The Forbidden Planet International Blog Log

News via Down The Tubes that Mirabilis, another good DFC strip cruelly curtailed by the ending of the comic, is getting a print edition – 2 hardcovers available in 2011 from Print Media Productions:

“Print Media Productions has announced it will be publishing hardcover editions of Mirabilis: Year of Wonders — a huge graphic novel project by Dave Morris and Leo Hartas. Mirabilis is a fantasy adventure story for young adults which opens New Year’s Day 1901, when a green comet appears in the sky. As it gets bigger, the line between reality and fantasy blurs. Soon there are mermaids in the Thames, elves in Parliament and a dragon roosting on Big Ben. But then the comet rounds the sun and starts to fade. Will the world be able to go back to a life without magic? The full-colour graphic novel was originally serialized in The DFC, the weekly print comic published by Random House UK, who financed the production and has been released as a digital edition for iPad.”

This is more good news – like I said back here, Mirabilis was a strip with a lot of promise. It will be nice to see it presented in proper album format.

UPDATE 28th Feb – Thanks to Reuben in the comments for pointing out that the Mirabilis books have already been in print – and available since late 2010. I emailed Dave Morris about the confusion and he cleared it up thus….

“There’s an interesting and convoluted story there. We set the softcover versions up as print-on-demand just before Christmas, as a last-minute decision mainly because so many (well, maybe a dozen) Mirabilis fans told us, “I want to get the whole thing but I’m not buying an iPad!” Now that the hardbacks are on their way from a proper publisher, we’ve pulled the softcovers. I guess it just takes a while for Lightning Source’s system to register that the books have been withdrawn, and then for Amazon to catch up with that. I’m chasing them this week to make sure they update before the Print Media editions arrive.”