Dark Horse Comics made a number of announcements at the recently concluded San Diego Comic-Con International, including a four-issue comic book adaptation of the Pixar film The Incredibles, due out this fall.  Based on the reaction to The Incredibles panel, which featured director Brad Bird (The Iron Giant), the combination of Pixar production values and a superhero storyline appears to have an irresistible appeal to a large portion of comic book fandom. 

Dark Horse's comic book adaptation will feature art by Ricardo Curtis, one of the storyboard artists on the film.  Given Dark Horse's strong track record with licensed properties, the pedigree of the creators, and the potency of the property, this is one movie adaptation that should not be ignored.

Dark Horse also announced a new manga series, Katsuya Terada's The Monkey King, a manga adaptation of the popular Chinese legend.  It features the toughest monkey in the East, who is on a mission to retrieve the legendary scrolls of Buddha.  Look for the first volume of this series coming in March 2005. 

Another new project announced by Dark Horse has manga overtones, but in format it's actually more of a children's book -- Hipira: The Little Vampire features a story by Katsuhiro Otomo (Akira) and art by Shinji Kamura.  The story of a little vampire who is trying to find his way to hell (because hell is 'heaven' for vampires), The Little Vampire could easily find favor with the goth audience.

Goth types might also warm to the savage satire of Peter Bagge's Apocalypse Nerd, in which one solitary Microsoft engineer manages to escape the nuking of Seattle (he's on a camping trip) and returns to scavenge his existence from the ruins of coffee shops and software campuses.

Movie director John Landis, who is working on an adaptation of 'Gone,' a story by Mike Richardson from the Dark Horse Book of Haunting, is also writing an as-yet-untitled comic book series about a James Dean-like teenage vampire, which Dark Horse plans to publish in 2005. 

In November, Dark Horse will publish its first Jingle Bell book.  Paul Dini, who brought the property over to Dark Horse from Oni, will write and Jose Garibaldi will provide the art.