So, did you see that Dark Horse is planning to reprint the Lanhkmar books? And reprint the old Epic comic adaptations? And that they have the movie license? And that they’re going to do some comic adaptations?
You can see how this came about: First, they are having a (surprising) success with the Conan comics, and they are actively searching for other properties to license.
Second, one of their most successful properties is Mike Mignola‘s Hellboy, which sells a lot of comics and which perhaps more importantly (from a bottom line perspective, but not from a creative one) has produced a successful feature film with at least one sequel on the way.
Third, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser have previously been adapted to comics, with the involvement of Mike Mignola. Also when White Wolf printed their lovely hardcovers of the Lanhkmar books a while back, Mignola did covers & internal illos for those. (I have a set of these HCs, by the way, and compiling it was not easy.)
Fourth, the books have been pretty much continuously in print forever, so publishing them is not exactly a bad risk. Add in the fact that reprinting the earlier Mignola comics means a lot of “free money”–it’s a reprint, so there are no costs to get the scripts of art, and they will sell a lot of copies to Mignola fans as well as whatever copies they could sell to Leiber fans. And, of course, some of those Mignola fans will become Lankhmar fans, and carry over into the new comic series. Oh, and there is that potential movie jackpot as well, of course.
Here’s some interesting bits from the press release:
Basically we will reprint the original [novels and collections], probably at the rate of three per year,” Richardson said in an interview. “Also, preceding that, we will be republishing [the 1991 Marvel Comics] comic [penciled by Mike Mignola and scripted by Howard Chaykin]. That will appear later this year, the entire series in book form.”
Dark Horse will also be launching a brand-new comic-book series for Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, which will feature graphic adaptations of the original Leiber stories, as well as original material.
I also found this unrelated-to-Lankhmar bit interesting:
Meanwhile, Dark Horse continues to pursue other properties. Richardson said that Dark Horse is working on a deal with Conan Properties, which would allow them to bring other famous Robert E. Howard characters into print in comic-book format and possibly in book format as well. “Characters like Solomon Kane and King Kull are on their way,” he said.
… primarily because I’ve always thought the Solomon Kane stuff was the best of R.E.H.‘s fantasy work. (Also, it has the most droolworthy-if-ridiculously-expensive-these-days collection.)
