Yes, yes, we might all still be waiting for The Winds of Winter to get finished sometime this decade, but that doesn’t mean more George R.R. Martin content isn’t on the way. There’s of course HBO’s upcoming Game of Thrones TV spin-off House of the Dragon, but now the author’s other novelized passion project is jumping to another medium courtesy of Marvel.
The publisher is set to release a comic adaptation of Wild Cards, GRRM’s long-running superhero anthology series. The collection of 25 books, which began in 1987, included short stories, full-blown novels, and more, written by science fiction and fantasy luminaries such as Roger Zelazny, Charles Stross, Saladin Ahmed, and of course Martin himself. I’ll let Marvel have the honor of summarizing the series’ premise:
“The Wild Cards series tells the story of an alternate history where Earth is home to super-powered individuals. When a human is infected with the alien ‘Wild Card’ virus, the odds are that they will be killed… which is referred to as ‘drawing the black queen’. Of those that survive, the bulk of them become ‘jokers’, left with some strange mutated form. A lucky few are called ‘aces’, those gifted with super powers they can put to use towards heroic goals… or villainous ones.”
So, yeah, if you’re not familiar: expect superhero stories with a lot of card motifs! The first comic series, based on the original Wild Cards novel, of course, will be written by Paul Cornell with art from Mike Hawthorne, and will be subtitled The Drawing of Cards. Interestingly, this is not exactly the first time Marvel has made Wild Cards comics—the publisher released a four-issue limited series in 199,0 under its Epic imprint.
Meanwhile, a TV adaptation of Wild Cards is currently in development for the Peacock streaming service, after being in development over at Hulu for several years. Suffice it to say that Wilds Cards: The Drawing of Cards will come into existence first, when it’s released on June 1. In the meantime, we’ll get back to optimistically waiting for those Winds of Winter updates we’re certain are just round the corner.
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