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AfterShock Reteams with Zac Thompson and Andy MacDonald For “I Breathed a Body”

By | October 20th, 2020
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Writer Zac Thompson (“Lonely Receiver,” “Undone By Blood”) and artist Andy MacDonald (“Multiple Man,” “Rogue Planet”) will be collaborating with colorist Triona Farrell and letterer Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou at AfterShock Comics on the new speculative horror series “I Breathed a Body.”

“I Breathed a Body” investigates the spheres of social media, after influencer Mylo Caliban posts something so despicable and incendiary that it causes a reckoning for the corporate powers of Silicon Valley, a reckoning that Caliban’s manager Anne Stewart must navigate.

“Before coming to comics, I worked with YouTube influencers for years,” Thompson said. “I was a video producer creating content and attempting to leverage the labyrinthine algorithms that keep viewers engaged. Since then, the landscape of social media has changed for the worse. Fear takes precedence over all other emotions. We live in shocking times. Outrage drives engagement. Engagement drives profit and the question of the moral cost of this system has never been more important. This age of ‘content’ is inherently appalling. This series will explore the ramifications of our collective moral outrage, its role in society, how/if it can affect change, and what it means to worship content above all else. If nothing is famous for longer than five minutes, does anything matter anymore?”

By placing an emphasis on how social media encourages the worship of excess, Thompson and MacDonald look to analyze the constant barrage of extremes that the internet feeds its users, a topic similar to Thompson’s other ongoing AfterShock horror series, “Lonely Receiver.”

“This book is an indictment of the Big Tech companies who engender and profit from this vitriolic environment,” said Thompson. “It’s got a lot of fungal horror. Recently, I’ve developed a love for mushrooms and the unique space that occupy within the complex systems of nature. They are these creatures that are neither living nor dead in the conventional sense. Fungal horror has been around for a long time and I wanted to take this strange horror subgenre and propel it firmly into the future. So every issue is layered with as much speculative fungal fiction as I could muster. There hasn’t really been a horror comic like this.”

“Andy MacDonald’s art on this book is stunning,” Thompson added. “His character work is immaculate, giving each member of the cast a life of their own and brings a real pathos to the whole cast. This is a sad world, filled with broken people who hide behind excess. And finally, Andy’s impeccably detailed line work makes the horror pop off the page and burn into your eyeballs.”

“I Breathed a Body” #1 releases for US$4.99 on January 20, 2021, with a main cover by Andy MacDonald and Triona Farrell, with a variant by Trevor Henderson (above). Check below for that (gory) cover, and a five-page preview.


James Dowling

James Dowling is probably the last person on Earth who enjoyed the film Real Steel. He has other weird opinions about Hellboy, CHVRCHES, Squirrel Girl and the disappearance of Harold Holt. Follow him @James_Dow1ing on Twitter if you want to argue about Hugh Jackman's best film to date.

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