2026 will be the year Monster Forge Productions explodes. As founder Shannon Eric Denton has been pulling back some of his past work to form a solid back catalog, new titles keep tumbling forth through established publishers and crowdfunding. (Sometimes both.) Today, Monster Forge Productions launches the book on Zoop I should have guessed would happen: Forge of Monsters.
Created by a powerhouse lineup of legendary comic talent, this bold new series delivers chilling tales and mythologies, and introduces an original cast of monstrous heroes set to carve out their legend in the ever-expanding Monster Forge Universe. And it’s paired with two additional titles: Hunters — a gritty prequel set during the building of the U.S. railroad, (art by E.J. Su) and Atlantean — a standalone graphic novella plunging readers into a mythic underground nightmare as really only Mike Dubisch can delineate.
Though Shannon has many collaborators involved with this, the inevitability comes from knowing he loves monsters and pulp heroes in almost equal measure. The upcoming Kraken from Titan Comics serves as a testament to that. And at our Comic-Con panel this summer, Shannon clarified there were more stories to be told in that world. Let us not be surprised that an entire Monster Forge Universe has dawned, and let me foretell that it will be brave, bold, frightening, and fun.
“Millennia ago, an ancient society existed. In the dominion of Hypothrexia, a ruling class of sorcerers communed with powerful, otherworldly, chaotic forces. In an effort to control these powers, the sorcerers created a terrible artifact that could summon and harness the ungodly essence of these entities — a MONSTER FORGE.
But such energies are not meant to be controlled. The frenzied, berserk backlash ripped their world apart, killed the dinosaurs, brought about the Ice Age, shifted the continents, and birthed a new world.
Over countless eons, the Monster Forge was forgotten — but it is still out there, hidden, buried, hemorrhaging dark energies that have influenced the world ever since. Forgotten by all but the most sinister of cults…
Until now.”
In addition to Su (Blood & Thunder) and Dubisch (The Adventures of Professor Dario Bava), the powerhouse collaborators on this first anthology include Bret Blevins (New Mutants), Rick Hoberg (X-Men: The Animated Series), Roger Robinson (Batman), Mike Manley (Darkhawk), Steven E. Gordon (X-Men: Evolution), and Roy Burdine (Spider-Man). Forge of Monsters also marks the comics debut of Ryan Liebe.
This is only the beginning…
