Philip Pullman has signed a deal with Scholastic. He has written a story for his debut graphic novel entitled The Adventures of John Blake: Mystery of the Ghost Ship.
Fred Fordham created the illustrations for this middle grade fiction project. The Phoenix, a United Kingdom-based children’s publication, is publishing it as a serialized comic. David Fickling Books and Graphix, two Scholastic imprints, will gather all of the comics into a full-color graphic novel and release the book in June 2017.
Pullman gave this statement in the press release: “John Blake is a story that’s close to my heart. In Fred Fordham, John and the crew of the mysterious schooner The Mary Alice have found the ideal illustrator, and I’ve loved watching the story develop in his hands. The joy of the setting and the characters for me is that they’re capable of infinite variations. The Mary Alice can roam throughout time, past, present, and future, and anywhere on the oceans of the world. I hope readers will enjoy it as much as we have!”