Thursday night at Comic-Con, IPI Comics offered a sneak peek at their line-up this year which they called “Heroes, Horror, and Holmes.” Combining prose fiction from their parent publisher IFWG Publishing with revivals of two comics from the past, IPI might have a small slate at the moment, but it’s powerful. As powerful as The Human Fly, you might say…
And yes, full disclosure, I hosted the panel.
Let’s start with the prose — both featuring Eisner Award-winning writer Jim Krueger. First up comes an anthology edited by Steven Paulsen and IPI Editor-in-Chief Christopher Sequeira. Nosferatu Unbound focuses on the more feral version of Dracula created for the film Nosferatu. Though originally Bram Stoker’s widow had sought to stop the film in 1922, an intervening century has lent perspective. Dacre Stoker provides an essay offering his family’s perspective on the character and its influence, and Dracula scholar Leslie S. Klinger provides an introduction. Featuring a killer line-up of authors, Nosferatu Unbound hits US stores in September.
Later in the fall of 2024, contributor Krueger gets an anthology of his own. The first of two parts in what’s called Haunted Night, instead of 12 Days of Christmas we get 12 stories of Christmas horror. When the second book comes out, Krueger will have offered us an Advent Calendar of terror.
But a company called IPI Comics should be putting out comics, and in addition to this year’s already released Bristle Mouth and reprints of Queenie Chan’s manga The Dreaming, September will see Sherlock Holmes: The Dark Detective. Combining Holmes and Hammer-esque horror, the Dark Detective goes up against Moriarty and many things undreamed of by normal men. Originally published in Australia by Black House Comics, we’ve only seen issues 1-4 when Caliber Comics reprinted them. Black House published 8 issues, but the creative team of Sequeira, artist Phillip Cornell, and artist Jan Scherpenhuizen have a 9th regular issue and a special in store.
As you can see above, though, IPI has something even more special. I’ve written about it a few times on Fanboy Planet, but this was the first time I got to see Scherpenhuizen’s variant covers that pay tribute to iconic images of comics past. (Issue 3, aping Gold Key covers, is my favorite. It was my favorite of the Space Ghost variants, too.)
With Human Fly International’s Alan Brewer and Tony Babinski on hand, we were able to dance around a developing feature film, and Babinski’s work to create a new mythos that still tied in to what Marvel did those many years ago. There were hints of possible team-ups, but for me, the best thing to be able to reveal was the special guest artist doing a variant cover for issue #1.
I’ve been sitting on this for over a month now, and could finally show it. The legendary Bill Sienkiewicz has contributed to IPI Comics’ The Human Fly. Don’t sleep on this, people. Let’s get buzzing!
There’s more to come. Brewer and Brawer could only hint at another book they’re developing with Sequeira for IPI Comics. And Krueger will be writing the second arc of the bi-monthly The Human Fly, followed by Brawer. No doubt this publisher will only get bigger. So check your Diamond Previews catalog now!
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