One of the great undiscovered horror gems from any medium over the past few years is The Abandoned, the “Dawn of the Dead meets Suicide Girls” graphic novel by writer/artist Ross Campbell. So it’s much to my delight/dismay that Campbell himself delivers some good news/bad news in the comment thread of blogger Bill Sherman’s review of the book. The good news is that Campbell’s pitching The Abandoned 2 to various publishers (all of whom would be well advised to snap that shit up toot sweet), and has a vision for a Volume 3 at some point as well. The bad news is that due to a falling out with original publisher Tokyopop, Campbell no longer has the rights to the first volume’s lead character, zaftig lovesick lesbian punk Rylie. Suffice it to say that the events of the first book led Rylie to a place emotionally that would be very interesting to explore; let’s hope that Campbell’s dream of getting her back in time to cap off the trilogy comes true.
Meanwhile, Thomas Jane, star of director Frank Darabont’s upcoming adaptation of Stephen King’s wonderful novella The Mist, reveals to Fangoria that Darabont has changed the story’s much-loved ending. This news comes via The Horror Blog’s Steven Wintle, who expresses concern. However, a coworker of mine noted that insofar as the novella’s ending relies on a very specific way of delivering a line or two that would be difficult to replicate outside of prose, it may not be much to worry about. My feeling is that if the changed ending takes up “the last 10 pages” as Jane implies, there are larger changes afoot, ones that may dumb down the Hitchcockian denouement of King’s original. We’ll see.
Finally, Cinematical brings us the news-to-me details on The Descent director Neil Marshall’s next film, the aptly titled post-apocalyptic virus flick Doomsday. This link comes courtesy of my old running buddy Jason Adams of My New Plaid Pants, whose tolerance for all things post-apocalyptic and viral seems a lot lower than mine own.