Dabel Brothers Publishing and Del Rey have announced that they’ll be jointly working on a project to bring Robert Jordan‘s Wheel of Time series to life as a comic. Dabel Brothers will publish the comic book adaptations starting this December, and then Del Rey will collect them into book-format graphic novels, probably starting in 2009. The deal was negotiated by Jordan’s agent, Nat Sobel of Sobel Weber Associates, and Jordan’s widow (and editor) Harriet McDougal.
McDougal commented on the deal: “I’m delighted to be working with the Dabel Brothers. Their work is splendid. Robert Jordan liked it enormously.”
Tor Books has been publishing Jordan’s epic, and best-selling, fantasy series since the 1990 debut of The Eye of the World. Jordan was at work on the twelfth and final volume, A Memory of Light, when he died last September. Brandon Sanderson finished the book (with help from Jordan’s notes and McDougal), which Tor will be publishing next year. According to Dabel Brothers, The Wheel of Time is “the story of a world—both our past, and our future—in which the battle between the Light and the Shadow must be fought every day; and of the people, both ordinary and extraordinary, who must fight that battle.”
Dabel Brothers previously worked with Jordan when they published a comic adaptation of Jordan’s A New Spring in March 2005. On that project, Jordan provided them with extensive notes for use in further possible publications, including character descriptions and other visuals.