Kickstarting Comics: Top Cow Announces Stjepan Šejić’s ‘Letters To The Vampire Queen, Book I: The Bloodsilver Collar’

Top Cow Productions has announced a new Kickstarter campaign for Letters to the Vampire Queen, Book I: The Bloodsilver Collar, by writer/artist Stjepan Šejić. This is an illustrated dark fantasy novel from Šejić (Sunstone, Death Vigil, Harleen), launching in partnership with Rocketship Entertainment. For fans who want to get in early, you can pre-register here.

 

“Blending dark fantasy, horror, romance and Šejić’s signature visual storytelling, Letters to the Vampire Queen introduces Lysandre, a young woman condemned by her city for who she loves.

Collared in mystic bloodsilver and shunned for being a Lilian, a Nightblossom, a woman who loves other women, Lysandre is considered a threat because women like her could bring back Alyssa Dalkoff, the vanquished vampire queen of Dalkoffburg. Lysandre has no intention of doing anything of the sort. But when a monstrous killer begins claiming the lives of the people she loves, her only hope may lie with an even greater monster.

And so she begins writing letters to the Vampire Queen.”

This is the first time Šejić has authored a novel after decades of storytelling through comics and graphic novels — combining prose with his own illustrations, seems the obvious extension of his skills.

Šejić said of this new direction:

“I’ve spent most of my career telling stories through sequential art, so Letters to the Vampire Queen gave me a chance to approach storytelling from a completely different direction. With prose I can spend more time inside these characters’ heads and explore the world in ways that comics don’t always allow, while still illustrating the moments I most want readers to see. It’s still very much one of my stories, just told in a new way.”

Top Cow President and COO Matt Hawkins added:

“I’ve worked with Stjepan for a long time, and one of the things that continues to impress me is that he never stops pushing himself creatively. Letters to the Vampire Queen is his first illustrated novel, but it is unmistakably Stjepan: gorgeous art, deep world-building, complicated characters, dark humor, romance and more than a little blood. I’m excited for people to see what he does with an entirely different storytelling format.”

Check out the pre-registration page here.