Next Stop, Exit City!

Cyberpunk Murder Mystery in the Techno-Dystopian Art Scene

One of the best things about working with Mad Cave for me has been getting to know Mark London, the visionary founder, talented writer, and architect of their interconnected Underworld universe.

Mark loves comics, full stop. It’s been his dream, like many of ours, to create a fully functioning comic universe to rival Marvel and DC. And he’s taken the first steps towards achieving that with Underworld - where the world is a stage for a conflict between shadowy conspiracies, mystical forces, and deadly assassins. You can see this conflict play out in the first 3 Underworld series, Revolution 9, Hour of the Wolf, and Exit City, all building towards their first big crossover in Endless Night.

But it doesn’t end there - Mark and Mad Cave have big plans for the future of Underworld, and I was honored to be asked to contribute to them by taking over Exit City for a story arc - and I’m proud to announce that I’m writing EXIT CITY #5-#8, available starting in April!

So what is Exit City? Imagine if all the worst billionaires in the world, the Peter Thiels, Elon Musks, and Jeff Bezoses (Bezi?) all got together and built a city in the middle of the ocean, a techno paradise where they finally got everything they wanted - unregulated development, no constraints on research, exploitation, or any of the pesky checks that functioning governments impose on oligarchs.

But people still have to live there, right? So they need things like police and fire departments, food service, entertainment, all of that - so its become a place where the desperate and dispossessed can come and make a living in the shadows of the neon giants. And that’s where we come in.

Exit City 5 launches a new story arc, Vitruvian, that explores the art scene of Exit City, both the corporate-sponsored commercial scene, and the underground world of grafitti and performance art - and what happens when a new player decides that murder is the only way they can express themselves.

If you know me, you know how I feel about AI art, and one of the things I wanted to explore here was the idea of creativity, art, and personal expression in a world that seems hooked on mass produced slop. About the dangers artists face when ceding control of their work to corporate sponsors, and the sheer disdain profiteers have for anything but the physical price tag on artwork.

Along the way, I get to explore some really fun and interesting protagonists in DetectivesMcCormick and Miller, Exit City’s pair of misfit cops. Miller is a no-nonsense, ass-kicking wisecracker who’s not afraid to get her hands dirty or bend the rules when necessary - while McCormick is practically a living computer - having been experimented on to enable parallel processing in his brain - which presents the other theme I’m exploring - can you trust what you see, what you know, when you don’t have full control over what your brain is being fed? Can you make rational decisions when you’re being constantly flooded with information?

Big questions. Relevant ones. And we’ll be exploring them over the course of this arc, filled with plenty of action, intrigue, and laughs, to boot. And when you see the art of Tom Derenick, Fran Gamboa, and Dave Sharpe, I’m sure you’ll wind up loving this book just as much as I do.

I really hope you’ll check it out, and the rest of Underworld… it’s all building with continuations of the original series, and completely new ones, and while I don’t know all the plans, the ones I do, I’m very excited for.

As always, the best way to support the book is to let your comic retailer know you want it, and to spread the word about it to friends, and online - every mention really helps, so please do what you can!

More to come, including preview pages once they drop!

Thanks,
Rich