A new Expendables project from Sylvester Stallone, Chuck Dixon, and Graham Nolan will take the mercenaries from Louisiana to Hell.
The Expendables is a multi-million dollar franchise created by Stallone that homages action films of the 1980s and 1990s. It features three movies with the first released in 2010. The movies follow a group of elite mercenaries based out of Louisiana and led by Stallone’s Barney Ross. The team originally consisted of Lee Christmas played by Jason Statham, Toll Road played by Randy Couture, Yin Yang played by Jet Li, Gunner Jensen played by Dolph Lundgren, and Hale Caesar played by Terry Crews.
The films have also featured Arnold Schwarzenegger as Trent “Trench” Mauser, Bruce Willis as Mr. Church, Charisma Carpenter as Lacy, Mickey Rourke as Tool Ross, Chuck Norris as Booker, Liam Hemsworth as Billy “The Kid” Timmons, Jean-Claude Van Damme as Jean Vilain, Mel Gibson as Conrad Stonebanks, Harrison Ford as Max Drummer, Antonio Banderas as Galgo, Wesely Snipes as Doctor Death, Ronda Rousey as Luna, and Kelsey Grammer as Bonaparte.
The new project titled, The Expendables Go To Hell, is a graphic novel that was just recently announced via an IndieGoGo campaign. The graphic novel features a story by Stallone and Dixon with a script written by Dixon and Richard Meyer with art work by Graham Nolan.
Meyer took to YouTube to discuss the project.
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He details the brass tacks of the graphic novel:
“It’s a full color graphic novel…it’s going to be about 90 pages. Story by Sylvester Stallone and Chuck Dixon. Script by Chuck Dixon and me. Art by Graham Nolan.”
Meyer then details the gist of the story:
“The story is The Expendables, you know, they are mercs, the odds catch up to them one day. And most of these mercs get merced and they wake up in Hell. And they find themselves in the middle of a battle that’s been raging essentially for eternity in Hell. They end up meeting all kinds of characters from history. Some who definitely deserve to be in Hell and some that are kind of strange why they are there.”
Meyer continues, “I forgot there were war elephants in this. This thing’s got everything. It’s got modern battle tanks, World War II battle plans, it’s got war elephants like something from Hannibal Barca, it’s got tons of historical figures in there, and it’s got The Expendables. There’s fricken’ dragons in there. The devil is in there.”
Chuck Dixon tells us the main story takes place between The Expendables 2 and The Expendables 3.
He also described the project to me:
“Hell is War! Barney Ross is wounded on the battlefield and awakens in the land of the damned where he’s joined by a few of the other Expendables along with some of history’s fiercest warriors in a fight against Satan himself and an army of villain’s from five thousand years of warfare! And, as always, the Expendables are at the point of the spear in a war for eternity itself!”
He then explains that the 90-page graphic novel will feature a main story, but also a number of side-quests.
“It’s got the main story and it’s got a couple of side quests. This is a classic thing you do in team books. You kind of split the team up so that Graham doesn’t have to draw 5 characters in every single character. I wrote two of the side quests and then Chuck wrote another one. The art for the side quests one has Kelsey Shannon doing the art, one has Jason Johnson, who did Team 7 one of my favorite franchises ever…and then we got Butch Guice, who has basically drawn everything.”
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The first Side Quest story is titled “The Bridge” with art by Jason Johnson. It sees Barney Ross stunned to “find the soul of his still-living friend Tool, trapped in Hell.”
The second story with art by Kelsey Shannon is titled “Christmas in Hell.” It sees Lee Christmas lured away from the team just when he’s needed the most.
The third story is titled Barbarian’s Holiday and features artwork by Butch Guice. It sees Gunner Jensen make the most of a bad situation.
The book will feature a main cover by Kelsey Shannon with options to purchase a number of variant covers.
Currently announced variant covers are from Billy Tucci, Richard C. Meyer, Jason Johnson, and Renzo Rodriguez. However, they do hint that more variant covers could be included.
You can take a look at some of those variants below.
The IndieGoGo campaign has already exceeded it’s $10,000 funding goal. As of writing it’s earned $50,757 from 759 backers. You can find the IndieGoGo campaign here.