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Wonder Con – Archaia Press Presents: 2011 and Beyond

Archaia’s panel consisted of four big announcements of new titles the first being their partnership with Relativity on an anthology for their new movie The Immortals. They talked a little about the film that’s being produced by the same team that produced 300. The movie stars Mickey Rourke, Henry Cavill from the upcoming Superman re-launch and Kellan Lutz from Twilight. After talking about the movie they went into their partnership more and what the goal for the anthology was.

The Anthology will be a series of short stories by a lot of comic super stars. The first part of the book will deal with the Gods and the Titans fighting and how the Titans lost.  The second half of the book is how the humans arrived to their role in the film. The key thing is that it’s not an adaption, but a series of stories that take place in the world of the movie. Some of the talent working on the book includes Jock and Ben Templesmith.

The anthology is being put out under Archaia’s Black Label which they jokingly said was their “whiskey brand” and treated it as a label for creators who don’t know anything about comics or how they work, can come to them with projects for them to help them. Essentially it’s a place for big names in Hollywood to come and put a project together and turn it into a comic. They stressed the fact that the book is not an adaptation and it’s for fans of the movie that want to have a richer experience after the film, or for people that want to go into the movie with a richer experience.

The book ships in September two months before the movie releases on 11/11/11.

Storyteller ArtworkThey then moved onto their partnership with Jim Henson studios and spoke briefly about the upcoming Dark Crystal graphic novel and the recently announced at c2e2 title A Tale of Sand which is an unproduced script by Jim Henson that he wrote before the Muppets took off. Their next Jim Henson project is Jim’s Storyteller stories. They discovered an unproduced teleplay from the show and are working on another anthology of stories from super star creators in that world.

The talent for this anthology includes: Roger Langridge, Janet Lee, Evan Shaner, Jeff Parker with Tom Fowler, Katie Cook and Jim McCann with Janet Lee

Next they discussed two original graphic novels coming in the summer. The first is OCB which is set in the distant future and follows a police officer living in Athens. Athens has been wrecked by a natural disaster and rebuilt by a Japanese company. Now it looks like Tokyo, but with ancient ruins still rest in the city. The book will be in black and white and is the perfect meld between Japanese and European comics.

The next novel was Rust by Royden Lepp which is this year’s all-ages book, much like Dapper Men was last years. It’s a mix of Iron Giant and the Rocketeer set after a world war III type event. It takes place on a small Midwestern town where a young boy is trying to be the provider for the family after his father has died. That is until Jet Jones lands on the farm wearing a jet pack and being chased by a 40 foot war bot. The book is also in black and white.

The Dark CrystalThey then added that Alan Ball is writing the forward to the Lucid Hardcover. They recapped Luicd which you can read the reviews of all the entire series starting here and ending here.

Mr. Murder is Dead is the next Before the Door project. Described as “what if Dick Tracy became a pissed off old man and then became a bad guy on top of that? The story follows his career in the 40’s, 50’s and so on. When flashing back to that era the comic style of the time will be represented as to pay homage to crime drama comics. The format will be like a newspaper strip style much like Bloom County from IDW.

The Days Missing: Kestus Hard Cover forward will be written by Wil Wheaton. Out in May and again they recap the book and you can check out the reviews for that here and here as well.

They moved on to Bleed Out written by Mike Kennedy. What happens when oil runs out due to human intervention? A micro-organism that can eat oil is used to clean up a spill, but then it continues eating all of the oil. The story moves on to a post meltdown city where crime rules the city. The book is coming out at the end of April or May. 14.95 graphic novel.

Q - Were you surprised by the success the Killer?

No it’s awesome. It’s always a challenge to bring foreign material into the American market. We’re all working on stuff we would like to read. Believe that if we love it then you’ll love it too. When we saw it we knew it was something America audiences would love.

Q - A Nerd with a sword asks how true the Immortals anthology will be to the original myths. Also he states that he’s a big mythology geek which is an understatement?

Showing a realer look the myths but keeping true to the myths. Sticking to what’s captivating about the stories not making the monsters big.

That’s about it, but I’m sure that’s enough information for now and I’m very sure that we’ll have coverage and reviews of basically all of these titles.

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