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While some of us may have spent a good portion of our time at the end of last year slaying dragons in The Elder Scrolls: V: Skyrim, DeZerlin media, based in Qingdao, China, wants to undo all of your work by bringing us a world where dragons are being brought back to life.  Creator/CEO Lin Zhang and writer/producer Mark Byers of DeZerlin media announced a brand new franchise called Dragon Resurrection, in which they have teamed with Dark Horse to publish a series of comics for their creative team. 

The story is being billed as a mix between Jurassic Park and Mission: Impossible and centers around twins, Jesse and Jack Chang.  Jesse discovers the remains of a dragon in a Tibetan mountain which prompts her to give her geneticist brother a sample of the dragon DNA for research.  And since every story needs an antagonistic force, Dragon Resurrection’s villain comes in the form of a rogue DARPA general hoping to procure this technology for his own evil, probably devious ends!  Byers, in interview with MTV Geek, seemed really excited about the prospects of the project and billed it as “a real popcorn movie – a lot of fun to watch, and entertaining to talk about afterwards”.  With DeZerlin being based in China, Byers stated that there would a definite “Chinese flavour” to the work, but made it known that “DeZerlin’s approach is combining the best of East and West to create something that is not Chinese and not Western, but is truly global”.

If we can real here for a moment, though, when you’re writing a story with the word “dragon” in the title, it should be no surprise that most everything is going to hinge on whether or not the dragons are cool or not, right? Well, when tasked for details by MTV Geek, Byers definitely showed the team had put a lot of time into determining what the dragons would be like and what they would mean to the world of Dragon Resurrection.  “With so much legend and lore about dragons all around the world, there must be some truth that we have yet to discover”.  According to Byer “Chinese dragons can fly, they don’t have wings as we would think of them, but rather slither through the air much like a snake in water” (Think of the eternal dragon from Dragonball Z).  “…for a western audience to buy a flying dragon that doesn’t have full wings…we had to take a Chinese dragon and add Western winds, giving us a hybrid that works for everyone”.  Furthermore “Western dragons are strong and smart, and perhaps they can breathe fire…Some Chinese dragons control the power of wind and water…telekinetic powers… project force fields”.  While these powers aren’t necessarily confirmed to belong to the dragons in the book, the differences between schools of thought definitely make the proceedings all that more interesting.

DeZerlin does not plan to stop with the completion of the comic (set to be released next summer) but, also aims to put out a major animated movie, video games, spin-off series and potentially more books with Dark Horse in the future. While no mention of who those other properties are being produced by, Byers did state that he feels as though DeZerlin as though “they are destined to become the Pixar of China”.  While this is a very high compliment, it does bode well for the company to position themselves with the proper people and the right teams to produce genuinely interesting content. 

To get a better feel for what Dragon Resurrection is, go here for a free 25-page preview of the comic.

(Source: darkhorse.com)