Alyssa Milano’s Hacktivist Has New Print Date, Serialization Plan

Back in June, Hacktivist was announced as an upcoming graphic novel from Archaia. The news came out during the summer convention season with a celebrity attached and a preview ashcan released. Alyssa Milano apparently came up with the idea or inspiration or something — the actual creative team was writers Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly and artist Marcus To. The plot was described as a “fast-paced cyber-thriller” about two guys who found a social media company but are secretly hackers working for social justice. (The preview pages at that link show how difficult it is to make using a computer visually interesting.)

The original plan was for the book to debut digitally before being printed as a graphic novel next year, but then Boom! acquired Archaia. Now, they’ve announced that the material will be released as a four-issue limited series, starting on January 22 at a $3.99 cover price.

The original press release was successful in getting attention from surprising sources — including an interview at Forbes.com (with some interesting figures on women, digital media, and viral marketing) and some griping about her attempt to trademark “hacktivist”. I suspect this re-do won’t get quite as much coverage, particularly since we’re far out of convention season. On the other hand, serializing at this point means there’s still time to bring out a collection by summer 2014, the original publication date. Plus, since Boom! and Archaia titles are available on comiXology, it will likely still be available digitally.