Oni; $4.99  

The Crownsville comic is a ghost story based on the real Crownsville Hospital, an all-Black psychiatric facility that opened early in the 20th century. For years, the hospital was known for overcrowding and neglecting patients, and there were rumors that patients were abused and put through illegal experiments.  

The comic begins when someone dies at the closed, abandoned hospital, and the death is ruled a suicide. Annapolis detective Mike Simms and journalist Paul Blairare consider the death suspicious and decide to the investigate the facility themselves. Meanwhile, the new night security guard has already been visited by the hospital’s ghosts and has gone missing.  

Killadelphia and The Boondocks writer Rodney Barnes is penning this comic about the Maryland psychiatric hospital that abused Black communities in Annapolis during the Jim Crow era. It provides the atmospheric scares of a ghost story with the real horrors of how underprivileged and people who are mentally ill were treated at the hospital.  

Artist Elia Bonetti illustrates the derelict hospital in near darkness, illuminating it only by Mike and Paul’s flashlights, and seamlessly blends the past and present through the coloring. It has significant shading and visible lines that mask some of the details and enhances the mystery. 

–Amanda Sheriff