Hope Springs Eternal

Part of what we always intended with Deadend was to create a universe that was a fully fleshed out as possible. To this end, we decided to write an Issue Zero that would set up the universe a little more fully than jumping straight into the main plot.

The main objective of this was not to introduce any of the main characters, that would wait for the first issue. Instead this was more to give a taster of the background and the events that lead humanity to where it will be when the story proper begins.

In Deadend, Humanity is pretty much a bottom feeding lower class citizen in a vast galactic alliance. How we ended up in this position, and indeed how we even become a part of the alliance, was to be covered in the Zero issue. At the beginning of our tale Earth is on the verge of total ecological meltdown (in fact, come the start of Deadend, Earth was intended to be fundamentally abandoned, with the majority of Humanity on other colonised worlds or in orbiting stations around Earth.) However an attempt was made to save the human race and indeed earth when the governments of Earth got together and created a star ship from which they could find a new habitable world for Humanity to colonize. The ship was called Hope Springs Eternal and its exploits and indeed fate where to be the main subject of Deadend Issue Zero.

Whilst going through all the Deadend stuff, I found that I actually have the majority of Issue Zero already written. It needs work... and finishing, but I thought it would be interesting to post a vague description of how far I got.

It starts with the launch of the Hope, with the President of the U.S. giving some kind of inspirational speech. The next few pages focus on the journey of the Hope, told through news clips on TV. I was going for an almost documentary style with the issue, to give it a sense of history. Anyway... I don't want to give too much away, but the fate of the Hope leads to unavoidable tension back on Earth and eventual war. When humanity is at it's weakest, The Mentarthans make their presence known and war erupts.

So by the end off the issue, Humanity has had to pull them selves out of World War and battle an alien threat. But I'll let you read the issue to find out exactly how it all goes down!