Available now in a Standard Edition. Signed VHS Box Edition and “Psycho Fan” Personalized Set, the second issue of Eibon Press‘s 3-issue comic series set in the world of William Lustig’s Maniac not only continues the story of sweaty slasher Frank Zito, but it also begins the cross-over between Maniac and Lucio Fulci’s The New York Ripper!
Eibon’s Stephen Romano teases the new issue, “The whole MANIAC comic series was something we really wanted to do on an artistic level. This wasn’t a business decision. We weren’t looking at demographics or whatever and saying “oh this will be a big hit!” We wanted to do this adaptation because it’s kind of a unique movie in the 1980s horror slasher pantheon. In the wake of Carpenter’s HALLOWEEN, you had all these movies that were about the victims, which is great and we love that. It’s as it should be. We need to identify with the survivors of these massacres, in order to have any empathy. But if I am honest as a writer and also as a survivor of violent crime myself, what interests me more is what goes on inside the heads of people who actually do these crimes. I don’t identify with them, obviously, but I want to know what makes them tick. To me, that’s true horror.”
“Frank Zito is an uncomfortable creation in that way. We are forced to KNOW HIM in the film, because he is the main character, and it’s not a worldview we like. So for the comic book, we take it all a quantum leap further and really get inside his head. In Issue 2, we go pretty far with that, and he meets up with his one true love, Anna D’Antoni, as played by Caroline Munro in the film. In the comic script, she is expanded and deepened and her relationship with Frank is darker and more complex. I always wondered why those two hit it off so well in the movie, and we answer that question here.”
“Of course, what the fans REALLY want in issue #2 is what we’ve been teasing for over a year now, and that’s the MANIAC VS. NEW YORK RIPPER battle. That was also fertile fields for exploring real horror, and in that case we deal more with the psychology of the victim, and how each killer perceives her. They are each obsessed with the same girl, and she is doomed of course, but the fascinating thing is both Frank and The Ripper think they are the heroes of their own lives. Everybody does. Even these sick, deranged lunatics who to all these despicable things. When you start really getting into the psychology of that, you start really getting scared. And that’s what this series is all about.”
Check out an exclusive page from Issue #2 below, and grab your copy from Eibon Press!
Issue #3 of Maniac, the final chapter, will be available in December.
