Comics source storytelling inspiration from all manner of media—video game–based graphic novels are a growing trend, but there have also been recent adaptations from such unexpected originals as a suppressed WWII opera and a 1980s cult classic film. These media tie-ins promise a timely remix in comics form in a diverse range of new and forthcoming titles.
American Psycho
Michael Calero, Piotr Kowalski, and Brad Simpson. Sumerian, Oct.
This limited-run series, which launches in the fall for the direct market (expected to hit trade in 2024), is based on the 2000 film adaptation of American Psycho—which is itself based on the 1991 novel by Bret Easton Ellis. But the comic takes its tone from the movie, with an updated millennial antihero who’s obsessed with social media—a timely face-lift to the thriller to attract readers who can relate to the addictive powers of doomscrolling—aka almost everyone.
Death Strikes: The Emperor of Atlantis
Dave Maass and Patrick Lay. Dark Horse/Berger, Jan. 2024
In 1943, Peter Kien and Viktor Ullmann, two prisoners at Hitler’s Terezín concentration camp in Czechoslovakia, created a one-act opera. They died before it was performed—and now the work instead finds life as a graphic novel that combines dystopian sci-fi, mythic fantasy, and zombie horror, set in a world where Atlantis never sank, but instead evolved into a techie tyrannical state.
Jaj: A Haida Manga
Michael Nicoll Yahgulanaas. Douglas & McIntyre, Sept.
Yahgulanaas’s 26-foot square mural commissioned by Berlin’s Humboldt Forum gets adapted into a manga, exploring the fraught history of the first contact between Europeans and Indigenous people. Individual pages can be cut and assembled to re-form the artwork, which assembles a vista reminiscent of a traditional Indigenous woven robe.
Labyrinth
The Jim Henson Company, with creative team and pub date to be announced.
This newly announced joint venture already has legion fans of David Bowie and Jim Henson’s cult classic fantasy film Labyrinth gathering round. The ambitious comics adaptation of A.C.H. Smith’s novelization of the 1986 film starring Bowie will also include scenes that didn’t make it into the movie. A crowdfunding Kickstarter campaign, which Boom now runs routinely for celebrity-driven initiatives (see Keanu Reeve’s Brzrkr), raked in over $665,000 of preorders.
Macbeth
K. Briggs. Avery Hill, July
“The mix of reverence for a literary classic with playful, sensuously detailed artistry is a joy,” says PW’s starred review of this comics transformation of the unabridged script of Shakespeare’s Scottish play. Briggs won the Elsinore Award for Graphic Shakespeare in 2016 for adapting just the first act. In the full work, detailed, tactile art at every turn of the page will delight followers of the Bard—and may lure in students who find visuals help unpack the iambic pentameter.
Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History
Nic Watts and Sakina Karimjee. Verso, Oct.
Based on a 1930s play by Trinidadian revolutionary C.L.R. James, this visual narrative recounts the Haitian Revolution of 1794–1803, centering on Louverture, an enslaved man who rose to lead the revolt. The original production, which featured Paul Robeson in the title role, marked the first instance in which Black actors performed the work of a Black playwright on the British stage.
