Prose fiction based on comics characters isn't new: it's a tradition that stretches back as far as a Superman novel in the 1940s. But with the rise of graphic novels in the book business, comics publishers are experimenting with books without pictures as a medium for their properties.
DC Comics has some big prose crossover plans for 2005. A few books will tie in with upcoming movies, including a line of Hellblazer novels by horror writer John Shirley, about the character from the upcoming Constantine film. There'll be a Batman movie novelization in summer 2005 (by longtime Batman writer and editor Denny O'Neil), and Del Rey is also launching a series of Batman novels.
Marv Wolfman, who wrote DC's original Crisis on Infinite Earths series 20 years ago, is writing a novelization of that story line that iBooks will publish in the spring. iBooks publisher Byron Priess said that the company has also lined up three Green Lantern hardcover novels. Earlier this year, iBooks put out a trade paper novelization of Christian's Gossett's acclaimed Red Star comics series that included an insert section with comics. In May, iBooks will release The Forensics of Batman, a prose crime series about the Dark Knight's toughest cases written by Douglas Moench. And in September 2005 comes a triology of Justice Society of America novels by Jeff Johns and Paul Kupperberg.
Steve Korte, DC's group editor of licensed publishing, is particularly excited about Tom De Haven's It's Superman, due in fall 2005 from Chronicle—it's set in the 1930s and tells the story leading up to Superman's first appearance in Action Comics 1.
DC has also published comics by writers who have a very high profile in the prose fiction world, notably Brad Meltzer and Neil Gaiman. "In Brad's case," says Paul Levitz, DC president and publisher, "I think the real opportunity will be next year with Identity Crisis, the kind of story his prose readers would be likely to enjoy. We've published several projects by Neil since he became a significant prose author, but historically Neil's readers are very passionate about him, and know what he's going to do next. So we try to get some cross-display and a certain amount of trade publicity in places like Locus, the science fiction news and review journal, but we don't have to do very extreme marketing to connect the two—it's a connected group already."
Novelist Greg Rucka also writes several comics series and adapted the Batman comics story No Man's Land as a novel a few years ago. But for A Gentleman's Game, this fall's Bantam novel based on Queen & Country, the spy-thriller comics series he writes for Oni Press, Rucka did something different: the novel fits directly between two of the graphic novels and relates a story that dramatically affects the characters. "Greg's editor at Bantam suggested he should do this," said Oni's editor-in-chief James Lucas Jones. "Everyone's instinct was to adapt the first arc from the comic. But the more we thought about it, what the novel needed to do was tell a story outside the scope of what comics could do. [The novel format has] a different set of rules and advantages."
"The comics readership falls to novels much more freely and easily than the novel audience falls to comics," Rucka says. "I know a couple of mystery bookstore people who said they tried to carry the Queen & Country graphic novels for a while, and people just wouldn't pick them up—although they might have more success now." Oni has made promotional bookmarks for both comic stores and bookstores, listing the Q&C backlist on one side and information about the novel on the other, and the publisher is making sure that bookstores where Rucka will be signing have his comics work available.
Marvel Comics launched its Marvel Press prose imprint earlier this year and recently published its first adult hardcover prose novel, Marc Cerasini's Wolverine: Weapon X, but as of press time, Marvel hadn't yet solicited future titles. "I think that Wolverine is meeting our expectations in terms of the audience that we're targeting, and solidifying the idea that our characters can work in media besides the visual ones," said Marvel Press's editorial director, Ruwan Jayatilleke. Marvel expects to release soon a publishing plan for 2005, and Jayatilleke told PW that it will feature "characters along Wolverine's level of popularity. I would say fairly confidently that there will be a number of adult books and young adult books."
Dark Horse Comics hasn't done a lot of prose, but recently published the story collection Hellboy: Odder Jobs and might be trying more titles in the future.
Asia has its own tradition of novels based on manga titles, and the American manga publisher ComicsOne is experimenting with prose fiction about its characters. This year, it published two novels (by an author known only as Please) based on the Onegai Teacher series. In true manga fashion, Onegai Teacher is, of course, about a high school student who is mistakenly thought to be involved with his rather attractive teacher. The teacher happens also to be an alien.
Editor-in-chief and marketing director Shawn Sanders told PW that ComicsOne printed the novels at the same trim size as manga and with the same logo: "At a brief glance, you might think the novel was another manga." In March 2005, ComicsOne will be publishing the prose novel Junk Force by Hideki Kakinuma, on which its manga series is based, and several Storm Riders prose novels by Wing Shing Ma, who also writes the manga series.
