PANICK Entertainment and IllFonic’s IllComic imprint have officially announced a Halloween comic book series built off Halloween: The Game, the asymmetrical multiplayer horror title IllFonic released September 8. The comic isn’t a novelization of the game, it’s positioned as a standalone story set in the same continuity, opening on Halloween Eve, 1978, with Myers’ escape from Smith’s Grove Sanitarium, the inciting incident the entire Halloween mythology hangs on. Writers Hans Rodionoff and Adam F. Goldberg handle the script, with art from Eamon Winkle, colours by Robert Nugent, and additional inks and art from Ivan Dedov and Sean O’Toole.
PANICK CEO and publisher Kris Longo, a former Heavy Metal Magazine executive who launched the company as a horror-focused multimedia label, framed the book as a return to basics for the character: “The combination of Hans Rodionoff, Adam F. Goldberg and this phenomenal art team makes for an incredible Halloween comic. This is classic Michael Myers unleashed.”
Issue one arrives with three covers, featuring art from Zach Howard and Nelson Dániel, a variant from Jonathan Wayshak, and a limited incentive cover from Winkle and O’Toole, with a rotating creative team planned for issues #3 through #5, bringing in Timmy Heague, the duo of James and Elyse Willems, and Leon Reiser.
Not surprisingly, Halloween: The Game arrives as the franchise’s latest attempt to extend Michael Myers past the finality Halloween Ends tried to impose on him back in 2022. Whether Rodionoff and Goldberg’s script does anything more ambitious than restage the night everyone already knows scene-for-scene remains to be seen; setting a tie-in comic on the exact night of the 1978 original is the safest possible choice a writer could make. But Compass International Pictures’ name attached to the project (the company that holds a stake in the original Halloween‘s legacy rights) suggests this one is being treated as more than disposable game merchandise.
Issue one goes on sale November 4. The pre-order cutoff for retailers lands September 29, so anyone who wants a shot at the limited covers should tell their shop now.
