Kim Newman's Anno Dracula is one of my favorite novels. It's got a great high concept built around a simple premise, set in a world where Harker, Morris, Holmwood, and Van Helsing fail to stop Dracula, who goes on to bite Queen Victoria, make her his thrall, and become Prince Consort of England.

Under Dracula's reign, the next century is shaped by his presence into a world where vampires -- all kinds of vampires -- are a pretty big fact of life. Beyond that, though, Newman takes an approach that doesn't stop with Dracula, but builds a canon from pretty much everything in pop culture, from Dr. Jekyll and Mister Hyde all the way down to The Rockford Files.

And now, it's finally making it to comics. Titan has announced an Anno Dracula adaptation set for March of 2017, written by Newman with art by Paul McCaffrey.

Originally published in 1992, the first Anno Dracula novel takes place in 1888, focusing on the early years of a society where vampires have just gone public, and a mystery --- for the characters, if not the readers --- surrounding the Whitechapel murders of Jack the Ripper.

Like Alan Moore and Kevin O'Neill's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, it's filled with references to other books, movies, TV shows, and even a couple of comics, some explicit and some pretty obscured, usually depending on whether the reference in question is in the public domain.

Which is to say that there may or may not be a scene in the fourth book, Johnny Alucard, in which Frank Castle, Shaggy and Scooby, and Ms. 45 form a street gang of vampire hunters. It's a pretty great book.

All told, the Anno Dracula series includes four novels, Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Baron, Dracula Cha-Cha-Cha, and Johnny Alucard, as well as multiple short stories. Whether the comic will be a new story or an adaptation of the first novel has not yet been announced.

 

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