Strain #1 by Bloody Disgusting

THE STRAIN

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Story by Guillermo del Toro and Chuck Hogan Script by David Lapham Art by Mike Huddleston Colors by Dan Jackson Letters by Clem Robins Cover Mike Huddleston Variant cover Steve Morris Designer David Nestelle Assistant Editor Jim Gibbons Editor Sierra Hahn Publisher Mike Richardson Special thanks to Scott Allie and Gary Unger.

Advertising Sales: (503) 652-8815 x370 Comic Shop Locator Service: (888) 266-4226 Talk about this issue NOW at: Boards.DarkHorse.com THE STRAIN #1, December 2011. Published by Dark Horse Comics, Inc., 10956 SE Main Street, Milwaukie, Oregon 97222. Text and illustrations of The Strain™ © 2011 Guillermo del Toro. Dark Horse Comics® and the Dark Horse logo are trademarks of Dark Horse Comics, Inc., registered in various categories and countries. All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the express written permission of Dark Horse Comics, Inc. Names, characters, places, and incidents featured in this publication either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons (living or dead), events, institutions, or locales, without satiric intent, is coincidental. Printed by Cadmus Communications, Easton, PA, U.S.A.

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Send your letters to thestrain

@darkhorse.com.

THAT was issue #1 of The Strain. Are you hooked? Let us know. Here. In the letter column that we’ll be publishing throughout the entire course of the Strain Trilogy. Tonight, I am in Paris—both working (this letter column is due!) and playing (it’s Paris!)—and just enjoyed a wonderful dinner with The Strain superstar artist Mike Huddleston. This is our first meeting since we started working together last spring. While we mostly took time to get to know one another, and swap stories about life and work, we were finally able to talk about the series thus far and look ahead to the next THREE years we’ll be working together, alongside David Lapham, Guillermo del Toro, and Chuck Hogan (what an amazing team). I’m extremely grateful for this brief time together as we continue on this journey to make great comics. We have so much in store for you readers and I guarantee that it just gets better from here on out, with both Lapham and Huddleston taking this world created by del Toro and Hogan to new heights.

I am a del Toro devotee. I have not read the novels. I will correct my blasphemy soon. I am excited about the comic The Strain. Lapham’s Stray Bullets fucking kicks ass. Dark Horse keeps kicking ass. Sophea Uk Corvallis, OR Hi there! Let me just say, I’m a big fan of Mr. del Toro. So when I discovered that his collaboration with Chuck Hogan was going to become a Dark Horse comic, I squealed with glee! The novels were great, and I bet that the comic will be even as good! Thank God there’s no sparkly vampires here, just good, bestial, monstrous ones! Thanks, guys, Nick Curnow Thank you for your letters! Please keep writing in and share your impressions of issue #1. Favorite characters thus far? Going forward? Burning questions? We’ll try to address everything here. Just write in to thestrain@darkhorse.com.

Months ago we asked fans of our creative team and/or the series of novels to write in and share their earliest impressions of the series and ask any burning questions. Below is what we received. Thank you.

Sierra Hahn Editor

G. del Toro and Chuck Hogan’s Strain Trilogy joins Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot and Justin Cronin’s The Passage as my all-time favorite vampire stories. When I read the first Strain novel I was overcome with joy. It seemed to capture what made Salem’s Lot so emotionally powerful: That sense of compounding dread being countered by a heroic group of ordinary people. For years I had hoped that King would write a sequel to his vampire novel, and he did with Dark Tower novels 5 through 7. However, those did not completely satisfy me. Along came The Strain and it seemed to not only capture the magic of Salem’s Lot, but reinvented it with a new array of terrible wonders. So can you imagine my reaction to a comic book adaptation of The Strain? I just cannot wait to see del Toro and Hogan’s fiends on the prowl! Thank you, Dark Horse Publishing, for adding a new facet to The Strain’s power. Mike H. Some politics can be found in vampire fiction. Take Dracula, for instance; the count is not just a rotten vampire, he is a rotten foreigner. There is a xenophobic subtext there. And have you noticed, invariably, how many vampires are aristocrats? The necks of middle-class victims are the ones at risk. Right now, terrorism is the horror of the day. Old terrors— foreign aristocrats—are replaced by contagion vectors and bioterrorists. The Strain keeps pace with our changing fears, and it moves, skillfully, the vampire into our modern age. Jeremy Beebe Kansas City, MO

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NEXT MONTH The Strain #2