Margaret Atwood is best known for The Handmaid’s Tale, but she’s got a long, genre-bending writing career, dabbling in everything from espionage thrillers to different subgenres of science fiction, and a pile of awards to her name. And now she’ll be pushing into an entirely new medium: She’s developed a graphic novel, Angel Catbird, to be published by Dark Horse next year.
Angel Catbird is another riff on Atwood’s interest in gene-splicing: Our hero is the victim of a scientific accident that makes him part cat and part bird, and promptly finds himself struggling with the identity issues that come up with being both predator and prey. That’s not entirely by accident; the release will tie in with a campaign from Nature Canada, Keep Cats Safe and Save Bird Lives. It’s also an all-ages book, an extension of Atwood’s work in children’s literature.
The art is being handled by Johnnie Christmas, artist behind the thriller Sheltered, who’s an interesting choice for the art as he doesn’t do a lot of straight superhero work. The two will definitely make for some fascinating comics, although we don’t know much more beyond the concept; the books will be arriving in 2016.
(Via the New York Times)