Hellboy creator Mike Mignola’s is creating a whole new “shared universe” of stories in comic book form with the help of writers and artist Ben Stenbeck.
This will be a new anthology comic series published by Dark Horse and it will be called Curious Objects. The first comic in the series is titled Bowling With Corpses and Other Strange Tales From Lands Unknown.
It will include a collection of strange folklore stories written and drawn by Mignola, along with his longtime collaborators colorist Dave Stewart and letterer Clem Robins. The universe will then expand with another comic created by Stenbeck.
In Bowling With Corpses and Other Strange Tales From Lands Unknown, “the stories are fantastical, odd and charming — from a search for the beating heart of a long-dead sorcerer, to a pirate girl who makes a deal with the devil, to the titular boy who wins a grim prize in a game with undead interlopers.”
It’s also explained that Curious Objects will focus on the folkloric elements in what Dark Horse calls its “weird, wicked, and whimsical stories.”
Mignola said in a statement: “It all started with an Italian Folktale about a boy who goes bowling with corpses. I fell in love with the story as soon as I discovered it but I wanted to play fast and loose when adapting it, so I created a whole new world.”
He added: “Not TOO different than our world a few centuries ago, but with a lot more gods and monsters. Once I created that world new characters and stories just started pouring out of it. There is a whole lot to play with here and I expect to be at it for a very long time.”
I love folklore and old legends and this sounds like a pretty cool and fascinating comic series that I’ll enjoy reading!
