March 9 will bring us a new season of ABC’s hit series Revenge, and on September 3, Marvel will fall in line with their Disney network buddy and bring us Revenge: The Secret of Emily Thorne, an original, 112-page hardcover graphic novel from series writer Ted Sullivan, co-writer Erica Schultz and artist Vincenzo Balzano.
For those who don’t know (and I certainly didn’t), Revenge is about a woman named Amanda Clarke, whose father was framed for a crime he didn’t commit, ruining her family’s life when she was a child. 20 years later, she adopted the identity of Emily Thorne and moved to the Hamptons to exact vengeance on the nefarious Grayson family, the bastards who destroyed her life.
“Emily is a comic book character!” Sullivan says. “She has a secret identity. She’s poses as a rich socialite who exacts revenge for a childhood tragedy. Even her famous dark “hoodie” is a type of superhero costume. She has all the classic comic book tropes that make her and her adventures a perfect fit for an original graphic novel with Marvel.”
This new graphic novel flashes back to her origins, naturally, and her first revenge mission in Geneva, Switzerland, after training in Japan. Schultz says, “This story takes us way back to before Emily had any experience in her ‘takedowns.’ She makes mistakes. She learns from some of them, but, as you’ll see, she has a hard time learning some lessons and fans of the show will be pleased to pick up on a few Easter Eggs hidden here and there.”
Check out this cover from Dustin Nguyen.
