Animorphs' Graphic Novels Are Good, But I Want More

Animorphs graphic novel cover art

Everybody loves Animorphs, the series of young adult novels with whacky covers that hide surprisingly mature and dark stories inside. They’re fantastic books, and their author, Katherine Applegate, seems to be a pretty decent person too, with some incredibly strong positive messages for anyone who reads her work.

You might not have known this, but for the past couple of years, Animorphs has been in the process of being adapted into graphic novels. The first release, which adapted the story of the first book in the series, The Invasion, released on October 6, 2020, and it was great!

The art style is absolutely wonderful, and while some of the inner monologues of characters have been cut down or cut out entirely, it did a pretty great job of faithfully telling the story. Do you know how many graphic novels have been released since then? Two. Just two.

The Visitor was released roughly a year after The Invasion, on October 5, 2021, and The Encounter came another year later, on October 4, 2022. The fourth graphic novel in the series, The Message, is set to be released later this year, on December 5, 2023.

Here’s the thing, I love Animorphs. I would gladly buy a complete collection of Animorphs graphic novels someday. But at the current rate of one per year, if we’re toeing the line between generous and realistic, I will not live to see the final graphic novel release. There are 54 books in the Animorphs series, and a further 8 canon books after that. 62 releases total, meaning a projected end date of 2081. That’s not gonna happen.

And look, I get it, graphic novels take a long time! Pumping out even one a year is probably a razor-thin timeline, and the more complex the storytelling, the longer it’s going to take. It’s safe to say that later Animorphs books get pretty complex too, so one year for some of them just won’t be enough.

This isn’t just me whining about the passage of time, though it certainly is at least somewhat that. I’m just a huge fan of Animorphs, and I’d love to see more out of the series. There used to be Animorphs video games, though pretty much none of them were good. Why can’t we have a good one? Can you imagine a metroidvania game where you can progress further through the game depending on your animal morphs? We’re in a golden age of metroidvanias, I believe it can be done.

What about an anime? Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood aired over about a year, and had 64 episodes in total. It’s probably not all that viable to tell the entire story of Animorphs at a pace of one episode per book, but even stretching it out to 5 or 6 years wouldn’t be that bad of a wait in the grand scheme of things.

What I want most though, more than any of this, is an opportunity to buy and read a physical collection of Animorphs books again. I have scoured every secondhand book store to try and find anything resembling a complete collection, but they’re either wildly incomplete, or far too expensive, at $10 or more a book. I have the Megamorphs books – those 8 extra canon books I mentioned earlier – so all I’d need is the 54 main story books.

As far as I can tell, these books have been out of print for a decade or more. That’s a bummer, because I truly think that there’s a whole generation of teens out there who would stand to benefit from all that Animorphs has to offer, just like I did all those years ago. And yes, I would buy a full reprint too, because I am desperately trying to relive my childhood by ranking Power Rangers and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles from worst to best.

All I want is a chance for Animorphs to be something again, to set the world on fire, to be the cultural icon it was always destined to be. I don’t know if that’s ever going to happen, least of all anytime soon, but I can hope, and dream.