First of all, our inner 14-year-old is like unto bursting: “Dude! They’re making a comic book out of The Talisman, dude!” But that’s not all: The first issue of the graphic novel series, which will be published by Del Rey Manga, features a variant cover by Mike Krahulik, one half of the creative team behind the webcomic sensation Penny Arcade. (Regular cover duties are handled by Massimo Carnevale, with interior art by Tony Shasteen working off Robin Furth‘s script.)

The funny thing is, Krahulik wasn’t even a fan of the Stephen King/Peter Straub novel, which celebrates its 25th anniversary this year, before he took the gig. “They approached me about creating an alternate cover for the comic and I let them know it sounded cool but I’d never read the original book,” he confesses on the Penny Arcade blog. “I grabbed it for my Kindle iPhone app and discovered two things. First, the Kindle iPhone app is awesome and I love reading books on it. Second, The Talisman is rad… The coolest part about this project was that all the work I did from sketches to the final piece had to be approved by Stephen and Peter. That means that Stephen King and Peter Straub actually looked at my work and liked it.”