Comic-Con News: Dynamite Entertainment announced a host of initiatives today including an agreement with Mechanist Games to produce comics based on the popular Heroes of Skyrealm game, plus the first ever Kung Fu/Noir comic series Intertwined, a new Jim Butcher’s Dresden collection, an art book based on Grind Games’ Path of Exile video game RPG, and a series collectible pins based on the Chaos Comics universe. 

Dynamite plans to debut its Heroes of Skyrealm comics soon after the massive launch of the Mechanist Games’ Heroes of Skyrealm game on both major phone platforms (iOS and Android).  The new Heroes of the Skyrealm phone game displays the increasing sophistication of this increasingly-important (Pokemon Go) gaming platform as it blends a core of team-based action RPG gameplay with an addictive towers-and-traps strategic layer, as a ragtag crew of sky pirates, steampunk robots, and arcane warriors fight back against an invading empire.

The Heroes of Skyrealm comic is a joint production between Mechanist Games and Dynamite, with game writer Edwin McRae writing the story, while Rik Hoskin is fashioning the scripts, which Illaria Gelli is drawing.  Set several years before the game, the Heroes of Skyrealm comic tells the story of Darius, a young magic user in the spacefaring Unbroken Armada. After a routine mission to Skyrealm goes awry, Darius is thrown into the battle of a lifetime - and uncovers a secret that will change this unfamiliar world forever.

Fabrice Sapolsky, who shook up the Spiderverse by putting Peter Parker in the pulp fiction world of the depression-ridden 1930s in Spider-Man Noir at Marvel, is back with a new genre mash-up that earned $12,354 on Kickstarter.  This time it is the world of Kung Fu movies (and comics) that will acquire a noirish sheen in Intertwined, a new series by Sapolsky and Fred Pham Chuong, described as a “gritty collage of crime, corruption, and Kung Fu, the first issue of which will be solicited in Diamond’s August Previews for an October release.

Dynamite plans to publish the lavish coffeetable book, The Art of Path of Exile in early 2017.  Some collections of the extraordinary art created for video games have done very well (Dark Horse’s Legend of Zelda collection for example—see “Dark Horse Has the #1 Book in Amerca”), and Grinding Gear Games’ Path of Exile is both visually interesting and very popular with 14.2 million registered users.

Dynamite also expanded its merchandise line by announcing a 4-pin set of enamel pins ($17.99) from Chaos Comics (Evil Ernie, Lady Demon, Purgatori, and, of course, the Smiley the Psychotic Button), plus limited edition variant statues of Red Sonja, Deja Thoris, and Jungle Girl priced at $249 each (the Red Sonja & Deja Thoris figures have a “diamond eye,” while the Jungle Girl variant is painted in black and white). The pins and statues will be solicited in the August Previews.

Also announced today was the latest collection in Dynamite’s series of in-continuity original stories set in the gritty, magic-tinged universe of Jim Butcher’s Dresden, Jim Butcher’s Dresden: Wild Card, which is due out in October.