Marvel Publishes Graphic Novel Based on Halo Game
Posted on June 4, 2006
Halo is one of the most popular game franchises ever. The Halo and Halo 2 Xbox games from Microsoft have sold over 14 million copies worldwide. Halo 2 broke video game sales records by grossing $125 million within 24 hours of being released. Peter Jackson has already signed on to make a movie based on the game. Three Halo novels have been published that have sold over 400,000 total copies to date. Now, Marvel has published the Halo Graphic Novel, which is also known simply as HGN. USA Today has more information about the new Halo comic.
Comic industry veteran Maria Paz Cabardo (Pokemon; Magic: The Gathering; Vertigo comics) helped connect Bungie with artists and writers beyond their own staff. Among them: the famed comic artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud, well-known Japanese manga artist/writer Tsutomu Nihei and writer Jay Faerber, who has worked on several Marvel series.More details about the Halo comic can be found here on Marvel's website and here on Bungie.net, the game developers website.Once they had the makings of a project, the novel was pitched to publishers, and Marvel won out. "The Halo Graphic Novel is true to the vision, scope and spirit of the Halo universe. It is dynamic, engaging and cinematic," Jayatilleke says.
The plots for the four stories in the novel came from Bungie's "Halo Story Bible," which details the underpinnings for the game universe: a sci-fi epic that involves a Starship Troopers-like Master Chief battling aliens. "The graphic novel was a chance for us to expand outward and fill in some of the fictional gaps and provide insight into events that tie into the more mainstream stories," Jarrard says. "These four were the most interesting to us, and the writers, for this project."
Once the stories were chosen, artists were paired with writers. "The stress was to make the characters look very much as they do in the game. Beyond that point I was given free rein to interpret the script and the action," says Simon Bisley, who illustrates the longest story in the book, the 48-page The Last Voyage of the Infinite Succor, written by Lee Hammock, a game designer and DC Comics veteran.