Marvel's next big comic comes from a video game

[Night Hunter]

 

When Marvel Comics was founded in 1939, the very idea of a video game was so foreign that even its futuristic thinkers couldn't imagine such a thing.

 

Now 76 years later, the company will launch its first comic inspired by one.

 

Marvel, owned by Walt Disney, is launching a comic series this October built around Contest of Champions, a video game co-created with San Francisco-based Kabam. The comic will follow the story line of popular superheroes, like the military superhero Captain America and the web-slinging Spider-Man, who are kidnapped and forced to fight by a mysterious figure known as the Collector.

 

This is a first for Disney's Marvel division, whose comic books have become the driving force behind some of the most popular movies and TV shows ever made, including "The Avengers," "Spider-Man" and "X-Men."

 

That inspiration has been a one-way street: the comics have always led to stories for other media, and never ceded control of their story lines -- until now.

 

"On the comic book side, this book has to be as good and bar-shattering as the game," said Bill Rosemann, creative director at Marvel's games group. "We have to define what a comic is based on a game."

 

The move not only recognizes the video game industry's story-telling prowess and growing influence, it could lead to a shift in the way comics are written. While Marvel will still rely on comic writers for its Contest of Champions, video game makers could offer up new story lines, drawn with a potentially different artistic perspective. Perhaps most important, the effort will give readers and gamers a deeper connection with the stories' characters, participating in the game's side-plots while reading their favorite characters' thoughts and motivations in the comic.

 

"Video games have really become an important storytelling medium for us," said Peter Phillips, head of Marvel's interactive and digital media group, who added the company has rallied its television, movies, comics and games groups together for this and other initiatives. "We've gotten smarter as an organization."

 

Source http://www.cnet.com/