NEWS
IMAGE BRINGS TWO WILDSTORM TITLES BACK TO PRINT
‘Ocean’ and ‘Automatic Kafka’
Posted by Brigid Alverson on August 5, 2026 @ 9:57 pm CT
Image Comics will publish new collections of series originally published by Wildstorm: Ocean, by Warren Ellis and Chris Sprouse, and Automatic Kafka, by Joe Casey and Ashley Wood.
Ocean, a science fiction story with horror and thriller elements, was originally conceived as a film script and then as a graphic novel but was eventually published as a six-issue series in 2004. The story follows a weapons inspector who visits Europa, the moon of Jupiter, and finds danger beneath the ice that encases it. Wildstorm published a trade paperback in 2005, collecting all six issues, and Vertigo combined it with another Ellis title, Orbiter, in a hardcover graphic novel published in 2015. Image will release the new edition as a 176-page paperback on October 28 in the direct market and November 24 in bookstores with an MSRP of $16.99.
The screen rights to Ocean were optioned in 2007 by Gianni Nunnari and Nick Wechsler, the producers of 300 and Ronin, respectively (see “‘Ocean’ Gets Optioned”).
Automatic Kafka, first published in 2002, was a sardonic take on the superhero genre, featuring an android who was formerly part of a superhero team and now wanders a dystopian world searching for ways to be human. Originally published as nine issues, it is being collected for the first time by Image. The 224-page paperback will be released on November 25 in comic stores and December 22 in the book channel with an MSRP of $19.99.
“This is a series that meant a lot, both for my career and for me, personally,” Casey said in a statement accompanying the announcement. “It was my biggest swing in comic books at that time, and laid the foundation for a lot of my work that came after.”
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brigid Alverson
Contributing Editor. Alverson has been writing about comics since she launched MangaBlog in 2005. She wrote the Comics A.M. column for Robot 6 (now part of CBR), and currently edits the Good Comics for Kids blog at School Library Journal. In her earlier life, she had roles at magazine and book publishers.
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