The Book of Lost Souls, a monthly series with artist Colleen Doran (Orbiter, A Distant Soil). J. Michael Straczynski is an admitted "long term fan of her work", and this collaboration between these two industry stars is bound to be something. Not much has been revealed as to what the series is about so far, so we asked Mr. Straczynski for the low down.
"One of the recurring themes in my work, almost but not quite to the point of being tedious about it, is the degree to which we have been kind of desensitized to each other as humans," Straczynski said. "Politically, ethnically, economically, we’ve been marginalized and factionalized and tribalized to within an inch of our lives. That was one of the underlying themes, perhaps the dominant theme, of Midnight Nation...the lost and the dispossessed, the run-aways and the thrown-aways of society. And the thing is, you can have a home, and a family, and a job, but be as utterly lost as some guy living under a bridge.
"When I was working in Vancouver on the TV show Jeremiah, I used to hang out a lot downtown, because it’s a beautiful city," Straczynski explained. "On a long stretch of Granville and other streets, you see kids -- teens into twenties -- runaways, thrownaways, living on the streets, dozens at a time, every few blocks. Sometimes, I’d see a few of them wander into the comics store there, and look around...and walk out empty handed, having found nothing that related to the lives they were leading, lives of quite desperation, where hope is something you gave up long ago. I wanted to write a story for them, and for others out there on the razor’s edge between light and dark. Because sometimes having all the money in the world won’t move you one inch closer to what you really want out of life."
"So we’re three issues into this book, which follows a fellow named Jonathan, who committed suicide by drowning -- or tried to do so -- over a hundred years ago, and resurfaces (literally) in the present (when the red sox won), with a big book of names and a mission, to be the force that tilts the balance in people’s lives one way or another, " Straczynski said. "It’s kind of a dark book, but with a certain hopefulness in it. He also has a talking cat named Mystery, who is perhaps more than he appears. "
