That's LIFE...

New DSTLRY series announcement from myself, Brian Azzarello, Danijel Zezelj, Lee Loughridge, and Will Dennis.

This book started in a restaurant in St. Pete, FL where Brian and I were discussing an idea I had for a heist involving a planet - “you ever robbed a planet?” Brian added that he had a similar idea that added a wrench into the heist: prisoners living on the planet. But, writing together? I’ve never really co-written a comic before, and Brian and I admittedly have pretty different voices when it comes to our writing style. So, we decided to make it a flip book, showcasing two stories from two different points of view that allow our individual voices to both carry the story without overshadowing the other. It also allows us to take risks with the characters and story direction, switching writing duties with one another the moment we feel too comfortable with what we’re doing.

This has been like solving a puzzle together - laying out all the pieces and working to build a cohesive universe where the characters interact, in often pretty terrible ways. I didn’t say LIFE was a nice book… but that IS Life, isn’t it?

So, from one side of the book, you are presented with seasoned criminals who are headed towards what they think is a deserted prison planet to steal jewels that were being mined there many years before. A heist to rob a planet. One last score. A crew that can’t be trusted.

But, the prison is NOT deserted. It’s filled with prisoners who were part of an experimental prison program where criminals with multiple life sentences were medically forced to serve ALL of those sentences. Eternal life is not all it’s cracked up to be… it’s actually disgusting, painful, and way, way too long. As time and disease are still able to impact these prisoners, they have been stranded on this prison planet for hundreds of years with no contact to Earth and no way off the planet… until a group of thieves show up. With a spaceship.

Sample page from issue 1 with art by Danijel Zezelj and Lee Loughridge.

Half heist. Half prison break.

All told with the gorgeous art of Danijel Zezelj and Lee Loughridge, this is a really dark, sci-fi world.

Each issue of LIFE is two full-sized comic issues together in a flip book format (over 48 pages total). The story will run for 6 oversized issues and the first issue comes out this August.

Personally, I’ve never written something that has taken the kind of planning that this story has. Working with Brian to have characters play back and forth with one another, to sync elements of the larger narrative in unexpected ways, has been a really rewarding challenge.

Once again, feel free to drop questions about LIFE in the comments section (the book… I’m not qualified to deal with an existential crisis). Brian and I will also be looking to do some promo together to talk more about the writing process and the story. I’ll post links to any promo we do, and if you all have any outlets you’d like to see us talk to about LIFE, also drop that in the comments below and we’ll see what we can do!

Read more about LIFE here.

Thanks as always for reading, and if you’re in and around Niagara Falls next weekend, you can also find Brian and I at the Niagara Falls Comic Con, June 7-9.

-Stephanie