The thing about the pop culture community is you can find fellow horror hounds pretty much everywhere, and our friends over at Comic Crusaders have been bringing the news about comics and their creators for 20 years now. One aspect Comic Crusaders dives into a bit more than us here at TD is indie publishers, and one has caught our eye thanks to the folks over at Comic Crusaders.
LA MANCHA #1 from Mad Cave Studios takes one of literature’s most recognizable dreamers and drops him into a horror story where the delusion comes with a body count. Don Quixote’s obsession with becoming the heroic knight he believes himself to be is no longer just something for readers to laugh at. In this version of the story, people are actually getting hurt, lives are being destroyed and somebody has to put a stop to the madness.
If you had to read DON QUIXOTE in school, this is definitely not that, so we are already excited for it.
From The Official Press Release:
The new six issue horror series comes from writer Christopher Sebela, artist Ibrahim Moustafa, colorist Brad Simpson and letterer Joe Sabino. The familiar world of La Mancha remains, with Quixote charging forward on his impossible quest and Sancho Panza reluctantly following along. This time, however, Quixote’s heroic fantasy has become something considerably more dangerous.
That leaves Dulcinea del Toboso with a problem.
Rather than simply existing as the idealized woman at the center of Quixote’s fantasy, Dulcinea is a farm girl trying to keep her family farm alive. When Quixote’s obsession begins destroying everything around her, she is forced to leave her old life behind and take matters into her own hands. The woman who exists as a romantic ideal in Quixote’s mind becomes the person who has to deal with the very real consequences of his actions.
From there, LA MANCHA sounds like it is taking the familiar ideas of obsession, identity and heroism and taking them on a long trip through hell. Quixote believes he is on a noble mission to save the world from an evil enchanter, while everyone else has to contend with the bodies being left behind along the way. They have even incorporated those classic windmills Quixote battled in the original tale…but this time it’s far more bloody.
Sebela and Moustafa are reimagining one of literature’s most iconic stories as a darkly funny horror adventure that puts the consequences of Quixote’s fantasy front and center. The result sounds like the kind of indie horror comic that can take something familiar, twist it sideways and come up with something that feels completely different.
LA MANCHA #1 is shaping up to be a pretty wild trip through one of literature’s most famous stories, only this time there are monsters, madness and a whole lot more blood waiting on the other side of those windmills. Get those preorders in so you don’t miss out.