marvel

Let me be clear by saying that if you put shades of HP Lovecraft in anything, you have my complete attention. Horrors from beyond time and space? Let's see it. Stephen King dipping his toes into something so blatantly Lovecraftian? Hell yes. Cthulu plushies? Want one. All of this amounts to me being seriously peeved at myself for not discovering this until now. You see, I fell off of the Stephen King train a while back. I still like the guy's work and know that he's produced some of the best bits of fiction in history.

That said, since what I will refer to as 'the Dreamcatcher Incident' transpired, I haven't been his biggest fan. Still, the guy keeps on turning out work of varying qualities. I haven't paid too much attention to most of it, but back in 2008, he released a short story collection entitled Just After Sunset. Within was a previously unpublished work called N. It was adapted into an illustrated webseries even before the book's publication (a webseries I will be devouring moments after this article).

Now, Marvel is bringing the story into comics form in the shape of a 4 issue limited series written by Marc Guggenheim, one of the bigger writing names in the industry. What's more is that they're using artwork from Alex Maleev who, after his stretch on Daredevil, can really do no wrong.

It's an epistolary tale (again, Lovecraft) of a psychiatrist who falls into the same trap of madness and obsession as one of his patients. They discover an assortment of mysterious stones in the desolate Ackerman's field that may be a portal holding back a creature of unrefined evil.

Marvel's Blade universe is a fairly extensive one, with the character crossing paths with such branded standbys as SHIELD and Doctor Strange. Naturally, very little of this was ever used in the Blade film trilogy, and if you longed to see a touch more of the comic series on the big screen, there might be hope. According to Comics2Film, Steven Norrington is returning to the franchise, and spinning a Blade-less, Wesley Snipes-less spinoff.

Norrington and Stephen Dorff have apparently been talking about a Deacon Frost spinoff for some time. Dorff initially broke the news via The Sunday Mail. "It will be a prequel to the Blade movies, Deacon's story. It's a new trilogy the director has created. It will [be] cool. We hope to shoot the first film next year. Frost is a character I have never been able to shake." Norrington confirmed the story, but quickly added that the movie wasn't exactly what the Mail described before crediting Dorff with the idea.

What isn't clear is what path the Frost spinoff will take, since Norrington acknowledged that Blade departed from the Marvel series, but promised that despite Dorff being front and center, "the linkage to Blade is still big in the equation." That probably means they'll link the two via Blade's bitten mother, but I wonder if they'll actually go into Frost's comic past as a immortality seeking scientist. Or did Dorff come up with an origin story wildly different than the scientific one of the comics? We'll see. But is this the way you wanted Blade to return, or could you do without a Frost / Dorff spinoff?