Amazon Launches Jet City Comics Imprint

I didn’t know this, but apparently Amazon has its hand in the book publishing business. They bring back out-of-print books, translate books from other countries, publish books in dozens of different genres, and now they’re taking a stab at comic publishing with some pretty big names behind the stories.

Amazon recently announced that they’re starting up a new imprint of their publishing branch called Jet City Comics. Along with this, they announced the first comics to be published under this label.

First up there’s six original comics set in The Foreworld Saga universe, an alternate history series that started in 2010 with The Mongoliad. The first of these comics, called Symposium #1, was written by Christian Cameron (The Alan Craik series) and drawn by Dmitry Bondarenko. The issue details the origins of the Shield-Brethren in Ancient Greece, a few days after Athens fell to Sparta. It is on sale now. New installments will be released monthly with a collected edition coming in 2014.

Next up is a comic adaptation of Meathouse Man, a short story by George R.R. Martin of A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones fame. Drawn and adapted by Raya Golden, the single issue story is set on a “corpse world,” where some people have the ability to force their will on to corpses. The story follows a nameless man with this ability from adolescents to adulthood, and all the fucked up shit he does with dead bodies along the way. Meathouse Man launches in digital format this October.

Speaking of Martin, their will also be a re-release of the comic adaptation of The Hedge Knight, the first Dunk and Egg story set in the same universe as Ice and Fire but 90 years prior to the events of the books/show. The book was adapted by writer Ben Avery and artist Mike S. Miller into a six issue series which ran between 2003 and 2004. This will be released as a graphic novel in print and digital forms this November, with the sequel story, The Sworn Sword, coming in 2014 (The cover art below is a different size because they didn’t actually release any cover art for this book).

Finally, Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray, along with artist Jimmy Broxton, are adapting the Hugh Howey novel Wool. Set in a dystopic future where the surface of the Earth is fucked, humanity now has to live beneath the Earth in giant silos. The book will be released as Kindle Serial, with six issues coming out starting in October, with a collected edition coming in 2014.

Source: EW