Broken Frontier

Dark Horse is partnering with 72 Productions to release Deadlocke, a special one-shot comic tie-in to Christopher Krovatin’s Venomous.

Venomous, a Simon & Schuster young adult novel, is also currently in the works as a feature film produced by the Los Angeles–based company 72 Productions, run by Jen Chaiken and Sebastian Dungan.

Deadlocke mixes real life and young adult themes with escapist comic book fantasy to  tell the story of a Manhattan teenager, Locke Vinetti, whose world is turned upside down when the dark alter ego who exists in his drawings threatens to take over his life. Locke must learn to control his newfound strength at the risk of losing Renee, the darkly beautiful girl of his dreams. This internal struggle eventually culminates in a brutal rooftop battle where the characters’ lives, and souls, hang in the balance.

Novel author and screenwriter Chris Krovatin’s other credits include 2005’s Heavy Metal and You. He is currently working on his first adult novel for Broadway Books, expected to be finished within the next year. This special comic tie-in is written by Rex Mundi writer Arvid Nelson and illustrated by Nick Stakal, artist on the recent Criminal Macabre series Cell Block 666.

“The film script for Deadlocke is just great,” says Nelson. “The dialogue crackles, and so does the plot. There's a fantastic tension between reality and fantasy. I think we really captured that in the comic, and I’m so excited for people to read it!”