Although it’s the end of of 2018, it seems like fledgling comics publishers are popping up left and right like it’s the dawn of a new era. One of those publishers, Cave Pictures Publishing, has described themselves as “a wall for modern myth-telling.” It’s certainly a high minded concept– fitting, given that the publisher’s name refers to Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. And next year, the company’s publisher and founder, Mark Rodgers, will team up with artist Jesse Hamm to release one of Cave Pictures’ first stories: The Blessed Machine.
With the first issue set for release in March 2019, The Blessed Machine follows a “courageous few” who live, trapped, in an underground city. When these individuals decide to try to reach the surface world, they find themselves fighting against “the minds and flesh of men” and “their man-made minders.” The premise is based off an E.M. Forster short story, “The Machine Stops,” which railed against the reliance on technology that has only increased since that story’s publication in 1909.
Creator bios follow:
Jesse Hamm has been writing, drawing, and teaching comics for over 20 years. He has drawn such characters as Batman, Hawkeye, and Flash Gordon, and his work has been published by Marvel, DC, Boom!, Dynamite, and Dark Horse. Jesse is a member of Helioscope, North America’s largest comic art studio, located in Portland, Oregon, where he and his wife, Anna, make their home. jessehamm.com
Mark Rodgers is an entertainment executive, having produced a number of feature films through Cave Pictures Productions as well as the off-Broadway play Babette’s Feast and numerous cause campaigns such as Global Citizen.
