'Despicable Me' and 'Iron Giant' Veteran Stephan Franck Wraps Up His 'Silver' Vampire Epic This Fall

Stephan Franck, Head of story for the forthcoming Playmobil movie and supervising animator on the beloved animated classic The Iron Giant, is currently funding the fourth and final of his Silver vampire graphic novels on Kickstarter.

Franck, also a key story contributor to Despicable Me, has told the story of Silver over the course of four volumes (and a stand alone novella). It picks up 30 years after Professor Abraham Van Helsing visited Dracula's castle. Now Van Helsing's descendent, the mysterious vampire hunter Rosalyn, is teaming up with a ragtag group of con men for a high stakes heist to rob Europe's richest vampires. Will they succeed, and live off their take from this one last job? All will be revealed in the fourth and final volume of Silver, which Franck and his company Dark Planet Comics are funding via a Kickstarter campaign.

"Silver takes place in an original universe inspired by Bram Stoker's Dracula," Franck explained to ComicBook.com. "Forty years after the events of the novel, we meet conman/master thief James Finnigan and Rosalynd 'Sledge' Van Helsing as they assemble a team to steal the Silver Dragon, a mythical treasure hidden deep inside Dracula's castle. As volume 3 ends and volume 4 begins, the team has managed to make Dracula's massive treasure mysteriously disappear, and seems to have surmounted its internal conflicts and various dysfunctions. Our heroes are now in a race against time to get out of dodge before Dracula understands how they pulled off the heist. After much suspense, the team finally heads off on the getaway train, only to find that the train has one extra passenger— a very deadly one."

ComicBook.com previously featured Silver when they were crowdfunding their third volume, as well as a tie-in novella and audiobook, back in August.

Silver Volume 4 Gallery

You can check out some exclusive preview images from Volume 4 in the attached image gallery.

In Silver, a group of criminals discover the late Jonathan Harker's secret ledger, which discloses the existence of an exotic treasure of silver hidden in Dracula's castle. Finnigan, the group's leader, knows a retirement plan when he sees it, so he's willing to do whatever it takes to pull off the biggest heist of the last ten centuries—even if that means allying himself with the mysterious, sword-wielding vampire hunter Sledge, aka Rosalind Van Helsing.

Fans who back the new Kickstarter can get digital editions, all four trade paperbacks individually, a signed slipcase featuring forall four trade paperbacks, the acclaimed novella Rosalynd, an audiobook of Rosalynd and limited edition prints by or done in collaboration with three incredible artists: Marvel comics and Kickstarter sensation Takeshi Miyazawa (Ms.Marvel, Spider-Man, Code Monkey Save World), animator and bandes dessinées artist Rodolphe Guenoden (Kung Fu Panda, Ma Reverence), and superstar illustrator Mel Milton.

If funded through Kickstarter, pledges will be delivered to backers this fall.