Dark Horse Comics will publish the comic book prequel to Revolution Studios' hit-in-the-making Darkness Falls, starring Buffy the Vampire Slayer's Emma Caulfield, coming January 2003 (www.sonypictures.com/darknessfalls). Darkness Falls: The Tragic Life of Matilda Dixon, by Joe Harris and Charlie Adlard, serves as a prologue to the film, recounting the century-old events that set a horrifying cycle of violence in motion.

Darkness Falls: The Tragic Life of Matilda Dixon focuses on a defining moment in the history of Darkness Falls, a small fishing village. Matilda Dixon, a once-beautiful, now-disfigured widow has developed a special relationship with the children of Darkness Falls. They bring her their recently shed baby teeth in exchange for coins.

However, the mask-clad Dixon's familiarity with the town's children alarms their parents, and when two children go missing a lynch mob gathers to make Matilda pay. Unable to defend herself from the town's fury, Matilda is hanged from the nearest tree. No sooner is her neck broken than the two children reveal themselves: they had simply snuck off to go to the fair.

The comic is as sorrowful as it is frightening and the events of the book clearly presage the curse that Matilda's death has cast on Darkness Falls and its children for decades to come.

Darkness Falls: The Tragic Life of Matilda Dixon is available January 2 for the retail price of $2.99.