Suvudu Universe

Back in June, Hacktivist was announced as an upcoming graphic novel from Archaia. The news came out during the summer convention season with a celebrity attached and a preview ashcan released. Alyssa Milano apparently came up with the idea or inspiration or something — the actual creative team was writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly and artist Marcus To. The plot was described as a “fast-paced cyber-thriller” about two guys who found a social media company but are secretly hackers working for social justice. (The preview pages at that link show how difficult it is to make using a computer visually interesting.)

The original plan was for the book to debut digitally before being printed as a graphic novel next year, but then Boom! acquired Archaia. Now, they’ve announced that the material will be released as a four-issue limited series, starting on January 22 at a $3.99 cover price.

The original press release was successful in getting attention from surprising sources — including an interview at Forbes.com (with some interesting figures on women, digital media, and viral marketing) and some griping about her attempt to trademark “hacktivist”. I suspect this re-do won’t get quite as much coverage, particularly since we’re far out of convention season. On the other hand, serializing at this point means there’s still time to bring out a collection by summer 2014, the original publication date. Plus, since Boom! and Archaia titles are available on comiXology, it will likely still be available digitally.

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