Robert Kirkman has a slew of creations under his belt and while he’ll likely always be best known for ‘The Walking Dead,’ his latest work, “Oblivion Song,’ is far from the undead, even if it includes an apocalypse. The book is illustrated by Lorenzo De Felici, and Kirkman has a few details of what we can expect after the first issue.
What is interesting is that a critical factor in the book relies on the type of noise you hear “in the monster-filled dimension that exists alongside our own.” This is a different take for a medium which, unless a television series or movie ends up happening, is something we can’t directly experience.
Here’s how one of the main characters describes the sound:
“The sounds… when nothing was going on. The few times there wasn’t a monster chasing us. In the quiet moments… the breeze, the creatures in the distance, insects… it all came together like… it sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before. It was like music.”
So this monster-filled world sounds like music when not in the heat of battle or trying to survive. That is an interesting take and Kirkman goes on to explain why he went this route in the book:
“Our every day white noise, especially coming from Kentucky and spending a lot of time in Georgia on the set of Walking Dead… there’s no such thing as silence. If you take a moment to realize you have crickets over here and you have wind over there, there are distant car horns, birds chirping, winds rattling through trees… then when you start applying that to another dimension, you’re thinking about the noises animals would make, and the way the breeze would sound through different fungal formations as opposed to trees. To me, it would be really remarkable to be in another dimension. I’ve never really heard about stories exploring that aspect of going to an alien world.”
The idea for working in an alien world is something that Kirkman has been toying with since the early 2000s and is only now seeing the light of day. In fact, the idea was formed before creating Skybound Entertainment and even before he was working with Marvel. It was decades in the making, and over the years Kirkman would slowly flesh it out:
“I would put it on a shelf, and a year or two would go by, and I would start thinking about new things to add to the world. This has probably been the slowest-burn concept I’ve ever had. It’s definitely the one that’s gestated the longest.”
The difference between ‘Oblivion Song’ and ‘The Walking Dead’ is that while an apocalyptic event happened in both books, this one isn’t world-ending and is localized to one area which people could enter and leave under certain circumstances. The event which transported millions to what appears to be another dimension has been cut off and the government isn’t doing anything about it. However, Nathan Cole is a scientist who keeps going in to try and save more people who are trapped there:
“It would be as if Rick Grimes could pop into the zombie apocalypse and then pop back out and go into Starbucks and talk about how difficult his work day was. It makes the story more unique when you think about it like that. What kind of character will take it upon themselves to jump into the apocalypse and risk his life every day? He doesn’t have to go over there. No one’s making him do this. He could just stay home and spend time with his girlfriend. It does not pay especially well. It’s technically illegal. He’s risking his livelihood by doing it. But still, he does it.”
The idea is a fun one, and I’m eager to see what direction the series progresses into.
If you’ve had a chance to read the first issue of ‘Oblivion Song’, did you enjoy it? What concepts from the series either have caught or lost your interest? Share your thoughts below!
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
