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Rafael Albuquerque Reflects On Dark Horse's Ei8ht

Article Image c3c2Dark Horse's Ei8ht (DEC140095) welcomes you to the Meld, an inhospitable dimension in time where Joshua, a chrononaut, finds himself trapped. See exclusive preview pages and more as Rafael Albuquerque discusses his new creator-owned series!

Click here to see a PREVIEWS Prevue!

Ei8ht #1 (DEC140095) is in comic shops February 18th.

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PREVIEWSworld: Rafael, thanks for taking the time to speak with us about the comic! For starters, can you give us a quick elevator pitch about the series for readers who may be unfamiliar with Ei8ht? How would you best classify this series in terms of genre?

Rafael Albuquerque : Hey guys. Thank you!

Ei8ht is a Sci-Fi series. Our hero is called Joshua, and he’s a simple man who has accepted a suicide mission in order to save the life of his dying wife. He lives in a sort of near-future in which we can definitely see that things went wrong. This future has been plagued by war recently and the bad guys obviously won. Segregation and poverty are everywhere.

Joshua is tasked with finding and killing the man responsible for the current state of the future and somehow change the course of history. But in his travels he ends up lost in a weird place in time called the Meld, alone and with no contact with those who sent him. Soon after his arrival a mysterious voice contacts him via his radio, a voice that seems to know a lot about him, guiding him in his unexpected journey.

Article Image 89e7PREVIEWSworld: In terms of writing and drawing, it seems like the world of Ei8ht allows for an incredible amount of creative exploration and freedom! The story’s setting, The Meld, is a sort of “catch-all” space where timelines have (in a sense) converged--anything and everything that has ever slipped through the cracks of time collects there. With a near limitless selection of possibilities, how did you decide on what kind of elements in incorporate into the story? Did you establish any “rules” or put any parameters in place while building Ei8ht’s world or did you decide to just let your imagination cut loose?

Albuquerque: I have to say, originally, being able to draw anything I wanted was the whole reason for creating this world. The story came up through this exercise. The Meld, as you said, allows us, as creators, to have access to anything that ever existed, or may yet exist in the course of Earth’s history, so there’s a lot of possibilities. However, we tried to make it believable for the reader. We had to figure out how these societies in the Meld would evolve, in their own way. An example: If we still had dinosaurs walking around, I believe humans would somehow attempt to domesticate them. These kinds of things are featured throughout  the story.

Article Image efaaPREVIEWSworld: Ei8ht’s earliest incarnation was as a creator-owned webcomic entitled Tune 8. What made you decide to serialize the story in print instead of continuing it online? How have you gone about translating the story from the web to the printed page? Has Ei8ht retained any of the content found in Tune 8, or have you completely remade the project from the ground up? Does your approach to working on a page (be it writing for, illustrating, or both) for print differ greatly from your approach for creating work for online viewing?

Albuquerque: Wow. You did your homework! You are right. Tune 8 was part of a comic project housed at a big Internet portal from Brazil. They invited some talented creators to do very different, and new weekly web comics. Since it was my very first time writing something alone, I came up with the idea of creating a universe that allowed me to draw whatever I wanted. I thought it would be easier, but it ended up being even harder by the end. So, the project was cancelled and I couldn’t really finish the story for that audience, despite the love and support from the fans. But that initial work appeared on Dark Horse's radar, and they offered me the opportunity to publish it in a five-issue mini-series. Originally I wanted to just go on with the original story, and republish what I had, but I figured out that it wouldn’t fit the new format, so I would have to change the story a bit. The series launch will be the first time this universe appears in the US, so we decided to redo the whole script and art, to make it the best that we could.

Article Image 2a83PREVIEWSworld: While Tune 8 was a solo endeavor, Mike Johnson is helping you to co-write Ei8ht. What lead you to seek out a co-writer for this series? How has Mike’s involvement helped to shape the world of Ei8ht? What is your collaborative process like while working on each issue? With previous comic projects, you’ve played with different methods of stylization and techniques to help convey the story. Are you trying anything differently with Ei8ht--in terms of penciling, layouts, inking, or color?

Albuquerque: Mike is a good friend of mine, and an amazing talent. We had briefly worked together on Superman/Batman, and I simply loved his ideas and the way he can bring action and adventure to a story. He has a past of working as a script consultant for Orci/Kurtzman, so he really knows what works and what doesn't. He brought a lot to the project, and I couldn’t imagine this book without him.

So, early last year, I went to LA with a rough idea of what I wanted in terms of script, and Mike and I met for a week, in order to nail down a solid pitch for Dark Horse. Since Superman/Batman we’ve been great collaborators and we chat all the time about our parallel projects.  Working with Mike is always pretty smooth, creative wise.

Article Image 0c16Visually, Ei8ht has been solid since the original publication. The very limited palette I've used is crucial to tell the story we wanted, and I believe the way the colors are featured is something very inventive in comics.

PREVIEWSworld: What sort of readers, do you think, will enjoy the world of Ei8ht the most? Did you create the series with a specific audience in mind? Can you give us any hints as to what’s in store for Joshua as he attempts to navigate The Meld and make it back home (wherever and whenever that may be!)?

Albuquerque: People tend to know me as a "horror artist," but the fact is that I always wanted to be able to draw any kind of story, from humor to drama, from superheroes to horror. This is my first time doing a sci-fi story, and our main inspiration is old Steven Spielberg movies. You will find a lot of action, drama, humor, and adventure in Ei8ht. We have a whole new world of possibilities, for sure, but our main goal here is creating great characters. The ones you care about.

It’s an all-ages comic, and I’m pretty sure that it will please sci-fi fans to superheroes fans and beyond all in the same way.

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