Beloved comics writer Steve Niles may be writing a Kolchak: The Night Stalker story. Earlier this month, James Aquilone and Moonstone Books launched a Kickstarter campaign for a graphic novel celebrating 50 years of Kolchak: The Night Stalker. The TV series of the same name, which Chris Carter said was a huge influence on the development of The X-Files years later, only ran for a single season in 1974 and 1975, but was preceded by a pair of TV movies beginning in 1972. It became a cult classic and lived on in syndication, one of the earliest examples of a series that did that with so few episodes to fall back on in reruns.
The all-new, 100+ page, full-color graphic novel will feature ten stories chronicling the life of monster-hunting reporter Carl Kolchak, from comics creators including Rodney Barnes (Killadelphia), Kim Newman (Anno Dracula), Peter David (The Incredible Hulk), and Jonathan Maberry (V-Wars). It features art by Colton Worley (The Shadow), Warwick Johnson-Cadwell (Mr. Higgins Comes Home), J.K. Woodward (Star Trek), and Paul McCaffrey (Anno Dracula).
The campaign, which has 15 days left to go, was originally seeking under $15,000 in funding, but currently has more than $75,000 in pledges. Needless to say, they have pretty much blown through all of their established stretch goals.
So ComicBook can exclusively announce the next one: if the project can reach $85,000 in funding before it ends, the book will include a new Kolchak story written by 30 Days of Night co-creator Steve Niles (who himself has some X-Files experience, come to think of it). Niles, a veteran of stories featuring Batman, The Spectre, The Creeper, and Spawn, Niles is a guy who can come at the mysterious and the macabre from basically any angle. It’s hard to guess what he’ll choose to do with a guy like Kolchak who, due to his limited original stories and the wide variety of people who have written stories for him following the end of the show, is one of the most malleable protagonists in modern fiction.
We’re also able to share the first six pages of roughs for one of the stories, a tale called Interview with the Night Stalker by writer Kim Newman and artist Paul McCaffrey. You can check those out below, along with a look at the various covers for the collection.
