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Margaret Atwood Is Writing a Superhero Comic Book
Margaret Atwood, a prolific writer of poetry, fiction, non-fiction and children’s literature, is tackling a new genre: comic books. Atwood will be penning a new comic series for Dark Horse Comics called Angel Catbird.
The hero of the tale is a genetically-spliced bird-cat hybrid creature in tight feather pants, judging by the cover. Atwood explained her hero’s anatomy: “I have concocted a superhero who is part cat, part bird. Due to some spilled genetic Super-Splicer, our hero got tangled up with both a cat and an owl; hence his fur and feathers, and his identity problems.” The choice of cat and bird imagery was important to Atwood, whose goal is helping animals by publishing Angel Catbird in association with the Keep Cats Safe and Save Bird’s Life initiative, which is led by Nature Canada.
Angel Catbird will be released in the fall of 2016, each of the three volumes will cost $10.99 and be in full color. Illustrations will be done by Johnny Christmas, who said he is “tremendously excited to work with one of the great contemporary novelists,” and promised heart, humor, and action from the series. Hope Nicholson, owner of Bedside Press, will be the consulting editor of the series. Nicholson previously worked with Atwood on the Kickstarter funded anthology The Secret Love of Geek Girls. She announced the good news about their continued collaboration in this tweet:
I am a consulting editor on the upcoming GN series Angel Catbird by @MargaretAtwood & @j_xmas for @DarkHorseComicshttp://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/12/08/margaret-atwood-writing-a-series-of-graphic-novels/?smid=tw-nytimesarts&smtyp=cur&_r=0 …
With Angel Catbird, Atwood is becoming a part of a budding trend of literary writers writing comics. Novelist Benjamin Percy has been writing Green Arrow and Ta-Nehisi Coates was hired to write the new Black Panther Series as we wrote about earlier this fall.
