You should be paying attention to Markosia Enterprises. The publisher with a name that sounds like the evil villain's headquarters in a comic book is best known for works such as
King Kong, Starship Troopers, The Lexian Chronicles, Breathe, Midnight Kiss and
Of Bitter Souls has a book that should be in stores this month called
The Dark.
Written by Chris Lynch (the series creator) and illustrated by Rick Lundeen,
The Dark is a "superhero sci-fi thriller" that makes you wonder about reality and fiction. The main character in the story is Daniel Abbot, a young scientist credited with creating Memetech, a technology that allows for encoding information and memories in a liquid form. The upside to this is that just about anyone can drink said liquid and absorb all the encoded knowledge. Like most brilliant scientists, Abbot is a bit of a paranoid eccentric as well and, fearing his creation will be used for nefarious purposes, destroys it all an ingests one last batch. There's a catch.
“We've hidden lots of coded messages throughout the book,” explains Lynch, “Both in the dialogue and in the artwork. From the symbol on The Dark's chest to adverts in the background, everything is there for a reason. Hopefully people will get a kick out of trying to solve the mystery, or at least from looking back after they've read the book for the first time to find all the clues they missed. Either way, we wanted to create something with enough depth to bring people back to re-read the story time and again.”
See what they did there? They've "encoded" secrets into the comic that will give the reader the chance to solve the mystery before Abbot himself can figure it all out. Definitely not a conventional means of relating to the reader but I'm definitely digging it. I mean, how often do even books engage you on this level (besides turning to page 236 and finding that the door you thought was the right way to go has a dragon behind it who eats you. This definitely seems like a choose your own adventure book of sorts, and it will definitely give you something to look at in the series besides just the artwork.
Full press release and interiors after the jump.
March will see the introduction of two new graphic novels from UK-based publisher AAM/Markosia, following hot on the heels of recent successes ‘From the Pages of Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Harker’, ‘Serpent Wars’ and ‘Kong: King of Skull Island’.
‘The Dark’, written and created by the prolific Chris Lynch with art by Rick Lundeen, is a super-hero sci-fi thriller that challenges the reader’s very perceptions of reality versus fiction. It is the story of Daniel Abbot, a brilliant young scientist on the fringes of the establishment and the creator of Memetech - a technology that encodes information and memories into a liquid form, allowing anyone to literally "drink" the encoded knowledge. Terrified that his invention will be used for military purposes he decides to destroy his research, but not before he takes one last trip ... with disastrous results.
Two years on and the genie is out of the bottle. Abbot, having perfected his own version of the technology, fights a one-man war against the spread of his own invention and the collapse of our information culture in the guise of ‘The Dark’. Aided by an artificial intelligence nicknamed Howard Hughes, Abbott creates ‘The Baffler’ - a coat made of Memetech that gives his the edge over his enemies. Capable of injecting information directly into this brain and firing Memetech flechettes to hit others with bursts of pure information, The Baffler is both weapon and disguise in Daniel Abbot's war against his own creation.
Mixing high-octane super-hero action with hard science in a world of overlapping realities and fantasies, the story offers the reader the opportunity to solve the mystery of just what is real in the world of The Dark before even the hero can.
“We've hidden lots of coded messages throughout the book,” explains Lynch, “Both in the dialogue and in the artwork. From the symbol on The Dark's chest to adverts in the background, everything is there for a reason. Hopefully people will get a kick out of trying to solve the mystery, or at least from looking back after they've read the book for the first time to find all the clues they missed. Either way, we wanted to create something with enough depth to bring people back to re-read the story time and again.”
The Diamond order code is: JAN10 0699 THE DARK GN
You should be paying attention to Markosia Enterprises. The publisher with a name that sounds like the evil villain's headquarters in a comic book is best known for works such as King Kong, Starship Troopers, The Lexian Chronicles, Breathe, Midnight Kiss and Of Bitter Souls has a book that should be in stores this month called The Dark.
Written by Chris Lynch (the series creator) and illustrated by Rick Lundeen, The Dark is a "superhero sci-fi thriller" that makes you wonder about reality and fiction. The main character in the story is Daniel Abbot, a young scientist credited with creating Memetech, a technology that allows for encoding information and memories in a liquid form. The upside to this is that just about anyone can drink said liquid and absorb all the encoded knowledge. Like most brilliant scientists, Abbot is a bit of a paranoid eccentric as well and, fearing his creation will be used for nefarious purposes, destroys it all an ingests one last batch. There's a catch.
“We've hidden lots of coded messages throughout the book,” explains Lynch, “Both in the dialogue and in the artwork. From the symbol on The Dark's chest to adverts in the background, everything is there for a reason. Hopefully people will get a kick out of trying to solve the mystery, or at least from looking back after they've read the book for the first time to find all the clues they missed. Either way, we wanted to create something with enough depth to bring people back to re-read the story time and again.”
See what they did there? They've "encoded" secrets into the comic that will give the reader the chance to solve the mystery before Abbot himself can figure it all out. Definitely not a conventional means of relating to the reader but I'm definitely digging it. I mean, how often do even books engage you on this level (besides turning to page 236 and finding that the door you thought was the right way to go has a dragon behind it who eats you. This definitely seems like a choose your own adventure book of sorts, and it will definitely give you something to look at in the series besides just the artwork.
Full press release and interiors after the jump.
March will see the introduction of two new graphic novels from UK-based publisher AAM/Markosia, following hot on the heels of recent successes ‘From the Pages of Bram Stoker’s Dracula: Harker’, ‘Serpent Wars’ and ‘Kong: King of Skull Island’.
‘The Dark’, written and created by the prolific Chris Lynch with art by Rick Lundeen, is a super-hero sci-fi thriller that challenges the reader’s very perceptions of reality versus fiction. It is the story of Daniel Abbot, a brilliant young scientist on the fringes of the establishment and the creator of Memetech - a technology that encodes information and memories into a liquid form, allowing anyone to literally "drink" the encoded knowledge. Terrified that his invention will be used for military purposes he decides to destroy his research, but not before he takes one last trip ... with disastrous results.
Two years on and the genie is out of the bottle. Abbot, having perfected his own version of the technology, fights a one-man war against the spread of his own invention and the collapse of our information culture in the guise of ‘The Dark’. Aided by an artificial intelligence nicknamed Howard Hughes, Abbott creates ‘The Baffler’ - a coat made of Memetech that gives his the edge over his enemies. Capable of injecting information directly into this brain and firing Memetech flechettes to hit others with bursts of pure information, The Baffler is both weapon and disguise in Daniel Abbot's war against his own creation.
Mixing high-octane super-hero action with hard science in a world of overlapping realities and fantasies, the story offers the reader the opportunity to solve the mystery of just what is real in the world of The Dark before even the hero can.
“We've hidden lots of coded messages throughout the book,” explains Lynch, “Both in the dialogue and in the artwork. From the symbol on The Dark's chest to adverts in the background, everything is there for a reason. Hopefully people will get a kick out of trying to solve the mystery, or at least from looking back after they've read the book for the first time to find all the clues they missed. Either way, we wanted to create something with enough depth to bring people back to re-read the story time and again.”
The Diamond order code is: JAN10 0699 THE DARK GN
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