Fans of “Game of Thrones” are eagerly awaiting a new prequel series, and also have high hopes that author George R.R. Martin will publish more novels. Fans awaiting more books may be in for disappointment with Martin announcing a new project.
What Happened: A superhero anthology written by George R.R. Martin called “Wild Cards” is getting a comic book adaptation via Marvel Comics, the publishing arm owned by The Walt Disney Co DIS.
The series is made up of stories written by Harold Waldrop, Roger Zelazny and Martin. The complete anthology was featured across 25 novels, 20 short stories and featured the contributions of over 40 authors across three decades dating back to 1987.
“The Wild Cards series tells the story of an alternate history where Earth is home to super-power individuals. When a human is infected with the alien ‘Wild Card’ virus, the odds are that they will be killed…which is referred to as ‘drawing the black queen,’” Marvel said.
The franchise features nods to playing cards, with those who survive becoming jokers and aces.
“As my fans may already know, the Wild Cards World holds a special place in my heart,” Martin said. “So to have the privilege of announcing that an industry titan like Marvel is going to produce the narrative from the beginning as a comic book brings me no end of joy.”
The comic book series will be written by Paul Cornell and feature the artwork of Mike Hawthorne.
“Wild Cards is still a unique take on superheroes, a creation story that’s influenced everything since, but still maintains its power,” Cornell said.
The first comic “Wild Cards: The Drawing of Cards #1” will be released on June 1.
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Why It’s Important: Fans of “Game of Thrones” and comic book superheroes may have a common interest with the release of this series that features the early work of Martin.
Martin is a longtime comic book fan, who once wrote a letter to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby praising the work of “The Fantastic Four.”
“Game of Thrones” was one of the most successful television franchises for HBO, a unit of AT&T Inc T.
“House of the Dragon” is the most anticipated television show for 2022 according to IMDB, a unit of Amazon.com Inc AMZN. The first season will feature 10 episodes and is planned for 2022 with no release date announced. The show is the most searched on IMDB and a teaser trailer has over 14 million views, showing the anticipated demand that HBO and the HBO Max streaming platform could have.
Meanwhile, “Wild Cards” is in development at Peacock, a unit of Comcast Corp CMCSA, after previously being tied to Hulu for years. The streaming platform from Comcast could end up having a hit, with the comic book release likely bringing new fans to the franchise that had no idea of Martin’s early superhero work.
Photo: Courtesy of Gage Skidmore on Flickr
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