Based on the novel by Seth Graeme-Smith, Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is one of the summer's more curious releases, imagining an amusingly outrageous scenario whereby the legendary American president was actually a skilled slayer of the undead. The film is produced by Tim Burton and directed by Timur Bekmambetov, both of whom have obvious connections to the comic book world via their adaptations of the Batman comics and Wanted, respectively. In support of Abraham Lincoln, Bekmambetov has teamed with Aspen Comics to release a book quite unlike anything we can remember seeing.

While it's typical for a film's storyboards -- the simple, comic-book-style drawings that map out a movie's shots -- to be reproduced along with script pages in those handsome "Art of the Movie" books, the Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter team have gone the extra step to reconfigure the storyboard images by artist Indar Dzhendubaev into an actual comic book. It's a pretty cool idea, and we've got loads of images to demonstrate the results.

Bekmambetov considers the comic, officially called Director's Cut: The Art of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, to be his director's cut of the film. Interestingly, the narrative is constructed in such a way that the graphic novel retells the movie's story from the point of view of its villain, played by Rufus Sewell in the film.








Director's Cut: The Art of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter is on sale now in bookstores and will be available in finer comics shops later this week.