Eibon Press have made their presence known in 2017 with their essential for any Fucli fan releases of “Zombie” and “The Gates of Hell”, the former of which I praised here. Luckily for horror comic fans, that crew is hard at work on another set of cult comics – Laserblast and Maniac. Yes, THAT Maniac; the sleazy, greasy slice of 42nd street directed by William Lustig and starring Joe Spinell. Says Stephen Romano,co-founder and head writer of Eibon Comics, of their Maniac release: “We’re striving extra hard to make this one extra special. Joe Spinell is like our leader. We really like having him as the face of Eibon Press. He actually shows up in two of our other books. Our house artist loves to draw Joe. And here’s the thing: These are both ongoing comic series. We’re not talking about doing a five or six issue run adapting each movie. These will go on as long as we can hold onto the licenses. Which means we’re weaving in all sorts of new stuff and drawing inspiration from the films, so that we do justice to the movies we’re honoring, then go beyond them, like we’re currently doing with Lucio Fulci’s ZOMBIE. That means the story of Joe Spinell as the Maniac Frank Zito will go on long after the credits roll on the film.” How can you not get excited for this to be in front of your eyes with promises like that?!
Laserblast is receiving similair treatement, again acording to Romano: “With this one, it was a chance to take a great idea and a killer brand—I mean, how awesome is a title like LASERBLAST, right?—and give it a new life in a new medium. People remember the movie because of the cool central premise and the fact that it was on MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000…but I always saw a much darker, more terrifying ideal at the center of everything. What we’ve done is take the story of the film, and the same characters—you’ll see Kim Milford and Eddie Deezen in there, just like they were in the movie—but we’re really getting a lot deeper and more radical with it.” I can’t wait to see what the folks at Eibon Press/VHS Comics unleash on us this Fall but thankfully there are some previews to tide us all over until October. The art is for both series is done by Pat Carbajel who is working with Eibon to draw all of thier titles, including Zombie and upcoming Bottomfeeder, as well as working on Back to the Future, James Bond, and Sherlock Holmes comics in the past.
The releases will also come with custom VHS clipcases, according to co-founder Shawn Lewis: “what we’ve done is to manufacture special VHS boxes for the special edition issues, and each box comes inside the Eibon sleeve with all the other extras. It’s flat, but you take it out and unfold it and assemble it. It’s an actual, real VHS box you can even slip a cassette into, with special custom designed comic art done just for the box! It looks just like one of those old VHS box covers, except is all our cool updated comic book versions of all this stuff.”
If you need this in your life (and you probably do), mark you calanders for October 13th, 2017, which is when both Laserblast and Maniac will be unleashed. They will only be available through www.eibonpress.com and will not be sold in retail stores. Follow their facebook page to stay up to date on thier releases.
-Scotty (@drunkgraveyard)
