Part cat, part bird, heavily muscled and wearing nothing but a pair of tight feathery pants, a new superhero is due to make his comics debut next autumn, courtesy of the Booker prize-winning novelist Margaret Atwood.

The Canadian author will make her graphic novel debut with Dark Horse Comics, which has announced its acquisition of Atwood’s Angel Catbird. Illustrated by the artist Johnnie Christmas, the project will consist of three graphic novels, the first due in autumn 2016.

The cover art for Angel Catbird. Illustration: PR

“I have concocted a superhero who is part cat, part bird. Due to some spilled genetic Super-Splicer, our hero got tangled up with both a cat and an owl; hence his fur and feathers, and his identity problems,” said Atwood. Christmas said it was “tremendously exciting to work with one of the great contemporary novelists”, adding that the world of Angel Catbird had “warmth, heart, humour, and lots of action”.

Dark Horse publisher Mike Richardson described Atwood’s superhero as “a bold and unforgettable new character, paying homage to both classic pulp heroes and traditional comic book origin stories”, while acquiring editor Daniel Chabon said he was “a strange mix of Will Eisner’s The Spirit, Grant Morrison and Chas Truog’s Animal Man, and Ryan North and Erica Henderson’s Squirrel Girl”. Chabon promised the series would be “a humorous, action-driven, pulp-inspired story”, with “a lot of cat puns”.

The project, which is being published in association with conservation charity Nature Canada’s Keep Cats Safe and Save Bird Lives initiative, was brought to Dark Horse by consulting editor Hope Nicholson, a Canadian comic-book publisher and editor. Nicholson previously worked with Atwood on The Secret Loves of Geek Girls, a Kickstarter-funded anthology that raised C$122,286 (£60,000) after setting its original goal at C$37,000. Atwood’s contribution to the anthology of stories about dating and love saw her drawing a series of cartoons about her “personal experiences as a young woman”.

Atwood is also the author of the Booker-winning novel The Blind Assassin, and acclaimed novels including The Handmaid’s Tale, Alias Grace, The Robber Bride and Cat’s Eye. She also writes poetry and short stories, and earlier this year contributed the first text to the Future Library. This project, from conceptual artist Katie Paterson, will see 100 authors, over the next 100 years, deliver a piece of writing that will not be revealed until 2114, when 1,000 trees in Oslo’s Nordmarka forest will be chopped down to create the paper on which the texts will be printed.