Tag Archives: the faraway

Crowdfunding Corner: Cullen Bunn’s The Faraway follows a group of RPG enthusiasts trapped in a dark fantasy world

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Cullen Bunn has announced the Kickstarter campaign for first comic offering in the Outer Shadows imprint is now live! The Faraway #1 presents a new dark fantasy/horror world that will entertain, delight, and chill!

We know the story, right? While playing a fantasy role-playing game, a group of friends accidentally transports themselves into a fantasy world. Therein, they meet a friendly magical gnome who grants them magical weapons and guides them through their adventures. They face dark forces, but they rise into the roles of heroes and reaffirm the lifelong bonds of friendship in the process. 

Yeah. 

This isn’t that story.

Our heroes are transported into a magical kingdom of warriors and wizards and dragons and catacombs, yes. They meet a friendly magical gnome, yes. They are granted magical artifacts of great power, yes. But, within minutes of arriving in the fantasy world, this group of five college students finds themselves thrown into an adventure that is more horror than high fantasy. 

Our heroes have arrived, you see, in the DARKEST if dark fantasy worlds, where the “evil overlord” has already successfully conquered the realm and enslaved all of the free peoples. It is a nightmare realm populated by the most awful monsters and the most cruel sorcerers and warlords. 

Think of it as a tale of survival horror… in a land like Mordor… if the corruption of Mordor spread across all of Middle Earth. 

Trapped in this violent, vicious, unforgiving, terrifying (and terrifyingly lethal) realm, our heroes struggle for survival as, at every turn, they are faced with malignant monsters, foul magic, and fiendish foes. 

Written by master of horror comics Cullen Bunn and illustrated by high-energy artist Vitalii Kalchenko, The Faraway takes the familiar tropes of “gamers trapped in a fantasy world” and turns them on their decapitated head.

The campaign runs until Saturday, March 23, 2024 at 12:59 AM EDT.

Outland Entertainment and Cullen Bunn expand their horror endeavor

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Last year, Outland Entertainment announced Cullen Bunn’s horror imprint, Outer Shadows. Through Outer Shadows, three prose projects (Swords in the Shadows, Raze, and Crooked Hills) have been published. While more terrifying prose projects are in the works, Outer Shadows will also be pushing into the comic book publishing arena with an aggressive, exciting, and horrifying initiative.

There are dozens of comic books, trade paperbacks, and original graphic novels planned for the Outer Shadows imprint. First up, a dark fantasy/horror series titled The Faraway, written by Bunn and illustrated by Vitalii Kalchenko.

In the release, Bunn described the new series:

The Faraway offers a clear premise. If you’re my age, you loved the old Dungeons and Dragons cartoon, where a group of kids get swept into a magical land. What happens, though, if those kids get trapped in a realm of fantasy and magic… that has been completely consumed by evil? In The Faraway, a group of unlucky gamers finds themselves surrounded by a world of horrifying monsters and murderous cutthroats. And, while the book is gorgeously illustrated, the situation will not be pretty.

The Kickstarter campaign for The Faraway will launch on March 7, 2024. The pre-launch campaign page is live now. 

Several other comics are currently in production for Outer Shadows, with a variety of styles and horror subgenres being tackled. In addition to The Faraway, a new erotic horror thriller titled Bumping Uglies (illustrated by Ann Marie Cochran) will be serialized under the imprint. This story follows a pair of police detectives on a descent into a sex-fueled nightmare as they investigate a new mind-altering drug with supernatural origins.

The Faraway and Bumping Uglies will be a series, but Outer Shadows will also be releasing one-shot horror tales titled Nightmare Fuel Presents. These stories will be self-contained tales of pulse-pounding terror.

Nightmare Fuel Presents one-shots will include Death Duel with Chainsaw Witches (illustrated by Diogo Carvalho) which follows a group of heavy metal bandmates out to destroy the demons they helped summon. Long Pig and Azrael (illustrated by Emmanuel Casallos) follows a lonely hitchhiker and the demonic entity that is always following him. The Window (illustrated by Luay Garwan) features a down-on-their-luck family that moves into a new house… and discovers a passage to an alien world.

Bunn and Joe Bocardo’s apocalyptic vampire epic Nightwalkers, which was previously published in single issues, will join the line-up. It will be released in a collected edition and the series will be continuing through Outer Shadows.

And Bunn promises even more.

“We have several other comics and graphic novels in the works. Terrifying giant monster stories? You bet! Stories about infernally-possessed knickknacks? Of course! There are so many stories in the works, and I’m excited to make Outer Shadows a home for horror and dark fantasy comics.”

Outer Shadows publications will be released first as crowdfunding campaigns with Kickstarter. These campaigns will have options for every budget and reading preference. They will have low funding thresholds and, in many cases, shortened campaign durations. The crowdfunding campaigns will offer readers the chance to help in the creation of these comics and score some product offerings only available during the campaigns. After the campaigns are funded and delivered, comics in the line will also be distributed to the direct market.

Upcoming non-comics offerings from Outer Shadows include I’ll Kill You Last, an anthology of horror tales inspired by 80s action movies; Goblinville, a dark fantasy novella series; and The Complete Short Fiction of Cullen Bunn, a three-volume collection of Bunn’s prose short stories.