In Brief:
- Kaidro (official site) creators Peggy Chung and Robert Simons announced at San Diego Comic-Con that Storyteller Media will publish their manga and Macmillan will distribute it, starting with “Kaidro: The Relic” on Nov. 10.
- The deal covers six volumes following Ava, the orphan who inherits the relic, and arrives with a same-day audiobook scored by Odesza.
- The bookstore push follows Kaidro shutting its 25-month Play to Airdrop program on Sept. 4 and winding down KDR staking.
Kaidro’s manga is going to retail shelves through a traditional publisher. Storyteller Media will publish the series and Macmillan will distribute it globally, with the first volume, “Kaidro: The Relic,” out Nov. 10.
Peggy Chung and Robert Simons, the Gadget-Bot founders who created the property, announced the partnership at San Diego Comic-Con, a convention they attended for years as fans.
From attending San Diego Comic-Con as fans to announcing a major publishing deal for their own manga franchise.
At SDCC, Peggy Chung and Robert Simons shared a full-circle moment as they announced the Storyteller x Macmillan publishing partnership for Kaidro: The Relic.
The@KaidroView on X ↗
The agreement covers six books. The series, “Kaidro: The Awakening,” follows Ava, an orphan on the divided planet Tal’Jor who is left with a relic that grants her the power of a Kaidro, the rare ability to channel energy from the Astral Realm into the physical world.
What ships Nov. 10
The premium edition is a hardcover printed at 8.5 by 11 inches, art-book size, with a matte finish, embossed gold foil and raised spot UV detailing. The limited first run adds sprayed edges, holographic pages and in-game assets. Once it sells out, that version is gone.
Pre-orders are open at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target and Walmart. The ISBN is 9781969905056.
Hidden inside 100 pre-order copies of the deluxe limited first edition is a “Golden Relic,” a golden holographic page carrying a QR code. It unlocks a signed and numbered drawing from the creators, an in-game Spark Suit skin, a lore dossier pack, a private Q&A livestream, a CD of the audiobook, a plushie and an invitation to the launch event. Only pre-order copies contain one.
A fully produced audiobook launches the same day, with original music by Odesza and a cast that includes Veronica Taylor, Kieren Biew, Jason Marsden, Trina Nishimura and Robert McCollum.
Who Storyteller is
Storyteller Media is the publishing arm of Curiosity Entertainment, co-founded by producer Adhrucia Apana and screenwriter Charles Allen. It plans to publish 20 to 30 titles a year across children’s, young adult, adult fiction, fantasy, memoir and graphic novels, with global distribution through Macmillan and placement in more than 2,000 independent and specialty stores.
Curiosity unveiled its first page-to-screen slate in July, naming Kaidro alongside YA fantasy “Witches of Calabasas” and the dramedy “Goodman.” The company also hired Laurie Seidman, formerly senior vice president of current programming at CBS Entertainment, as head of film and television, and named John D. Maatta head of its board. Every Storyteller title is selected with screen, gaming and other adaptations in mind.
The token side is contracting
The publishing news lands as Kaidro pulls back its reward economy. The studio ended Play to Airdrop on Sept. 4 at 10 a.m. PT after 25 months, closing the Synergy and Spin Wheel phases with it. The final airdrop from the original distribution phase went out an hour earlier, based on an Aug. 30 snapshot, and was the third and last of that phase.
New KDR staking and auto-restaking are ending. Existing stakes can be claimed through Dec. 31. Unstaking early returns the originally staked KDR and forfeits the reward. Outstanding NFT rewards are being converted into KDR, and physical rewards will be fulfilled in batches.
The team said this isn’t the end of KDR, and that future allocations will still be reserved for the community, though it wants the token folded into experiences tied to the Kaidro universe rather than a standalone reward system. No replacement mechanics or timeline have been published.
KDR launched Dec. 18, 2024 on Ronin with a fixed supply of 100 million tokens and trades on Katana and Bitmart. Community rewards, including airdrop campaigns and tournament prizes, account for 35% of supply.
Background
Chung and Simons spent more than a decade at Gadget-Bot on design work for “Jurassic World,” “Pacific Rim” and “Battle Angel: Alita,” plus “Call of Duty,” “Apex Legends” and “Valorant.” They founded Kaidro LLC to build their own IP.
Kaidro started as print manga, then a Webtoon series funded through Kickstarter, with the build process documented on TikTok. The studio has been explicit that the art is human-made and not generated.
The franchise’s game, “Kaidro: Clan Battles,” is an RPG and shooter hybrid on Ronin built around 3v3 fights with customizable Spark Suits. Its fourth open alpha is running on Steam. A television adaptation is in development with Tim Hedrick, a writer on “Avatar: The Last Airbender.”
Simons has said he started sketching the Kaidro universe at age 11. Chung said Ava’s story draws on her own experience of loss.
“It is a dream come true to share the Kaidro book with even more readers,” Chung said.
