Veteran actor and Fango fave Lance Henriksen and author/filmmaker Joseph Maddrey have already joined forces in two different media: documentary film (Henriksen narrated and Maddrey wrote and produced NIGHTMARES IN RED, WHITE AND BLUE from the latter’s book) and the printed word (Maddrey co-wrote Henriksen’s biography NOT BAD FOR A HUMAN). Now the two are reteaming to tackle the comics scene, and both gave Fango the skinny.

Speaking to us at last weekend’s Monster Mania convention in New Jersey, the duo explained that the project was birthed at last month’s San Diego Comic-Con, where they were promoting HUMAN (which we reviewed here). “The head of Dark Horse came to us and said, ‘Lance, do you want to write a comic?’ ” Henriksen tells Fango. “I said, ‘Oh, hell yeah, I’ve got some really good stories.’ He said, ‘All right, consider it a deal.’ Boom, that was it, now it’s happening.”

“Lance had written a science fiction script a number of years ago, and that was the first thing that popped into his head,” Maddrey continues. “So he already had a story, he was ready to go. We’re hashing that out, but all the detail is completely worked out in his head, because he had written it out as a script. He doesn’t have it anymore, so we’re sort of recreating it. He’s got a photographic memory; the trick for me is sort of like writing the biography, just asking him the right questions, because he stores all the minutiae in his head. The level of detail that he has in there…he knows exactly what everything looks like, and you can ask him about any character in the story and say, ‘Where did they grow up?’ and he has the backstory at his fingertips. He’s very thorough and worked through all the worlds, even though there’s nothing on paper.”

“I wrote that script about 18 years ago, and it was something I really wanted to do,” Henriksen adds, “but…everything has its own schedule in terms of what people are interested in. The ironic part is that it’ll go from a movie to a comic and back to a movie. I think the story is so good that that’s going to happen.” While Henriksen isn’t ready to reveals details of the plot at the moment, he does promise, “We’re going to present it to you in a way that you’re really going to enjoy. I’m a great believer in it.”

Nor has it been determined who will illustrated the project. “We don’t even have the story fully down on paper yet,” Maddrey notes, “so we haven’t started talking specifics to any artists. Although we had Tom Mandrake, who did the PUMPKINHEAD art in the book, here with us last night and mentioned it to him, and he was intrigued by the idea. Lance certainly gets along with him and it’d be cool to work with him again, so you never know.”

Maddrey adds that work on the comic will truly begin in earnest once they complete the NOT BAD FOR A HUMAN promotional tour. “It’s just a matter of us sitting down in one place where Lance is not being swarmed by people and talking through all the details,” he says. “We sat down the day before we came here, two days ago, and did the rough outline. From that, we’re going to go through and flesh it out scene by scene. Lance does not like to waste time; as soon as he gets an idea in his head and he’s serious about doing it, he wants it done immediately. So it won’t be a long wait. We’ll crank it out as fast as we realistically can.”

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