Orson Scott Card and Marvel Team-Up!

This is an official Marvel Comics press release:

New York, NY- April 21, 2008, Marvel Comics, a division of Marvel Entertainment, Inc., and Orson Scott Card announced at the New York Comic Convention this weekend that the award-winning novel series ENDER'S GAME will be published as a comic book series thru Marvel's Best-Selling Authors line. The first limited series installment, ENDER'S GAME, will be adapted by comic book and animation writer Chris Yost, drawn by Pasqual Ferry, and overseen by Card himself. This highly anticipated project debuts in comic stores in the fall.

"ENDER'S GAME and ENDER'S SHADOW are my most popular novels, and for many years I've withheld them from adaptation until the conditions were exactly right," says Orson Scott Card. "I've worked with Marvel for several years now, beginning with the ULTIMATE IRON MAN series, and I trust them to do superb work. They understand the stories; they know how to translate them into graphic-novel form; and nobody has higher standards of professionalism. In short, now is the time, and Marvel is the publisher to bring Ender and Bean to life in the visual media."

The comic series will mark the first visualization of the best-selling sci-fi epic in which the world's most gifted children are taken to Battle School to prepare them for the fight of their lives—and to save humanity from its greatest threat! It is the tale of an unassuming young boy named Ender Wiggin, who will rise up to be the greatest warrior and leader that the human race has ever known. This saga follows Ender and his friends as they grow to become the last hope and line of defense for all of mankind.

"Given the successful relationship we've developed with Orson Scott Card, we're thrilled to have ENDER'S GAME—which is considered by many to be the finest work of science fiction--come to Marvel," says David Gabriel, Senior Vice President of Sales and Circulation, Marvel Entertainment, Inc. "The Best-Selling Authors line, which includes works by Card and Stephen King, has brought more new faces into comics retail shops than any other initiative since the Death of Captain America!"

In addition to ENDER'S GAME, Marvel will concurrently publish the companion series, ENDER'S SHADOW. These two series comprise a sci-fi saga which has won countless awards and influenced generations since it debuted in 1985, including back-to-back wins for the Hugo and the Nebula award. Card is the only author to have won both awards in consecutive years.

"The sheer amount of energy, dedication, imagination, poignancy, and skill that Orson Scott Card brings to the craft of storytelling is phenomenal--as we've already seen in his penning the ULTIMATE IRON MAN comic series. Marvel is once again on the crest of an incredible moment in graphic fiction publishing, and fans of compelling fiction are sure to be thrilled," said Ruwan Jayatilleke, Vice President of Development, Marvel Entertainment, Inc.

Tor Books, Orson Scott Card's publisher for more than 25 years, is delighted to announce the publication of a new Ender novel, Ender in Exile, for late 2008. Ender In Exile is a direct sequel to Ender's Game; it follows Ender Wiggin and his sister Valentine on their journey to Earth's first colony world. New York Times bestselling author Orson Scott Card is one of the most exciting science fiction writers to emerge in the last 25 years. His signature novel, Ender's Game, and the Ender Series and Shadow Quartet series that followed, have successfully crossed genre lines placing Card at the top of his field. Ender's Game alone has sold more than a million copies since its original publication in 1985, and has been translated into nearly twenty languages. The entire sequence of novels remains in print, winning new readers every year. In 2007, Tor Books published A War Of Gifts, a short novel set during Ender's time at the Battle School, and in April 2008 released Keeper Of Dreams, a massive collection of Card's short fiction.

© C Harris Lynn, 2008