During a panel at the New York Comic Convention today, Marvel Comics announced that they will be working with Hugo and Nebula Award-winning science fiction writer Orson Scott Card to adapt two of his most acclaimed novels, Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow, into comic books later this year.

Ender’s Game, a cult-favorite novel about a child prodigy named Ender recruited to help fight an alien army, and Ender’s Shadow, a concurrent book focused on another young soldier, will launch as separate comics in late 2008, with the first Ender’s Game collection due out in summer 2009.

Like Marvel’s other literary crossovers, the Ender’s Game comics aim not only to woo new readers into comic stores, but also to continue the push of graphic novels and trade paperback collections into traditional bookstores and libraries where they can reach a more mainstream audience.

Card, who also currently scripts the Ultimate Iron Man superhero comic with Marvel, says he was eager to pursue a comic book adaptation, but that the rights were previously bound up in film deal for the two novels, which were optioned by Warner Brothers, the parent company of DC Comics.

“The moment I got the comic book and game rights extracted from the movie option deal, I let Marvel and other [publishers] know about the availability,” says Card. “I truly was open-minded about who would end up doing the books, [but] Marvel got there first, with a terrific, ambitious plan for Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow.”