Thomas Jane Brings ‘The Lycan’ And His Passion For ’50s Comics To Comic-Con
Already a beloved figure among the San Diego Comic-Con set for fixture for his work as the title character in Marvel’s The Punisher, Thomas Jane is back. This time, he’s armed with news he is bringing his horror comic book series The Lycan to Comixology Originals. Jane is doing it through Renegade Entertainment, the company he co-founded with Courtney Lauren Penn, who are producing Season 2 of the Prime Video show Troppo, in which Jane plays disgraced ex-cop Ted Conkaffey. That drama premieres today on Prime Video.
With The Lycan, Jane takes on the new role of comic book editor. The Lycan is based on a story Jane hatched with David James Kelly, with a script by Mike Carey (Lucifer), art by Diego Yapur, coloring by D.C. Alonso, and lettering by AndWorld Design. The 6-issue series is the first from Renegade Entertainment and will be released monthly from Amazon’s Comixology Originals exclusive digital content line with covers by artist Tim Bradstreet (Hellblazer).
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We’ve seen many artists moonlight in the comics space as a way to create vehicles for themselves, or to create quick IP and proof of concept for films and series. That is not the case here: Jane is a comics aficionado going back to childhood, and he’s worked on The Lycan for a decade.
“As far as storytelling goes, comic books were my first love,” he tells Deadline. “They were the first thing that I discovered that could transport me to another universe. There were so many different stories, styles, and genres and artistic visions that I got exposed to at an early age. My first love was EC Comics, the pre-code horror stuff that came out in the fifties out of New York. My mom was an antiques nut, and everything in our house was antique, the silverware, the dishes, all the furniture, everything. It was like walking back in time in our house. So that meant we spent a lot of time at antique sales, garage sales, thrift stores, auction houses. And more likely than not, there would be a box full of old comics there. I was bored as hell waiting around in these giant warehouses filled with old crap, and so the first thing I would do is try to find their magazines and comic books.”
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It honed a taste that went beyond Marvel and DC heroes, and into darker and more daring fare.
“Digging through these things, I would find these amazing books,” he said. “One of the things that really knocked me out was the underground Comics. This was the seventies and the eighties and underground was a thing. So I’d run across comics like Slow Death or Corn Fed, and these underground artists were so different than the Marvel and DC stuff I would normally look at. Blew my mind and opened up the possibilities of what you could do with a blank page. So I had a huge collection of old comics.”
While Jane was spared the plight of many a comics and baseball card collector who found their mother threw out their beloved stash, he doesn’t have any of his old supply.
“My parents’ house actually ended up burning down and I lost all the old,” he said. “I had every Mad Magazine ever, quite a collection of good stuff, but all that’s gone. But I’d moved out to California by then and had my own second collection going. So when I got into doing The Punisher for Marvel, that opened up a door for me where I got to meet all these comic book creators, and I was like a kid in a candy shop. I knew my bag was always science-fiction and the horror stuff, and I got to become friends with Bernie Wrightson, all the great Frankenstein stuff and The Swamp Thing and so many wonderful things. One of the big inspirations for me was Pacific Comics in the eighties put out two titles that Bruce Jones wrote, Twisted Tales and Alien Worlds. And these were kind of an update of the old EC stuff, these anthologies by Richard Corbin or John Bolton, these amazing artists. And so I got to meet these guys. I got to hang out with Bruce Jones. And so that inevitably led to putting out a couple of books of my own. So I started Raw Studios and put out three or four titles. And the one that I had that I never got to do was this book called The Lycan.”
The delay was caused by a tragedy.
“A buddy of mine, David James Kelly, came up with this outline of a story about these big game hunters that got marooned on this little British isle that turned out to be overrun by these massive wolves. And there’s a castle, it’s a gothic, gothic werewolf story. Hired a great writer, Mike Carey, and then we hired this amazing artist named Sean O’Connor. I was very particular. I really wanted great art in a specific style, the kind of Franklin Booth kind of style.
“And then Sean just disappeared off the face of the earth,” Janes said. “He completed one issue of six, and he disappeared off the face of the earth one day. I still don’t know really what happened to Sean O’Connor, and the book sat in a drawer for 10 years. I started my new company Renegade with my partner Courtney Lauren Penn and we started producing movies, and then we got a television show with Amazon that I produced and that I’ve directed and I’m starring in that drops today, Tropo.
“Courtney said, Hey, we should do a book. And I said, well, I’ve got a book. And we ended up at Comixology, and now we’re really excited. This particular story, it would make a fantastic movie or streamer project; a lot of great characters, a lot of fun, palace intrigue, and of course werewolves. So yeah, this particular one will make a great little movie or a streamer. But that was never the impetus for the comic. I think I love the medium, and these comics have to exist on their own two legs. I’m picky, and these things take a long time and they’re a lot of work as you have to live with the story for a couple of years. Most take three years, The Lycan took 10. This medium is my first love. I need to be able to hold the physical comic in my hand, so that it brings me back to those EC comics from the 1950s, and my favorites of those are Tales from the Crypt, The Vault of Horror, and then of course the incredible science fiction, fantasy and all of that EC stuff.”
The Lycan will be published in early 2025, Jane said.
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