The Weird History of Anne Rice’s Vampires in Comic Books

by

Before Anne Rice’s stories were adapted into TV shows and movies like Interview with the Vampire and Queen of the Damned, comics were the only way to experience her world outside of the books. In the early 1990s, comics featuring Lestat and his vampire companions were very popular, selling well alongside titles like Grendel and Hellboy. However, these Anne Rice comics are now out of print and can only be found through resale markets. They did, however, show that her characters had the potential to succeed in different forms of media.

Anne Rice’s novels were most popular in the late 1980s. While her 1976 novel, Interview with the Vampire, gained a dedicated following over time, the 1985 sequel, The Vampire Lestat, quickly became a bestseller, building on the success of the first book. In 1988, The Queen of the Damned reached the top spot on the New York Times bestseller list. The following year, Ballantine published the first three novels together as The Vampire Chronicles, and sales exploded. For many Goth readers, these books were as important as The Lord of the Rings, offering a dark and romantic world filled with blood and mystery.

Anne Rice’s vampire novels struggled to become a movie for many years during the 1980s and early 1990s. However, the comic book industry was thriving at the same time, with many new, independent publishers emerging alongside the major companies like DC and Marvel. One of these was Innovation Comics, which launched in 1988. While they created some original comics, they primarily adapted existing properties, including titles like A Nightmare on Elm Street and Quantum Leap. In 1989, Innovation secured the rights to adapt Anne Rice’s The Vampire Lestat into a 12-issue comic series, with the first issue released towards the end of the year.

Faye Perozich adapted the story into comics, with Daerick Gross providing the interior artwork and John Bolton creating stunning cover paintings. The comics closely followed Anne Rice’s original writing, and the characters looked just as she’d envisioned them – Lestat, in particular, bore a striking resemblance to Rutger Hauer, who Rice herself thought would be perfect for the role in a movie. Fans of Rice’s work loved it, and the comics quickly became popular, selling out in stores. Their success was likely due to the timing – the comics were released around the same time the first three books of the Vampire Chronicles were being sold together as a collection, creating a really strong combination.

Innovation quickly expanded its work with Anne Rice’s stories. After finishing the twelfth issue of The Vampire Lestat, they obtained the rights to adapt her other two Vampire Chronicles novels, Interview with the Vampire and The Queen of the Damned. They also turned Rice’s lesser-known novella, The Master of Rampling Gate, into a graphic novel, and published several Vampire Companions. These comic book-sized publications offered behind-the-scenes content, including interviews with Anne Rice and photos of fan cosplay and artwork, effectively showcasing her early fandom before the internet existed.

Innovation Comics was unfortunately caught up in the major downturn of the comic book industry in 1994, which forced many publishers to shrink or close completely. Even major companies like DC and Marvel suffered. Innovation ultimately failed, and the final issue of Queen of the Damned was never released. With the exception of The Vampire Lestat, these comics haven’t been collected into trade paperbacks and are still unavailable. As a result, fantastic artwork by creators such as Christopher Moeller, Alexander Jubran, and Octavio Cariello risks being forgotten by new readers unless they actively search for it online.

Despite the initial cancellation, Anne Rice’s stories continued in comic form. Millennium Comics, a publisher that no longer exists, started adapting Rice’s 1990 novel, The Witching Hour – the first book in a trilogy now being adapted as The Mayfair Witches on AMC. They planned for 10 issues, but only released five, leaving the story unfinished. Millennium did successfully adapt another Rice novel, The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned, completing its full 12-issue run.

In the late 1990s, a small publisher briefly revived Lestat in comic form, but it didn’t last long. Sicilian Dragon then obtained the rights to adapt Anne Rice’s fourth Vampire Chronicles novel, The Tale of the Body Thief, as a 12-issue comic series. Unfortunately, poor sales cut the adaptation short after only four issues, though the rest of the story was later continued as an original graphic novel. More recently, in 2011, IDW adapted Rice’s 1996 ghost story, The Servant of the Bones, which Rice actively promoted through public appearances.

Fans got a new take on the classic story in 2013 with the release of a graphic novel, Interview with the Vampire: Claudia’s Story. This version retold Anne Rice’s original 1976 novel, but from the perspective of the heartbreaking character Claudia. Adapted in a manga style by Ashley Marie Witter and published by Yen Press, the graphic novel impressed Anne Rice so much that she added it to the list of works included in her novels. Claudia’s Story came out a year before Rice herself returned to writing about her vampires, beginning with Prince Lestat in 2014.

It’s uncertain if these classic stories will ever be made into comics again, especially with the current AMC series. However, the original comics themselves should soon be accessible to fans. Hopefully, a publisher will acquire and properly collect them, allowing new readers to discover these hidden gems – particularly those who’ve become fans through the AMC’s Anne Rice Immortal Universe series. Now that characters like Lestat, Louis, and Armand are popular on TV, it’s a great time to bring them back to the world of comics.

Read More

2025-11-12 19:04