Ever since the news dropped about a potential Phantom board game back in X-Band 85, phans around the world have been clamouring for more information.
Thankfully the design team of Alex Wynnter and Dale Maccanti have been very forthcoming, joining us in each of the last two Comics and News episodes of the podcast.
With Episode 89 dropping earlier tonight, phans are becoming a little more aware of the gameplay, which sounds like it is heavily built around players avoiding booby-traps and disaster as they attempt to rescue a treasure.
In the conversation Dale also gave us a few incredible revelations about some of the bonus material that will accompany the game through the upcoming Kickstarter campaign.
As Alex explained in his interview on Episode 87, the board game is based on the popular Pirates of the Red Dragon trilogy. Dale has revealed that, to celebrate this, Frew have committed to producing a new trade paperback available exclusively as an add-on for Kickstarter backers of the game.
Not only have Frew acquired the license to publish the stories in colour and reproduce them all in English in a single edition, there are also concrete plans to generate two new parts to the story, adding a prequel and a sequel story to the trilogy.
This will mean a collection of five Pirates of the Red Dragon stories in one book, similar to 2017's high-quality For Those Who Came In Late.
Creative teams are begin to solidify, with Dale himself having written the prequel already. Frew co-director Glenn Ford is currently going over that draft. New Phantom writer Julie Ditrich is apparently charged with writing the sequel. Julie is perhaps best known as founder and CEO of Comics Mastermind, an Australian company providing professional development for comics creators.
Artists for the two stories are not able to be announced yet.
Given the popularity of the Red Dragon stories, both in Scandinavia where they originated in 1979 and in Australia where they were finally published last year, the prospect of a pair of book-ending narratives is bound to have phans around the world salivating.
In addition to this exciting TPB news, Dale revealed that there will also be two exclusive Universe cards produced for the Kickstarter campaign: Waldo the Hypnotist and Orkhan, both key characters in the original Red Dragon trilogy.
Yes, there are still nine more months until this all becomes real with the launch of the Kickstarter. However, the slow burn of excitement has well and truly begun!
