Idw publishing goes crazy with spike
This September, The
Lunatics Are Running The
Asylum
!
An all-new,
five-part
Spike miniseries is set to
breakout from IDW Publishing this September... and things are guaranteed to get
crazy with
Spike: Asylum. And, who is
responsible for putting away Spike with hundreds of deranged and psychotic
monsters and demons? Making their IDW debuts are screenwriter
Brian Lynch (
Big Helium Dog,
Monkey Man
) and Italian artist
Franco
Urru.
In
Spike: Asylum, Spike is offered the
opportunity to be a hero—as well as earning a hefty fee—by helping the Monahan
Family find their missing daughter, Ruby. As luck would have it, Ruby is a
half-demon and has been checked into the Mosaic Wellness Center, a rehab
facility for vampires, demons, and other creatures of the night. Spike’s
“simple” solution is to check himself in as a patient, but there’s a slight
problem—the numerous super-powered, supernatural patients at the center happen
to know Spike, and they want him dead. Can Spike survive the onslaught of mad
monsters, much less the therapy?
“The fun of
doing a comic series featuring Spike is that we have a far bigger budget than
any TV show,” states Lynch. “Not in how much we’re getting paid, but everything
and anything can happen. We can go as epic as we want to be and not worry about
working within the restrictions of a weekly TV budget.”
Lynch, writer that he is, had more to say,
too. “I've been a fan of the Joss Whedon's work and characters since the very
first season of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER.
BUFFY and ANGEL (and later FIREFLY and SERENITY) have inspired and
influenced me as a writer.
The chance
to play in his universe is a dream come true.
“The fact that Franco and I get a full five
issues to tell a solo Spike tale lets us really
delve into the character in ways that (hopefully) haven't
been seen. Spike's a
complicated character; he's been both a
ruthless killer and a hero who's saved the world a handful of times. And he's
still not sure which role suits him best.”
“I'm approaching the series as if it's a
full-on, big-budget SPIKE summer movie. Huge set pieces, fight scenes, and a
supporting cast of hundreds demons, vampires, and other assorted monsters. But
we don't lose the character moments and serious smart-assery that Whedon fans
have come to expect.”
IDW will be
announcing two other projects based on Joss Whedon’s classic characters at next
week’s Comic-Con International in San Diego, too.
Spike: Asylum #1 (Diamond Order Code JUL06 3217)
, the first full-color, 32-page issue of a five-issue miniseries,
debuts in September 2006.