Posted in: Comics, Dynamite | Tagged: 80 page giant, Alan Moore, gary frank, red sonja, vampirella
Vampirella & Red Sonja Launch Dynamite’s New Line Of 80-Page Giants
Vampirella & Red Sonja Launch Dynamite’s New Line Of 80-Page Giants – including Vampirella/Dracula by Alan Moore and Gary Frank
Article Summary
- Dynamite launches Vampirella & Red Sonja 80-Page Giants at $10, kicking off a new anthology-style reprint line.
- Red Sonja 80-Page Giant spans Dynamite stories by Christos Gage, Kurt Busiek, Ron Marz and Eric Trautmann.
- Vampirella 80-Page Giant includes Archie Goodwin, Alan Moore/Gary Frank, Nancy Collins and Priest material.
- Dynamite pitches the 80-Page Giants as affordable throwback samplers, with more Vampirella and Red Sonja-style volumes planned.
The Red Sonja volume collects four stories spanning the Dynamite era. It opens with Dragons from the 2009 Red Sonja Annual #2 by Christos Gage and Pablo Marcos. Also included is Seeing Red, a short from the 2021 Red Sonja: Black, White and Red #1 by Kurt Busiek and Benjamin Dewey. The rest of the book is filled out with two full-length tales from the original Dynamite series: Ron Marz and Lee Moder‘s story from Red Sonja #30 (2008) and Eric Trautmann and Patrick Berkenkotter‘s from Red Sonja #60 (2011).
The Vampirella 80-Page Giant reaches further back. It includes Death’s Dark Angel,the 1971 story from Vampirella #12 by Archie Goodwin and José González,one of the defining early tales that shifted the character from horror-hostess to lead. Also present is “The New European,” Alan Moore and Gary Frank‘s 1997 short from the Vampirella/Dracula: The Centennial one-shot, published to mark the 100th anniversary of Bram Stoker’s novel. Rounding out the volume are the first issues of two later runs: the 2014 series by Nancy Collins andPatrick Berkenkotter, and the 2019 launch of Christopher Priest‘s ongoing tenure with artist Ergün Gündüz.
Both books feature new covers by Roberto Castro. They will also be available in a “retro” treatment that uses inset panels from the included stories on the cover. Dynamite’s pitch is that it has a deep enough archive of material in varying lengths to regularly curate these kinds of packages, essentially oversized anthologies that give readers a sampler of different creative teams without requiring them to buy multiple trades.
The format itself is a deliberate throwback. Oversized reprint books and 80-page giants were once a standard way for publishers to move a lot of story material at a lower per-page cost. Whether the line expands beyond Vampirella and Red Sonja will depend on how the first two perform once they reach stores, but the initial announcement positions them as the flagship titles for the format. More 80-Page Giants are expected to follow.
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