Garth Ennis Mixes Dogfights And Dinosaurs For ‘Secret Wars’ Tie-In ‘Where Monsters Dwell’

The latest Marvel Secret Wars tie-in is an unlikely story from the likeliest of sources. Garth Ennis, a writer who specializes in off-kilter war stories, is bringing back the 1960s ace pilot hero The Phantom Eagle for the second time, alongside artist Russ Braun, to pit him against a lost land of dinosaurs in Where Monsters Dwell.

The Phantom Eagle, aka Karl Kaufman, was created in 1968 by Gary Friedrich and Herb Trimpe in Marvel Super-Heroes #16 as a fantastical version of a Word War I flying ace. Ennis and artist Howard Chaykin offered an alternative spin on the character in the 2008 Marvel MAX mini-series War Is Hell -- a name borrowed from a 1970s Marvel war comic. Where Monsters Dwell is of course the title of another 1970s Marvel comic, as is the previously announced Master Of Kung Fu.

With the majority of Secret Wars books still to be revealed, it's tempting to speculate which other old titles might get the Battleworld treatment, such as Haunt of Horror, Monsters Unleashed, Savage Tales, and our top pick, Gothic Tales of Love. Marvel hasn't confirmed just where Where Monsters Dwell dwells on the Battleworld map, but the dinosaur-filled Valley of Flame seems the most likely candidate.

Talking to Vulture, which broke the exclusive announcement, Ennis described the series thus; "Some time in the early 1920s, ex–Great War fighter pilot Karl Kaufmann is bumming around the Far East, getting into various scrapes and trying to make a dishonest buck. He agrees to fly naïve English socialite Clementine Franklin-Cox to Singapore, only to end up blown off course and flung into an exotic world of dinosaurs, cannibals, and a rather unusual tribe of amazons — who have their own plans for Clemmie. She, in turn, is not quite all she seems."

Where Monsters Dwell is a five-issue mini-series debuting May 27.

Check out some classic Where Monsters Dwell covers in our gallery below: