City of Heroes book deal announced

The comic book-inspired massively multiplayer role-playing game will be making a return to print--in the form of novels. NCsoft announced that it has licensed City of Heroes' backstory to CDS Books, which will publish a series of books based on the game. The first book, The Web of Arachnos, will cover the origins of Statesman, Paragon City's signature hero, as he battles one of the game's first villain groups. It will be published in late 2005. City of Heroes follows in the footsteps of other game licenses that have been published as books, such as Halo, Diablo, and (less notably) Crimson Skies.