Benjamin

by Ben H. Winters, Leomacs (Illustrator)

IN ONE L.A. MOTEL ROOM, A COSMIC QUEST IS ABOUT TO BEGIN . . . 
More than just a writer, more than just a science-fiction icon, Benjamin J. Carp was a cultural revolutionary. Over the course of 44 novels and hundreds of short stories—including the counterculture classic The Man They Couldn’t Erase—Carp pushed the boundaries of literary respectability for the sci-fi genre and his readers’ perception of reality itself . . . until decades of amphetamine abuse and Southern California excess finally ended a mind-bending career that always just escaped mainstream success. He died in 1982.

Until 2025 . . . when Benjamin J. Carp awakens, alive, in a burned-out motel on the fringes of Los Angeles. He remembers dying. He knows he shouldn’t exist. Is he a dream? A robot? A ghost? A clone? A simulation? In his own time, Carp pondered all of these scenarios through his fiction—and now, as he treks from Studio City to Venice Beach and onward into the paranoid sprawl of 21st-century Los Angeles, he will be called to investigate his greatest mystery himself. 

From Edgar Award nominee and Philip K. Dick Award winner Ben H. Winters (EC’s Cruel Universe, The Last Policeman trilogy) and rising star Leomacs (EC’s Epitaphs from the Abyss, Ghostlore) comes a uniquely fascinating and hilariously deranged excursion into the metatextual nexus where existence and oblivion, past and future, genius and madness, and glitter and grim reality all meet just beyond Hollywood Boulevard.

Genres: Comics

Kindle Edition

Expected publication March 10, 2026

About the author

Ben H. Winters is the author most recently of the novel The Quiet Boy (Mulholland/Little, Brown, 2021). He is also the author of the novel Golden State; the New York Times bestselling Underground Airlines; The Last Policeman and its two sequels; the horror novel Bedbugs; and several works for young readers. His first novel, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters, was also a Times bestseller. Ben has won the Edgar Award for mystery writing, the Philip K. Dick award in science fiction, the Sidewise Award for alternate history, and France’s Grand Prix de L’Imaginaire.

Ben also writes for film and television. He is the creator and co-showrunner of Tracker, forthcoming on CBS. Previously he was a producer on the FX show Legion, and on the upcoming Apple TV+ drama Manhunt.

He has contributed short stories to many anthologies, as well as in magazines such as Lightspeed. He is the author of four “Audible Originals”– Stranger, Inside Jobs, Q&A, and Self Help — and several plays and musicals. His reviews appear frequently in the New York Times Book Review. Ben was born in Washington, D.C., grew up in Maryland, educated in St. Louis, and then grew up a bunch more, in various ways, in places like Chicago, New York, Cambridge, MA, and Indianapolis, IN. These days he lives in LA with his wife, three kids, and one large dog.

Reviews

[Suki J · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank you Oni Press and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review.

4.5 stars.

Benjamin J. Carp is a cult sci-fi writer who died in the 1980s and then finds himself mysteriously resurrected in 2025. He enlists an unsuspecting man named Marcus to help him discover who and what he is, and his purpose.
What follows is mind-bending at times, and I can't say I understood every moment, but it didn't matter. It was such a fun journey, strangely heart-warming, and hilarious.
I'm really glad I picked this up, and would definitely recommend for lovers of trippy sci-fi graphic novels!

[Alex Sarll]

Benjamin J Carp, a cult writer (though he hates the term) with a style and back catalogue suspiciously reminiscent of Philip K Dick, awakes in a motel room, sees people walking around with devices out of his stories, and learns that the world believes he died decades previously. So he drags Marcus, a directionless employee at said motel, into finding out the hidden truth behind this bizarre turn of events. It's lively enough, and at three issues doesn't outstay its welcome, but the minute you stop to think about it, it all feels as flimsy as one of its own fake realities. Trying to out-meta PKD on his own turf is a losing game; playing up the solipsistic side of his hunt for ultimate reality has an obvious appeal in an age when conspiracy madness is mainstream, but at one and the same time Carp has some of Dick's worst edges sanded off, is A Lot rather than an outright menace, and his books seem to offer much more definite answers than the hall of mirrors into which Dick so often leads the reader. When it plays for laughs, it does get some, but never on the level of Steve Aylett's more lightly Dick-influenced (Dickfluenced?) Lint. Even bringing Dick back from the dead was already done, years back and without the changed name, by the late Michael Bishop. And at the end of it all, there's the sappiest resolution I ever did see, whose jarring handbrake turn from what came before seems to be deliberate, but that isn't enough to make it satisfy. Leomacs' art nicely balances trippiness with McKelvie-esque face acting, but writer Winters should be very grateful for Alien: Earth, simply because it saves this from being the most disappointed I've been by a Legion alumnus lately.

(Netgalley ARC)

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is one story to make your brain hurt! Or you can just do as I did, sit back, read on, and enjoy the ride.

That’s the attitude needed as you take this journey through an author’s writing. (Benjamin’s that is, not the comic’s author Ben H Winters.) Or is it the soon to be, maybe not, book/life of a hotel clerk? I really don’t know!

It was a fun ride either way. But my head now needs time to recover.

By the way, I didn’t quite understand the end. If I had maybe it would have been 5 stars. I suppose it doesn’t matter. I chose to exist, I was there. I survived. I smiled.

Thank you to ONI Press and NetGalley for this experience, and giving me the comic ARC. The views expressed are all mine, freely given.

[Chris · Rating 4 out of 5]

It’s a really fun, reality warping mini series by novelist Ben H Winters. To say too much would spoil it but there’s shades of Milligan’s Profane here along with some good oddball humour. It’s not perfect as doesn’t quite stick the landing, but it’s above average entertainment in a saturated market. Leomacs is terrific as always.

[doowopapocalypse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Arc from netgalley.

I don't know that I loved it. It just seemed to peter out and never really build up a head of steam.