Halo: Blood Line

Halo: Blood Line, formerly known as Halo: Spartan Black, is an upcoming four-part comic series about a team of stranded SPARTAN-II Commandos before the Battle of Reach in mid-2552 . It is set to be released in December 2009. It is written by Fred Van Lente and will be penciled and inked by Francis Portela as well as colored by Ulises Arreola.

Official Synopsis

"Blood Line is also a pre-"Halo: Combat Evolved" story, focused on a small Black Ops sabotage and intelligence fire team of Spartans assigned to the ONI, the Office of Naval Intelligence. While on a top-secret mission in enemy space, their ship crashes on a remote moon along with a Covenant cruiser. When a mysterious entity that has lurked on the moon for millions of years threatens both groups, Spartans and Covenant have to forge an uneasy alliance to take down the common threat ... but not all humans and aliens can suddenly start treating the other like allies.."

— Fred Van Lente

Issue #1 Summary

Main article: Halo: Blood Line Issue 1

"Based on the Best-Selling X-Box Game! The Spartan team codename: Black is the top-secret unconventional warfare unit of the United Nations Space Command's Office of Naval Intelligence, engaging in sabotage and assassination missions deep inside Covenant space. But when this quartet of super soldiers is shot down over a desolate moon along with a Covenant Cruiser, humans and aliens will have to forge an uneasy alliance against a common foe before an eons-old threat destroys them both!"

— IGN article

Appearances

Characters

• "Team Black", a top-secret team of SPARTAN-II commandoes.
• Iona, an AI construct assigned to the team.

Locations

• Unnamed Moon

Vehicles

• Colonial Mining Ship
• Covenant Cruiser

Trivia

• On 21 September 2009, with early Marvel solicitations, it's was learned that the title of the limited series was changed from Halo: Spartan Black, to Halo: Blood Line.
• The armor the Spartans wear in the series appears similar to the MJOLNIR MK.VI, which shouldn't have been in use by the time the comic takes place. As stated by Frank O'Connor, this is merely an aesthetic change and not a canonical appearance of the MK.VI as many have believed.

See Also

• Halopedia Interview with Fred Van Lente