Via Popverse, it was announced at WonderCon that Image Comics imprint Syzygy will publish a graphic novel for director Francis Ford Coppola’s long-gestating science fiction film Megalopolis. Syzygy co-founder Chris Ryall will create the book with artist Jacob Phillips, which Ryall describes as being “very much its own thing” from the film. The movie, which finished filming earlier this month, follows a woman who becomes torn between her father, the Mayor of New York, and her lover, an architect with visionary plans for the city.
Ryall tells Popverse Coppola pitched the project to them. “The exciting thing is that I’ve only worked directly with him on this,” he says. “This isn’t the kind of thing where he licensed out the material — the movie and the book are solely his. We spent a few hours in Atlanta last month talking about not only this graphic novel but the childhood comics he loved, and all the way along, he’s been permissive and encouraging in telling us to make the book very much its own thing. So it’s been a kind of stunning arrangement, to get to work directly with someone of his stature on something like this.”
He adds, “As a huge fan of not only Jacob’s color work on the Ed Brubaker/Sean Phillips graphic novels but certainly also the amazing art and colors on his ‘That Texas Blood’ series, getting to work with Jacob while he’s on such a creative roll is also a thrill. Gonna be fun to build this particular corner of Francis’s new city.” Like the movie, the book does not have an expected release date yet.
Syzygy also announced they will bringing Alex Segura and Sandy Jarrell’s retro superhero comic “The Legendary Lynx” to print sometime later this year. The comic, which was originally serialized digitally on Zestworld, purports itself as the lost series from Secret Identity, Segura’s mystery novel set in the comics industry during 1975. The print version will run for four issues, and will be timed ahead of the release of the Secret Identity sequel, Alter Ego, due out next year.
