AfterShock is bringing readers a technicolor apocalypse in its latest series “We Live,” co-written by Roy Miranda and Inaki Miranda, with art by Inaki Miranda, coloring by Eva de la Cruz, and lettering by Dave Sharpe. The story, set in 2084, follows five-year-old Hototo after being selected as one of the five thousand people who will be saved from Doomsday by a group of benevolent aliens. His thirteen-year-old sister Tala has to get him to the beacon before they run out of time.
“I’m very excited for the release of this book, the whole team is. Roy, Eva and I have poured so much love and hard work into this book. And at the same time there’s a weird feeling dancing in my head, because destiny has placed ‘We Live’s’ launch in the middle of an unprecedented moment in history that is very close to this story. We, humans, are living through a unique collective tragic experience with the current pandemic situation,” said Inaki Miranda. “I’d love this book to be experienced as a parallel read, in some magical way, to all the adversities that we are going through right now. I’d love for Tala and Hototo’s journey to turn into a part of the readers’ own journey as well. That’s the magic of storytelling, it’s all about the metaphors that we can recreate and the emotions that we can extrapolate into our own lives.”
Roy Miranda cited Hayao Miyazaki, Cormac McCarthy’s The Road, and Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn as inspirations for the book. “‘We Live’ is a story about defeat. It talks about a human race that has accepted its own extinction. Imagine what it‘s like to begin an adventure in that emotional state,” he said. “We have combined two great human conflicts like desperate migration and the consequences of climate change, and we have placed them on the shoulders of two innocent kids. That right there is a fabulous blend of fairy dust and powder in the pockets of imagination.”
“We Live” #1 releases October 14 with a cover by Inaki Miranda, and an incentive cover by Dustin Nyugen. Below is a selection of preview pages and character sketches, all by Inaki.
