From Sirens to Galaxies: The Wild Visuals of Omenana’s Issue 32

April 28, 2025

Omenana released Issue 32 on March 31, and while the stories are great, the images deserve real attention too.

For over a decade, Omenana has been pairing short fiction with visual art, and in that time, they’ve developed a signature feel. Some readers treat artwork in stories as simple decoration, an afterthought that just mirrors what’s already in the text. That’s fine. But those who know, know: the graphic work is its own act of world-building. It does serious work in storytelling. It sets mood, carries emotional weight, and sometimes hints at ideas or tensions that the story only brushes against. The visuals are linked to the story, but they also open their own space — building a world that is connected but not contained by the words.

All of this is to say: with Issue 32, Omenana came correct. Omenana has an in-house graphic designer Godson ChukwuEmeka Okeiyi, who may have worked on these images.

The visual mood strange and urgent. There’s a woman facing off against a blood-streaked figure with a knife in hand. A spaceship cutting across a wild, purple-blue galaxy. A little boy and girl running through a sunlit forest, with hidden eyes watching from the bushes. A smoky ghost choking a man in an office. A forest scene where two people fight their way out of water. A fiery battlefield where two warriors, one with a metal arm, stand in the flames. And in the most surreal image, a sad clown in traditional beads watches a woman in a headwrap roll her suitcase out of a room.

Each image conveys the speed and chaos that sci-fi, fantasy, and horror are known for. But the collection also moves across moods. Some images are funny, some are eerie, some just plain strange. See below for the images and the stories they anchor.

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Firstborn | Tehila Okagbue | Read

A young girl discovers that the strange marks on her face are signs of a dangerous power she’s only beginning to understand.

Keywords: awakening, power, otherworld

Ne’za’s Yearning | Eugene Bacon | Read

A being is caught between the world of her monstrous family and the human world she secretly longs to join.

Keywords: belonging, alienation, identity

Sirens | Afolabi Adekaiyaoja | Read

A rookie hunter sets out to capture one of the deadly, alluring creatures rumored to haunt the local forests.

Keywords: seduction, hunger, rivalry

Where There’s Smoke | Chyna Cassell | Read

In a future Liberia scorched by climate engineering and corruption, a determined intern at the Ministry of Environmental Initiatives uncovers a dangerous political secret.

Keywords: climate catastrophe, corruption, resistance