Twelve Gates Productions, which describes itself as “a cutting-edge Christian Entertainment Company,” is preparing to launch a series of graphic novels under the general title Armageddon Now that will present a bold, searing vision of the Biblical Apocalypse.  The founding partners of Twelve Gates include businessman Mike Gadd, comic artist Rob Liefeld, and Phil Hotsenpiller, a teaching pastor at the Yorba Linda Friends Mega Church. Liefeld is drawing all of the Apocalypse Now graphic novels which Hotsenpiller is writing.

The first  Armageddon Now graphic novel, World War III, will be out in a 100-page hardcover edition (all drawn by Liefeld) in June.  The saga begins with “the humbling defeat of America,” which is laid low by a combination of a nuclear explosion in L.A. and a devastating biological attack on the East Coast.  The action then shifts to the Middle East where a huge Islamic coalition attacks Israel.

Twelve Gates Productions’ Mike Gadd told ICv2 that the plan is to publish two books in 2008, followed by “two to three books each year.”  Though one might think that a series of books that begins with the devastating defeat of the United States might have tough sledding in the marketplace, it is worth remembering that apocalyptic and “end of times” literature has been very popular in Christian circles in recent decades—Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins’ Left Behind series, which has reportedly racked up sales of more than 60 million copies worldwide, has been rightly hailed as “the most successful Christian fiction series ever,” and it appears that the troika at 12 Gates Productions is attempting to replicate some of that success in the graphic novel market.