New Sword-and-Sorcery Comic From Conan's Jim Zub

In a dark medieval-fantasy world, a skilled group of warriors and priests from a strict religious order have been tasked with escorting a dangerous prisoner back to the “Fayral”, an untamed primal realm of perilous elemental energy.

Their sacred charge is a mercurial and mysterious princess of the fay folk and, the closer the group gets to the land that powers her magic, the more difficult it will be to complete their quest. Worse still, at each step of this perilous journey secrets will be revealed about themselves and the history of their world that may save or damn them all.

March next year sees the publication of Omen-Bound #1, a new creator-owned comic from fan-favourite Conan The Barbarian scribe 'Grim' Jim Zub. It will be released via Image Comics.

The dark fantasy series was co-created with artist Alberto Alburquerque, while Misty Coats provides the colouring and and Marshall Dillon the lettering.

In his newsletter this week, Jim Zub describes the project as follows:

"Omen-Bound is dark fantasy, mysterious and emotional with an old school Dungeons & Dragons-style ensemble party and evocative narration familiar to readers enjoying my run on Conan the Barbarian.

"To say this is a passion project for our team is an understatement. I can’t wait for you to see how far Alberto is pushing himself on every single page and, when that’s coupled with Misty’s colors and Marshall’s lettering, it really is magic."

Guess this is going on my pull-list then?

Sample Omen-Bound art by Alberto Alburquerque

Backrooms (2026)

Disgruntled Clark (Chiwetel Ejiofor), the manager of a failing furniture store in 1990's San Jose, California, finds a mysterious "portal" in his store's basement.

It leads to the seemingly never-ending "backrooms": an "abandoned" maze of bizarre yellow rooms and corridors constantly bathed in humming neon light.

When he disappears, Mary (Renate Reinsve), his therapist - who Clark had been seeing regularly because of his anger issues - goes looking for him. She is surprised to find that his rambling tales of this alternate liminal dimension are actually true.

Directed by 19-year-old Kane Parsons, who originated the online Creepypasta-esque idea of The Backrooms in 2019, the film is one of those weird fiction horror pieces that is best experienced with as little foreknowledge or preconceptions as possible.

Part mainstream cinema, part "found footage", and utilising a minimal script by Will Soodik (who wrote 10 episodes of Ash vs Evil Dead as William Bromell) Backrooms does an excellent job of capturing the confusing, unnerving atmosphere of the source material, but could well frustrate a lot of viewers with its lack of explanation as to what it really going on.

Scientist Phil (the great Mark Duplass) provides a vague info-dump in the final act, but even he - and his organisation - don't have an explanation for the "backrooms". Which is the point of the original conceit, it's there purely to unnerve viewers and creep them out (as well as inspiring others to make their own online "backrooms" contributions).

Are there clues in the half-sunken objects, reversed signage, partially-remembered people? Possibly, but probably not. To me, it's the three-toed statue on the Lost island all over again: a cool visual that's there to look cool, that's all. Nothing deeper.

Ultimately the A24-produced movie is no more than an expanded iteration of one of these YouTube offerings with a bigger budget and slightly more developed central characters.

It never was going to give any definitive answers because that is not the nature of the "backrooms". Once you have a concrete explanation interest wanes because there is no more mystery.

Don't get me wrong, I love this new wave of horror films - and TV shows - based on modern, internet-spawned myths and ghost stories.

It's an innovative addition to the Universal era monsters, the Hammer monsters, the Halloween-inspired monsters etc

Every generation deserves its own horror movie mythology that reflects its experiences of the world. It's only fitting that this generation's inexplicable horrors are growing out of the internet.

'Tis The Season of Sam

Celebrating the 30th anniversary of Sam's iconic appearance in the delightful Halloween anthology film, Trick 'r Treat, creator Michael Dougherty has launched the Sam: The Soul of Halloween site.

As well as offering limited edition merch, Dougherty will be releasing brand new animated shorts and artwork via various associated socials throughout October.

Sam first showed up in Dougherty's 1996 short Season’s Greetings which has been given a 4k restoration and is touring festivals and indie cinemas in the States this month.

Art by Steven Rhodes

"Indiana Jones. I Always Knew Some Day You'd Come Walking Back Through My Door"

These belong in a museum

It seems fitting that on Karen Allen's birthday, we celebrate the arrival of a brace of gorgeous hardback collections of Marvel's Further Adventures of Indiana Jones comic books from the 1980s.

Each sporting faux leather covers and a stitched in red silk bookmark, both these arcane tomes are going to look majestic on a book shelf with my other Indiana Jones books acquired through the years.

Volume one contains adaptations of Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, plus issues one to 16 of the Further Adventures of Indiana Jones, while volume two includes issues 17 to 34 of the Further Adventures of Indiana Jones series and the four-issue miniseries adaptation of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

The main series was first published between 1982 and 1985, with five of the story arcs also serving as the basis for adventures in the much-maligned Indiana Jones roleplaying game from TSR.

I can't recall just how many of the original run I read back in the day, although I'm sure quite a few were also reprinted in a British Indiana Jones magazine if my memory serves me right.

So, I'm looking forward to being able to follow the full 34 issues of Indy's adventures here, in time for his next Marvel tale to launch this December. Hopefully, Marvel will also eventually be able to reprint his various miniseries runs from Dark Horse Comics in a similar stylish form.

You can read more about this pair of 500-plus page Further Adventures of Indiana Jones collections in an earlier article here.

The Twilight Sword is Drawn and Monsters Arise!

 

With the core Twilight Sword books winging their way to backers as you read this, publisher Two Little Mice has announced a new crowdfunding campaign for its anime/video game-inspired tabletop roleplaying game.

Next month, on November 17, a campaign to fund the Monster Book will launch on Backerkit.

As well as a new playable Kin (species) and a new Way (character class), this new book will contain:

"...dreadful Monsters, friendly Beasts, and unique Loot!"

November 17 is, of course, an auspicious day for this blog: not only is it Life Day in the Star Wars Universe, but it is also the official anniversary of the current iteration of my blogging efforts "going live". 

I, therefore, take this as a sign that I need to back this campaign!

MUSICAL MONDAY: Mausoleum (Manic Street Preachers)

Is It Legal To Shoot A Ghost?

In 1803, London’s Hammersmith Ghost sparked terror — and a deadly case of mistaken identity. When Francis Smith shot Thomas Millwood, believing him to be a ghost, he was convicted of murder. The bizarre trial shaped British criminal law for centuries. But who, or what, was the Hammersmith Ghost?

Colony (2026)

Disgruntled scientist Seo Yeong Cheol (Koo Kyo-hwan) stages a terrorist attack on the company that stole his ideas, unleashing a zombie-like infection at a biotech conference that spills over into the attached shopping mall.

Co-written and directed by Train To Busan's Yeon Sang-ho, Colony is a taut, claustrophobic zombie horror actioner from a master of the genre. 

While it homages such classics as Romero's Dawn of The Dead and the early years of The Walking Dead TV show, the central conceit - which differentiates it from other zombified movies I'm aware of - is the idea that the flesh-eaters can rapidly evolve via a hive mind connection.

This sees them develop from bestial monsters into a near-human state through the film's two hour runtime.

The idea of zombies as an insect-like colony allows for some slick set-dressing as well as the creatures transform the walls and floors of the mall into their nest - using mucus as their building material of choice.

Parallel to this, Seo Yeong Cheol develops from a fuming nerd into a suave Lex Luthor-level master villain, creating a role you don't usually associate with this sub-genre of horror movies - that of a "head" zombie! When you look at this, combined with the hive-mind element, comparisons with Star Trek's Borg are also unavoidable.

As well as some canny foreshadowing, Colony has it all: from heroism and heartbreak to gore and political cowardice.

The main plot follows conference attendee Professor Se Jeong (Jun Ji-hyun) as she tries to guide an ever-diminishing contingent of survivors out of the locked-down mall.

However, while this is unfolding there is the equally fascinating (if not so action-packed) second storyline about the professor's ex-husband's new wife Gong Seol-hee (Shin Hyun-been), another senior scientist, navigating the political minefield of trying to contain the outbreak and find a cure for the infected.

A particularly interesting touch is the fact that, for the longest time, the authorities consider the infected as "patients" and - unlike 99 per cent of other cinematic zombie scenarios - don't start killing them straight away.

Of course, eventually, that approach is overturned - as you would expect - but I thought it was a novel (and probably more "realistic") approach to a zombie outbreak.

Yeon Sang-ho's pacing is spot-on and even though the film runs for two hours it never dragged and, to be honest, I wouldn't have objected if it had carried on for another hour or two.

Despite what you may have read elsewhere, however, Colony is not a prequel to Train To Busan anymore than The Uprising tells the origin story of Robin Hood.

Slender Man (2018)

A quartet of teenage girls decide to freak themselves out by watching an online video about summoning the urban legend known as Slender Man (think meme-age answer to Bloody Mary).

Soon afterwards, they're all having nightmares and then one, Katie (Annalise Basso), disappears on a school trip.

At first, this is thought to be an abduction, but then her friends begin to suspect more supernatural forces are at work as the mythology of Slender Man worms its way into their minds.

Released in 2018 to almost universal negative reviews, and condemnation that it was capitalising on the genuinely disturbing, real-world, "Slender Man" attempted murder case, Slender Man slunk back into the shadows, leaving nary a trace of its passing.

Which is why I hadn't bothered with it, until now.

I watched it on Sky Cinema, as a double feature with Beware The Slenderman, the HBO documentary about the stabbing of a young girl by her two friends, who claimed they were acting as "proxies" for Slender Man.

Except for the central figure of the mythical Slender Man there's no narrative connection between the fictional story and what happened in real life. Surprisingly, it's mentioned briefly in the documentary, and, to my mind, not given enough backstory, such as exactly when the character was invented for an online Photoshop challenge and even who created it.

The seriously-underrated cinematic Slender Man is a mind-bending, Lovecraftian creation (may I hazard a suggestion that it could be an avatar of Nyarlathotep?) that uses the Internet, and modern technology, to spread its insanity like a computer virus, jumping from the world wide web into human beings.

As is often the case in this style of teen-targeted horror, the script stumbles over some unbelievably poor police work, allowing the main girls to conduct their own investigations in a reality somewhere between Scooby-Doo and True Detective.

While Sylvain White's film does employ a handful of jump scares, the film relies on more psychological techniques (taking a leaf from a lot of the Creepypasta online Slender Man lore, there's often something going on behind the characters, in our peripheral vision) and psychedelic imagery as the characters' grip on sanity slips.

Although the archetype of a supernatural character that steals children has roots that go back to Biblical mythology, the Pied Piper etc, Slender Man is very much a modern fiend that works so well as its existence revolves around a relatively new creation (the Internet) that certain generations are still unsure of, because it divides as much as it unites.

The Slender Man film does a good job of twisting those themes into an unusual little horror gem.