Something Fiendish This Way Comes: Previewing The Collected ‘Fiends Of The Eastern Front’

by Richard Bruton

Coming your way in December, the classic 2000 AD terror tale, Gerry Finley-Day and Carlos Ezquerra‘s classic wartime story featuring vampires vs nazis – Fiends of the Eastern Front.

This one’s been a fair time coming, but finally this November we get the collection of 2000 AD‘s classic vampire tale, Fiends of the Eastern Front, a strip dating all the way back to the early days of 2000 AD (Progs 152-161, 1980) when Finley-Day and Ezquerra brought together vampires and nazis for the first time and created a classic bit of 2000 AD horror as the vampire Constanta’s tale of blood and hunger unfolded.

It all began when the remains of Wehrmacht soldier, Hans Schmitt, and his diary, were discovered – a diary full of Schmitt’s terrifying meeting with the Romanian Captain Constanta and his platoon of blood-sucking vampire soldiers. It’s blood and terror in the frozen East of WWII that quickly became a huge favourite amongst fans.

But for so long, that 10-part series was all there was, no sequels at the time, just ten episodes of absolute brilliance and a strip that became an instant classic.

Classic Carlos Ezquerra art from Fiends of the Eastern Front

It wasn’t until a quarter of a century and more, 2006, that we got more Fiends, when David Bishop and Colin MacNeil took us to Stalingrad, 1943, with the Russians fighting to their last man to defend the city. But the cold and the Nazis aren’t the only things to fear out in the night.

From Fiends: Stalingrad – art by Colin MacNeil

But of course, the vampire Constanta is practically immortal and has been stalking this world for prey for far longer than merely back in WWII. And it was that idea that writer Ian Edginton took on, developing a number of Fiends series developing the legend of the vampire Constanta across the ages, of which the first, 1812, sees the vampire Constanta finding plentiful prey with Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow.

The Collected Fiends of the Eastern Front contains all those tales, plus one-offs from WWI and the Vietnam War, all of them full of classic terror and vampire horrors.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of seeing Carlos Ezquerra do zombie soldiers in WWII, this is a wonderful chance, with 2000 AD releasing this horror-filled collection in paperback and hardback on 7th December – definitely something to sink your teeth into!