About Weird Tales
Look, there’s a certain cosmic poetry to Weird Tales – the magazine that gave Howard, Lovecraft, and Bradbury their first real audience for eldritch bullshit – finally getting the graphic novel treatment. These stories have always wanted to be visual. They’ve been whispering from those crumbling pulp pages for a hundred years, demanding someone draw the damn tentacles already.
Monstrous is teaming up with Weird Tales Magazine to make the first official Weird Tales graphic novel, and they’re not half-assing it. Covers from Kelley Jones (Dracula, Sandman) and Eric Powell (The Goon). Contributors who actually understand that “weird” means something specific and unsettling, not just “quirky.”
What’s Inside This Beautiful Beast
What They’re Adapting
Ray Bradbury’s “The Scythe” gets the treatment from J.K. Woodward and Jonathan Maberry, who also happens to edit the current Weird Tales. Robert E. Howard’s “Skulls in the Stars” goes to Steve Niles of 30 Days of Night – which, fine, he knows how to make violence feel consequential. C.L. Moore’s “Shambleau” (still one of the most psychosexually uncomfortable stories in the pulp canon) gets adapted by George Quadros and Blake Northcott.
But here’s what’s actually interesting: they’re not just doing Greatest Hits. Rodney Barnes (Killadelphia, Peabody Award winner) is writing an original Lovecraft Mythos story with art by Lukas Ketner. They’re also reaching back to the very first story Weird Tales published – Anthony M. Rud’s “Ooze” from 1923 – and giving it a modern reimagining, which could either be brilliant or a cautionary tale about why some things should stay buried.
Nancy A. Collins – first woman to write both Swamp Thing and Vampirella, which is the kind of resume that actually matters – is adapting Allison V. Harding’s “The Damp Man” with Marco Finnegan. There’s also a father-son collaboration: David Avallone adapting his late father Michael Avallone’s 1953 story “The Man Who Walked on Air” with Robert Hack from Chilling Adventures of Sabrina. That one’s going to hurt in the good way.
A Century Late
Weird Tales launched in 1923 and basically wrote the blueprint for what horror and fantasy could be when you stopped being cowardly about it. That it’s taken until 2026 for an official graphic novel feels like a minor crime against the medium, but some summonings take time.
The Kickstarter is live now – 8.5 by 11-inch prestige hardcover, multiple collectible covers, the usual array of challenge coins and shirts for people who need to signal their taste in public.
If you’ve ever felt that specific electricity of encountering something genuinely weird – not cute, not quirky, but wrong in the way that makes your brain recalibrate what’s possible – this is probably worth your money.
Weird Tales Short: “Shambleau”
Weird Tales Short: “Man Who Walked On Air”
Note: The following pages should be considered as in development at time of publishing this article.
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