Following their successful collaboration with Judge Dredd, IDW Publishing and Rebellion/2000 AD announced at Comic-Con that they've selected Rogue Trooper as their next publishing initiative. IDW will not only produce a new Rogue Trooper series but also reissue the existing 2000 AD material in newly recolored editions.

IDW also announced that it had secured the comic book rights to Hunter S. Thompson's classic work, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas.

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Co-created by Gerry Finley-Day and Dave Gibbons in 1981, Rogue Trooper depicted a future world hopelessly polluted as the consequence of a crazy war. "Genetic Infantrymen" were created to cope with the new environmental conditions. These blue skinned warriors could survive in the impossibly toxic atmosphere, and their thoughts were recorded on implanted biochips so they could be reused in new bodies. The infantrymen were betrayed and their biochips corrupted in such a way that prevented downloading into new bodies, so those biochips that survived inhabit the titular Rogue Trooper's gun, backpack and helmet. It's pretty crazy. In addition to Gibbons, Steve Dillon, Colin Wilson, Cam Kennedy, Bret Ewins, and Chris Weston all worked on the series.

No creative team has been announced for the new Rogue Trooper, but IDW says the project will follow the model established by Duane Swierczynski and Nelson Daniel, and that the recolored edition of the original material will come courtesy of Dredd's Adrian Salmon.

The new Rogue Trooper will launch in 2014.

 

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Fear & Loathing is the latest in a number of literary adaptations from IDW, which have included Beowulf, Dracula, Oliver Twist as well as contemporary works like Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn and the Parker  novels of Richard Stark. 

IDW CEO Ted Adams expressed devotion to Thompson's work: "I've read Thompson throughout my entire life, I'm very serious about doing this novel right."

No creative team or release date has been announced, but given IDW's past fidelity to artists, it seems likely that original Fear & Loathing illustrator Ralph Steadman's work will be a part of the project in some way or another.

 

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