Legendary Hellboy creator Mike Mignola will team up with iZombie co-creator Chris Roberson as well as the original Witchfinder series artist Ben Stenbeck and colorist Michelle Madsen for Witchfinder: City of the Dead. The new series will be a five part miniseries about the Sir Edward Grey, occult adviser to the queen, who must defeat scores of flesh-eating corpses in London while also exploring and uncovering a temple beneath the city that is full of ancient secrets.
“One of the great things about the monster tropes in horror fiction is that they don’t have to be limited to any specific setting,” said Chris Roberson. “Werewolf stories aren’t all set in Eastern Europe, vampire stories don’t have to take place in Victorian London, and zombies needn’t be relegated to the post-apocalyptic scenario. There’s a lot of fun to be had from taking these types of characters and transposing them into different historical periods and cultural milieus.”
This won’t be the first time Mignola has teamed up with Roberson. The two are currently co-writing Hellboy & The B.P.R.D. Mignola spoke highly of Roberson, ““Chris’s pitch for WITCHFINDER: CITY OF THE DEAD is what made us all realize he was a perfect writer to add to our little world.” He went on, “Chris and Ben Stenbeck have outdone themselves on this book. I’m super excited about it!”
Speaking of Stenbeck, he will return to the Witchfinder series after helping launch it back in 2009. “It’s fantastic to return to the world of WITCHFINDER,” said Ben Stenbeck. “I get to go back to Edward Grey’s London and help to flesh it out a bit more. Hopefully I’ve gotten better at it in the 7 years since I last drew WITCHFINDER.”
“I’ve always been an enormous fan of Victorian-era occult detectives, and of Mignola’s Sir Edward Grey in particular,” said Roberson. “One of the greatest things about Hellboy’s world is the richness of its backstory, and it’s been a real thrill to get to explore some of the uncharted territory and fill in some of the gaps in the map.”
Witchfinder: City of the Dead #1 hits comic book shelves on August 31, 2016. All the covers for the five issue miniseries will be provided by Julián Totino Tedesco .