John Layman, co-creator of the Eisner Award-winning Chew series from Image, and John McCrea, the artist on Garth Ennis’ Eisner Award-winning Hitman series, are teaming up to create a new Mars Attacks comic book series for IDW Publishing.  The new Mars Attacks comic from IDW, which debuts in June, is set in an all-new Mars Attacks universe, but will be filled with the dark humor and outrageous action that characterized the original Topps card series that debuted 50 years ago.

 

The IDW comic is part of a major relaunch of the Mars Attacks property (see “Mars Attacks Again”) that also includes an artbook from Abrams Comicarts and lots of merchandise (see ““Mars Attacks Gets Major Relaunch”).  Layman for one is very excited at the prospect of writing the new Mars Attacks comic stating: “I’m a huge fan of Mars Attacks from a long way back.  I own about half the original card set from 1962 and have a pretty big collection of collectables and doodads.  It’s always been a dream of mine to destroy the Earth and inflict huge degrees of suffering on the rest of humanity. With this Mars Attacks series, I finally get my chance.”

 

The new Mars Attacks series will feature a unique cover program.  In addition to covers by McCrea, and other comic artist luminaries such as Sam Kieth, Ben Templesmith, and Eric Powell, the book will ship with 55 variant covers, each based on one of the original Mars Attacks cards from 1962.  IDW will also offer for sale a complete collector’s set of the 55 card-based comic book covers in a box that replicates the original card packaging.