By
News Editor
February 18, 2013 - 15:00
Titan
Comics is pleased to announce the launch of Numbercrucher, a
creator-owned series by writer Si Spurrier and artist P.J. Holden. Hitting
stores on July 10, 2013, Numbercrucher is an off-the-wall romance mixing
time-travel, life-after-death and coal-black comedy.
Spurrier is a novelist, comic book writer and former BBC art director whose
career has often intertwined with flagship British science fiction comic 2000AD
and its spin-off, Judge Dredd Megazine, whether penning the tales of its
flagship character, or co-creating such unique and disturbed characters as
Lobster Random and The Simping Detective.
Currently writing the electric super-psychological adventure X-Men: Legacy
for Marvel NOW!, Spurrier has also penned adventures of Wolverine,
Ghost Rider and Punisher.
Spurrier is the writer of two critically-acclaimed post-pulp occult crime
novels, Contract and A Serpent Uncoiled, both from Hodder
Headline.
Co-creator and artist P.J. Holden, also an acclaimed regular on 2000AD and
Judge Dredd Megazine, crafting stories of Judge Dredd, Rogue Trooper,
Johnny Woo and the 86ers. Holden broke into U.S. comics with Fearless
from Image Comics. A digital comics pioneer, he designed the 'Comics
Reader App' in 2009, which was licensed by NBC for its similarly
pioneering Heroes Web comics.
Utterly unusual, vaguely insane, and unexpectedly heart-warming, Numbercrucher
follows a brilliant mathematician who dies young, enters the afterlife and
discovers a way to cheat the terrifying Divine Calculator. He schemes to be
endlessly reincarnated within the lifespan of the woman he loves, no matter how
often the violent bailiffs of the Karmic Accountancy cut short each life. It
falls to one such bailiff – the surly Bastard Zane – to put a stop to the
time-twisting romance once and for all, before the Mathematician can pull-off
his greatest trick and escape Existential Justice forever.
“When Si first proposed Numbercruncher to me, it was clear we'd need to
play with some different techniques for this multi-layered, multi-reality
story; flipping between the afterlife and the real world was a key element, and
we needed something to make those realities distinct. And, being a huge fan of
the Pressburger and Powell film A Matter of Life and Death (a romance
about a dying World War II pilot, which similarly flits between a monochromatic
afterlife and a technicolor real world), it seemed fairly obvious that the best
way to do that was to have the afterlife be a sort of dreamy, textured b&w
world, and the real world a much more comic book style, pure line art with
color. And, when Zane moves from the afterlife to the real world, crashing that
b&w into the color, visually it would be show-stopping, and look like
nothing else out there,” said P.J. Holden, co-creator.
“PJ and I worked our socks off on Numbercruncher – a time-travelling
romantic comedy thriller with more twists than Agatha Christie’s corkscrew – so
it’s enormously satisfying to see it published by such a prestigious
institution as Titan, and hugely exciting that it’s part of their new
all-original-content initiative”, said Spurrier.
“Numbercruncher is one of those intensely personal yet universally
brilliant projects you just can’t wait to get into print,” says Steve White,
senior comics editor. “Si is a master of the wonderfully off-beat idea, and PJ
has illustrated it to perfection. The new, subtle, and emotive colors by
colorist, Jordie Bellaire help round off the Titan package. This is a title
that’s flown under the radars of a lot of readers in the U.S., so it’ll be
great to finally get it into their hands.”
Numbercruncher was originally serialized in black & white in Judge
Dredd Megazine in the UK. The series is now being newly colored and
expanded for the first time by Titan Comics.
Numbercrucher #1 will hit comic stores on July 10, 2013. The series will
also be available to read day and date on the iPad, iPhone, Web, Android and
Kindle Fire, exclusively through the comiXology app.
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