CMON’s Comic Imprint Guillotine Press Brings Asmodee’s Twilight Imperium and Android to Graphic Novels in 2021
CMON LTD and Asmodee Entertainment have entered into a licensing partnership to bring two of the most famous boardgame universes of all time to the pages of comics! The best-selling game worlds of Twilight Imperium and Android are slated to make their graphic novel debut in 2021. The deal is the latest example of Asmodee Entertainment’s continued expansion into licensed publishing opportunities. For CMON, this deal secures the first-ever licenses for their newly minted comics arm, Guillotine Press.
CMON has seen some of their games turned into comics through IDW Publishing and recently Kickstarted three graphic novels “CMON Comics – Vol. 1.” That project raised $501,632 from 12,261 backers and featured not just print comics but expansions for CMON’s popular tabletop board games. It’s slated to be delivered in February 2021.
As with CMON’s first set of graphic novels, these new books will be created by veteran writers and artists, who will bring their immense talents to the projects. Scheduled to be launched on Kickstarter in 2021, the books will be paired with tie-in game components designed to delight long-time fans of both franchises.
Twilight Imperium, the genre-defining 4x strategy game immersing players into interstellar conquest and diplomacy for over 20 years, is set against the backdrop of a sweeping, epic space opera filled with iconic races, locations, ships, and characters. Twilight Imperium was first released in 1997 and has seen four editions released with the latest in 2017. The game was designed by Christian T. Petersen with art by Bill Heagy.
Meanwhile, the cyber-noir setting of Android explores a future where megacorporations compete across the globe and cyber-espionage is just business as usual whilst criminal gangs fight for dominance in the overcrowded streets below gleaming corporate starscrapers. Android has been explored through board games, card games, and roleplaying games for over a decade. Android was released in 2008 by designers Daniel Clark and Kevin Wilson. It features art by Julie Dillon, Henning Ludvigsen, Stefan Morrell, Aaron Panagos, Didier Poli, and Zoe Robinson. 2012 saw the release of the popular card game Android Netrunner by Richard Garfield and Lukas Litzsinger which featured art by Bruno Balixa, Ralph Beisner Del Borovic, Adam S. Doyle, Amelie Hutt, Thomas Lishman, Henning Ludvigsen, Ed Mattinian, Dallas Mehlhoff, Adam Schumpert, Mark Anthony Taduran, and Matt Zeilinger. That release saw numerous expansions well into 2018.
Both the Twilight Imperium and the Android game lines are products of Asmodee’s Fantasy Flight Games studio.