I’m a huge fan of Black Mask Comics. I try to keep an eye out every time they release a new title because I know it’s going to be something socially conscience and well crafted. The trend continues in August with Patrick Meaney and Eric Zawadzki’s “Last Born.” The solicit reads “What if the Big Bang was not the first of its kind? And, more importantly, not the last? Her whole life, Julia has yearned for adventure, and when she falls through a rupture in spacetime, she finally gets her wish. This cosmological thrill-ride marks the comic writing debut of Patrick Meaney, director of Grant Morrison: Talking With Gods.”

This concept is really only the beginning as Meaney and Zawadzki really dive into something incredibly unique that doesn’t forget the tenets of it’s genre but pushes them in new and interesting ways. I mean I loved issue one and I was lucky enough to sit down with the men behind the book and talk about the core themes of “Last Born” and the implications it has for our current society. Check it out and get educated.

Bloody-Disgusting: “Last Born” seems to be a story about destiny, history, and time travel all rolled into one, why tackle some of the most difficult concepts in science fiction in a four issue miniseries?

Patrick Meaney: I love stories where big cosmic ideas about the nature of space and time can be welded to small scale personal struggles, and those were the two pulls on the story. Because it’s comics, drawing the universe being destroyed costs the same amount as drawing two people talking, and I wanted to take advantage of that and incorporate a wide variety of settings and giant ideas into the story. I didn’t want to do something that you’re seeing in movies or on TV, I wanted to do something you can only do in comics, and comics seems like a perfect medium for tackling those big ideas. Plus it’s fun to torture Eric by throwing multiple time periods and environments to design in each issue.

Eric Zawadzki: I actually really enjoy drawing the multiple different timelines. It keeps things really interesting for me from issue to issue. All the research tends to slow things down a little for me, though.

BD: Julia seems driven to escape her life, and although her father’s detachment scares her somewhat, it seems to motivate her. What does she want out of life? And why is she so discontent?

PM: I grew up in a suburban environment not too different from what she had, and I knew a lot of people who had this desire to escape and the feeling that there was something more exciting out there, be it in the city or off at college, or wherever else. Julia is growing up with a father who’s been mentally absent, and an aunt who resents being forced to care for her. She sees the walls closing in around her and realizes this is her one chance to escape and find a new life. She doesn’t want to follow the preordained path that many people would see for a girl like her in the early 1960s, and she has a natural yearning for adventure.

What her story is really about is taking someone who’s always been frustrated with their life and longed for adventure, and forcing them to confront what it means when they finally get it.

BD: How did you two create the dystopia at the end of time? How much did you work on the design of the “Viral Man?” and what inspired the look of this bleak world?

PM: The visual design was largely Eric. I had the idea of a world where global warming had raised the sea levels and flooded everything, then all the water mysteriously disappeared. So everything is eroded and decayed, ghostly echoes of the world that was. The Viral Man’s look came out of trying to imagine a parallel evolution, where humanity grew up into something different, and what those people would look like.

EZ: I’ve always loved drawing rubble strewn, abandoned urban areas, so this setting is definitely in my wheelhouse. As for the Viral man, I wanted him to be human looking, but a little off. The inspiration for his gray skin is the character of Mr. Rolands from John From Cincinnati. His appearance during the infamous Sermon scene (the only scene he was ever in I believe) really disturbed me. I also liked the idea of a dull boring tone to him compared to our colorful cast. He represents conformity and sameness in this white and gray world while our protagonists are unique and vibrant.

BD: Calling the series “Last Born” carries some serious ominous implications about where he narrative is headed, why motivated you to give the book that title?

PM: Naming the book was not easy. We had two other titles, which both became properties in the time the book was developed. Last Born worked for me because we’re looking at a dead world, without life. These people are the last ones left alive, and maybe the end of humanity as we know it. Titles are tough, when you’re trying to come up with one, it seems impossible, but once you get the right one, you can’t imagine it being anything else, and I feel like “Last Born” is that right title.

BD: Will we ever find out what truly happened to Julia’s father?

PM: We will! I have a whole chronology of events that will be revealed over the course of the series, and it’s going to twist through a lot of different points in history. We’re planning to do three volumes of four issues, and when the series is over, you’ll be able to go back and find a lot of new layers on the first few pages of the series. This was a story that started with a lot of big ideas, and I had to find the best entry point into it. But, we’ll be going through a lot of interesting stuff along the way.

BD: The coloring process plays such an important role in creating the tone for many of the more intense scenes. Eerie blues, and drained greys add so much to certain scenes. Do you both work to create that mood?

PM: Take this one, Eric, it’s pretty much all you.

EZ: It was definitely my intent to have a big colourful contrast between the dead future and all the other timelines. Our cast of characters are bright colourful representatives of a once lively world while they wander this dead, ashen landscape.

BD: What made you want to tell this story? What interests you most about the end of humanity? What scares you most about this story?

PM: This is a story I’ve been working on for over six years, I’ve been piecing things together in my head for a really long time, and letting the story germinate over the years. I was trying to create the kind of story that I would love the most, the kind of story I would get obsessed with and want to pass on to other people, so I poured everything I love in stories into it and hopefully others will respond to it.

What interests me most about the end of humanity is how perilously close and yet impossible it seems. It feels like things will go on like they’ve been forever, like there’s never going to be an “end of the world,” but we came so close to nuclear annihilation in the 50s, and it wouldn’t take very much to completely destabilize society. And perhaps even more troubling is the idea that we could just slip further and further down the troubled path we’re on now and not even notice that things are completely messed up.

But, I’m not a pessimist. I put a lot of my fears about the world into the story, about the environment being destroyed or the next generation being worse off than us into the book, but ultimately I’m an optimist, and I think that humanity will do good. There’s a lot of ups and downs, but I think we are going in the right direction. The question is how far down we have to go before getting back on that path.

EZ: It’s interesting that this project is finally coming out now because lately I’ve been coming across quite a bit of articles and discussions concerning the end of society. It seems like all the smartest people are in agreement that we have about 50-100 years left before everything falls apart. Part of me is optimistic like Patrick. I don’t think you can discount the creativity and inventiveness of humanity. But another part of me just thinks we’re all doomed because we want it all and damn the consequences. We have a tendency to think about what individually is best for ourselves, rather then what’s best for the world as a whole. That’s pretty ironic considering our big bad is pushing for a pretty dramatic form of unity.

BD: Black Mask specialize in comics with a social conscience, what does the Viral Man say about our society? Is he a reflection of our unending quest for ultimate connectivity?

PM: The idea to some extent came out of Grant Morrison’s idea of the super context, which basically posits that the evolutionary future of humanity is to become a single unified organism that exists on the mental level, where we realize that our individuality was an illusion and we’re actually all one. My idea was, what if the super context went wrong, and rather than being a positive unifying thing, it became a destructive force out to absorb anything that was not a part of it.

But beyond that, there’s certainly a layer of technology and the way that people are so willing to surrender their privacy in exchange for the sense that they’re part of this web of social media. There’s a certain relief in surrendering your free will and just going along for the ride, and the question is, how willing are you to fight for your individuality, at what point do you just give up?

Last Born #1 can now be preordered. 

Item Code: JUN140921 – In Shops: 8/27/2014 – SRP: $3.99.

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