If you’re looking for a little escapism this summer (let’s be honest, we ALL want to escape this timeline…!) look no further than the next stunning installment in Oni Press’ summer 2025 graphic novel lineup, ‘Meat Eaters’ – a punishing and poignant original graphic novel about the monsters that lurk both in the darkness beyond—and within us all, landing in stores on July 8.
From acclaimed cartoonist and illustrator Meredith McClaren (‘Black Cloak’, ‘Heart In A Box’, ‘Hopeless Savages’, and ‘Super Fun Sexy Times’), ‘Meat Eaters’ follows the Blood-Soaked Story of a Newly Undead 19-Year-Old. Let it be said that dying is rough. Nineteen-year-old Ashley Moore found this out the hard way.
All Ashley wanted was to keep her head down and work hard until she could escape the small town where she felt she was stagnating. But after waking up one night covered in blood—and irrevocably dead—Ashley finds her foolproof plan for getting out has gone up in smoke, and something within her has changed.
Without a heartbeat and with a disturbing craving for fresh—preferably bloody—meat, Ashley finds herself privy to a world that exists just beneath our own: a world of ghouls and monsters and things that go bump-in-the-night.
Despite her desire to be left alone—and to not think about the night of her death at all—Ashley is slowly drawn into the realm of the unusual, getting advice from ancient vampires, dodging angry pack leaders, and becoming the reluctant big sister to werewolves Motley and Harrison. (It’s giving us ‘Nightbitch’ meets ‘Twilight’ vibes, IYKYK!)
As she does, she finds it increasingly difficult to put away the parts of herself she wishes to ignore—namely, what happened that fateful night she stopped breathing. The truth, it turns out, can’t stay buried forever.
“’Meat Eaters’ is an ode to all the teen horror television I lovingly consumed over the years,” said Meredith in a press statement. “Where there are bad things in the world, sometimes they hurt you, and sometimes that makes you change in ways you do not like.”
She also spoke about writing Ashley’s newly developed eating habits and why this was a fun part of the creative process for her.
“I play a little loose with the ghouls in ‘Meat Eaters’. Ashley can eat anything that’s already dead, whether she scavenges it or makes it that way. And raw. Cooked meat does nothing. I think those are the only two rules. We find out later that there is only one substitute for the ‘blood’ aspect of things, but it’s not going to cover everything. She’s not getting away from her new diet that way,” she said.
Diet fads and changing your eating habits are pretty common traits in teenagers, but in this comic we see it from an entirely new an more gruesome perspective, which Meredith hopes will also be relatable, as it was for her.
“I feel for Ashley a lot right here. I have a weird relationship to food too sometimes. Like, I will LOVE something for months and then suddenly can’t touch it again for years. Funnily enough, it never occurred to me that she could just eat sushi forever. I have a hard time seeing myself getting tired of salmon. …Maybe a future story, if I get to touch on Ashley’s UNlife again.”
In this visceral story about the effects of trauma and anxiety, dying is indeed hard. But getting on with it? That can be worse. Want to see some exclusive inserts of the comic before it hits stores on July 8? Scroll on below. You can also follow Meredith on Tumblr and Patreon to see more of her work.
