Dead Kings Arrives This Fall From Steve Orlando and Matthew Dow Smith

CBR

By Jon Arvedon

Published Jul 18, 2018

The dirty folklore world of Thrice-Nine limps along this fall in AfterShock Comics' Dead Kings, by Steve Orlando and Matthew Dow Smith.

This fall, writer Steve Orlando and artist Matthew Dow Smith team up with AfterShock Comics to deliver a brand new series that dabbles in magic, the supernatural and the struggles of surviving in a post-apocolyptic world: Dead Kings.

“DEAD KINGS is a Post-Post-Apocalypse," Orlando said in a statement. The human spirit, and species, is enduring, even after we've invoked science and sorcery to drive ourselves to global war. In DEAD KINGS, there is no mystery to magic, it's simply assets and technology, and like any other type of dangerous technology, we've abused it to create massive diesel-punk war machines that nearly destroyed the world... This is Russian Folklore to the tune of Blade Runner 2049, and it's going to take you to a world you've never seen...the world a generation after the end of the world, where the first sprouts of goodness are fighting to grow up through the cracks."

“Honestly, I have yet to see an Aftershock title I haven’t loved," Smith said about working with the publisher on Dead Kings. "It’s such a diverse roster of talents, concepts, and genres, from Bennet and de Latorre’s Animosity to Ellis and Hester’s Shipwreck to Layman and Kieth’s Eleanor and the Egret. Any time I see an AfterShock book on the shelf, I know there’s going to be something new and fresh and unexpected inside, and it’s one of the reason I was so excited this project is coming out under their banner. They’ve built something special and it’s a thrill to get to be part of it.”

Check out the full solicitation text and preview art below:

DEAD KINGS #1

Steve Orlando (W) • Matthew Dow Smith (A)
Cover by Matthew Dow Smith
Variant Cover by Michael Gaydos
NEW SERIES!
Thrice-Nine took Sasha's brother, and it took Maria's heart.
Plagued by the ramifications of a techno-magic world now thirty years gone, Thrice-Nine is a dirty folklore world that limps along, degenerating into a place filled with paranoia and poison. Sasha Vasnetsov thought he’d escaped all that, but when news comes that his younger brother has been kidnapped by the secret police, he finds himself dragged back into the madness with a simple goal—to find his brother.
But Sasha is going to need help to do this, and he enlists Maria Kamenaya, a former warrior with hundreds of enemy kills to her name, who was betrayed by the very country she served. This quest is how they get both of those things back, in the lawless land of decapitated states...the land of DEAD KINGS.
Written by Steve Orlando (Batman/Shadow, Crude, Midnighter, VIRGIL) and drawn by Matthew Dow Smith (October Girl, Suicide Squad, X-Files) DEAD KINGS is an in-depth exploration of retribution, in all its dark, complex forms.
In Shops: October 24, 2018
32 PGS./Rated T+ …$3.99