Del Toro Promises Pacific Rim Graphic Novel

By all accounts Guillermo del Toro has been having a blast making Pacific Rim, the sprawling 3D alien invasion epic starring Idris Elba, Ron Perlman and Charlie Hunnam. And the impressive amount of world-building the film's high concept requires, from the monstrous Kaiju rising from the seas to the mind-controlled robots we build to defend ourselves, makes the wait until next July 13 look particularly long.

To bridge fan interest over the interim and add new access points to his burgeoning story, del Toro revealed at Comic-Con that a prequel graphic novel to the film is being developed. Part of the idea is to lay in the underlying complexity of using "a weapon that can change its mind," and the resulting empathetic bond between the robots and their two human pilots.

Set 25 years or so before the movie, the story will involve the creation of the robot pilots' crews and the technology they use, as well as the del Toro's background biographies for movie's key players. The book will come out on the Legendary Comics imprint. The street date was not announced, except that it will be available sometime between now and the film's release date. Every aspect of the book has to undergo del Toro's approval, he said, with the writers and artists working from the director's own intricately detailed bible for the film--said to run a thousand pages.

"The idea was to set up the creation of the world that is in Pacific Rim," del Toro explained, "sort of give the stories and the drama and the science that occurs after the first kaiju makes land in 2013, and what happens when that occurrence is repeated over and over again until we realize that it's not a single occurrence or a series of occurrences, but a full-on invasion. And that we are going to need to [create] a weapon to deal with a creature that is that big and is not going in a straight line or a diagonal—hitting a target that is a living organism of a scale that has never been seen on Earth. We need to create an equally inventive way to grapple with the creature before it gets more inland. The ingenuity of the creation of Jaegers—the gigantic machines—that are pilot-controlled; the reaction of the kaiju attack; the creation of the academy; the first generation of Jaeger pilots that come out ... all of that is set up in the movie, but is not expanded upon. The graphic novel will do that and more."

This is the kind of story premise that's so awesome that if the film weren't on its way, just this graphic novel would be enough to create a whole new cult fandom. Pretty apt from the guy who threw Hellboy up on the big screen.

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