ONCE UPON A TIME AT THE END OF THE WORLD Roundup

A recap of the week's new creator-owned announcements and art reveals

So, to recap, I’m doing a new original series with BOOM! Studios that’s called ONCE UPON A TIME AT THE END OF THE WORLD and it starts when girl meets boy in a tower by the sea sometime at the far end of days. They’re children, but this is not a children’s story. It’s the story of two lifetimes full of wild, unbridled love and all the joy and suffering, pleasure and horror, and healing and scarring that come with it, all as lived in the post-apocalyptic wasteland. It’s the world’s last great love story, and here’s the first issue cover by the great Mike del Mundo.

Book One, titled “Love in the Wasteland,” is drawn by recent Eisner-award winner Alexandre Tefenkgi (go read THE GOOD ASIAN if you haven’t already or maybe even if you have). Here are Alex’s character designs for our two kids, Maceo and Mezzy, and his variant cover for issue #1 which evokes the “Wes Anderson meets Mad Max” vibe that we’re going for with this opening story.

By Book Two, our kids aren’t kids anymore. Turns out falling in love in the wasteland was the easy part. Now grown-up Maceo and Mezzy set out to create a new society from the ruins of the old. A community built upon the sacred belief that love is love, in all its many forms. The supremely-talented Leila del Duca is bringing to life this second arc, titled “The Rise and Fall of Golgonooza.” It’s not just the story of our two lovers all grown up but also a beautiful new vision of an end-times paradise that’s fighting desperately to keep the darkness at bay. Here are Leila’s character designs for Book Two Maceo and Mezzy.

Things take a dark turn in Book Three, “Not Even If You Were the Last Person On Earth.” Maceo and Mezzy have gone from lovestruck kids to hard-edged wastewalkers, each just as brutal as the apocalyptic landscape where they fight to survive. But now they’re brought together with nothing less than the fate of the planet at stake. Artist Nick Dragotta is the absolute perfect choice for this action-driven, emotion-packed finale of our weird little wasteland love story.

No art from Nick that we’re showing off just yet, but you won’t have to wait until Book Three hits shelves to see it. We’ll see Nick’s contributions before we get there, as the three time periods of this story will sometimes weaves themselves together as we go. Because life and love are always messy, especially at the end of the world.

Bu hey, here’s a beautiful variant cover of Mezzy for issue #1 by Junggeun Yoon.

And I will leave you with this interior page from issue #1, featuring art by Alexandre Tefenkgi, colors by Lee Loughridge and letters by AndWorld Design. The journey begins in November. Tell your local comic shop that you would like enough copies to last you until the apocalypse.

For probably the first of many times, I’d also like to recognize my editors at BOOM, Sierra Hahn and Allyson Gronowitz. They’ve been working like mad to bring the ambitious scope of this project to beautiful life. And Sierra in particular, who’s been a friend for many years, has been instrumental in this project’s long and winding gestation and its path to being published at BOOM, where I’m excited to be working for the first time.

I will have a whole lot more to say about this series as we go, in particular about how it came to life during our own recent plague-ravaged end times.

Next time I’ll get back to the usual sort of business we’re used to conducting here. Hope you’re all well and worthy.

Cheers.

Jason Aaron

KC, August 21, 2022