Jeremy Whitley and Megan Huang will combine Arthurian fantasy with a dose of detective noir in The Cold Ever After, a new graphic novel announced by Titan Comics this week at the San Diego Comic Con.
“Longer ago than I’d like to admit, I had this idea. I was stumped for a new idea for a story I wanted to tell, but I had all these genres I loved. So I thought, what if I combine a couple of very disparate genres and see what I can make out of that? One was ‘Arthurian Noir,'” Whitley, the co-creator of Princeless, said on Twitter. “Arthurian Noir really stuck with me, and I thought: the noir detective and the disgraced knight are really compatible ideas that I really like together, but also I’m really tired of Lancelot stories. I wanted a beautiful queen and a stalwart knight I had never seen so that’s how we ended up with Noelani. She was taken from her home by the church based on a holy test and trained to be the king’s Holy Champion for years. Shown no love or care, just training, until she was sent on a dangerous mission to retrieve the would-be queen.”
Huang said the idea predates her first published comics work. “This OGN was a pitch even before my first big comics work. So it’s amazing to finally talk about it,” the artist of Jia and the Nian Monster said on Twitter.
Here’s the description from Titan:
A unique and thrilling blend of Arthurian romance and detective noir, a unique fantasy story in the vein of Game of Thrones meets Chinatown. For fans of epic fantasy, queer romance, and hardboiled detective noir!
She lost everything when she fell in love with her Queen. Now she has a week to find a missing princess, or she’ll lose it all again… along with her head.
Ten years after her disgrace and exile, Sir Noelani Mahi’ai – former Royal Champion of the kingdom of Patria Lupi and Queen’s protector – has been hiding under a rock at the bottom of a bottle and hasn’t lifted a sword in all that time. Until one day, the Queen summons Noelani to find her daughter who has mysteriously disappeared the night before her wedding.
Given one week to recover the princess, Noelani is forced to confront a baffling mystery, a terrifying adversary and her own past to save the kingdom. But not everything is as it seems in Patria Lupi, and in seven days she may not have a life to get back on track.
And here’s a look at some of the interior artwork:
Look for it to arrive in stores next February.