Comic-Con 2011 has barely begun, but already Dark Horse is doing their best to put the book back into comic books. The publisher announced three new horrific titles last night, two of which are based on series of bestselling horror novels -- Guillermo del Toro's The Strain and P.C. Cast's House of Night. The third title, Orchid, is an original comic from Rage Against the Machine's Tom Morello (pictured above next to Cast at a special Preview Night signing at the Dark Horse booth). More after the jump.

I caught up with Dark Hose editor Sierra Hahn -- who's editing all three titles -- minutes after the books were announced, and she told me a little bit about what fans can expect.

"They're all totally different," said Hahn. "Certainly The Strain is very obvious horror, plants us in the real world and says, 'What if this virus could break out and turn on you and infect all the people around you so they become these vampiric monsters?' It's pretty faithful to the book. I think one thing that we couldn't emulate in the book, that's present in the novels, is that we can't bounce around as much. There's a lot of non-linear storytelling, and several different characters in different locations. And we're trying to create a more linear structure throughout all of those different events. So that's gonna be a very different reading experience, on top of it being a very visual medium as well."

"P.C.'s title is actually different. She has her world of House of Night, this series of novels about teenagers who are marked once they hit puberty, and then they go to this special school. And at this school they have a guidebook called The Fledgling Handbook, that retells these historical events of other vampires through time, and they have these different lessons within those stories. And this book, the comic book, is going to have the teens reflecting on those narratives and applying them to their real lives. So it's extracting information from her books, but also creating a new narrative and a new experience at the same time. It sounds a little convoluted, but it's new and original, while also using pre-existing material. So House of Night fans who have read all of P.C's material, will find something new in this experience. And if you've never read anything of P.C's, this is a good entry point as well."

"Orchid is an entirely original, creator-owned book from Tom Morello; he's working on it with Scott Hepburn, who's an incredible artist and doing probably the best work of his career if you ask me. The central character is named Orchid. She's a sixteen year old prostitute. It takes place in the future, a dystopian future where cataclysmic events have changed the face of worlds. So there's definitely horrific events. It's very political, it can be very violent, very gory. But it's sort of a coming-of-age story for Orchid, who's this sort of rough-and-tumble punk who learns to grow into herself and learns to understand her circumstances and the world that she lives in and become a freedom fighter in the process. Instead of succumbing to her circumstances, she overcomes them."

As for the scheduling and length of each comic, Hahn remarked, "House of Night is a five-issue miniseries. Orchid is twelve issues, and then The Strain will be twenty-four issues. So it will be eight issues of The Strain. The Fall is the second book, another eight issues. And then The Night Eternal, eight issues. With Orchid, after every fourth issue, we'll take a month of two off. But The Strain will be pretty continuous, without much of a break before The Fall."

Artwork from the books, as displayed at Dark Horse's booth, can be seen below...