Star Trek: New Visions - The Mirror, Cracked Among the New Releases for the Week from IDW Publishing
Mars Attacks: First Born is out in stores this Wednesday, what can you tell us about the story without spoiling it for us?
It's called "First Born" because it involves the first Earth-born Martian after the initial invasion. And since this is Sam Kieth and I, it's more about the family, namely the blind girl who adopts the Martian baby, than it is about a big invasion storyline.
It seems that Mars Attacks: First Born is quite different from previous Mars Attacks tales, what made you want to go in this direction?
After Sam and I did The Hollows together, we realized that we're really only able to do (or interested in doing) more idiosyncratic kinds of stories, and this definitely follows suit in that regard. John Layman told the big, action-packed and funny Mars Attacks tale in his series, so we didn't want to try to replicate that and instead had something different in mind.
Sam Kieth brings a very unique visual style to Mars Attacks, how do you think his work supports the story that you're telling?
Sam very much marches to his own beat, and his style perfectly suits this story, because we were looking to do something dark, creepy and very much influenced by our love of EC comics.
Have you always been a fan of Mars Attacks?
Lunatic aliens wreaking havoc across the planet? There might be nothing I enjoy more than that… having previously written two Mars Attacks one-shots during our big "Mars Attacks IDW" event a year or two back (Kiss and Zombies vs Robots), I really became aware of how many different kinds of stories the Mars Attacks concept lends itself to, and it was a blast to work with Sam and do something completely different in tone than those other stories. Yet still also give people the mayhem and craziness they expect from a Mars Attacks tale, only with a very different kind of flavor than they might be expecting.
For more information, check out the official IDW Publishing website.