Warren Ellis and Chris Sprouse’s Cult Sci-Fi Horror Classic OCEAN Returns to Print This Fall From Image Comics

The complete six-issue first-contact thriller heads back to shelves with a new Image Comics edition, bringing its frozen Europa mystery to a new generation of readers.

Some stories disappear for a while, then come back at exactly the right moment. Ocean, the cult science fiction horror thriller from writer Warren Ellis and artist Chris Sprouse, is returning to print this fall in a new trade paperback edition from Image Comics.

Originally published as a six-issue miniseries, Ocean will be collected in full for this new release, giving longtime fans another shot at owning the complete story while introducing new readers to one of the more unsettling first-contact tales of its era. With renewed public fascination around UFOs, deep space exploration and the possibility of life beyond Earth, the timing feels almost too perfect.

Ellis, known for work including Transmetropolitan, Trees and Netflix’s Castlevania, teams with Sprouse, whose credits include Tom Strong, Black Panther and Batman, for a story that begins with one of the coldest places imaginable and somehow manages to make it even more disturbing. The setup is simple, but nasty in all the right ways.

Jupiter’s moon Europa is sealed beneath a massive layer of ice. Under that frozen shell sits an enormous ocean, one of the most fascinating locations in the solar system for anyone wondering whether life might exist beyond Earth. In Ocean, researchers stationed in orbit around Europa discover something buried beneath the ice that absolutely should not be there. Thousands of coffins. Yeah. That’ll ruin your morning.

The discovery brings U.N. weapons inspector Nathan Kane to Europa to investigate exactly what the researchers have found and, more importantly, what might be waiting inside those coffins. Kane quickly learns that the scientific team is not the only group interested in what is sleeping beneath the Europan ocean, turning a mystery in deep space into a dangerous race for answers. What makes Ocean hit so damn hard is how simple the setup is, and how fast it gets under your skin. It mixes first-contact science fiction, corporate tension, political paranoia and straight-up cosmic dread without needing to throw a monster on every page. The fear comes from not knowing what is under the ice, why it is there, and what happens if somebody decides opening it is a good idea. Because somebody always decides opening it is a good idea.

Fans of Arrival and Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation should feel right at home here. Ocean plays in that same uncomfortable space where discovery and terror are sitting inches apart, and humanity’s curiosity becomes both its greatest strength and the thing most likely to get everybody killed. The new Ocean trade paperback, ISBN 9781534331266, is scheduled to arrive in comic book shops on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, followed by bookstores on Tuesday, November 24, 2026.

Readers will be able to find the collection through local comic shops and major book retailers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Indigo and Waterstones.

The collection will also be available digitally through platforms including Amazon Kindle, Google Play, Apple Books, Barnes & Noble Nook, Everand, Kobo, OverDrive, Hoopla, Comics Plus and additional digital services.

For readers who missed Ocean the first time around, this is one of those books where knowing less going in actually makes the ride better. A frozen moon, thousands of mysterious coffins and a bunch of people who absolutely cannot agree on what to do next? Fam, nothing good is coming out of that ice.

Ocean returns to comic shops October 28 and bookstores November 24 through Image Comics.

Learn more at Image Comics