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Anything and everything Dark Horse
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Started by Parabellum,

796 posts in this topic

Qalyar

Qalyar

Posted
Posted
On 3/16/2022 at 6:42 PM, wombat said:

I had no idea this existed. Now I want one. 

 

On 3/16/2022 at 9:17 PM, The Meta said:

Yup

So, if you're not familiar with Diablo: Tales of Sanctuary at all (which isn't actually that surprising), the retail version (with the black cover) is quite a bit easier to acquire, although ebay prices for it are sometimes, erm, interesting and good luck if you want a copy better than my 9.6 (although I guess there are 3 on census in 9.8...). My apologies for that photo quality, by the way; I'm awful at comic photography, but even I'll admit this is worse than usual for me. It's actually a really pretty book and slab in person.

Anyway, Tales of Sanctuary is an anthology book, containing three unrelated short stories. It's a chonky 64 pages, and a weird nonstandard size; all in all, it's a very "Dark Horse"-looking book. I'm pretty sure it was intended as a backdoor pilot for one or more Diablo miniseries and/or ongoing titles, but since this apparently didn't perform well -- perhaps due to a small print run and minimal advertising of its existence, hmmmm? -- Dark Horse never published any other Diablo material, and there wouldn't be another Diablo comic book from anyone else for another decade (2011's miniseries from DC, which also had a microscopic print run and no fanfare). Which is all actually sort of a shame. I'm not going to say this is the pinnacle of the comic book medium, but all the stories here are pretty good reads. The paladin one (-script by Dave Land) suffers the most from ending on a cliffhanger that will never be fulfilled. The necromancer one (-script by Phil Amara) is probably my favorite of them, but the druid one (also by Land) is quite good as well. All the art is by Francisco Ruiz Velasco, who is probably best known in this thread for Alien vs. Predator: Deadspace and Predator: Hunters, but who has also done a bunch of stuff over at Marvel. Fun fact, he was also a concept designer on Hellboy II: The Golden Army. He's not an A-list artist, but I think he's pretty good; he definitely does a solid job nailing the Diablo II-era aesthetic here.

The blue cover version is a promotional item of one form or another, given that it has no cover price, and the ISBN has been removed from the back cover. No idea where that was distributed. Was it part of some sort of press kit? Advertising give-away? Contest? Convention loot (but predating Blizzcon, so who knows what convention)? No idea, and at this point, I'm convinced the internet doesn't know either. In any case, if the normal version is a pretty standard "low print run modern", then the promo variant is just downright rare.

PXL_20220317_200605223.thumb.jpg.296fa4a790a3707cbfdc4dc34ffba7b9.jpg

 

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wombat

wombat

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Posted

Great information. Thanks. Honestly I don't care about the grade for this. I'm a huge Diablo fan and just think this is cool. This also sent me down a rabbit hole yesterday and I didn't realize they made diablo action figures. So I got my eye on some of those. I did already have the Tyrael funko pop. And I did run across those DC comics as well. 

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Qalyar

Qalyar

Posted
Posted
On 3/17/2022 at 3:54 PM, wombat said:

Great information. Thanks. Honestly I don't care about the grade for this. I'm a huge Diablo fan and just think this is cool. This also sent me down a rabbit hole yesterday and I didn't realize they made diablo action figures. So I got my eye on some of those. I did already have the Tyrael funko pop. And I did run across those DC comics as well. 

You can probably snag a reader copy of the normal version for the $15-20 range with a little patience. There are always a bunch on eBay for $50+ but I don't really believe this book is worth that  No idea what FMV would be for the promo cover; I may eventually sell my undercopies once I have one I'm happy with for the permanent PC.

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Parabellum

Parabellum

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1988-1992 collection of the “big three” so far.  Missing a couple books (Aliens 1 second and third print, Aliens 2 second print, Aliens 3 third print, Aliens 4 second print, Aliens 5 third print, Aliens Earth War 1 second print, Aliens Hive 2, 4 and Terminator One Shot).

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Edited by Parabellum
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