Stephen Romano, the genius behind the terrific Shock Festival and the writer of Don Coscarelli’s ‘Masters of Horror’ entry Incident On and Off a Mountain Road, has partnered up with Shawn Lewis (Black Devil Doll) to form Eibon Press, a new comic book company with a mission to “Make owning and collecting horror comics cool again.”

The idea is to release single issue comics in super limited “Prestige Editions.” These editions will feature premium printing and innovative packaging never before seen in the history of comics.

“Our books are like limited edition record albums,” says Romano. “You know all that awesome stuff they’re doing with posters and vinyl soundtracks at places like Mondo? Well that’s what we’re bringing to comics. Each and every issue of each and every title will come encased in a specially-designed album jacket-style sleeve which we’ve invented ourselves. We call it the “Eibon Sleeve.” Plus you’ll get some fun extra stuff inside the sleeve with your comic. For example, the first 250 of each 1,000 copy run will contain a signed and numbered bookplate. And we’ll be inserting random awesome stuff in a few of the sleeves like autographed bookmarks and such. What we’re doing has never been done before, and we really hope people will dig all the blood and sweat we’re putting into each issue.”

If you’re familiar with Romano’s work you already know he’s an amazing artist with a knack for handling grindhouse fare. That’s basically what Shock Festival is all about. Given his background and talent, creating horror comics is essentially his calling. The fact that they’ll be pretty exclusive makes it even more exciting from  a horror collector’s viewpoint. Stuff you can get anywhere is cool because it’s easy to get, but it’s not as fun but it’s not as special. Releases from Eibon Press will most certainly be special. Comics will only be available through the Eibon website and will not be sold in any stores.

“We were actually about to sign a pretty big co-branding deal with an established publisher to get these books out,” says Lewis. “But Stephen had been down that road before and when we started looking at the numbers, it became more logical to use our own resources to get these books out through direct internet marketing. So we came up with a business model that would allow us to sell a limited number of titles in small print runs through our own website. Stephen’s been a professional creator of this crazy stuff for decades and I’ve been in the business of mail order fulfillment for decades, so it was kind of a “duhhh” moment. We figured we’d do this thing ourselves and make the books really collectible and special.”

“It’s a lot of hands on work to do it this way,” says Romano. “But it really makes these comic books into instant one-of-a-kind collector’s items. Plus, of course, there’s what actually INSIDE the pages of the books. Which ain’t so shabby, if I do say so.”

It’s true. Check out the gallery below, the artwork is incredible. I wish these had come out when I was a kid. Not that I’m not going to be excited about them now, because I very much am and can’t wait to get my hands on these books, but having these specific ones as a kid would have been a real treat.

Eibon Press’ debut line will be Fulci Comics that have spent nearly 16 years in the making. After taking on an adaptation of Fulci’s The Beyond, Romano and Lewis tackled a number of other projects based around Fulci’s work in the late 90’s. The pair took on very ambitious graphic novel adaptations of both Zombie and City of the Living Dead (Gates of Hell), but unfortunately they were met with great adversity and were just kind of lost in time…until now of course. With the birth of Eibon Press these past projects are experiencing a re-birth.

“Actually, you really haven’t ever seen these comics before,” Romano quips. “Not like we actually wanted you to see them anyway. GATES was never really released in its entirety at all. ZOMBIE had a release, but it was so small and it looked so bad, with the lousy printing and everything. Plus that was like 16 years ago. A lot of people have never even heard of these things. We wanted to return to these Fulci projects and not only get them really right—but continue the stories beyond the films they are based on.”

What does this mean exactly? Well it means that ZOMBIE will get it’s originally intended 4-issue film adaptation and then once that’s complete it will move forward as an ongoing series. Where do I sign up?!

“You’ll see all your favorite characters of course,” says Lewis. “But you’ll also see some new faces. And some faces you thought were dead and buried, too. Stephen’s bringing back Doctor Menard, for example, as a crazy mutated zombie mad scientist monster, working under the insane magic of BIACANDO—the voodoo priest sort of responsible for the zombie apocalypse. But there’s a post modern twist to everything, involving a toxic waste dump and a crazy Army general. It’s just insane stuff. The fans are gonna eat it the fuck up. I mean. I’m a fan
and I’m already eating it the fuck up!”

THE GATES OF HELL will be ongoing as well, but we don’t know much beyond that at this point. Romano and Lewis are being very hush-hush regarding that specific title.

“It’s a secret for now,” says Romano. “But we have some awesome-wicked stuff coming in the second wave of Fulci Comics. The Saga of the Seven Gates was something we sort of set rolling in 1998, and we may be bringing it to its conclusion soon. Plus we’re working on several other Fulci film licenses.
And some non-Fulci film stuff, too. Fans are gonna shit when they hear what’s coming next.”

Lucio Fulci’s ZOMBIE #1 will be available to the public in July. The follow up will be The Book of Eibon, which I gather to be a snapshot of all Eibon plans to offer up to genre fans. The first issue of this series will have a preview of Shark vs Zombie which is scheduled to be a story in a Halloween issue of ZOMBIE. This first issue of The Book of Eibon will be exclusively available in the August Box of Dread from Dread Central, so you’ll want to be sure to sign up for that.

The duo doesn’t plan to just stick to Fulci adaptations either. They’ve got plenty more in store, like BOTTOMFEEDER. This is an all-new original horror series that is expected to be released in 2017 and is described as HUMANOIDS FROM THE DEEP meets BAD LIUETENANT.

“We originally wanted to make BOTTOMFEEDER as a movie,” Romano says. “So when we decided to make it as a comic series, we ‘cast it’ just like we might have cast a dream version of the film. This means we can have some heavyweight horror stars in there, like Bill Mosley and Clu Gulager, who have both given us permission to use their likenesses…plus we get to resurrect Joe (MANIAC) Spinell and Zoe (MS.45) Tamerlis from the dead. Just wait’ll you see them in our comic. Our artist did an amazing job of bringing them back to life!”

For more information be on Eibon Press be sure to follow them on Twitter and Instagram and give them a ‘like’ on Facebook. As you wait to get your hands on these awesome comics enjoy this trailer for the ZOMBIE comic series and take a look through the gallery, which features art from ZOMBIE, BOTTOMFEEDER and more!