Oni Press has hired a new Director of Marketing & Communications: Daniel Crary, former Director of Community Engagement & Events for Vault Comics.  Oni also announced that Matt Dryer, former Editor and Director of Digital Art & Prepress for Dark Horse, is coming on board as Editor, and Oni’s former Director of Marketing, Katie Sainz, has been promoted to Director of Sales, Book Market.

Crary joined Vault in 2022 and was a lead member of the publisher’s marketing and sales team, helping create the narrative around important titles such as Unnatural Order and reshaping its approach to conventions.  His key responsibility at Oni will be to coordinate marketing across all channels: the direct market, the book channel, and direct-to-consumer sales.

Dryer, who started at Dark Horse as an editorial intern and stayed with the company for 21 years, will work with Editor-in-Chief Sierra Hahn on Oni’s new line of original EC Comics (see “Oni to Launch New EC Comics Line”); the first title, Epitaphs from the Abyss #1, will be released in July 2024.  At Dark Horse Comics, Dryer edited Star Wars: Hyperspace Stories, Conan, and the Eisner-nominated Dwight T. Albatross’s The Goon Noir. Dryer, who has a BFA in Digital Illustration from Kendall College of Art and Design, was also an Adjunct Instructor at the Art Institute of Portland for several semesters.

Sainz started her career at Lion Forge as a Marketing Assistant in 2018 and was promoted to Assistant Marketing Manager in 2019 and then to Marketing Manager after Lion Forge merged with Oni (see “Lion Forge, Oni Press to Merge”), working on the launches of high-profile titles such as Maia Kobabe’s Gender Queer, Brenna Thummler’s Sheets, and Wendy Xu and Suzanne Walker’s Mooncakes.  She was promoted to Director of Marketing in April 2022, and in a 2023 interview, Oni President and Publisher Hunter Gorinson highlighted her contributions, saying, “She's our Director of Marketing, who also has a tremendous amount of experience and expertise in working with the book market, especially libraries, which is something she's incredibly passionate about.  She's been an exceedingly valuable voice as we continue to pay attention to that market, too” (see “ICv2 Interview: Hunter Gorinson and Sierra Hahn of Oni Press”).