Artist Jamie McKelvie has announced his next book, The Killing Horizon from Image Comics. He’ll be collaborating with his The Wicked + The Divine colourist Matt Wilson, as well as letterer Aditya Bidikar, designer Cecil Richard, and editor Katie West.
McKelvie spoke to i09 about the upcoming project. On the transition from magic-based stories to hard sci-fi, he said, “It’s a big change […] I wanted to challenge myself and expand what I’m capable of. I never felt I was very good at the science fiction elements that appeared in my previous work. A lot of my career motivation has been spite: ‘Oh you don’t think I’m good at that thing? I’ll prove you wrong.'”
McKelvie recently wrapped up his five-year stint on WicDiv, where he worked with regular collaborator and writer Kieron Gillen. On writing for himself, he said, “Kieron often talks about how a script is really a letter to the artist, which doesn’t really apply when you’re writing for yourself.”
He continued, “But I suppose the biggest thing is the need to set challenges, push things, see what I can make comics do […] I wouldn’t have worked with Kieron for so long if I didn’t love what we were doing. But it was always what I set out to do. And now I’m lucky to be in the position to be able to see where that takes me.”
Here’s McKelvie’s description of the series:
The post-post-apocalyptic future. Far from Earth, a specialist in studying dead alien societies is embedded with a military unit to excavate a new find. She’s done it before. It’s good work and it’s safe. She thinks it’s just another job.
She’s wrong.
Lost and alone, deep beneath the warped, skeletal spires of the millennia-dead city, she finds something powerful. Something unlike anything any human as ever known. Something that needs her to take it on a journey no living being has ever taken. Something that will make her a target for every side fighting a deadly war. It calls to her.
She answers.
The Killing Horizon debuts in the summer of 2020. Check out some cover art below.
