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We announced my first two creator-owned comics titles at the San Diego Comic-con's Oni Press panel this past weekend. Newsarama has the details, but I wanted to elaborate a bit.

I've had a journey, from Marvel mainstay on both Spidey and X-books (if you remember these, wonderful, but I can't bring myself to flashback in this post), to horror movie Hollywood and back again. Oni seems to get what I'm about and what I'm trying to do. I've been blessed to have two incredibly talented co-conspirators and am ecstatic to bring my first original comics to the fore.

First up for me is GHOST PROJEKT (illustrated by Steve Rolston).

The story takes place in the former Soviet Union and revolves around the idea that during the Cold War, the Soviets experimented with all sorts of weapons of mass destruction, including the supernatural.

An American weapons inspector discovers a project that involved the Soviets trying to weaponize ghosts that "went horribly wrong," Harris said. It's due in late 2009 or early 2010.

The series will mark Steve's first color work for Oni and is going to be a tense, action-packed thriller with some very creepy moments of horror. I'm writing it now and can't wait to get this out.

The second title we announced is THE HASHISHIAN, an original graphic novel with former DC and Bat-books artist, Trevor McCarthy.

Harris said the name comes from a sect of assassins during the Crusades who were sent out to perform assassinations "drugged out of their minds," Harris said.

"But that's not exactly what our story is about," he added. It's about two Brooklyn stoners who find a magical stash of marijuana, and when they smoke it, "they have flashbacks to the 12th century where these characters were alive and well and doing their duty," he said. The owner of the pot, one of these 12th century assassins, shows up and hunts them down to reclaim his pot - later they learn he's there to assassinate the president.

I love stoner buddy movies in the Cheech and Chong tradition. I look forward to Pineapple Express like few others. But I've never seen anyone do with the genre what we're trying to pull off here. I've been describing this as a sort of "Harold & Kumar meets The Bourne Identity" with a serious action/adventure bent and some subversive politics thrown in for good measure to go along with the drug comedy.

I've had the idea for THE HASHISHIAN percolating in the back of my head for a very long time and I can't tell you how excited I am to finally be telling this story.