John Sinclair is a fictional character and the protagonist of a popular German horror detective series (of the dime novel or penny dreadful variety).
In the stories, Scotland Yard chief inspector John Sinclair battles all kinds of undead and demonic creatures, such as vampires, witches, ghouls, and werewolves.
[5] The Professor Zamorra [de] novels take place in an alternate universe within the fictional multiverse and also had numerous crossovers with John Sinclair since the 1976 story Der Fluch aus dem Dschungel.
[7][8] Other artists that contributed to artworks and cover designs for John Sinclair include Sebastià Boada, Tim White, Les Edwards, Luis Royo, Vicente Segrelles, Ron Walotsky, Alan M. Clark, Michael Whelan, Jim Warren etc.
Due to the horror nature of most of the creatures, some return even after being destroyed, most notably Vincent van Akkeren who started mortal and had to be killed 3 times by powers of the light before he stayed dead.
[1][12] In Germany, John Sinclair is considered a pop culture and horror icon that has sometimes been compared to Italian comic book hero Dylan Dog.
[20][21] Over the years, there have been numerous fan conventions, with one of the most recent ones being a special event in Cologne on July 15, 2023 that commemorated the 50th anniversary of John Sinclair's first appearance in the 1973 story Die Nacht des Hexers.
[22][20] There has also been some scholarly engagement with the Sinclair novels of Jason Dark, particularly as regards their author's powers of imagination and inventiveness, and a positive assessment has on occasion been expressed.
The first episode, Im Nachtclub der Vampire, was released on CD in October 2000 and series creator Helmut Rellergerd eventually received a gold record in 2013 to celebrate 150,000 sold units.
[27] The role of John Sinclair is currently voiced by Dietmar Wunder [de], who is best known for dubbing Daniel Craig in the German version of the James Bond films.
[30] Over the decades, numerous well-known actors made guest or cameo appearances on the John Sinclair audio drama series, including Carmen-Maja Antoni, Wolfgang Bahro, Hartmut Becker, Rasmus Borowski, Ralph Caspers, Peter Groeger, Peter Matić, Jürgen Prochnow, Oliver Rohrbeck and Martin Semmelrogge.
The spin-off serves as a chronological epilogue to the main series, taking place decades into the future and depicting an elderly John Sinclair.
[38] In April 1997, the live-action television film John Sinclair: Brides of the Devil [de] based on the novels premiered on the channel RTL.
John Sinclair – Demon Hunter was also adapted into an English audio drama series, which was recorded at OMUK Studios, London and Igloo Music, Los Angeles.
The J-Novel Club release also sees Conroy's text adapted into British English as the novels were originally written with American spelling and phraseology.
Beginning with Volume 4, the J-Novel Pulp release contains direct, unaltered translations from a selection of Jason Dark's original stories as chosen by the Geisterjäger John Sinclair editors.