Exclusive: Dark Horse Comics To Publish FALCONSPEARE by Mike Mignola & Warwick Johnson-Cadwell

Josh Millican |

Mar 11, 2021

This fall, Dark Horse Comics will publish Falconspeare, an original graphic novel featuring Mike Mignola and Warwick Johnson-Cadwell’s characters Professor J.T. Meinhardt, Mr. Knox, and Ms. Mary Van Sloan. This eerie Victorian-style mystery delivers horror, humor, and the kind of off-kilter, charming twists that fans of Mignola and Johnson-Cadwell’s previous collaborations Mr. Higgins Comes Home and Our Encounters with Evil: Adventures of Professor J.T. Meinhardt and His Assistant Mr. Knox have come to expect. Monster hunters extraordinaire Professor Meinhardt, Mr. Knox, and Ms. Van Sloan have teamed up to slay spooks and investigate the uncanny before, but now they’ll tackle a question that’s haunted them for years: What happened to their friend and vampire slayer extraordinaire, James Falconspeare?

Falconspeare is written and drawn by acclaimed artist Warwick Johnson-Cadwell, with lettering by Clem Robins and a cover by Mignola and Eisner Award-winning colorist Dave Stewart.

“Evil lurks among dark shadows and in many forms. The vampire, the werewolf, monsters of all kinds,” said Johnson-Cadwell. “We need a particular kind of hero to thwart these evils, and Professor J.T. Meinhardt, Mr. Knox, and Ms. Mary Van Sloan are just those heroes. A cryptic correspondence sets them on a mysterious path which will lead them to diabolic danger and grim reality where evil may lie. Diabolic evil is revealed in grim reality, and an ultimate sacrifice is demanded. Their encounters with evil continue.”

“Mr. Higgins Comes Home was a silly little story that basically wrote itself, inspired by old movies both Warwick and I love,” said Mignola. “I certainly didn’t imagine it would lead to other things, but seeing Warwick take those couple of characters from the original and create a whole world around them has been a real joy. I hope he’s having as much fun making these books as he appears to, because (now that I can just enjoy them as reader) I never want him to stop.”

Like the previous graphic novels, Falconspeare features the signature loose, expressive style of cartoonist Warwick Johnson-Cadwell in a standalone story that builds on the characters’ previous adventures. It is set outside both the Hellboy Universe and the Outerverse. Falconspeare will be on sale from Dark Horse Books in comic shops on September 29th, 2021 and in bookstores on October 12th, 2021.

Reviews of Mr. Higgins Comes Home:

“Charmingly illustrated by Warwick Johnson Cadwell, MR. HIGGINS is both a timeless fable and a cheeky send-up of Victorian vampire tropes, and it’s utterly delightful.”—SYFY WIRE

“Funny, scary… tragic and absurd. In short, it’s a perfect comic book to curl up with on Halloween, or any other day that you’re feeling up for that peculiarly All Hallow’s Eve blend of scares and laughs… and just a tiny hint of tragedy.”— DREAD CENTRAL

“You can always count on Mike Mignola for horror stories with a spooky atmosphere and a sense of humor, and he consistently puts out new horror comics with artists that bring an unconventional visual sensibility to the genre.”—AV CLUB

Reviews of Our Encounters with Evil: Adventures of Professor J.T. Meinhardt and His Assistant Mr. Knox

“Hauntingly unique.”—FORBES

“Satisfying horrific but refreshingly imaginative and playful.”—LIBRARY JOURNAL

“I could look at Johnson-Cadwell’s artwork all day long.”—MULTIVERSITY

For more information about Falconspeare, follow Dark Horse Comics on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

About Mike Mignola:

Reading DRACULA at ago 12 introduced Mike Mignola to Folklore and Victorian Supernatural Literature from which he has still never recovered. He began working as a comic book artist in 1982, working for both Marvel and DC Comics before creating HELLBOY, published by Dark Horse Comics in 1994. What began as a single comic book series would eventually expand to a “Hellboy Universe” of related graphic novels, prose novels, short story anthologies and both animated and live action films. He also wrote and drew THE AMAZING SCREW-ON HEAD AND OTHER CURIOUS OBJECTS. He has co-written novels with Christopher Golden (Baltimore, or, The Steadfast Tin Soldier and the Vampire) and Thomas Sniegoski (Grim Death and Bill The Electrocuted Criminal), worked with Francis Ford Coppola on BRAM STOKER’S DRACULA, was a production designer on Disney’s ATLANTIS: THE LOST EMPIRE, and visual consultant to Guillermo Del Toro on BLADE II, HELLBOY and HELLBOY II: THE GOLDEN ARMY. A new HELLBOY film directed by Neil Marshall will be released this spring.Mike’s comics and graphic novels have earned numerous awards and are published in a great many countries He lives in Southern California with his wife and a very demanding cat.

About Warwick Johnson-Cadwell:

Warwick Johnson-Cadwell has been drawing as long as he can remember, enthusiastically digesting comics and transposing James Bond, spaghetti westerns, and Hammer Horror movies onto paper. This drawing persisted, taking him through an Illustration degree and on to work in publishing with work for The Guardian and The Times newspapers. He’s done Animation Design for several projects in commercial and features studios including Aardman Animation’s Pirates! His comic work has featured in Nelson (2011), Lovecraft Anthology 2 (2012), Sold State Tank Girl (2013), Samuari Jack (2018), and many “small press” titles including Dangeritis (2014) with Robert Ball. He also skippers boats on the southern coast of England. He collaborated on Helena Crash with Fabian Rangel Jr. and, most recently, Mr. Higgins Comes Home and Our Encounters with Evil with Mike Mignola.

Are you a fan of Mike Mignola and Warwick Johnson-Cadwell? Are you excited to check out Falconspeare this fall? Let us know in the comments below or on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram! You can also carry on the convo with me personally on Twitter @josh_millican.

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