The hite primetime series Penny Dreadful, a period piece that puts London, England at the center of a dual between good and evil has announced a book deal with Titan Comics. Now, the Victorian England drama will expand from the screen to a graphic novel in the coming year with the first comic book scheduled for a Spring 2016 release.
It's been noted that the books will be written by Penny Dreadful scriptwriters Chris King, Krysty Wilson-Cairns and Andrew Hinderaker with art provided by Heavy Metal's Louie De Martinis.
If you are in the minority not in the know, Penny Dreadful is the hit Showtime series based on the 19th century London comic strip of the same name. In the show, Vanessa Ives (Eva Green) is a powerful clairvoyant that lives between the real world and the underworld. In this severed dimension, demons of the past come to haunt the characters and as villainous as vampires, werewolves, or evil spirits.
The series draws from the Alan Moore graphic novel, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, where literature's long measure of fictional characters from various texts come together to solve a task--and that's intertextuality at its finest.
In Penny Dreadful, characters like Dorian Grey (Reeve Carney), Mina Harker, Dracula, Frankenstein, Ethan Talbot (With Josh Hartnett as Wolfman), and with a little help from explorer Sir Malcolm Murray (Timothy Dalton), fight an unrelenting battle against dangerous forces trying bent on destroying the world.
"This incredibly exciting new comic series is going to captivate fans of horror, literature and Penny Dreadful a like, giving them a whole new insight into the lives of the fascinating, even bewitching, characters," said Lizzie Kaye, editor of the Titan comics.
The deal expands Titan Comics' footprint in the realm of comic books based upon genre TV shows; it already publishes four series based on the BBC's Doctor Who (based upon the Ninth, Tenth, Eleventh and Twelfth incarnations of the hero), as well as series based upon NBC's Heroes Reborn and The Blacklist. Additionally, Titan plans a comic book prequel to next year's Independence Day: Resurgence.
