Your First Look At Berger Books’ Hungry Ghosts #1 From Anthony Bourdain, Joel Rose, Alberto Ponticelli & Vanessa Del Rey

by Hannah Means Shannon

Karen Berger’s imprint at Dark Horse is going to start releasing books in January 2018, and the first title for Berger Books will be Hungry Ghosts.

Author, chef and Emmy award-winning television star Anthony Bourdain (Parts Unknown, Kitchen Confidential) and writer Joel Rose (Get Jiro!; Kill, Kill, Faster, Faster) create a series containing multiple international tales of “terror, irritable spirits, and horribly strange beings” in a 4 issue miniseries.

The first issue is illustrated by Alberto Ponticelli (Unknown Soldier, Dial H) and Vanesa Del Rey (Redlands, The Empty Man, Hit 1957), with color by Jose Villarrubia (Conan the Cimmerian, Get Jiro!, Sweet Tooth), and a cover by Paul Pope (Batman Year 100, Battling Boy, Heavy Liquid).
Subsequent issues will feature art from Francesco Francavilla, Leonardo Manco, Paul Pope, Mateus Santolouco, and others.

The series is inspired by the Japanese Edo Period game “Hyakumonogatari Kaidankai” or “100 Candles”, played by samurai warriors to test their courage, and Hungry Ghosts adapts this approach when “a circle of international chefs invoke modern tales of horror, terrifying yokai, yorei, and obake, all with the common thread of food—and pray that they survive the night”.

For the first issue of the series, and the first course:

…a ramen chef refuses to help a beggar, and a band of pirates gets more (and less) than they were bargaining for after their encounter with a drowning woman turns ghastly.

Here’s our first look at the interiors on this comic: