Wild Cards #1 (September 1990). 9.6 NM+. Special origin issue! Written by Lewis Shiner, Melinda Snodgrass, Howard Waldrop and Walton Simons. Art by Barry Kitson, Jackson Guice, Marshall Rogers, Keith Williams, Fred Fredericks and Harry Candelario. Cover by Jackson Guice and Alfred Ramirez. Bookshelf Format. 52 pages. Cover price $4.50.
Wild Cards started out in 1983 with a roleplaying game. “It triggered a two-year-long role playing orgy that engulfed not only me, but the rest of my Albuquerque gaming circle as well,” Martin wrote. He turned those creative energies into stories that he and his fellow gamers had come up with.
That blossomed into a much larger project with fellow SF writer Melinda Snodgrass: A contemporary superhero world. Martin edited the first published anthology in 1987. It included stories from Roger Zelazny, Walter Jon Williams, and Melinda Snodgrass.The series has expanded to additional anthologies, comics, novels, and roleplaying games. Given the wild success of superhero films and TV shows in the last decade, it’s of no surprise that there’s been considerable interest in an adaptation. In 2016, NBC’s Universal Cable Productions optioned the story for a TV series; in 2018, Hulu announced that it had picked up the rights for an adaptation. Now, the project is now headed back to NBC under its streaming service Peacock, to be headed up by a new writer.