On Tuesday, January 11, 1972, Kolchak: The Night Stalker terrified and delighted audiences on ABC. The TV movie — written by horror legend Richard Matheson and based on an unpublished novel by Jeff Rice — was the highest-rated TV movie in U.S. history. It subsequently spawned both a second TV movie, The Night Stalker, and a cult TV series that ran for just one season, but inspired a generation of storytellers, notably including X-Files creator Chris Carter.
Moonstone Books is celebrating this pop culture milestone with a Kickstarter campaign for Kolchak: The Night Stalker 50th Anniversary Graphic Novel, edited by James Aquilone. This all-new, 100+ page, full-color graphic novel will feature 10 startling stories chronicling the life of monster-hunting reporter Carl Kolchak. The stories are written by such master storytellers as David Avallone, Rodney Barnes, James Chambers, Nancy Collins, Peter David, Kim Newman, Jonathan Maberry, Richard Christian Matheson, Tim Waggoner, and Aquilone, and illustrated by such amazing artists as Jonathan Marks Barravecchia, Marco Finnegan, Warwick Johnson-Cadwell, Paul McCaffrey, Clara Meath, Julius Ohta, Tom Rogers, J.K. Woodward, and Colton Worley. It features covers by Colton Worley, Jerry Ordway and J.K. Woodward as well as lettering by Thomas Napolitano, coloring by Zac Atkinson, and text design by Shawn T. King.
Kolchak: The Night Stalker 50th Anniversary Graphic Novel also includes an introduction by Richard Christian Matheson, the bestselling horror author/screenwriter/producer and son of The Night Strangler writer Richard Matheson, an essay on the 50th anniversary by Mark Dawidziak, the author of The Nightstalker Companion, and a retrospective of Moonstone Book’s Kolchak publication history by publisher Joe Gentile.
The Kolchak: The Night Stalker 50th Anniversary Graphic Novel Anthology will be available in limited-edition softcover and hardcover editions, both with variant covers. In addition Moonstone Books is creating a special 40-page standalone comic for the Kickstarter, featuring the story “Satanic Panic ’88,” written by James Aquilone and illustrated by Colton Worley, and featuring a cover by Dan Brereton.
Source: Graphic Policy