Tag: Adam Cesare

Nominees announced for the 2023 Bram Stoker Awards

Comics by Cullen Bunn, Leomacs, Adam Cesare, David Stoll, Amy Chu, Soo Lee, Junji Ito and Gou Tanabe were nominated this year.

The Horror Writers Association has announced the final nominees for the 2023 Bram Stoker Awards, which includes a graphic novel category.

The annual awards recognize “superior achievement” in horror and dark fiction, with a category dedicated to graphic novels. This year Dark Horse received three nominees, while BOOM! Studios and Viz Media each garnered one nomination. Last year’s winner was Kolchak: The Night Stalker: 50th Anniversary Graphic Novel edited by James Aquilone and published by Moonstone.

The nominees for the “Superior Achievement in a Graphic Novel” category are:

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Smash Pages Q&A | Adam Cesare and David Stoll on ‘Dead Mall’

The two creators discuss their love for malls, their approach to ‘mall horror,’ the potential for a sequel and more.

Horror novelist Adam Cesare‘s signature novel has a title that contains the two scariest words in the English language, Clown in a Cornfield, so right from the get-go you know that he gets horror. He’s also been adding comics to his resume over the last few years, having worked on Power Rangers comics, Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance and more.

David Stoll, meanwhile, was the artist for Pantomime, a Mad Cave title with writer Christopher Sebela from a few years back. The story featured students at a school for the deaf who become thieves, and I still remember how clever the visuals were in communicating what was being said and heard by the deaf characters.

The two of them more recently united on Dead Mall, a four-issue miniseries from Dark Horse Comics. Along with letterer Justin Birch, they told a complete story that combined horror and mall culture. The story takes place in — and is narrated by — the Penn Mills Galleria, a former mall that’s about to be demolished when a group of kids decide to visit it one last time. Only they find it isn’t quite so empty.

The miniseries was recently collected into a trade paperback by Dark Horse Comics, and it’s available now in comic shops and bookstores everywhere. I spoke with Both Cesare and Stoll about the story, abandoned malls and more.

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Cesare + Stoll present a ‘shopping spree from Hell’ in ‘Dead Mall’

The first issue of the four-issue miniseries arrives in October.

Horror novelist Adam Cesare, whose books include Clown in a Cornfield and Summer Job, will work with artist David Stoll (Pantomime) and letterer Justin Birch on Dead Mall, a new miniseries coming from Dark Horse Comics later this year.

The story takes place in — and is narrated by — the Penn Mills Galleria, a former mall that’s about to be demolished when a group of kids decide to visit it one last time — only to find it isn’t so empty.

“The first comics I remember buying as a kid, during my first trips to the comic shop with my dad, were issues of Dark Horse Presents. It’s surreal, 30ish years later, to be talking about Dead Mall,” Cesare said. “I wanted to tell a story that readers of my books would enjoy, but also something that couldn’t be done–or couldn’t be done *best*–in prose. A supernatural, monster-filled, body-horror-tinged combination of Chopping Mall and The Ruins, where the mall itself is narrating the story? That sounded like a lot! Something that could only be achieved in the collaborative medium of comics. And what a collaborator to have in David Stoll, whose art is immaculate and storytelling sense is unimpeachable. Then there’s Justin Birch and the rest of the team at Dark Horse, a dream to be working with them. We’re just so excited for readers to enter Penn Mills Galleria.”

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