Broken Frontier

Newly formed Virgin Comics is collaborating with Tiger Hill Entertainment, film-maker John Woo and partner Terence Chang’s creative shingle, along with best-selling comic book writer, Garth Ennis to create Seven Brothers.  The comic book series is set to debut in mid-October, it was announced today by Sharad Devarajan, Virgin Comics’ chief executive.

John Woo created many top selling films in Hong Kong before moving to the United States where he has directed John Travolta and Nicholas Cage in Face/Off and Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible II, both for Paramount. 

Author Garth Ennis is one of the best selling English-language comic writers.  His work includes ground-breaking action titles Punisher and Preacher for DC Comics.

Yoshitaka Amano will be painting original cover art for each of the Seven Brothers comics.  Mr. Amano is best known for his work illustrating the best selling Vampire Hunter D graphic novel series and the Final Fantasy video games.  Superstar artist Greg Horn will provide a variant cover for the premiere issue.

“For me, working in comics is quite comfortable — it's like the ultimate storyboard.  Garth has taken a seed of an idea I had about famous Chinese folklore to a whole new level that creates a modern, global story.  The depth that Garth brings to his writing and the visuals that the Virgin comics team and artists like Amano contribute creates an art form with comics that is unique and yet, clearly a brother to the film medium,” said creator John Woo. 

Added Woo’s long time producing partner Terence Chang: “We are excited to partner with Virgin for our debut in the world of comics.  Garth Ennis is an enormously talented writer and we look forward to exploring this title with him in the comic book medium and beyond.  We see creating SEVEN BROTHERS as a comic book first, which is in turn the perfect springboard to take this title into film and games.”

“As an avid comic book collector for many years, it’s a dream come true to participate in the development of comic book history.  We anticipate a long relationship with the comic book world and couldn’t have asked for a more perfect first date,” says Lori Tilkin, VP of Tiger Hill.

Indeed echoed Virgin’s co-founder and Chief Creative Officer Gotham Chopra, “we’re especially excited to work with John and Terence and their team at Tiger Hill because they understand better than most the brave new world of leveraging creative ideas across multiple platforms. It’s an honor for us to debut our Director’s Cut line of comics with their leadership. Garth’s take on John’s idea is awesome and we are thrilled to bring it to the world.”

Virgin Comics Director’s Cut line aims to launch comic titles in collaboration with iconic film-makers. Woo’s Seven Brothers is the debut comic of the Director’s Cut line. Virgin Comics plans to announce several more partnerships in the coming months.

“All they had to say was ‘John Woo’ and I was sold instantly,” added Garth Ennis.

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The Panini Group is pleased to announce that it has signed a contract with Virgin Comics L.L.C. , to become its long term master licensee for comic books, comic magazines, trade paperbacks and graphic novels, in Europe (UK and Ireland excluded) and in all of Latin America.

Virgin Comics is the recently announced entertainment company formed by Sir Richard Branson and the Virgin Group alongside world-renowned author Deepak Chopra (How to Know God, Seven Spiritual Laws of Success), acclaimed filmmaker Shekhar Kapur (Elizabeth, Four Feathers) and South Asia's leading publisher of comic magazines, Gotham Entertainment Group LLC.

Under this agreement, Panini will market in a variety of periodical and book formats the bold new titles produced under the Virgin Comics logo, which combine the mystical and epic aspects of Indian culture – mostly reintroduced by Deepak Chopra and Shekhar Kapur, with the cutting edge concepts of some of the leading filmmakers and performers worldwide, including John Woo (Face-Off, Mission Impossible 2), Guy Ritchie (Snatch, Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels) Dave Stewart (Eurythmics), and more.

Panini, who is the foremost publisher of US comics in Europe and Latin America, is no stranger to introducing new concepts to the publishing world, having spearheaded the translation and adaptation of hundreds of Japanese manga titles in all the main European territories and Brazil in the last eleven years.

Panini’s partnership with Virgin Comics marks Panini’s strategic move into new thematic grounds and into graphic novel and magazine content that can reach out to the general public thru the strong marketing power of brands such as Virgin and the stable of artists and directors connected with its comics line.

Marco M. Lupoi, publishing director, Panini group, declared “Virgin is one of the strongest brands worldwide, and the line of comics they have developed is ground breaking in the themes covered and the original vision of the world they embody, which can have a strong impact on European and Latin American audiences”.

Sharad Devarajan, Co-Founder and CEO of Virgin Comics LLC, commented, "We are thrilled to form this relationship with Panini, whose unparalleled resources and experience in international comic book publishing offer us exactly the kind of partner we are looking for to effectively bring the Virgin Comics line to a whole new audience of readers around the world.“