Saga of the Swamp Thing will hit hardcover format on February 11, 2009, DC Comics has reported.

For those in the know, included in this edition is “The Anatomy Lesson,” where Swamp Thing learns that he far more — and far less — than the Alec Holland he once was.

Alan Moore used this story as a springboard for psychedelia, environmental issues, as well as a controversial story in which the term “treehugger” gets far more close-and-personal (and NSFW) than one typically would find.

This collection is comprised of issues #20-27, and hits stores February 11.

If you like what’s you’ve read so far totally check out more super cute comics at:www.sosuperduper.com!

Or at least that’s what it seems like, with its latest blitz of marketing.

The publisher of Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe has released its schedule from now till New York Comic Con, and it looks massive. So what’s going on with Oni?

Perhaps we should start with the event that the publisher seems to be circling around: February 4th, also known as the release date for Scott Pilgrim vs. The Universe Vol. 5. For those not in the know, here’s the solicit for the new book:

SCOTT PILGRIM VOLUME 5: SCOTT PILGRIM VS THE UNIVERSE
by Bryan Lee O’Malley
Scott Pilgrim is at the top of his game: he just turned 24, he moved in with the girl of his dreams, and he defeated at least half of The League of Ramona’s Evil Exes. But life at the top is treacherous and if things can’t possibly get any better for Scott, it means they can only get infinitely worse! Scott’s band is in total turmoil, his own exes have all boarded the train to crazy town, and Ramona’s evil exes have started appearing in pairs! And what’s up with Ramona, anyway? She’s been acting kinda weird ever since she and Scott moved in together. It’s the second-to-last volume of the Scott Pilgrim series and it looks like Scott’s precious little life has come back around to bite him in the butt!

On Tuesday, February 3rd, Pilgrim writer Bryan Lee O’Malley will be hitting the People’s Improv Theatre in NYC from 8-10pm to join the Comic Book Club! He will be discussing the release of Pilgrim Vol. 5 and, knowing the classy boys of the Comic Book Club, any number of hilariously weird sexual neuroses. (I kid because I love.)

Following that, he’ll be travelling to Jim Hanley’s Universe off 34th Street to promote the book at its Midnight Release Party. The next day, meanwhile, at 7pm, O’Malley will hit Brooklyn’s Rocketship Comics for an additional signing.

Apparently, the first printing has a foil cover, and if you hit any of the New York events, you can get a limited edition Obi wrap as well as a “I Scott NY” t-shirt. (They don’t know what that statement means, either.)

But wait! What about the Comic Con itself? Well, the Oni people have given us a schedule for that, as well. Here’s the skinny for the publisher’s panels:

Saturday, 11:00-12:00 in room 1A21: How Not to Break into Comics
There have been countless articles and panels on how to break into comics, but very few on how not to. Come join Randal C. Jarrell (Managing Editor at Oni Press) and other industry insiders as they discuss the common and often hilarious mistakes people make when trying to break into the industry.

Sunday, 2:45 PM-3:45 PM in Kids Zone 3: Pillaging History For Story Ideas
Pirates, ninjas, gunslingers, and knights – history is packed with events, characters, and settings that you can use to make your own original stories! All you need is to know whereto look. Chris Schweizer (The Crogan Adventures) will help you will help you learn how to take real history and use it to make the types of stories that you want to tell.

Sunday, 1:30 PM-2:30 PM in room 1A14: Scott Pilgrim vs. The Panel!
Bryan Lee O’Malley (winner of the Doug Wright, Joe Shuster, and Harvey Awards) sits down with NYCC to discuss his ground-breaking, slice-of-life series Scott Pilgrim. From its genesis to the NYCC release of volume five, O’Malley speaks frankly about where Scott Pilgrim came from and where the series is going from here. With moderation by Douglas Wolk and a fan Q&A to close the discussion, this is a must see event of NYCC 2009!

In addition, at Oni’s booth, the following creators will be in attendance for signing: Bryan Lee O’Malley (Scott Pilgrim), J. Torres (Love as a Foreign Language, Scandalous), Eric Kim (Love as a Foreign Language), John Layman (Stephen Colbert’s Tek Jansen), Matt Loux (Salt Water Taffy, Sidescrollers), Philip Gelatt (Labor Days), Rick Lacy (Labor Days), Ray Fawkes (The Apocalipstix), Cameron Stewart (The Apocalipstix), Rick Spears (Black Metal), Ross Campbell (Wet Moon), TJ Kirsch (Uncle Slam Fights Back), Vasilis Lolos (The Last Call), Chris Schweizer (The Crogan Adventures), Cullen Bunn (The Damned), Ryan Kelly (Local), and Greg Rucka (Queen & Country, Whiteout).

Finally — what better way to end a post than with Scott Pilgrim Cubees? If you like ‘em, check out Oni Press or Cubeecraft.

And I’m not talking about Mama Grimm’s favorite son.

Universal Studios will be producing a new film version of John Carpenter’s shapeshifting alien cult classic, Variety reports.

Battlestar Gallactica executive producer Ron Moore will be writing the film, and Army of the Dead co-developer Matthjis Van Heijningen will direct.

According to Variety, this new film will draw much of its inspiration from the John Campbell Jr. story “Who Goes There” and the Howard Hawks screen story for “The Thing From Another World”.

I know we promised you webcomics earlier this month, but you’ll have to forgive us. Webcomics creators are largely doing a lot of work they aren’t getting paid for, so they’re all pretty busy.

Josh Neufeld, the creator of A.D.: New Orleans After the Deluge, took on a subject near and dear to my heart. I went to college in New Orleans, and though I left before Hurricane Katrina hit, I still consider New Orleans a huge part of me and my life. I appreciate someone taking on the stories of diverse New Orleans voices and presenting them in a new, creative and compelling manner. In addition to the comic, which will be published in print form soon as well, there are audio and video podcasts on the site and plenty of other supplemental materials, showcasing the possibilities for comics on the Web. Please check out A.D.–it gets my sincerest endorsement.

Josh took a few minutes to give me some answers about A.D. and about webcomics in general, so please, read on!

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Likely surprising very few, the Narnia film franchise, or at least the next one, Voyage of the Dawn Treader, has found a new home after being dropped by Disney last month. Variety Reports that Fox will distribute and co-finance the film under their “Fox 2000″ division. Walden Media, the owners of the license, already had a working relationship with 20th Century Fox through the shared and appropriately named Fox Walden label. Nothing is in stone yet as far as script and the ever important money question go, but the studios hope to start filming this summer for a 2010 holiday season release. Prince Caspian finished as the #10 grosser at the Box Office last year, and Dawn Treader has a lot of the magic and fantastic aspects missing from the second book/film, which the studios hope will drive higher earnings.

The principal cast, including Ben Barnes as Caspian, Skandar Keynes as Edmund, and Georgie Henley as Lucy are all signed on to return, and casting for the other roles has already moved forward.

[Via]

When you people lose your jobs, or are feeling down about the price of milk, it seems you seek one solace and one solace only: Video Games. While individual companies such as Midway, EA, and even Microsoft have had mass layoffs in the past few months, showing signs of financial strain, the video game industry as a whole has literally never been better.

$22 BILLION worth of video game software and hardware was sold in 2008. That’s the Gross Domestic Product of Costa Rica right there. Of this, over half, $11.7 billion was software, meaning it’s not all from people buying Wiis or taking advantage of price drops for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

December is perhaps the most baffling. In this month that was supposed to show the worst time for retailers, this 13th month of the then officially declared recession, sales weren’t just healthy, they were record breaking. For the first time ever in a single month, video game sales brought in over $5 billion. In fact, according to the ESA’s report on the sales numbers, they brought in more in December 2008 than in the entire year of 1997.

Mature games, which typically get the widest coverage in the “hardcore” market, accounted for only 15% of these sales, while E and E-10 made up 57%.

So, clearly, there are some well-entertained, starving, naked gamers out there. The question is, what is separating Video Games in people’s minds as still being such a strong value compared to comics, movies, or any other form of entertainment? While January has no doubt been a slow month, with games like Street Fighter IV, Resident Evil V, Halo Wars, and more on the horizon in just the next two months, it will be interesting to see if growth can truly be maintained.

[Via]

The judge in the ongoing Superman lawsuit has postponed the upcoming scheduled trials due to “health issues related to one of [the Siegel family's] main expert witnesses.” The trial on the alter ego issue is now set for April 21, 2009; the trial regarding apportionment of profits is set to follow on June 9th.

Oh yeah, it’s party time. Gonna be in town for the upcoming New York Comic-Con, just a little over a (GULP) week from now? Only have 45 parties to go to? How ’bout another? The Comicbook Artists Guild is hosting their fourth annual Indy After Party on Saturday, February 7th at 8pm. The party is at Blaggard’s Pub, a larger venue than last year’s 200+ attendee event. All are welcome in the spirit of independent creation and collaboration. The full press release is after the jump! (more…)

So last week I restarted my off-again, on-again affair with John Constantine (Hellblazer #251) It’s been ongoing for almost as long as my love affair with comics, and it’s always nice to slip back into familiar territory, though it’s a little different, each time, as a different author puts his (or her!) stamp on John.

This time, it’s Peter Milligan, and his Constantine has a new girl in his life and a strange skin condition, and there’s some unexplained-as-yet connection to labor unrest. In short, politics, sex, magic, and a bit of wickedness. Just what we want from John. Why did I ever leave him?

So I’ve got Northlanders this week, and I fully plan on finding 08. Otherwise, it’s a light week for me. Any suggestions?

While Wonder Woman doesn’t look to be getting a live action feature release anytime soon (though there is an animated DVD releasing in March), and some people agree with a ridiculous statement made by a Warner exec a couple of years ago saying females can’t carry a big time action movie, Warners are nevertheless relaunching and rebooting the Tomb Raider franchise. When they bought 20% of Eidos Interactive, the producer and license holder of the Tomb Raider games, a few months ago, part of the deal was the movie rights, once held and used by Paramount for two pictures.

Dan Lin, Executive Producer of Terminator: Salvation and producer on this year’s Robert Downey-fueled Sherlock Holmes, as well as the on again-off again Justice League movie, is producing with Stephen Gilchrist (Rules of Engagement) and Executive Producer Ian Livingstone from Eidos Interactive. The movie, like the announced upcoming game, will see a revamped Lara Croft, going even further in giving her a new origin (and thus presumably a new raison d’être). As such, it is unlikely they’ll be pulling Angelina Jolie out of her semi-retirement from acting for the role. Megan Fox, rumored for the last few days apparently because of a blog post in South America (no kidding), has likewise been disspelled as a possible Lara.

So, who do you think can fill those… boots?

[Via]

Er, you do know Hancock wasn’t a documentary, right?: Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Annette John-Hall on her favorite superhero. Who is it? Here’s a hint: He comes from Philly.

“There aren’t stories where Thomas the Tank Engine turns into a vampire”: Well if there were, I’d totally read that book or watch the DVD. Noah Berlatsky discusses superhero-decadence in relation to a very specific personal example—his young son being frightened by a comic featuring a vampire Batman. Berlatsky raises an interesting question that I know from experience is an awful touchy subject among a lot of super-hero comic readers. Are these children’s characters or not? Because DC and Marvel both use the exact same characters in books and products geared toward different audiences. That is, you can read Batman in Super Friends or a Doug Moench/Kelley Jones vampire comic; you can read Thor in an Essential or a Marvel Adventures comic or in his Max miniseries series where he’s knocking the heads off of rampaging Viking zombies. Please don’t get me started on DC’s marketing of Captain Marvel and the Marvel Family. It’s always struck me as odd that the only characters in either of these companies’ catalogs that are specifically marketed to a single age group are the Vertigo characters. I’d argue that there’s a far greater gulf between Super Friends and, say, Identity Crisis than between Identity Crisis and Swamp Thing or Hellblazer, for example. Berlatsky isn’t necessarily pissed at DC Comics or the comic shop owner or anything—he specifically mentions that it’s up to him to keep an eye out for what his son’s perusing—but it serves as an interesting real world example of something a lot of us usually just talk about in the hypothetical.

“Why not Wildstorm?”: Jeff Parker rounds up a dozen positive reviews of his new series with Tom Folwer, Mysterius The Unfathomable, and addresses a recurring question about the book—why it’s at Wildstorm at all. Says Parker:

The short answer is “because Senior Editor Ben Abernathy asked Tom and I what we would like to do.” But I don’t know how to address people who feel WS is supposed to do only post-Watchmen superhero stories. Maybe… they’d like to try other things? I think that’s it’s a question that doesn’t demand being asked- a publisher wants to expand their base beyond superheroes into other genres. Should we look a gift horse in the mouth or give it some carrots and encourage it to keep pulling?

That’s certainly fair. I guess the question probably shouldn’t be posed to Parker or Fowler, but to Wildstorm, and maybe not of Mysterius, but of the rest of the line. The imprint remains a pretty confused brand, splitting its attention about equally between Wildstorm “universe” books and spin-offs of video games and TV shows, with seemingly random books like Mysterius and Storming Paradise appearing now and then. At any rate, don’t let the fact that Wildstorm is publishing it keep you from checking out Mysterius #1; I agree with the other eleven people who gave the book pretty high praise.

Spider-Man: Threat, menace or hero?: I passed on Dark Avengers #1 last week, since my need for Avengers books was already being met by the existing ones, but I have been enjoying reading folks like Paul O’Brien and this Snell character trying to make sense out of Norman Osborn’s marketing of his new team, which includes at least one former supervillain turned publicly perceived good guy (Venom) posing as a former superhero turned publicly perceived bad guy (Spider-Man). The increasingly experienced comic book virgin Nina Stone dug the book though, as it met the rather low bar she had set for it:

I don’t know the real version of these characters, this Ms. Marvel, that Wolverine—and yet I got a little freaked out by these very bad, very mean, versions of those characters.  I don’t know the Avengers well enough to pick them out of a line-up.  But I came away from this comic knowing that these weren’t them, and that what this Norman Osborn was doing was wrong.  I got it, and I didn’t start with much.  That’s something.  Is it the best comic I’ve ever read?  No.  No way.  But it sure wasn’t the worst.

Compared to this, the Omega Sanction doesn’t really seem all that terrifying: Rachelle Goguen on the single most traumatic thing to happen to Batman the week that Final Crisis #6 came out.

Twit for tat: Kevin Church catches a Twitter exchange between a fan and Marvel, and the Marvel Twitter tweeter takes the opportunity to denigrate the current output of long-time Marvel stalwarts Kurt Busiek and Mark Bagley, who happen to be working for DC at the moment.  While you’re there, check out Church’s reader participation features this week.

Turns out Joe Carnahan’s on the jazz.

Variety reports that the Smokin’ Aces director has been signed on by Twentieth Century Fox to helm their remake film version of the A-Team.

Ridley and Tony Scott of Gladiator fame will get on the plane to produce. This is a good sign for the film, which hadn’t gotten much in the way of good news since May, when Cinema Blend reported that Bruce Willis was considering playing Hannibal Smith.

The library is a great place for readers to discover comics, and it’s a great place for comics readers to check out things that they want to try without spending their hard-earned cash. I’m looking at comics that I find in the New York Public Library system.

Hope Larson’s Chiggers is an Eisner Award-winner and a totally charming book. On one level, it’s an upbeat, girls-at-summer-camp romp, full of catty banter, fun camp activities and awkward teen social interactions. On another, it’s a discussion of growing up and finding not only your friends, but also yourself. Abby’s back in summer camp for another summer, but as the youngest girl in her group of camp friends, she’s suddenly an outsider among the older girls and their new responsibilities and new interests. Befriended by the mysterious Shasta, Abby finds herself torn between peer groups and confused about her interest in awkward boy camper Teal.

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Paramount has released a series of teaser posters for the upcoming G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra movie:

(left to right: Storm Shadow; Snake-Eyes; Duke)

You can also see posters for Scarlett, Ripcord and Baroness on MySpace. Personally, I’m not impressed. The whole “let’s do a bunch of posters with each one spotlighting a different character” shtick has been done to death since Batman Forever. It’s the sort of thing that can be done very well, like the teaser posters for Watchmen, which used the posters to capture elements of the plot through creative imagery. But more often than not you see posters like these, which simply feature boring, unimaginative character poses. There’s no style or creativity inherent in them, and I can almost guarantee you it didn’t take more than an hour worth of effort for the art designer to lay them out on their Mac.

Plus, the costumes mostly suck. Snake-Eyes and Storm Shadow look great, and the Baroness at least looks like the iconic version of the character, but the Joe uniforms look terrible. Black leather armor? Really, Paramount? One of the coolest things about the Joes has always been their individual looks. These look like something the producers picked up at Christian Bale’s yard sale. I fear for what Cobra Commander is going to look like.

On the other hand, the pre-release art for the Transformers movie didn’t look very impressive either, and that turned out to be a really fun movie.

Heroes writer Jesse Alexander will write the pilot for NBC’s “Day One,” the Hollywood Reporter has announced.

The series is about a band of survivors trying to rebuild society and discover the meaning behind a worldwide cataclysmic event.

While the plot may sound a bit familiar, there’s a strong shot for some early buzz, considering Alexander has also been behind shows like Lost and Alias.

I for one cannot wait for Predicament on Infinite Earths…

Avengers: The Initiative #21: As a title created specifically to chronicle the Marvel Universe’s post-Civil War status quo and what it meant for the heroes, The Initiative is at something of a crossroads now that that status quo is no longer the status quo. Now Dan Slott-less writer Christos Gage is joined by pencil artist Humberto Ramos to forge a new direction for the series, and, for this issue at least, that direction will involve Clor hitting members of the cannon fodder-filled Initiative team with his hammer. In other Dark Reign-branded releases this week, Ms. Marvel #35 features the title character going up against the new Captain Marvel, who was until recently the new Marvel Boy, Noh-Varr, and in New Avengers #49, Luke Cage takes off his shirt and avoids eye contact with The Sentry and Ares, who look approvingly at his well-defined torso, in order to find his missing baby, who was maybe a Skrull or stolen by Skrulls or something. It costs $3.99, a dollar more than Avengers: The Initiative, because Marvel hates you.

Batman: The Brave and The Bold #1: I’ve only caught a single episode of the new Batman cartoon because I can’t afford cable on a blogger’s salary (I’m lucky to afford electricity, come to think of it), but it started out with Batman, Plastic Man and Fire fighting Gentleman Ghost, and then it moved on to detail Batman and Plastic Man—here a reformed henchman of Kite-Man!—stumbling across Gorilla Grodd and his pterodactyl-riding gorilla goons attacking humanity from their secret base on Dinosaur Island.

In other words, it was a thing of beauty.

Hopefully this new, reasonably priced (Just $2.50!) series based on the show will offer similar pleasures on paper. It at least looks promising. It’s written by Matt Wayne, who writes for the show, and the cover of the first issue features a who’s who of characters it would be cool to see Batman team up with, from Jack Kirby’s OMAC, Kamandi and Demon to Guy Gardner and some Outsiders.

Faces of Evil: Kobra #1: It’s the last week of January, which means the end of the “Faces of Evil” marketing campaign. The star of this week’s special is Kobra, whom DC readers with good memories may recall is actually dead. Asks the solicit, “But who is this new player? Is it the original Kobra reborn— or something far more sinister?” In other words, is this yet another in a steady stream of dead characters who has come back to life, or is it another in a steady stream of needless legacy characters? Writer Ivan Brandon and artist Jesus Merino might have the answer, if either of those prospects excites you.

In other evil face news, Batman #685 has Catwoman by Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen, Justice Society of America #23 has Black Adam by Geoff Johns and Dale Eaglesham, Superman #684 has The Parasite by James Robinson and Merino, Teen Titans #67 has Brother Blood by Sean McKeever and Fernando Dagnino and Wonder Woman #28 has The Cheetah by Gail Simone and Aaron Lopresti.

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Variety is reporting that Jamie Bell (Billy Elliott) and Daniel Craig (Bond…James Bond) have been cast as Tintin and Red Rackham in the upcoming Steven Spielberg animated feature The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn. Adding them to previously-announced castmates Andy Serkis, Gad Elmaleh, Toby Jones, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost, the pair round out the cast for the feature, which has had a secretive pre-production following reports that its funding may have been in danger at one point, despite the attachment of Spielberg and producer Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings).

Scott King at KingFilm lays down a hilariously deadpan recap of the last five years of Marvel.  It reminded me of those terrific Lost recaps that are narrated in a vaguely monotone voice (“Here’s everything you need to know about Lost in eight minutes, 15 seconds.”). Actually, one of my favorite bits in King’s recap is a typo that indicates that the Scarlet Witch has “realty warping powers”. Now we know where the mortgage crisis began. Bendis, you have some explaining to do.

By the way, one of the great Lost recaps below:

Thanks to Tegan Page for pointing me to King’s bit.

From the Press Release, via Viz:

VIZ MEDIA LAUNCHES LANDMARK IMPRINT ‘HAIKASORU’ TO PUBLISH ACCLAIMED JAPANESE SCIENCE FICTION NOVELS

First-Of-Its-Kind Imprint Launches This Summer To Publish The Best In Contemporary Japanese Science Fiction Novels

San Francisco, CA, January 27, 2009 – VIZ Media, LLC (VIZ Media), one of the entertainment industry’s most innovative and comprehensive publishing, animation and licensing companies, has announced the launch of a brand-new imprint called Haikasoru, which will publish an array of contemporary Japanese science fiction (SF) and fantasy stories for English-speaking audiences. This is the first time an imprint with a dedicated focus on Japanese SF has launched in North America.

Haikasoru is scheduled to publish twelve books a year and launches in the summer of 2009 with four titles: The Lord of the Sands of Time by Issui Ogawa, All You Need Is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, ZOO by Otsuichi, and Usurper of the Sun by Housuke Nojiri.

Haikasoru will be helmed by Nick Mamatas, a respected author of science fiction as well as an editor at VIZ Media. Mamatas is the author of two novels, which have been nominated for the Bram Stoker Award and Germany’s Kurd Lasswitz Prize.

“I’m thrilled to be a part of this new imprint,” says Mamatas. “Haikasoru is making history with the future. Finally, SF is going global.”

The Lord of the Sands of Time by Issui Ogawa – Price: $13.99 U.S./CAN $16.00
Sixty-two years after human life on earth was annihilated by rampaging aliens, the enigmatic cyborg Messenger O is sent back in time with the mission to unite the humanity of past eras—during World War II and in ancient Japan, even back at the dawn of humanity—in order to defeat the alien invasion before it begins. But amidst a future shredded by war, love also waits for O. Will O save humanity only to doom himself? The Lord of the Sands of Time was nominated for the prestigious Seiun Award, the leading award for Japanese science fiction, the winners of which are selected each year by members of the Japanese National Science Fiction Convention. Available in July 2009.

ALL YOU NEED IS KILL by Hiroshi Sakurazaka – Price: $13.99 U.S./CAN $16.00
When the alien Gitai invade, Keiji Kiriya is just one of many recruits shoved into a suit of battle armor called a Jacket and sent out to kill. Keiji dies on the battlefield, only to be reborn each morning to fight and die again and again. On his 158th iteration, he finally sees something different, something out of place—a female soldier known as the Full Metal Bitch. Is she the key to Keiji’s escape or his final death? Available in July 2009.

ZOO by Otsuichi – Price: $13.99 U.S./CAN $16.00
ZOO presents eleven stories of dark fantasy and science fiction by one of Japan’s hottest authors. “The White Hut In The Forest” is the story of a man with a hole in his head and a charming home made from some strange materials. “Song of the Sunny Spot” is a rendition of the classic story of the Earth’s last man…and his charming companion. And in the book’s eponymous tale, a man sees his dead girlfriend’s corpse decompose, one gristly Polaroid snapshot at a time. ZOO sold over 740,000 copies in Japan and was also turned into a successful Japanese film. Available in September 2009.
USURPER OF THE SUN by Housuke Nojiri – Price: $15.99 U.S./CAN $18.99
When a ring appears around the sun, humanity seems doomed. One woman, a brave scientist named Aki Shiraishi, travels to the core of the solar system in a last-ditch attempt to save the world. A compelling new hard SF novel, Usurper of the Sun won a coveted Seiun Award in 2002 for Best Science Fiction Novel of the Year. Available in September 2009.

“Japan has long had a love affair with science fiction. In the wake of the massive international popularity of manga and anime, this is an ideal time to offer some of the best in contemporary Japanese science fiction to a sizeable domestic audience,” says Masumi Washington, Editor-In-Chief, Haikasoru Imprint, VIZ Media. “VIZ Media has been publishing fiction for a while, and now with the formation of Haikasoru it’s like finding a missing piece in a jigsaw puzzle. We are pleased to introduce this unique imprint and look forward to VIZ Media fans and science fiction readers in general enjoying these books.”

This is a pretty amazing development.  At a time when publishing is in fairly uncertain waters, this seems like a bit of gamble.  It’ll be interesting to see how Viz manages to capitalize on this idea.