Dark Horse Comics has continued to cut a wide swath through videogame properties by acquiring the comic rights to Halo, formerly at Marvel (see "New Marvel 'Halo' Series").  Halo has massive awareness, with over 50 million games sold worldwide.

Dark Horse will kick off its Halo program with the Halo: Initiation miniseries.  Scripted by Brian Reed, who wrote the storyline for Halo 4 (Xbox 360), and drawn by Marco Castiello, the artist on Star Wars: Purge, the first issue of Halo: Initiation will ship August 14th.

Halo: Initiation takes place after the events of Halo 4, revealing how Sarah Palmer, a former Orbital Drop Shock Trooper, became the first Spartan-IV commander.  The story ties into Spartan Ops, which is the Halo 4 Cooperative Mode that replaced Firefight from Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach.  Halo 4 was released last fall, and has sold over 8 million copies to date, according to VG Chartz.

--Brett Weiss