Dark Horse Comics today announced Bowling With Corpses & Other Strange Tales From Lands Unknown, the first publication in a new shared universe, called “Lands Unknown,” created by Mike Mignola and Ben Stenbeck.
It’ll also be the first publication to carry the name of Mignola’s new imprint at Dark Horse, Curious Objects. In recent years everyone from Stan Sakai to Brian Michael Bendis has launched an imprint with the publisher as a part of moving there — or moving back there, in Sakai’s case. So it seems only fair that the longtime Dark Horse creator, whose Hellboy is celebrating 30 years this year, would have one as well.
The release doesn’t say much more about what to expect from Curious Objects, but Mignola did share more about the Lands Unknown shared universe.
“It all started with an Italian Folktale about a boy who goes bowling with corpses,” he said. “I fell in love with the story as soon as I discovered it but I wanted to play fast and loose when adapting it, so I created a whole new world. Not TOO different than our world a few centuries ago, but with a lot more gods and monsters. Once I created that world new characters and stories just started pouring out of it. There is a whole lot to play with here and I expect to be at it for a very long time.”
Bowling With Corpses will be a 112-page hardcover anthology, featuring folklore-inspired fantasy stories written and illustrated by Mignola, colored by Dave Stewart and lettered by Clem Robins. The stories are described as “fantastical, odd and charming — from a search for the beating heart of a long-dead sorcerer, to a pirate girl who makes a deal with the devil, to the titular boy who wins a grim prize in a game with undead interlopers.”
Stenbeck, who has teamed before with Mignola on Baltimore, Frankenstein Underground and Koshchei, is working on other projects in the universe that will be announced at a later date.
“For a few years now Mike has been emailing me designs and pages and ideas and maps and lists of place names for this world, and his enthusiasm for this project is indomitable and infectious,” said Stenbeck. “So often my reaction to these emails is, ‘That’s great, Mike! But I still have two books to draw before I can even move on to this work!’ and then I find myself taking three days off to write a new story. Luckily Mike likes my stories. My first project is set far off in a distant corner of this world. That way I can’t bump into anything Mike is doing and make a mess. Spoiler…it will have monsters in it.”
Bowling With Corpses will arrive in stores beginning on Dec. 3.