Rocketship plans to publish three middle-grade graphic novels based on the Angry Birds mobile game, The Haunting of Hog House, Level Up, and Breaking the Bank, by writer Paul Tobin and artist Thom Zahler, and three comic issues for younger readers that will be written by Katie Cook with an artist to be named later.
"We're Kickstarting all three graphic novels in one Kickstarter, along with some exclusive merchandise," Rocketship CEO and publisher Tom Akel told ICv2, "and then the young readers comic series will be next year. The first graphic novel will hit retail next year—we're working on it now—and then there will be one a year." After the Kickstarter campaign, the graphic novels will be distributed through regular channels under Rocketship's Bottlerocket young-readers imprint.
Although single-issue comics for young readers have been sparse in recent years, Akel pointed to the success of Sonic the Hedgehog and Plants vs. Zombies in that format and said "I want the direct market to have more of a feel for what we have and what we do." Most of Rocketship's catalog is graphic novels based on webcomics and webtoons and crowdfunded via Kickstarter.
With the 15th anniversary of the franchise coming up, Angry Birds are in the news again; a new animated series debuted in May 2024 and an animated film is in the works.
Tobin, a three-time Eisner Award winner, was the writer of IDW's Angry Birds comics (see "'Angry Birds' Comic from IDW" and also writes Dark Horse's long-running Plants vs. Zombies comics. Zahler and Cook are both contributors to IDW's My Little Pony comics (see "My Little Ponies to Adapt Classic Tales").
“When it was declared at the end of the last Pacific Rim movie that we were going to take the war to the invaders, that was a set-up we couldn’t resist bringing to the world of graphic novels,” said Robert Napton, SVP, Comics & Publishing at Legendary Entertainment in a statement accompanying the announcement.
