There's blood in them thar hills in Scott Snyder and Dan Panosian's Canary
The horror western is set in the last days of the gold rush
American Vampire and Night of the Ghoul co-creator (not to mention ace Batman writer) Scott Snyder is returning to horror once more this November with Canary, a new limited series published by Dark Horse.
Drawn by Dan Panosian, the three-issue series is set in the dying days of the Old West and follows a Federal Marshal as he investigates a series of brutal slayings near a supposedly cursed mine.
"Canary blends Gothic Horror and the Western genre into a world never seen before," said Dan Panosian of the new book. "Scott created a unique take on this story and it demanded an equally unique take artistically. I wanted the look, the feel and the colors to take a reader to a place they haven’t been to before. A Western is familiar to most of us – but taking that style and twisting, ever so slightly, presents a certain unease that helps shape this experience. We hope you enjoy reading it as much as we have enjoyed creating it."
You can check out a selection of covers from Canary #1 in the gallery below.
Dark Horse's official synopsis for the new series reads:
"During the final days of the Gold Rush, one mining company in Colorado pulled up radioactive uranium – and then the mine collapsed in on itself. Legends sprang up about the mine being cursed or even haunted. Now, the Frontier is closed, the gold and silver mines have dried up, the country is becoming "civilized," and yet, in one stretch of the Rocky Mountains, a terrifying, new kind of violence is suddenly emerging: random killings as people go mad and murder neighbors or classmates without real cause. When a schoolboy kills his teacher with a hatchet, a famous federal marshal named Azrael William Holt is called in to investigate the killings. What he and a brilliant young geologist uncover is stranger and more horrifying than anything they could have ever imagined."
Earlier this year Scott Snyder signed a deal with Prime Video to turn Wytches, the series he co-created with Jock, into an animated series. There's no word as yet when that will make it to our screens, but both Snyder and Jock will be executive producers on the show.
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The 56-page Canary #1 is published by Dark Horse on November 1. The collected edition will be in bookstores from June 11, 2024 and in comic shops the following day.
Looking for more scares? Have you tried w0rldtr33 from Image? It may just be the year's best new series
Will Salmon is the Comics Editor for GamesRadar/Newsarama. He has been writing about comics, film, TV, and music for more than 15 years, which is quite a long time if you stop and think about it. At Future he has previously launched scary movie magazine Horrorville, relaunched Comic Heroes, and has written for every issue of SFX magazine for over a decade. He sometimes feels very old, like Guy Pearce in Prometheus. His music writing has appeared in The Quietus, MOJO, Electronic Sound, Clash, and loads of other places and he runs the micro-label Modern Aviation, which puts out experimental music on cassette tape.