I didn’t get to attend anywhere near as many panels as I wanted to, but one I was able to catch was the Dark Horse horror panel.

In attendance on the panel were Scott Allie (Editor), Mike Mignola (Hellboy, BPRD), Eric Powell (Goon, Buzzard), Shawna Gore (Editor), Steve Niles (Criminal Macabre), and Marc Andreyko (the forthcoming Let Me In tie-in).

Future plans for Dark Horse and their horror line were discussed, including the future of the Hellboy franchise.  It was noted that 2011 was the 25th anniversary of Dark Horse and with that milestone, a concerted effort to reinvigorate the horror line would be made.

There were no incredibly major announcements made, though we’ll start with Mike Mignola.  As far as Hellboy is concerned, he’ll be continuing the line with Duncan Fergredo, (whom he said in my interview with him at Dragon*Con is better at drawing Hellboy than his creator).  He’ll also be collaborating on a future Hellboy project with Richard Corbin and all of the BPRD stories will culminate in a story arc he dubbed “Hell on Earth”.  He also said that he’ll be working less and less on other projects and whittle down the amount of Hellboy slightly because he wants to draw his own comics again.  There were also no plans for another Hellboy short story anthology at the time, since he’s focusing on comics.

His big non-Hellboy news concerned his 5 issue mini-series “Baltimore”, which is based on his book with co-writer Christopher Golden and his collaboration with John Arcudi on another “Witchfinder” miniseries, which will be his last for him to focus on the Hellboy universe and drawing comics.

Steve Niles, who looks vaguely like a full-sized Kenny Baker, talked briefly about his Criminal Macabre ongoing, as well as a team-up involving the Goon.

Eric Powell talked vaguely about his upcoming projects.  There is more new Goon coming, Buzzard is going to continue with Billy the Kid backups.  Billy the Kid will be taking on Jack the Ripper.  He offered no hints about the Goon movie other than it’s moving forward.  There was a panel for that movie later the next day, but I was unable to attend since I was interviewing Kevin Smith at that time.

Marc Andreyko then stepped in to talk about “Let Me In” and his comics prequel for the movie.  He was incredibly enthused about the movie, though the audience seemed skeptical.  He assured us that it was better than anyone could expect it to be.  It was very different from the original “Let the Right One In” and is just as haunting.  He also disclaimed the fact that he’s not just saying that because he wants to feel good about doing the book, “It really is that good.”

They also talked about the Dark Horse adaptation and licensed comics from Joss Whedon’s film “Cabin in the Woods”.  It keeps getting delayed because the film has been delayed and it needs to come out with the film.  The reason it has been delayed is because of a post-production conversion to 3D which none of the panel seemed enthused about.

(photos by Patricia Bailey for Big Shiny Robot!)