Marvel Nemesis unveiled

EA has quaffed some colourful liquids and donned a mask to announce details of its beat-'em-up collaboration with comic book maker Marvel. Well, actually, it just plonked the press release on its US website and didn't mention anything. But we found it anyway.

As indicated by writer/film-maker Greg Pak, who's involved with the project, the overall brand is "Marvel Nemesis", and the first game will be a PS2, Xbox, GameCube and PSP effort called Marvel Nemesis: Rise of the Imperfects. It's due out this autumn.

It's being developed by Nihilistic, last seen leaving Blizzard's StarCraft: Ghost project for Swingin' Ape to complete, and produced by EA Canada, and as expected sees a cast of recognised Marvel superheroes doing battle with a new set of characters created by EA.

EA is taking its role in this pretty seriously, mind, and has flexed its bulging publisher muscles enticingly in the direction of a number of comic book and concept artists, with the likes of Jae Lee (who's illustrated the likes of Spider-Man and Uncanny X-Men) and Paul Catling (concept artist and character designers on films like Spider-Man 2 and, curiously, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) already involved.

Although details of its characters have yet to be unveiled, we're told the full game will feature more than a dozen fighters total from both stables duking it out in various interactive/destructible environments, each equipped with unique attributes and the appropriate super-powers, and that the EA line-up will be unveiled over the course of a six-issue comic mini-series called Marvel Nemesis: The Imperfects, which goes on sale in the US this May.

The Marvel Nemesis comic book features the likes of Spider-Man, Wolverine, The Thing and Elektra clashing with EA's evil overlord type Niles Van Roekel, an alien scientist intent on building an army of super-powerful warriors. Recently Greg Pak said the comic would explore "the hidden core of doubt which may plague even the greatest heroes" and see characters "struggle with the temptation of perfection offered by the alien scientist's transformative technology".

The comic books will unveil a new EA character each month leading up to the launch of the game, which will therefore presumably come out in October.

More details should be available at www.marvelnemesis.ea.com in the near future. For now, head there to find some comic book panels taken from the Marvel Nemesis book.