Robert Kirkman – creator of The Walking Dead, Invincible, and Outcast – has announced a new comic book, Oblivion Song. The series is firmly within the science fiction genre, and Kirkman has teamed up with artist Lorenzo De Felici on the project. De Felici has worked with Kirkman before: he’s provided one cover for Invincible and one for The Walking Dead. This marks his first interior work on an American comic. Annalisa Leoni will be the colorist on Oblivion Song, Rus Wooton the letterer, and Sean Mackiewicz the editor. 

Image and Skybound are backing up this creator-owned venture, as they have all of Kirkman’s major comics projects. Fans might be surprised to learn that Kirkman is adding more work to his already packed slate, considering that he is already writing a number of on-going comics and executive producing their live-action adaptations. And let’s not forget that Kirkman signed a deal with Amazon Prime Video back in August, vowing to produce original TV content for the online streaming service.

Regardless of that mammoth pile of work, Kirkman is pressing ahead with Oblivion Song. The new comic book series will debut in March 2018. It centers on an agent named Nathan Cole, whose job involves retrieving people from an alternate dimension – the Oblivion of the title. As well as breaking that news, CBR also shared this synopsis for the upcoming series:

“A decade ago 300,000 citizens of Philadelphia were suddenly lost in Oblivion. The government made every attempt to recover them but after many years they gave up. Nathan Cole… won’t. He makes daily trips, risking his life to try and rescue those lost, alone and afraid, living in the apocalyptic hellscape of Oblivion. But maybe… Nathan is looking for something else? Why can’t he resist the siren call of the Oblivion Song?”

There’s clearly a lot of promise in this idea, and plentiful mysteries to be solved. What caused the original Oblivion incident? Was there any rhyme or reason as to who was displaced? And why can’t Nathan Cole let it go? Is he linked to the whole thing on a grander scale than readers will initially know? Of course, only time will provide the answers to those questions.

Interestingly, the announcement of this comic hasn’t come attached to any live-action adaptation deal. As far as anyone knows at this stage, Oblivion Song is not linked to Kirkman’s Amazon agreement. However, knowing his success rate so far, there’s every chance that the film and/or TV rights will be snatched up by someone soon enough. 

Oblivion Song #1 is released on March 7, 2018.

Source: CBR