Dark Horse teams with synthwave band The Midnight for a new graphic novel

Zack Kaplan, Stephen Thompson and Jahnoy Lindsay will bring the band’s music to the comics page.

Music and comics will collide in a new graphic novel this fall, as the synthwave band The Midnight teams with Dark Horse for The Midnight: Shadows.

Written by Zack Kaplan with art by Stephen Thompson and artist Jahnoy Lindsay, the graphic novel is about a soon-to-be father who gets literally sucked into a cyberpunk video game from his youth called The Midnight. Colorist Thiago Rocha and letterer DC Hopkins round out the team.

“Before I got the privilege to write this graphic novel, I was a fan,” Kaplan said. “Intoxicated by the immersive beats and heartfelt lyrics since their very first demo. It was no surprise to me to see them become one of today’s best synthwave bands. Their presence is so narrative that it was dying to be shared in this form. And it’s been a joy to bring it all to comic life, to partner with Dark Horse for such a vivid and mind-bending series, and to create this electrifying world with a powerhouse creative team, Stephen, Jahnoy, Thiago and DC, that will blow your mind with one visually stunning page after the next. Whether you are a listener of the music or you just love a good sci-fi adventure, we cannot wait to take you to that place half in dark and half in light, where arcade dreams are a reality, where heroes battle monsters. Get ready for a truly epic, synth wave adventure.”

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Quick Hits | ‘Demon Slayer,’ Dav Pilkey, Bill Watterson top 2023 graphic novel sales charts

Plus: ‘Monica’ wins in Angouleme, the Bram Stoker Awards ballot and more.

Pulling information from Circana BookScan, ICv2 has listed the top 20 graphic novels sold in 2023 in the superhero, manga and “author” categories. They’ve also posted lists of the top adult and kid’s graphic novels.

Looking through the lists (which don’t provide exact numbers, just rankings), it looks like the first volume of Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba by Koyoharu Gotouge is the big winner, topping both the manga chart and the adult graphic novel chart. Or maybe I should say “a big winner,” because over on the kid’s graphic novel chart, Dav Pilkey rules supreme, as Dog Man and its Cat Kid Comics Club spinoff took 13 of the 20 positions, including the top 3.

Also, I’m not exactly sure how the superhero and author categories are defined. For instance, the Invincible Compendium shows up on the author list — which makes sense, given how popular the Amazon show is — with Robert Kirkman listed as the author. But I would have expected it to be on the superhero list, given it’s about superheroes and Kirkman isn’t the sole author.

Then for superhero graphic novels, IDW’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin hardcover topped the list, followed by Tokyopop’s Nightmare Before Christmas: Battle for the Pumpkin King manga. I think you could make the argument that the Last Ronin is a superhero title, but the Nightmare Before Christmas manga seems like it’s in the wrong place. But maybe I’m misunderstanding the catgeories.

All that aside, sales numbers for comics disappeared during the pandemic when the industry went from a single distributor to multiple distributors, so seeing any kind of data like this is appreciated and interesting.

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