Echo 3 Worldwide announced this week that it has acquired the comic license for the BloodRayne video game franchise. E3W President, Steven O'Connell (Tiger Wraith) explains how the deal came about:
was trying to think about which game out there would be perfect for the comic book treatment. Most of the games were first-person or third-person shooters but they didn't really have a detailed storyline. When I picked up the cover to BloodRayne and read the back, I was intrigued...so I purchased the game and just simply fell in love with it. Here was a sexy half-vampire running around shooting Nazis, throwing snide remarks around...how could you not love it? So, being that I'm from New Jersey and Majesco Games is located in New Jersey, I shot them an email. After a few weeks Product Manager, Liz Buckley wrote back. She told me to call her. I did. I told her my plans for the comic book if I was to obtain the license. She said put a pitch together - so I did. I knew Romano Molenaar (series artist) and shot him an email asking him if he'd be interested in helping me with the pitch. He loved the pictures of the character I forwarded to him so he jumped on board. He supplied me with a spec cover that was truly awesome (see attached picture). I then asked another guy I've known for a bit, Blond (Kevin Senft) to add the colors to it. He agreed. I put the whole thing together, sent it off to Liz and waited. I guess they loved the pitch because now we're producing the comic!
For those who don't know anything about BloodRayne...she is a dhampir, born from the unnatural union of vampire and human. Raised and trained to hunt supernatural evil, Rayne is blessed with the powers of a vampire, but is also cursed with the unquenchable thirst for blood and a weakness to sunlight. As a writer, I think she has this deep history of untold tales that need to be told...
BloodRayne will be released in a series of quarterly one-shots. The first one-shot, BloodRayne: Skies Afire will be written by O'Connell, with pencils by Romano Molenaar (Witchblade, Cursed, Tenth, More then Mortal), inks by Marco Galli (Aphrodite IX) and colored by Blond <http://www.blondthecolorist.com> (Masters of the Universe). It’s currently scheduled for an October release.
This Has An “I’m Not Bad, I’m Just Drawn That Way” Factor of Seven Out of Ten
Just got word from Steven O'Connell of Echo 3 Worldwide (
http://echo3worldwide.com) and he told me that they are planning ATLEAST FIVE comics and that
We're planning at least five...so as long as Romano wants to stay on board - he's the penciler.
great!!!
These are gonna be noteworthy even in 20 years!! LEt me tell you that!!!!
Want to look more at Ro's artwork:
http://boomvavavoom.tripod.com/romano.html http://www.romanomolenaar.com/Echo 3 Worldwide
http://echo3worldwide.com
