A staple of Roger Corman’s New World Pictures in the 1980s, sword-and-sorcery movie Deathstalker is getting a modern reboot, but in comics form. Vault Comics has made the announcement earlier this week, confirming that they’re teamed up with Shout! Studios, Raven Banner Entertainment, and Slash of Guns N’ Roses to revive the series in comic form with Seeley set to write and Jim Terry on artistic duties. A Kickstarter campaign for the new Deathstalker is set to kick off this October, with a deluxe, oversized hardcover edition of the comic up for order along with the single-issue comic books and trade paperback release that will arrive in 2024. The Deathstalker series will be released in comic shops next year as well.
“I’m excited to be kicking off a new era of Deathstalker,” Slash said in a statement. “From Tim Seeley, artist Jim Terry, writer-director-creature FX-wizard Steven Kostanski, and myself, our Deathstalker is a reimagining of that fine specimen of 80s sword and sorcery. With fantasy, you get a little of everything: horror, magic, sex, thrills, blood, guts, swords and weirdness. You know-all those things you can’t look away from. And that’s what we’re bringing. So-please-if you share my love of all things wicked, check it out!”
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“We obviously adore sword and sorcery at Vault,” said Vault CEO Damian Wassel. “So, when Slash approached us with the opportunity to relaunch a cult classic of the genre together with Steven Kostanski, and our friends at Shout! and Raven Banner, we couldn’t say no. The whole idea of this project is to balance nostalgia for the so-bad-it’s-good fantasy filmmaking of the 1980s with the storytelling sensibilities of our time. There’s no one we could trust more to turn that into a wickedly hilarious, fantastically epic comic than Tim Seeley and Jim Terry.”
Deathstalker made its way into theaters back in 1983, getting made in the shadow of the success of films like Conan the Barbarian starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, plus Dragonslayer, Excalibur, and The Beastmaster. The film would go on to make over $11 million on a budget of less than half a million, kickstarting a franchise. Deathstalker II would arrive in 1987 with Deathstalker and the Warriors from Hell premiering a year later in 1988. A fourth film, Deathstalker IV: Match of Titans, was released in 1990.ย
