Silver Graphic Novel

Below is a press release from Black Planet Publishing touting their new GN series Silver. We will bring in copies of their Free Comic Book Day giveaway to gauge interest but will only stock in if we get an order for it as the track record for independent GNs here is not that great. Let us you if you have an interest in it:

ears ago, Professor Abraham Van Helsing visited Dracula’s castle. Now his descendent, the mysterious vampire hunter Rosalyn Van Helsing, is teaming up with a master thief and his ragtag group of con men for a high stakes heist to rob Europe’s richest vampires. Welcome to the world of Stephan Franck’s SILVER, a globe-trotting graphic novel series that mashes up the world of Bram Stoker’s classic novel Dracula with action, adventure, humor, pulp storytelling and modern sensibilities.

This year, SILVER, is coming to a comic shop near you as a 4-volume set of trade-paperback graphic novels. SILVER writer and artist Stephan Franck tells us more:

SILVER begins 40 years after the events of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. We are in 1930’s New York city, where we meet a new character: conman and master-thief JAMES FINNIGAN. Finn kicks off the story by robbing a children’s charity auction, so clearly, karma-wise, he has some room to grow. The items up for auction are from the Harker family, a surname Dracula fans will immediately recognize. Then, thanks to a strange discovery at the end of Chapter One, a door will open on a new mysterious world of mortal undead danger and fortune untold. That’s too much for a thief like Finnigan to resist.

The adventure that follows is epic and super fun in the great Pulp tradition, but also an awesome opportunity to explore character. To me, con men and vampires are mirror images of one another. They live predatory, solitary lives on the outskirts of things and  don’t engage emotionally like other people do. The mash-up raises interesting questions, like “what does it really mean to feel alive?” Is it just about cheating death for a thousand years, becoming rich beyond your wildest dreams, or is there something more?

Finnegan immediately understands that, to take on the vampires, he will need a specialist. Thanks to Harker’s ledger, he locates a mysterious young woman known as “SLEDGE”, AKA ROSALYND VAN HELSING—the famed professor’s grand-daughter, and last of the Van Helsings.

Sledge carries on the family tradition of ridding the world of the vampire scourge, but it appears that she may have spent a little too much time lurking in cemeteries making sure the dead stay dead, and she’s pretty close to a complete spiritual burnout. She’s not someone easy to access, but eventually warms up to Finn’s scheme. Sparks fly as soon as they meet!

While we uncover a secret world of vampires, and while we have tons of fun with a super gothic/romantic take on DRACULA himself, SILVER is first and foremost a relentless Pulp adventure. The epic set pieces build one after the other, and the cons keep on coming.  

My hope is that some will make you laugh, some will break your heart, some will have you on the edge of your seat, and that all of it will keep you guessing until the very end!