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[TV] IDW and eOne Sink Their Teeth Into A “V-Wars” Adaptation

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IDW Entertainment and Entertainment One Television are wasting no time using their partnership. Today IDW announced that they will be developing an adaptation of Jonathan Maberry’s “V-Wars” as a series with Tim Schlattmann (Dexter) attached to pen the pilot.

The comic book series takes place in a world where an ancient vampire virus runs wild, affecting each individually differently. The first issue of the comic was released on April 30, 2014, and the second issue hit stands today.

vwars
Los Angeles/San Diego, CA (May 21, 2014) – IDW Entertainment and Entertainment One Television (eOne Television) announced today that V-Wars will be the first series project developed under the recently announced first-look co-production agreement.

Three-time Emmy® Award nominee Tim Schlattmann (Dexter, Smallville) has been tapped to write the pilot, and will serve as an executive producer on the series. Ted Adams and David Ozer from IDW Entertainment, John Morayniss and Benedict Carver from eOne Television, and David Alpert and Rick Jacobs from Circle of Confusion (The Walking Dead) will also executive produce.

V-Wars is being developed as direct-to-series and is based on the acclaimed IDW Publishing property written by New York Times best-selling and multiple Bram Stoker Award®-winning author Jonathan Maberry.

“This is a story that takes everything the audience thinks they know about vampires and throws it out the window. They’re not the undead. They’re us.” said Schlattman.

V-Wars is set in a world transformed by a catastrophic environmental event that releases a millennial-old virus that once triggered, affects individuals differently depending on their DNA. The result is vampires as unique as their cultures and a response from those unaffected humans like never seen before.

“V-Wars is a head-on collision of real-world science, terrorism, special forces action, ethics, politics and an exploration of what defines us as human,” said Maberry.

“Tim brings an incredible vision for V-Wars,” said Ozer, IDW Entertainment President, “The series sets an exciting tone for our first project launched with Entertainment One and will resonate throughout the global television market.”

“V-Wars is the perfect project to kick off our partnership with IDW Entertainment, and lays the groundwork for a slate of ambitious projects to come,” said Morayniss, Chief Executive Officer, eOne Television. “We are thrilled to have attracted such a huge talent as Tim to bring this gritty post-apocalyptic world to life.”

V-Wars debuted as a collection of prose stories that chronicles the first Vampire War, and a second volume is scheduled for release this July. IDW Publishing also launched an ongoing monthly V-Wars comic book series in May. The first issue was critically acclaimed and is already headed to a second printing.

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[Review] Graphic Novel ‘Tender’ Is Brilliant Feminist Body Horror That Will Make You Squirm & Scream

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Tender Beth Hetland Graphic Novel

Beth Hetland’s debut graphic novel, ‘Tender,’ is a modern tale of love, validation, and self-destruction by way of brutal body horror with a feminist edge.

“I’ve wanted this more than anything.”

Men so often dominate the body horror subgenre, which makes it so rare and insightful whenever women tackle this space. This makes Beth Hetland’s Tender such a refreshing change of pace. It’s earnest, honest, and impossibly exposed. Tender takes the body horror subgenre and brilliantly and subversively mixes it together with a narrative that’s steeped in the societal expectations that women face on a daily basis, whether it comes to empowerment, family, or sexuality. It single-handedly beats other 2023 and ‘24 feminine horror texts like American Horror Story: Delicate, Sick, Lisa Frankenstein, and Immaculate at their own game.

Hetland’s Tender is American Psycho meets Rosemary’s Baby meets Swallow. It’s also absolutely not for the faint of heart.

Right from the jump, Tender grabs hold of its audience and doesn’t let go. Carolanne’s quest for romantic fulfillment, validation, and a grander purpose is easy to empathize with and an effective framework for this woeful saga. Carolanne’s wounds cut so deep simply because they’re so incredibly commonplace. Everybody wants to feel wanted.

Tender is full of beautiful, gross, expressive artwork that makes the reader squirm in their seat and itch. Hetland’s drawings are simultaneously minimalist and comprehensively layered. They’re  reminiscent of Charles Burns’ Black Hole, in the best way possible. There’s consistently inspired and striking use of spot coloring that elevates Hetland’s story whenever it’s incorporated, invading Tender’s muted world.

Hetland employs effective, economical storytelling that makes clever use of panels and scene construction so that Tender can breeze through exposition and get to the story’s gooey, aching heart. There’s an excellent page that depicts Carolanne’s menial domestic tasks where the repetitive panels grow increasingly smaller to illustrate the formulaic rut that her life has become. It’s magical. Tender is full of creative devices like this that further let the reader into Carolanne’s mind without ever getting clunky or explicit on the matter. The graphic novel is bookended with a simple moment that shifts from sweet to suffocating.

Tender gives the audience a proper sense of who Carolanne is right away. Hetland adeptly defines her protagonist so that readers are immediately on her side, praying that she gets her “happily ever after,” and makes it out of this sick story alive…And then they’re rapidly wishing for the opposite and utterly aghast over this chameleon. There’s also some creative experimentation with non-linear storytelling that gets to the root of Carolanne and continually recontextualizes who she is and what she wants out of life so that the audience is kept on guard.

Tender casually transforms from a picture-perfect rom-com, right down to the visual style, into a haunting horror story. There’s such a natural quality to how Tender presents the melancholy manner in which a relationship — and life — can decay. Once the horror elements hit, they hit hard, like a jackhammer, and don’t relent. It’s hard not to wince and grimace through Tender’s terrifying images. They’re reminiscent of the nightmarish dadaist visuals from The Ring’s cursed videotape, distilled to blunt comic panels that the reader is forced to confront and digest, rather than something that simply flickers through their mind and is gone a moment later. Tender makes its audience marinate in its mania and incubates its horror as if it’s a gestating fetus in their womb.

Tender tells a powerful, emotional, disturbing story, but its secret weapon may be its sublime pacing. Hetland paces Tender in such an exceptional manner, so that it takes its time, sneaks up on the reader, and gets under their skin until they’re dreading where the story will go next. Tender pushes the audience right up to the edge so that they’re practically begging that Carolanne won’t do the things that she does, yet the other shoe always drops in the most devastating manner. Audiences will read Tender with clenched fists that make it a struggle to turn each page, although they won’t be able to stop. Tender isn’t a short story, at more than 160 pages, but readers will want to take their time and relish each page so that this macabre story lasts for as long as possible before it cascades to its tragic conclusion. 

Tender is an accomplished and uncomfortable debut graphic novel from Hetland that reveals a strong, unflinching voice that’s the perfect fit for horror. Tender indulges in heightened flights of fancy and toes the line with the supernatural. However, Tender is so successful at what it does because it’s so grounded in reality and presents a horror story that’s all too common in society. It’s a heartbreaking meditation on loneliness and codependency that’s one of 2024’s must-read horror graphic novels.

‘Tender,’ by Beth Hetland and published by Fantagraphics, is now available.

4 out of 5 skulls

Tender graphic novel review

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