BOOM! Studios is ready to unleash another whopper of a miniseries. If you're fascinated with stories about assassins and reincarnation, you'll definitely want to check out the upcoming WELCOME BACK. The first issue is on sale August 19 and is written by Christopher Sebela with art by Jonathan Brandon Sawyer. (The FOC is Monday, July 27 so talk to your comic shop ASAP).
We got our hands on a copy of the first issue and asked Sebela some questions about the series and what we can expect.
COMIC VINE: The first issue is pretty crazy and awesome. How do you describe the story to others?
CHRISTOPHER SEBELA: I’ve been having trouble with coming up with a quick elevator pitch for the book, honestly. “Reincarnated assassins in an eternal war hunting each other through life after life” is the bare bones way to describe the plot, but then I miss out on describing our main characters. So then it becomes “What if that aimless feeling you sometimes/always feel was because you haven’t woken up and remembered all your past lives and why you’re here? What would you do when you do wake up?” Or I go the clever route with “Romeo and Juliet meets Full Metal Jacket by way of reincarnation.” I feel like there’s a lot of different facets to the book that will appeal to a lot of different readers, so it’s hard to describe it just right for that individual reader. There’s all sorts of elements from action to horror to surrealism to romance to philosophy in it.
CV: Where did the idea of reincarnated assassins battling each other come from?
SEBELA: No idea anymore. I had the idea several years ago, just one of those things that bobbed up out of my brain that I seized on, even if I had no idea where it was headed. I had the idea and the title, but Welcome Back was a lot different when I came up with it. A lot darker. I tried writing it as a novel and it was too big, too formless, so I just made notes and eventually approached it as a comic and it began to make more sense that way.
Then when I met Jonathan Brandon Sawyer and we started kicking it around, it completely opened up to become this entirely different story than even the one I’d pitched BOOM!! initially. I’m really curious about the big unsolvable mysteries, and death and what happens after we die is probably the biggest mystery of all. While reincarnation is a nice comforting thought, it feels like there’s a lot of bad that could come with such a thing, so I naturally drifted into that end of the pool and tried to see what I could pull out of it.
CV: How did the character designs process with Jonathan come about?
SEBELA: Jonathan and I met pretty early in the process, and we talked a lot about what we wanted this book to be. It was only through talking with him and bouncing ideas back and forth that we broke the story out into something totally new. With character designs, I try not to get in the artist’s way. What I usually do is write up a paragraph about the character, talking about their lives, stuff they’re into, the way they think and react, ethereal-type stuff. I give that to the artist and let them decide how they want to approach it. It’s sort of like a police sketch artist, but if you only described a person in terms of who they are rather than what they look like.
Jonathan tore into the character designs, he’s talked to the bands whose logos Mali is sporting on her clothes and got their approval to use them, we discussed how Tessa’s tactical suit would function, he’s thrown in all these little details I never dreamed of that really make the characters feel real. Jonathan seemingly went down into his secret lab and came back up with designs that blew me away the first time I saw them. That’s kind of what he does on every page too, just knocks it right out of the park in a way I never anticipated.
CV: There's a great mix of action and character development in the first issue. As we get to know the characters better, is the action going to keep getting cranked up?
SEBELA: I like action. Action is fun, but it also feels like it should serve the character building more than anything. I never want things to turn into a wall-to-wall explosion and punching fest, unless that somehow works to really unfolding who these people are and how they’re reacting to this insane situation going on around them. I try to keep it pretty balanced between character stuff and action stuff for the most part. I definitely lean more towards characters, because they’re what keep me interested in the story and how I get invested and stay invested. Action stuff is just fun as hell, but if it’s only there for fun, my eyes kinda glaze over. So… hopefully the rest of the issues have the same balance as the first one. Sometimes it’ll be more of the former, sometimes the latter but it’s never an either/or situation, just more a matter of figuring out what chemistry works with this particular issue in front of you.
CV: What's the advantage or disadvantage in writing this as a four-issue miniseries?
SEBELA: There’s a nice brevity to doing a 4 issue thing. As a writer, it really helps me hone things down to just what’s necessary. I can definitely get flowery and profuse in my writing sometimes, so knowing I have this set amount of pages sets some nice boundaries and keeps me from lingering too much on stuff that isn’t important. It opens you up to creative solutions to use the language of comics to tell your story. Comics lets you tell stories in a very different way than other mediums, and when you just have 4 issues to work with, you start figuring out some creative tricks you never thought of before.
The disadvantage is this is a much longer story than just 4 issues. Mali and Tessa have been hunting each other for hundreds of thousands of years across continents and wars and history. Trying to sum it all up in 4 issues is nigh-on impossible. But we’re hopeful that the book will do well enough to let us tell the whole story in these neat little 4-issue arc servings.
CV: Could you see revisiting the characters or world in another miniseries?
SEBELA: The ultimate goal is to get enough people onboard with this first arc to justify doing more. It’s hard because there’s so many great books coming out these days, as a reader I definitely feel stretched. But doing this story in 4 issue chunks feels perfect to space it out, to give you a whole story and then build on it with the next 4 issues. Plus whenever we finish with Mali and Tessa’s story, there’s a hundred thousand other Sequels running around gunning for each other, some of them doing even more spectacular things, some of them working crap jobs both in their regular lives and in their secret Sequel lives. I feel like there’s a whole universe of characters and lives we can explore in this book down the road.
CV: What do you think you might've done in past lives?
SEBELA: Weirdly, I’ve still never really thought about it too much. I suppose if reincarnation was real, I probably didn’t do anything amazing by history’s view. I probably worked jobs, had people I loved, raised families, had some dreams I never fulfilled, died with some regrets. Maybe it’s possible I was a knight or a skilled warrior or a head of state who changed lives, but statistically speaking, the odds are pretty low. I kinda think maybe in a past life I was a dog and that’s why I get along so well with dogs, but that’s just an operating theory.
But that’s what drew me to reincarnation is that it explains the diversity in each person’s head and personality. No one is one fixed thing, everyone is a mixture of contradictions and opposing feelings, sometimes ones even they don’t understand. That maybe this is what explains it. We’re all in this life after having been all kinds of people, genders, nationalities, ethnicities and beliefs, we have the potential to tap into all those old lives, those old memories, to relate more with the people around us, to understand the world we live in.
I think that’s what’s fascinating about reincarnation as a concept is it’s just like regular life in a way. You gain all these experiences as you go, and you try to apply them best to the life that’s in front of you at the moment, hoping maybe you learned something useful on the way.
Don't miss out on WELCOME BACK. Let your comic shop know you need a copy. FOC (Final Order Cut-off) is Monday, July 27. Here's an exclusive preview for the first issue.
WELCOME BACK #1
(W) Christopher Sebela (A) Jonathan Brandon Sawyer (CA) Jonathan Brandon Sawyer, James Harvey
What's to Love: We believe Christopher Sebela is one of the most exciting new comic writers and his idea of reincarnated assassins who are forever fighting, killing, and loving each other throughout endless lives is another reason why. Plus, Jonathan Brandon Sawyer's (Critical Hit) expressive art style reminds us of Becky Cloonan and Sean Gordon Murphy, and it's just perfect for Welcome Back.
What It Is: Mali and Tessa have lived hundreds of different lives throughout time, caught up in an eternal cycle as they take part in a war so old that neither side remembers what they're fighting for anymore. As Mali wakes up in her newest life, she suddenly becomes self-aware and starts to question everything, especially why she continues to fight. But elsewhere, Tessa is already on the hunt...
Item Code: JUN151070 In Shops: 8/19/2015 SRP: $3.99
