ICv2 has a report this morning on HarperCollins imprint Zondervan launching a line of religion-themed graphic novels for KIDS that will be sold in Christian bookstores, comics shops and book shops.

Zondervan will launch a new line of graphic novels under its Zonderkidz children’s imprint in August of 2007. Twelve books will be released that month — both the first and second volumes of six different series. Zonderkidz will release the books in manga format, with from 160 to over 200 pages for $9.99 MSRP.

Five of the initial six series will be created for Zonderkidz in English. The sixth is a manhwa Bible series by Young Shin Lee and Jung Sun Hwang. All six series will be in eight volume arcs.

[snip]According to Bruce Nuffer, Associate Publisher of Zonderkidz, the publishing program was designed after years of study of the graphic novel and Christian bookstore markets. “We’ve been looking at it for a long time,” Nuffer said. The goal was to determine what obstacles existed to making Christian graphic novels successful, and to overcome them.


Of course, the item of most inetrest to casual comics watchers is the involvement of Alias’ Mike Miller, via Community Comics, which is packaging the books for Zondervan.

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