Red 5 Comics “The Dark Age” picked up for new TV project

By John Freeman on March 28, 2019

Christopher Lemole and Tim Zajaros, founders of Armory Films, are teaming with Knightfall co-creator Don Handfield on The Dark Age, based on a comic series from US publisher Red 5 Comics, Deadline reports.

Red 5 Comics will release the comic – written by Don Handfield, the co-creator of The Rift, and Scott Chitwood, with art by Rod Thornton and Leonardo Rodrigues – before it’s developed into a television project.

(The Rift, also published by Red 5 Comics, which was acquired by Steven Spielberg’s Amblin Entertainment to be adapted for an episode of the AppleTV+ revival of the Amazing Stories anthology series. Handfield also wrote The Mall, a series published by Scout Comics that was acquired last year by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Pictures to develop as a television series).

The Dark Age kicks off with as part of Red 5 Comics Free Comic Book Day 2019 offering, which will also feature the return of Afterburn, in an original short story just for FCBD, which will lead into the debut of a new series ahead of the movie starring Gerard Butler.

In The Dark Age, which opens in 2019, a grey haze descends on planet earth and reduces every known metal to worthless piles of rust. With no technology remaining, humanity reverts to a violent feudal system ruled by knights of wood, stone and plastic, this is the new Dark Age.

Afterburn, soon to be a major motion picture is set after a solar flare wipes out half the earth, Jake and his treasure hunters raid what’s left behind. Post-apocalyptic mayhem is unleashed in Russia in the FCBD original short story.

• Red 5 Comics is online at www.red5comics.com

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John Freeman

John is the founder of downthetubes, launched in 1998. He is a comics and magazine editor, writer, and Press Officer for the Lakes International Comic Art Festival. He also runs Crucible Comic Press.

Working in British comics publishing since the 1980s, his credits include editor of titles such as Doctor Who Magazine and Overkill for Marvel UK, Babylon 5 Magazine, Star Trek Magazine, and its successor, Star Trek Explorer, and more. He also edited the comics anthology STRIP Magazine and edited several audio comics for ROK Comics; and has edited several comic collections and graphic novels, including volumes of “Charley’s War” and “Dan Dare”, and Hancock: The Lad Himself, by Stephen Walsh and Keith Page.

He’s the writer of comics such as Pilgrim: Secrets and Lies for B7 Comics; “Crucible”, a creator-owned project with 2000AD artist Smuzz; and “Death Duty” and “Skow Dogs”, with Dave Hailwood.