Romance, obsession and horror will collide again in EC Comics’ Tortured Hearts 2 #1, a 56-page anthology one-shot due on January 27, 2027. Priced at $8.99, the full-color comic is positioned just ahead of Valentine’s Day, using the holiday’s familiar language of devotion, heartbreak and courtship as raw material for bloody horror stories.
Oni Press is continuing its newer EC Comics publishing line with the issue, which follows the first Tortured Hearts anthology. That earlier volume arrived in February 2026 and collected short-form horror centered on romance, violence and fixation. The sequel retains that anthology approach rather than functioning as a conventional serialized chapter: readers should expect a selection of separate stories united by their Valentine’s-adjacent premise and EC-inspired horror sensibility.
A new group of creators for a romance-gone-wrong anthology
The writing roster for Tortured Hearts 2 includes Michael W. Conrad, Melissa Flores, Sarah Gailey and Malachi Ward. The announced artists are Jenna Cha, Ryan Kelly and Sami Kivelä, while the issue’s formal solicitation credits “Ryan Kelly, & more” for the interior art. That means the confirmed lineup establishes several major contributors, though it leaves room for further artistic credits within the anthology.
An anthology format matters here. Rather than asking one creative team to sustain a single plot across a whole miniseries, it gives several teams room to approach the same broad idea from different angles. Romance horror can encompass jealousy, betrayal, unwanted devotion, revenge, destructive relationships and the terror of a person refusing to let go. The stated framing for this book leans directly into those possibilities, promising tales about lovelorn characters, jilted romantics and relationships turned violently unstable.
That creates a deliberately sharp contrast with the holiday timing. Valentine’s Day marketing usually treats hearts, flowers and affection as safe symbols. Tortured Hearts 2 instead treats the heart as an anatomical object as much as an emblem of love, and its promotional description signals graphic, splatter-oriented material. Prospective readers should therefore read the premise as adult-leaning horror rather than a darkly cute seasonal special.
What “EC” means in this context
EC Comics is a name associated with influential mid-20th-century American horror comics. Oni Press has revived the banner for new comics, including one-shots and series that draw on the style and traditions connected with the original publisher. In practical terms, that heritage points to genre stories built for impact: morally messy characters, heightened consequences, shocks, and a willingness to push a setup toward a nasty outcome.
That does not mean every new EC-branded book is a literal recreation of an older comic. Tortured Hearts 2 is a contemporary anthology with current creators, new material and a distinctly seasonal hook. The useful expectation is one of tone and format, not a claim that the issue will reproduce a particular historical formula panel for panel. The appeal is in watching modern writers and artists work within a horror-comics tradition where irony, melodrama and gruesome payoffs can all fit in the same short story.
The previous Tortured Hearts included a restored classic EC story alongside its newer contributions. That detail may interest readers who value a bridge between archival material and newly commissioned work. However, no comparable reprint has been specified for Tortured Hearts 2. It is best to treat a classic-story inclusion as unconfirmed, rather than assuming the second volume will duplicate every element of the first.
Readers looking for another comics-focused item on the site can also see the coverage of Rachael Smith’s Nap Comix: First Steps collection, a very different kind of anthology-adjacent comics project focused on collected parenthood strips rather than horror.
Cover choices and what the listed variants mean
Tortured Hearts 2 #1 will have several cover options:
- Cover A by Dustin Weaver
- Cover B by Reiko Murakami
- EC Homage Variant by Shawn McManus, listed as a 1:10 variant
- Black-and-white Artist Edition Variant of Weaver’s cover, listed as a 1:20 variant
- Archive Edition Variant by Patricia Martín, listed as a 1:50 variant
For comics buyers, the ratios are the key practical distinction. A 1:10 incentive variant generally means a retailer’s ordering quantity is tied to access to one copy of that variant at a ten-to-one ratio. The listed 1:20 and 1:50 editions are tied to higher ratios. This can affect how easily individual comic shops can stock them and may influence the price a store sets for a variant, but the ratios themselves do not establish a guaranteed resale value, print run or condition.
The cover labels also describe different creative intentions. An EC Homage variant suggests artwork designed to evoke the visual identity associated with classic EC material. An Artist Edition is identified here as a black-and-white presentation of Weaver’s cover art, emphasizing linework over the standard full-color presentation. The Archive Edition is a separate Patricia Martín variant. Beyond those names and artists, details such as paper stock, exact cover imagery, allocation practices and final shop pricing have not been provided.
For readers who simply want the stories, Cover A and Cover B are the clearest standard starting points in the announced lineup. For cover-focused buyers, it is worth asking a preferred comic shop about its ordering plans early, especially for the ratio variants. That is not a prediction of scarcity or demand; it is a straightforward consequence of retailer incentive covers being connected to order thresholds rather than being ordinary open-order editions.
Why the January release window fits the format
The January 27 on-sale date places the issue only a few weeks before Valentine’s Day. For a 56-page one-shot, that timing gives the book an obvious seasonal identity without requiring readers to commit to an ongoing monthly series. It can work as a self-contained horror pickup for the holiday period, whether someone is following the revived EC line closely or simply wants an anthology whose premise is built around romance taking a grim turn.
It also separates the comic from the usual idea of a Valentine’s gift. The promotional framing is intentionally anti-romantic: troubled relationships are not repaired, and love imagery is redirected toward gore, severance and vengeance. That makes the book’s pitch unusually direct. The attraction is not mystery about whether it will be horror, but curiosity about how each creative team will interpret its shared brief.
What remains unknown is just as useful to note. No story titles, page allocations, complete interior-artist list or detailed synopses have been announced. There is also no stated confirmation of a restored archival EC feature. Readers can confidently plan around the format, date, price, principal writers, announced artists and covers, but should avoid filling the gaps with assumptions based on the 2026 volume.
Release details at a glance
- Title: EC Tortured Hearts 2 #1
- Format: One-shot horror anthology
- On sale: January 27, 2027
- Price: $8.99
- Length: 56 pages
- Color: Full color
- Writers: Michael W. Conrad, Melissa Flores, Sarah Gailey and Malachi Ward
- Announced artists: Jenna Cha, Ryan Kelly and Sami Kivelä
- Publisher: Oni Press under the EC Comics banner
With a new creative roster, a broad short-horror format and five announced cover treatments, Tortured Hearts 2 is shaping up as a compact seasonal horror anthology rather than a continuation that demands prior reading. The first book supplies the clearest precedent—contemporary stories of romance and violence, filtered through EC’s horror lineage—but the sequel’s individual stories and full contents are still being held back. For now, the essential date for readers and retailers is January 27, 2027.
