Award-winning novelist Jonathan Lethem, a well-known admirer of superhero comics, announced plans to revive an obscure superhero comics series for Marvel comics, joining a number of well-regarded novelists currently writing scripts for comic book series.
Lethem, author of Fortress of Solitude and the short story collection Men and Cartoons, said Marvel approached him a year ago. "They challenged me, but I think I surprised them with what I wanted to do," he said. Lethem is reviving a Marvel superhero series called Omega the Unknown, originally published in the mid-1970s and canceled after a 10-issue run. He'll work with artist Farel Dalrymple, a Xeric Award—winning comics artist best known for his graphic novel Pop Gun Wars from Dark Horse.
The new Omega the Unknown will be published in a 10-issue series in 2006 and collected into a graphic novel. Lethem said the series "looked ahead to what the graphic novel has become today," and he compared it to Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons's 1987 Watchman, considered a groundbreaking literary superhero graphic novel.
Lethem joins novelists Michael Chabon, who is writing TheEscapist for Dark Horse, and Brad Meltzer, writing DC's Identity Crisis. Douglas Rushkoff is working on a graphic novel for DC/Vertigo, due sometime next year, and Little, Brown mystery novelist Denise Minna is at work on a mystery series, also for DC.
