Fans of nihilistic Western adventure will cheer the announcement that Dynamite Entertainment will add a monthly title based on the Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood Man with No Name series of movies.
Starting with A Fistful of Dollars, then For a Few Dollars More and finally The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, Leone and Eastwood created an archetypal character—a tough, morally ambiguous hombre in a serape who wandered the American West, guns at the ready, and defined the Spaghetti Western genre.
The comic will be called Man with No Name and continues the title character’s adventures starting in November or December. The books are licensed from MGM, like Dynamite's Army of Darkness books. "The deal took a year and a half to negotiate," said Dynamite president Nick Barrucci. The creative team will be announced at a later date.
While licensed books such as Red Sonja, Battlestar Galactica and The Lone Ranger continue to be Dynamite's staple, the publisher recently had a big hit with the creator-owned The Boys by Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson, a dark superhero comedy Dynamite picked up after content issues caused the series to be dropped by DC's Wildstorm imprint. Sales actually went up on The Boys #7, the first Dynamite-published issue, and a paperback collection of issues 1-6 has already sold 15,000 copies solely through the direct sales market, with a second printing on the way. According to Barrucci, Dynamite is currently looking at a number of different offers for bookstore distribution.
Barrucci continues to look for licenses that will fit into the Dynamite mold. Following the success of its Lone Ranger title, Dynamite opened the door for more Western comics by acquiring the rights to Zorro, a swashbuckling icon that originated in the pulp magazines of the early 20th century. A Lady Rawhide series is also on the way, featuring the comely swordswoman who originated as a Zorro spin-off. Asked if there was any possibility of a crossover between Zorro and Lone Ranger, Barrucci mentioned that “we have thought about it... but we want to get the regular Zorro comic out first, and can work on crossovers down the line.”
As if to prove its diversity, Dynamite also obtained the license for Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters, a humorous title about anthropomorphic martial arts mutants. Adolescent Radioactive Black Belt Hamsters, or ARBBH, began in the 1980s as a parody of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, a comic book that became a pop culture phenomenon in the late ’80s and early ’90s. Dynamite’s acquisition of ARBBH coincided with renewed interest in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles after the release of the CGI movie in March 2007.
“The timing of the announcement and big success of the movie did prove to be a happy accident,” said Barrucci, “and we're obviously quite pleased the market reacted as favorably to the turtles as they did.” Although the original ARBBH was printed in black and white, Barrucci said they are “still making creative decisions” about whether or not to use color.
In addition to these recent additions, Dynamite is also expanding current properties, adding the new Battlestar Galactica: Season Zero miniseries to the four Battlestar Galactica titles already underway. Set two years before the Sci-Fi channel series, Season Zero is a six-issue miniseries about the first mission of the Battlestar Galactica crew, and is slated for publication this month.
Dynamite recently offered readers a complimentary flip comic combining an introductory #0 issue of Battlestar Galactica: Season Zero and Lone Ranger #0, sending more than 100,000 copies of the joint book to comic book stores around the country for Free Comic Book Day. Although Dynamite has often used 25-cent #0 issues to offer fans an inexpensive introduction to new titles like Season Zero, the #0 issue of the ongoing Lone Ranger is intended to offer new readers an additional jumping-on point.
