A Smallville Star Brings A New Gothic Fantasy Series To Life for Titan

The long-running TV series Smallville revealed that, in his youth, Superman's greatest challenge was winning the heart of Lana Lang, played by Kristin Kreuk. It looks like the actor best known for playing Clark Kent's high school sweetheart is continuing her association with comic book fiction in a whole new manner.

Now, Kreuk serves as the co-creator of Black Star, an upcoming horror comic book that will be published in five issues by Titan Comics in 2026. Not to be confused with an entirely unrelated sci-fi graphic novel from 2021, Black Star is described in a recent press release as both a humorous and horrifying period piece of magical proportions. Its dark, fantastic elements are reflected in the official logline.

Amidst skirmishes between two warring factions in the early nineteenth-century fur trade, Dashiell Carlyle discovers he has magical abilities… and that he’s not alone. Thrust into a secret order with designs to use their magic to build a new and better world, Dashiell discovers that their utopia may come at a horrific cost.

The comic is set in Winnipeg, Canada, where Kreuk is originally from. Her co-writers, Peter Mooney and Eric Putzer, also hail from Winnipeg. Bringing their story to life with haunting illustrations is Joe Bocardo, known for The Hexiles and Scout Comics' horrifying Phantasmagoria. He says that working on a story as "ambitious and well-written" as Black Star is not just a gift but a privilege, due to the creative freedom that the writing team has granted him.

Kristin Kreuk Met Her Black Star Co-Writers On A TV Show Set

Kreuk has worked with Mooney and Putzer before on another CW show called Burden of Truth. Putzer served as a writer for the legal drama, in which Kreuk and Mooney starred as old friends-turned-lawyers working on opposite sides of the same case at the beginning of the series.

It is no coincidence that Burden of Truth was actually filmed in the town where Black Star is set, Winnipeg. The idea for the comic started brewing while the trio were shooting the series, as Kreuk reveals in the press release.

"Black Star was born while Peter, Eric, and I were filming Burden of Truth in Winnipeg," the actor said. "We were inspired by the city’s lore and, because we worked so well together, began spending our spare time on set (and then, for years afterwards) developing our own take on the history and magic we imagined pulsing beneath its surface, shaping the rhythms of the city and the battles raging just beyond our view."

Between the time Kreuk left Smallville and joined Burden of Truth, she starred in another modestly successful CW series called Beauty and the Beast, a reboot of a late-'80s fantasy series that reimagines the classic bedtime story as a modern crime procedural. More recently, she reunited with Smallville's Aquaman actor, Alan Ritchson, on the first season of Amazon Prime's hit series, Reacher.

Mooney, a Winnipeg native, rose to prominence with his award-nominated performance in the historical drama series, Camelot, before scoring a regular role in the Canadian police drama, Rookie Blue. His main claim to fame following the end of Burden of Truth in 2021 has been Hallmark Channel original programming, including movies like Fly Away with Me and a main role on the holiday-themed mystery series, Mistletoe Murders.

Putzer had also previously worked with Kreuk on Beauty and the Beast as a boom operator. He would also hold that position on the set of many other notable titles, including the coming-of-age action series Aaron Stone and the 2015 crime movie, Beeba Boys.

He also worked as a "cableman" on the 2013 horror film, Mama, by The Flash director Andy Muschietti and produced by Blade II and 2004's Hellboy helmer Guillermo del Toro. One could count that as Putzer's one major connection to comic book lore before co-creating Black Star, but, just like Kreuk and Mooney, the Titans release is his foray into writing for the medium.

Black Star #1 is hitting the shelves on July 29, 2026.