A new comic book from The Walking Dead creator Robert Kirkman is coming in March 2018 called Oblivion Song. Published by Kirkman’s Skybound imprint at Image Comics, it will be drawn by Lorenzo De Felici with colors by Annalisa Leoni.
The story follows a man named Nathan Cole, who spends his days trying to rescue people from another dimension called Oblivion. A decade ago, 300,000 people and a chunk of the city of Philadelphia were inexplicably transported to Oblivion, and at the same time enormous, man-eating monsters from that nightmarish dimension came to our world and wreaked havoc on the remainder of the city. Technology to visit Oblivion was developed but all rescue missions were called off because of the dangers of Oblivion. While most of society has moved on and the government considers the victims of the tragedy a loss, something is driving Nathan to keep going back, risking his life day after day.
Check out a preview of Oblivion Song #1 by clicking through the slideshow gallery below.
Kirkman held a private, pre-New York Comic Con press conference along with his artistic collaborators, Skybound EiC Sean Mackiewicz, and Image publisher Eric Stephenson where they fielded questions from journalists who had been given the first three issues to read in advance.
Kirkman was quick to point out that while Oblivion Song may have some post-apocalyptic elements like The Walking Dead, it’s a very different kind of story, so don’t expect to see any zombies.
“I like to say this is 'apocalypse-adjacent,'” Kirkman joked. “It's very much not an apocalypse story. The majority of Philadelphia is still intact. The theme that we're dealing with here is, no matter how [bad] something is that happens to us as a people, it doesn't take too many years for us to just go back to normal and kind of forget about it. And so we are dealing with the fact that a large chunk of Philadelphia completely disappeared, and when the story starts taking place our main character seemingly is almost the only one still very invested in it, still trying to figure out what happened, still trying to rescue people. Everyone else has gone back to status quo -- 'Can't we just forget that crater that's in the middle of our town?' -- and how horrible that is.”
The idea for Oblivion Song came to Kirkman a decade ago, and he attributes it to two comic book icons: Jack Kirby and Batman. Kirkman told a story of how he read an interview where someone was lamenting Jack Kirby had never done a long run on Batman, and that led Kirkman to think of what that would have looked like -- “He’d probably give him New Gods tech and all this weird stuff” -- and from there he started envisioning a man in a cape traveling to other dimensions, and that eventually evolved into the story of Oblivion Song. Kirkman also said being older than when he first imagined the idea has given him a new perspective on people who deal with loss and how complacent we are as a society, which are core themes of the book.
Given Kirkman’s success with The Walking Dead and its spin-off on TV, not to mention his 2014-released supernatural horror comic Outcast was adapted to a Cinemax TV show and his long-running superhero saga Invincible is in production to become a movie, it’s fair to ask if Oblivion Song will also be getting an adaption. Kirkman acknowledged that there’s been interest in the property, but wouldn’t give any specifics, instead opting to tease, “I wouldn't be surprised if there's announcements at one point in the future.”
The alternate dimension of Oblivion is filled with otherworldly plants and animals, but for as crazy as things might look, Lorenzo made sure they all had elements of realism.
“My parents are biologists so I grew up really attached to biology coherence in building my worlds,” he explained. “I had to design creatures many times in my career, but this time in particular I was really careful to build something that looked alien but coherent itself. I didn't want to do a patchwork of creatures and monsters not at all connected to the environment. For example, there are a lot of vines [in Oblivion], so most of the creatures have six legs to attach to the vines.”
As for the colors, Leoni told us via an Italian translator that she chose tones and colors that weren’t normally found in the real world in order to make the scenes set in Oblivion stand apart.
Kirkman said that Lorenzo, who he first discovered when Invincible co-creator Cory Walker recommended him, is currently working on Issue #9 of the series and explained how important it is to him to complete multiple issues far in advance so the series will ship on time.
“[A] thing that really upsets me about the comic book industry at large, and this is something Marvel and DC do a lot, is they will start projects and then go, 'Oh my god, it went off the rails, I don't know what to tell you, the artist had a baby, something happened, this happened, this happened,'” Kirkman said. The baby comment is likely a reference to how Marvel’s big summer event in 2016, Civil War II, suffered heavy delays because artist David Marquez took time off to be with his wife and newborn baby. Kirkman continued, “It's just irresponsibility. If you have the resources, it's logistically very easy to do a book in secret, get a lot of work done, make sure that it's all lined up. I don't think we'll be soliciting a book of this series that isn't completely lettered and done and ready to go to print. … I've done books that have shipped late, so I'm definitely throwing stones from a glass house, but it's something that I'm trying to avoid at all costs moving forward. It's the bare minimum of what we should be doing as creators.”
Whereas Kirkman has always maintained that the cause of the zombie apocalypse in The Walking Dead will never be explained because he wants the focus to be on the drama of living in a post-apocalyptic world, it’s the opposite with Oblivion Song. Discovering how and why the incident happened will be a core mystery that drives the book.
“That's actually very important to the book, which is different than The Walking Dead. How this happened, why this happened, will this happen again? -- all very big, important questions that will be dealt with over the course of the series,” he said.
Given that the book focuses on such a large mystery, Kirkman assured that they are working toward a planned ending. He said that lots of information will be revealed about Oblivion and what’s happening on Earth, and that will all snowball into a “massive epic” by around Issue #25.
Finally, for those curious about the title, it does get explained in the comic, but if you want to know now, then read on to hear Kirkman reveal the meaning.
“If you've ever spent time in the country, wind goes through the trees and the insects make different sounds and there's birds in the distance and there's a silence to our world that we don't pay attention to that we don't really notice when it's there because it's just white noise in the background of our lives. The idea is that being in a different dimension with different kind of vegetation, different kind of animal life is a completely different kind of white noise background sound and they eventually start calling that the ‘Oblivion Song.’ Some of the people that have lived there and come back miss it, and it's something unique and intriguing about being over there. It's about this guy Nathan, is he addicted to that? Why does he keep going into danger? What is this obsession with this other world? It all kind of plays into the title,” he explained.
Oblivion Song #1 releases on March 7, 2018.
Joshua is IGN’s Comics Editor. If Pokemon, Green Lantern, or Game of Thrones are frequently used words in your vocabulary, you’ll want to follow him on Twitter @JoshuaYehl and IGN.
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