Halo: Uprising - Publication History

Publication History

Marvel Vice President of Development Ruwan Jayatilleke contacted game developer Bungie about extending the Halo franchise to comics. Jayatilleke noted that Bungie's dedication to creating a believable world compelling to both hardcore and casual fans made the series "an attractive fit" for Marvel. In 2005, Marvel learned that Bungie had already created an original graphic novel, entitled The Halo Graphic Novel, but needed a publisher and distributor. Interested, Brian Michael Bendis and Jayatilleke visited Bungie to take up the offer of publishing the Halo Graphic Novel as well as to discuss the possibility of a tie-in comic book series.

The Halo Graphic Novel proved to be a critical and commercial success; the comic debuted at the number two position on the Diamond Comic Distributors' sales charts and more than 100,000 copies were published. Marvel Comics and Bungie announced the first Halo limited comic series, Halo: Uprising, at the San Diego Comic-Con 2006.

Brian Michael Bendis, writer for the series, said in an interview he was "honored" to add to the Halo lore. He noted that the graphic novel brought "humanity and perspective" to the franchise, something not easily imparted through the games. Bendis described himself as a longtime player of Halo and had "done Halo homework", reading and playing everything Halo. Bendis stated that Bungie was open to the Marvel team exploring lesser-known elements of the Halo universe or even bringing up new ideas, as opposed to sticking to a script or set of preplanned ideas from Bungie or Microsoft. The Philadelphia Daily News suggested that a Halo comic book would attract readers who had never picked up a comic book before. Bendis said that drawing casual gamers to the comics was a major goal for the series. While using established characters meant that Bendis had to cooperate with Bungie and Microsoft, he said he did not feel it was a restriction. "You can get pretty bloated and sloppy with total autonomy all the time." The Bungie team allowed Bendis to explore lesser known areas of the Halo story, which he enjoyed. Writing the dialogue for the Master Chief, who is faceless and normally silent during gameplay, was a challenge; Bendis scrapped much of the drafted dialogue to allow Maleev's work to define the character.

Originally, Halo: Uprising's entire four-issue series was to be published before the September 25, 2007, release of Halo 3. Bendis suggested that the series might be delayed unexpectedly due to the close cooperation between Marvel and Bungie. For unspecified reasons, the release of all issues of Halo: Uprising were pushed back. Issue #1's original date of August 15, 2007, was pushed back a week to August 22. Issue #2's original date of August 29 was pushed back and released on November 21. Issue #3 was originally slated for a September 2007 release but was pushed to a final release date of nearly a year late in August 2008. The constant revisions of the date became a running forum joke at the fan site Halo.Bungie.Org. Issue #4 also saw multiple delays, pushed from a scheduled October 31, 2007 release to March 4 and then March 18, 2009. Claude Errera of Halo.Bungie.Org noted that, given the series' track record and the fact that the issue's release had been moved more than a dozen times by that time, its appearance in March would be unlikely. In announcing two new Halo comic series from Marvel in February 2009, Jayatilleke informed IGN that the final issue was in the process of being colored. The final release date for the issue was April 15. The series was collected into a single volume released in May 2009 (ISBN 0-7851-3647-9). The collected hardcover features a variety of bonus art and "making of" materials.

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