Over on his website, Jim Butcher, writer of the Dresden Files novels, announces that he’s working with Dabel Brothers Productions on a series of graphic novel adaptations of his books:
Working together with Dabel Brothers Productions, the Dresden Files are going to be translated into a graphic novel format. The current plan is to lay out the Dresden Files storyline at the rate of one of the novels every twelve to sixteen monthly issues, with occasional side-trips and independent stories thrown in. (Ever wonder what happened in Branson the month before Storm Front? How about what somebody saw in the lake in Minnesota between Storm Front and Fool Moon? Maybe I’ll get to tell those stories now! How cool is that?)
I will be assisting with the writing of the comics, and am also involved in the design and approval of the characters, art, tone, and so on. This is an actual hand-in-hand project in which I have full creative input and influence, and I’m friggin’ giddy about it. I mean, come on! Comic books!
I’ve never read the books, but I did like the short-lived TV show that SciFi aired. Interestingly enough, one of Butcher’s other credits is a Spider-Man novel.
October 3rd, 2007 at 7:14 am
surely THIS will end well…
October 3rd, 2007 at 7:57 am
Can’t wait to see the Dabels screw this one up.
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:54 am
I’m positive about this becuase I want to see it.
And the only real experience I have with their stuff up until now was the first Sworn Sword adaptation and that went great.
October 3rd, 2007 at 8:55 am
Oh and just the usual disclaimers:
The books are so incredibly better than the TV show was.
Butcher writes some of the best third acts I’ve ever seen.
That Spider-Man book is very good.
October 3rd, 2007 at 9:21 am
I REALLY wanna read this.
I hope it works out, because the novels kick 50 awesome inds of booty.
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:18 am
As far as I’ve heard, the Dabels have had nothing but success with their adaptions. If people are citing the break with Marvel as failure, that’s more of a business shortcoming and not creative.
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:47 am
My question is…
Will the freelancers working on the book get paid?
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:53 am
Assuming the Dabel Brothers will not mess up on the business end, this is good news. The novels are fantastic, they’re very popular with lots of different readers, including some very savvy teen fantasy fans. I’m looking forward to Harry Dresden in comic book format, so I wish all success to the project.
October 3rd, 2007 at 10:55 am
Hi nice to meet you. I will be working on the project and I am being paid in advance for my work as well as the other people involved. So far I love this project and the novels are great. Some of the art will be public soon I hope you all enjoy them :)a
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:27 pm
I really hope they can pull this off. I was real mad when Sci Fi channel cancelled The Dresden Files. So hopefully this will make up for that.
October 3rd, 2007 at 12:50 pm
Love the books and the tv series. Would love to see the comics, but…
Dabel Bros seem to have history of leaving freelancers in their wake clutching unpaid invoices. How long will it be before they shoot themselves in the foot in a like manner. Plus their artists, though good at times, are not in the top flight.
I would have preferred one of the major publishers rather than Dabel
October 3rd, 2007 at 1:11 pm
We’re all fans of the novels at Dabel Brothers, and while the show was decent, it was disappointing if you’ve read the source material. And I agree about the strength of Butcher’s third acts… his books are always nicely surprisingly at the end.
We’re thrilled to be working with both Dean Koontz and Jim Butcher. And I think people are going to be pleasantly surprised once we announce the other “behind the scenes” projects we’ve got too…
October 3rd, 2007 at 1:14 pm
Erm, I meant “surprising.” My apologies for bad proofreading there.
October 3rd, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Hey stop giving out all the family secrets…heh.
This ride is going to be blast.
October 3rd, 2007 at 2:16 pm
I’ve been waiting for this announcement! Butcher is a big comic fan (you can just tell in his novels) and this just seemed to be a given. I swear if the Dabels screw this up…
October 3rd, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Considering we made Anita Blake a hit and didn’t mess that up I doubt we would mess this up.
October 3rd, 2007 at 6:20 pm
Hey Derek, slightly off topic here but can we expect the next volume of XIII anytime soon. The first one was fantastic. Many thanks.
October 3rd, 2007 at 6:41 pm
I am SO looking forward to this!
October 3rd, 2007 at 7:14 pm
I’ve liked pretty much everything Dabel Brothers has done to date, so I have a good feeling about this. One of my favorite series brought to the comics page
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Awesome news. These books put Harry Potter to shame.
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:28 pm
This is weird. The Dabels land this great license and they don’t even have a Web site or A forum in which to break the announcement. Another fine Dabel moment!
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:32 pm
Where are the Dabel Bros getting the money to fund these projects? Producing comics ain’t cheap! If they had their contract terminated by Marvel for not paying their bills, how can they hope to fund these new projects? Riddle me that, Sean or Derek!
October 3rd, 2007 at 11:39 pm
How are the Dabels still doing books? Every artist I have ever known that has done work with them ends up not getting paid. I don’t get it. If you have the money to make these deals with all these top novelist then you should have the money to pay your talent.
October 4th, 2007 at 12:15 am
Hi guys Les Dabel here to answer questions 21, 22 and 23.
21: We are revamping our website for the new launch it’s going to be a while before the new site goes lives. The news was picked up by Newsarama from Jim Butcher’s website, it was not an official press release sent out by us. We will be releasing an official pr very soon with some really cool art.
22-23: You are right comics are not cheap to produce, I am not sure where you got your info from but financially we are doing pretty good. The past couple weeks we’ve been working with the artist getting payments to them in full. Within the next month or two any artist that has ever worked for us that still has an outstanding invoice will be paid in full. Going forward on all of our future projects we have made arrangement with our creative teams to pay them in advance, this is not the norm in the industry but we want anyone working for us to focus on the project and not have to worry about money issues. Thanks.
October 5th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Well, as a fan of the series who hasn’t yet read any Dabel Brothers material, I can safely say that failure on this project could destroy any consumer trust I would ever have in them again. In other words, I wouldn’t even try another book by them because of shear fanboy hate. But I really excited about this and hope it works out of the Best! Oh, and read the Spider-man novel, Jim Butcher has a great sense of Peter Parker and I even came out of it wishing to see more of the Rhino. The Rhino! Go, read now while you wait for the next book
October 6th, 2007 at 6:00 pm
Les bro I don’t think you want me to start Raoring names out on a public forum.
October 7th, 2007 at 11:27 am
Will, where do I know you from? Your name sounds familiar. If you know of anyone that needs to be paid I would appreciate you passing my email to them. It is ldabel@dabelbrothers.com .
Please do so soon since we have already started the process. Thanks.