Following the success of his KISSING CHAOS series, Arthur Dela Cruz is unveiling an all-new creation. Written with newcomer Neelam Arora, MY DESTROYER is a new original graphic novel series from the popular artist, and it will be published by Oni Press in July.
“Arthur and I have been wanting to collaborate for some time now,” Arora said. (Indie comics readers may remember her name from last year’s SPX anthology, where a story she wrote and drew appeared.) “MY DESTROYER grew out of a desire to have him illustrate something different, something far afield from KISSING CHAOS. We started talking about the future and the sort of techno manga and sci-fi we liked, and the story tumbled out of there.”
MY DESTROYER is set in a distant future where the government has placed strict regulations on free expression and human interaction. This doesn’t stop people from being born with the artistic impulse, though, and many young people are cursed with a desire to create and no way to do so. Skye is just such a girl. She sees wonderful pictures in her head that she wants to put on paper, but must do so in secret. But secrets are not anything new for her-she is forced to live with cybernetic enhancements that the common populace thinks makes her a freak.
“The story begins to take off when Skye gets caught up in a larger plot,” Dela Cruz said. “She ends up in between an underground movement that sees her potential and the army, who wants that potential squashed. And in the midst of the chaos, she really only wants what every young girl wants: to be loved.”
“We definitely wanted to retain the romantic element that Arthur is known for,” Arora adds. “Even in his violent crime stories, Arthur’s central concern is the relationships between boys and girls and really, whoever. I am very much the same way. We wanted MY DESTROYER to have a human heart, since in the end, it’s all about the suppression of that heart. Whether it’s art or dating or how one wants to dress, when you stop people from being who they are, you’re really stopping something that isn’t nearly as surface as those elements suggest.”
“We were immediately drawn to Arthur and Neelam’s proposal,” said Oni Press editor in chief Jamie S. Rich. “Sci-fi isn’t normally our bag, but MY DESTROYER has a mainstream appeal that Oni loves. Plus, with the whole romance element, and imagining Arthur drawing the urban landscape of tomorrow-we were all really excited by the possibilities.”
MY DESTROYER vol. 1 is a 168-page trade paperback, featuring black-and-white story and art, printed at digest size. It ships to comic book stores on July 14, 2004, and retails for $14.95. The ISBN for MY DESTROYER is 1-929998-94-5. It’s suggested for mature readers.
Readers looking for more KISSING CHAOS can rest assured that another one-shot will be released by the end of the year, rounding out the series of adventures that will comprise volume 3 and point the way to the next full-length series in 2005.
My Destroyer is ? & © 2004 Neelam Arora & Arthur Dela Cruz. Oni Press logo and icon are ? & © 2004 Oni Press, Inc. All rights reserved. Oni Press logo and icon artwork created by Dave Gibbons.
