Brandon Routh as Dylan Dog – Tiziano Sclavi’s comic – ‘Dead of Night’

‘Dylan Dog‘ is the most popular comic book in Italy, regularly selling over a million copies each month, and of course that sort of popularity can't be ignored by filmmakers. In 1994, the Michele Soavi directed the film ‘Dellamorte Dellamore‘.

Rupert Everett (whose appearance Dog was originally modelled after) played Francesco Dellamorte, a sort of alter ego of Dylan Dog, and although Everett wears Dog's trademark costume, his signature: red shirt, black jacket, and blue jeans, Dog does not actually appear in the film.

In 1999, North American fans were finally given a chance to check out Dog, with Dark Horse presenting an ambitious series of reprints, in English. A sign of the times is that Groucho was now Felix, and he'd lost the thick black mustache.

Dylan Dog (1999, Dark Horse/Bonelli Comics) – 6 issue mini-series, written by Tiziano Sclavi, Mauro Marcheselli and translated by Bojana Dozic, Violeta Jurkovic:

“Dawn of the Living Dead”, “Johnny Freak”, “Memories From the Invisible World”, “The Return of the Monster”, “Morgana”, “After Midnight”.

Dylan Dog specializes in the strange and inixplicable stuff. Accompanied by his trusty sidekick, assistant/butler, Groucho, Dylan looks into some pretty squirrely business, often involving werewolves, vampires, ghosts and other manifestations of the supernatural and occult, although often the true monsters in many of his cases turn out to be human.

Dylan has many phobias, including claustrophobia, bats and heights. He is also particularly susceptible to motion sickness, which is one of the reasons why he rarely travels:

”Well, it's true that Dylan suffers from all sorts of things: he has a fear of flying, he suffers from vertigo, sometimes he's depressed. I didn't want to make him into an all-victorious hero, a Tex- style superhero. He's one who's sometimes a loser, or alternative, if he's on the winning side, he never wins completely. Basically, he doesn't even seem to be the right type for a comic strip hero. My stories are never comforting because the horror never finishes. It always starts all over again”, said Tiziano Sclavi.

Director Kevin Munroe (TMNT) has officially signed on to helm “Dylan Dog”. After long negotiations, Brandon Routh (Superman Returns) has now officially signed on to topline.

Now that Munroe is official on board, it means that he will not be directing “Gatchaman” as previously reported. The plan is to being filming “Dylan Dog” this July in Toronto, Canada.