'The Thing' gets tie-in digital comic from Dark Horse

The Thing has been given a tie-in digital comic series.

Dark Horse Comics has released the first instalment of The Thing: The Northman Nightmare via its website, Hero Complex reports.

30 Days of Night scribe Steve Niles wrote the spinoff series with Patrick Reynolds shouldering art duties. The storyline sees Vikings cross paths with the alien threat from the John Carpenter movie.

Niles said: "In the old movie, when they do find the spacecraft, they think it's been frozen for 500 to 1,000 years. So I took that concept - who says that only one ship crashed?

"The connection to it is that there's a possibility that there's more Things out there like this, and they're just frozen and waiting to be defrosted to take us over."

A prequel to The Thing is scheduled to arrive in theatres next on October 14, directed by Dutch filmmaker Matthijs van Heijningen Jr. Carpenter previously told Digital Spy that he had no input in the project.

Watch the new trailer for The Thing below: