New comics publisher Bad Idea is gearing up for the release of its debut series, ENIAC by Matt Kindt and Doug Braithwaite. The prestige-format limited series is due out in select comic shops this May, but -- ahead of that -- the publisher has shared a few unfinished pages from the project exclusively with CBR.
The CBR-exclusive pages (below) appear to be pulled from several different sequences in the oversized, 40-page first issue. They show the series' main characters, Agents Falk and Fletcher, as well as some flashbacks to the AI's creation during World War II and the destruction it wrought shortly thereafter. Additionally, they offer a sneak peek at an elite squadron of soldiers who speed towards danger in a motorboat.
According the series synopsis,
At the height of World War II, the world's most ingenious minds began a race to create a super-weapon capable of ending the war with the push of a button. One of those projects gave us the atom bomb...and another produced the world's first supercomputer: ENIAC (Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer) – an immeasurably complex mathematical model that targeted the Axis war machine by calculating missile trajectories and troop deployments.
Everybody knows that. It's real-life American history.
Or so we were told.
On August 6th, 1945, the United States dropped the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima.
Three days later, a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki... Only President Truman wasn't the one who gave order.
It was ENIAC.
In the Allies' determination to end the war, they had accidentally created the world's first autonomous machine intelligence...which had quickly deduced that one bomb wouldn't be enough.
But ENIAC's real plan was only just beginning...
Now, 75 years later, an encrypted countdown has just been detected in Earth's satellite network and mankind only has three days left before ENIAC launches every weapon in the planet's nuclear arsenal simultaneously. With few options and even less time, the Secretary of Defense has just given two covert operatives the most important mission in human history: kill ENIAC.
"In 80 years, this AI that's super-intelligent, what would it do? I don't even think it would care about killing or harming humanity. I think it's above that, but in a way, it has a loftier goal that doesn't involve us," Kindt teased in an interview with CBR. "Humanity is the problem. We're the ones that are threatened by this thing. It's like we're the dumb ones threatened by this super intelligent thing and so, in a lot of ways, we're kind of the enemy."
"The way the story is set up, from the early 20th century passing through [to today], which is quite unique to me. I've never really had the opportunity to do something like that. Obviously, I've done stories which were set in certain time frames, but they were specifically within those kind of general eras, but this is covering a whole swath of very important eras and they way they all link up together is quite intriguing," Braithwaite added.
Matt Kindt and Doug Braithwaite's ENIAC #1 goes on sale in select comic shops starting May 6.
