Dabel Brothers Publishing, a comics packager known for producing comics adaptations of notable prose works, announced plans to team up with Del Rey Books to create a comics version of acclaimed fantasy novelist Robert Jordan’s bestselling 11-volume Wheel of Time series. Dabel Brothers will adapt the prose works and begin publishing them as a periodical comics series in December 2008; Del Rey will collect the series into book-format graphic novels, likely to be released in late 2009. Jordan died in 2007 and this deal was negotiated with Jordan’s agent, Nat Sobel, and Harriet McDougal, Jordan’s widow and editor.
The first volume of Jordan’s 11-volume Wheel of Time series, The Eye of the World, was published in 1990 and the prose series has sold more than 14 million books. In 2009 Tor Books will publish the 11th volume of the prose series, A Memory of Light, which was completed by writer Brandon Sanderson after Jordan’s death.
Neil Schwartz, DBP marketing manager, said DBP established a working relationship with Jordan earlier, after creating a comics adaptation of his novel, A New Spring, in March 2005. At the time, Jordan provided DBP with notes, character descriptions and other material for use in future publications.
The deal is the latest between the Dabel Brothers and Del Rey. In November 2007 DBP and Del Rey announced a deal to produce comics adaptation novels by bestselling novelists Dean Koontz (Frankenstein: Prodigal Son), Jim Butcher (The Dresden Files) and George R.R. Martin (Wild Cards), to be released as periodical comics in the comics shop market. Del Rey agreed to collect these works into book format graphic novels for distribution to the general book trade and to schools and libraries, beginning in fall 2008.
"I'm delighted to be working with the Dabel Brothers,” McDougal said. “Their work is splendid. Robert Jordan liked it enormously.”
