THE END (again)

A few years ago now, Spanish artist Felipe Navarro and I were working on a low-key science fiction comic called The End - I had a first issue scripted, the series plotted, and Felipe had drawn character studies and a couple of test pages. The idea was to confront the Earth with an unknowable and unavoidable catastrophe, but to then follow a small handful of characters as they went about their final hours in what would seem (especially against all the panic and bombast of traditional Hollywood renditions) humdrum and insignificant. The point being, of course, that these hours would be incredibly significant and, above all, human.

Image from FH Navarro's Instagram.

This all ended when I saw an announcement that Drew Barrymore was lining up to direct a film of the (roughly) same plot and exact same title, on top of such recent fare as Seeking a Friend For the End of the World and Abel Ferrara's 4:44 Last Day on Earth. If my debilitating experience with trying to dig my aborted series Month of Sundays with David Frankum out from under the colossal shadow of Stephen King's book and TV show Under The Dome taught me anything about the creative process, it was in these situations to drop baggage and keep moving.

Time, of course, also moves on, and The End is no longer listed on Drew Barrymore's IMDB page, so I dusted the script off and realised that (as much a fan of grandeur and bombast as anyone) I could have my cake and eat it too. Felipe was still on board, so we started again where we left off.
Almost...

Because then Felipe and I had a short exchange on Facebook that changed the project entirely. It was, I think, the catalyst that moved us from wishing to work towards completing a project we once thought dead to grasping something new with both hands. And by new I mean classic; something recognisable that we hope to shape into something new again - we're telling this sort of comic in that sort of language. We can sum it up in one word, but we're keeping that word to ourselves for a moment.

The first line of dialogue on the first page of The End reads, "The universe always begins with a word." I didn't know when I wrote that how true it would be.