Halo is a name that changed the video game industry in the early ’00s. First-person shooters had gotten huge on computers in the ’90s, with devs taking advantage of the better hardware to create amazing games. FPS games still got made for home consoles, but they were never as popular – or as good – as the computer versions. Halo changed all of that. It was the game that launched the XBox, changing the face of the video game industry. It brought the strengths of PC FPS games to consoles, standing head and shoulders above console FPS titles, making this genre of game even more popular than ever. I know people who bought an XBox just to play the game. 2004’s Halo 2 was just as massive, with some of the first midnight releases in the industry.
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Everyone wanted a piece of the game, with novels and action figures from McFarlane Toys hitting the shelves. Microsoft and Bungie were trying to make as much money as possible off the game, and they knew that there was a place to sell the game that they hadn’t tried yet – the comic industry. The Venn diagram of comic fans with video game fans is basically a circle, and so Halo comics were planned, with Marvel Comics winning the rights to create comics based on the blockbuster franchise. 20 years ago, Marvel brought the Master Chief to the printed page.
Marvel Hitched Its Star to Halo‘s Great Journey
The success of Halo was a shock to the industry. Bungie had been working on the game since the late ’90s, where it started as a Mac exclusive. Microsoft got their hands on it and the rest is history, the success making them a major player. After the first game, Bungie and Microsoft wanted to take advantage of that. Microsoft’s head of franchise development Eric Trautmann approached comic creators John Ney Reiber and Adi Granov to create a draft comic for the higher-ups. Bungie didn’t like the book or the creative team and wanted to choose the creators themselves, with the company wanting Alan Moore and Joe Kubert for the book.
Trautmann knew that the two of them wouldn’t do it (Kubert was in the twilight of his life and can you see Moore writing Halo?) but Bungie was given control over the comic. Comic veteran and Bungie lead designer Maria Paz Cabardo able to assembled a group of writers and artists, including legends like Simon Bisley and Jean “Mobius” Giraurd. They still needed a publisher, though, and Marvel was eventually chosen. leading to the release of The Halo Graphic Novel.
Released on July 16th, 2006, The Halo Graphic Novel was an anthology book, not an adaptation, with four different stories and an art gallery. It was a smash success, selling over a 100,000 copies and getting numerous printings. It was exactly the kind of hit you’d want a comic based on Halo to be, with fans and critcs praising it. Bungie allowed the creators a lot of freedom and it showed in the stories. Plus, just having Bisley and Giraurd onboard, two artists known outside the comic industry, helped show that it was a quality book.
Marvel in the mid ’00s was branching out, the success of their superhero books leading them to try some new things. Halo was one of those new things and the company out out the next Halo book – 2007’s Halo: Uprising. Marvel tapped superstar writer Brian Michael Bendis and artist Alex Maleev for this next book and it was huge. Their work on Daredevil made the book one of the most beloved of the day and fans were waiting to see what their next project was after it. No one expected Halo: Uprising, but stores knew that it was going to sell.
I worked at a comic store at the time. The owner was all about getting the most rare incentive variants and would often over-order to get them. The day Halo: Uprising dropped, I ended up bagging and boarding hundreds of copies and we didn’t even open every box. He sold all of them. Because it was a Bendis and Maleev Halo book, it sold like hotcakes; the first issue sold out in the first 24 hours. Neither of them were known for their sci-fi work, but it didn’t matter. This book was a huge another huge success, but there would be a problem – the fourth issue was so delayed it wouldn’t come out until 2009.
This was the major factor in Halo comics dying out. Fans wanted more Halo to tide them over between games, so a book that took two years to come out wasn’t what anyone wanted. Marvel didn’t release any other Halo comics in the two years between issue #3 and #4, either, which was a big mistake. This killed the hype behind the franchise in comics, even though Marvel tried thrice more, with 2009’s Halo: Helljumper, 2010’s Halo: Blood Line, and 2011’s Halo: Fall of Reach, to coincide with Halo: Reach. During this period, the Halo novels really took off, to fans didn’t really need the comics anymore. Between the delays to Halo: Uprising and the success of the novels, Marvel’s Halo comics ended up getting glassed by a Covenant of these factors (I’m sorry for that).
Video Games and Comics Can Be Strange Bedfellows
The Halo comics were unique in that they were actually good. Video game companies had been coming to the comic industry for adaptations for years, but it was rare for the book to actually be worth buying. At best, you got a good book that couldn’t live up to the game and at worst you got some of the worst comics out there. While there is definitely fan overlap between comics and games, they are two very different things. Comics can’t engage their audience like a game can and many of them had a hard time replicating what made the games so popular.
However, Marvel’s Halo books were able to break this long-standing curse. Bungie allowed the creators a lot more freedom than other companies had in the past and this made a big difference. It’s interesting to think about what would have happened if Halo: Uprising had come out on time. We could have gotten even more Halo comics from A-list Marvel talent. It could have changed the perception of comic/video game adaptations, but in the end, even Master Chief couldn’t save the day.
What did you think of Marvel’s Halo comics? Would like to see more of the war between humanity and the Convenant in comics? Sound off in the comment section below.
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Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics -
Image Courtesy of Marvel Comics
