted that Oni had relaunched EC Comics in 2024.

The list widened again in 2025 and 2026. The same Publishers Weekly report said the writer and cartoonist Matt Kindt was moving his Flux House imprint from Dark Horse to Oni, that Oni had acquired film and television rights to more than 20 Flux House properties, and that the Oni line would start in June 2026 with Mind MGMT: New and Improved #1, followed by Fort Psycho in August and the anthology Flux House Presents in November. SmashPages reported on 18 December 2025 that Oni and Archie Comics had agreed a partnership under which Oni would publish new comics, collections and graphic novels with the Archie characters from fall 2026, edited by Hahn, opening with Archie in September.

Distribution changed hands as well. ComicsXF, in a report by Dan Grote on 4 February 2026, said Penguin Random House would become Oni’s exclusive comic and book distributor from 1 August 2026, replacing Lunar Distribution, which Oni had used for comics since December 2021, and Simon & Schuster for books. It quoted Gorinson describing a mission to bring “creator-driven comics and graphic novels to readers wherever they can be found”, and said Oni would celebrate its 30th anniversary in 2027.

For a design guide, Oni Press shows how a three-letter name taken from Japanese folklore can stay at the front of a business through changes of partner, a merger with a larger group and a run of imprints from Limerence to Flux House and EC Comics. Compare Dark Horse Comics, another Portland-area publisher founded by one person with a retail background, and Archie Comics, whose characters move to the Oni list in 2026. For this guide we use oni vermilion, indigo ink and rice paper with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Oni Press’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.