Nearly a full year since the project was first announced at Comic-Con International in San Diego, The Massive #1 is finally setting sail from Dark Horse Comics next week. Created by Brian Wood (DMZ, Ultimate Comics X-Men) and Kristian Donaldson (Super Market, DMZ), the story of a ship and its environmentalist crew who scour the world for missing comrades in the wake of "The Crash," the kind of apocalyptic ecological disaster that's been predicted for many years, The Massive began its voyage as a three-part serial in the Dark Horse Presents anthology before quickly upgrading to ongoing series. The book represents a deliberate effort by Wood to honor the single-issue periodical as a storytelling format, and you can read a preview of his and Dondaldson's results after the cut.

In The Massive, what was once the "first world" has become the "third world," and a team of seafaring conservationists search the oceans for their missing sister ship while they try to figure out what it means to be an environmentalist when the end of the world has come and gone. Speaking with ComicsAlliance last year, Wood said the book is his thematic and tonal follow-up to the long-running and critically acclaimed DMZ, which depicted a future in which the United States became once again divided between the Union and secessionists, and where the island of Manhattan became a demilitarized zone caught in the middle. As the tagline for the similarly cautionary The Massive asks, "What does it mean to be an environmentalist after the world's already ended?" What's the point of being right, after all, if you're too late?

As mentioned above, The Massive debuted initially as a three-part feature in the Dark Horse Presents anthology. That material -- 24 pages in all -- is available as a digital download from Dark Horse's digital store. The first issue of The Massive ongoing -- featuring colors by Dave Stewart and a variant cover by Rafael Grampá -- comes with supplemental content that will not be available anywhere else, and goes sale next week digitally and in finer comics stores.




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