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COVER ART BY JAMES BIGGIE COLLECTION EDITS BY JUSTIN EISINGER AND ALONZO SIMON COLLECTION DESIGN BY JEFF POWELL PUBLISHER TED ADAMS
ISBN: 978 -1- 6 314 0 - 875 - 5
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W I L L I A M G I B S O N ’ S A RCH A N G EL . AU GU S T 2 017. FI R S T PR I N T I N G. A R C H A N G EL © 2 017 W i l l i a m G i b s o n a n d M i c h a e l St . J o h n S m i t h . A l l r i g ht s r e s e r ve d . © 2 017 I d e a a n d D e s i g n Wo r k s , L LC . T h e I DW l o g o i s r e g i s t e r e d i n t h e U. S . Pa t e n t a n d Tr a d e m a r k O f f i c e. I DW Pu b l i s h i n g, a d i v i s i o n o f I d e a a n d D e s i g n Wo r k s , L LC . Ed i t o r i a l o f f i ces: 276 5 Tr u x t u n Ro a d, S a n D i e g o, C A 9 210 6 . A ny s i m i l a r i t i e s t o p e r s o n s l i v i n g o r d e a d a r e p u r e l y c o i n c i d e n t a l. W i t h t h e e x ce p t i o n o f a r t w o r k u s e d f o r r e v i e w p u r p o s e s, n o n e o f t h e c o n t e n t s o f t h i s p u b l i c a t i o n m ay b e r e p r i n t e d w i t h o u t t h e p e r m i s s i o n o f I d e a a n d D e s i g n Wo r k s , L LC . P r i n t e d i n Kor e a . I DW Pu b l i s h i n g d o e s n o t r e a d o r a c c e p t u n s o l i c i t e d s u b m i s s i o n s o f i d e a s , s t o r i e s, o r a r t w o r k
O r i g i n a l l y p u b l i s h e d a s A R C H A N G EL i s s u e s #1– 5.
Te d A dams, C EO & P ublisher G r e g G o l ds t ein, P resident & CO O Robbie Robbins, E V P/ Sr. Gr aphi c A r t i s t C hr i s R y all, C hie f C r e a t i ve O f ficer D a v id H e d g e c o c k , Editor- in - C hie f L aur ie W in d r ow, S enior V P o f S ale s & Mar ke t in g Ma t t he w Ruzi c k a, C PA , C hie f F inanc ial O f ficer L or e l ei B unje s , V P o f Digi t al S er v i c e s J e r r y B ennin gt o n, V P o f N e w P r o d u c t Developmen t
WILLIAM GIBSON MICHAEL ST. JOHN SMITH Created by WILLIAM GIBSON and MICHAEL ST. JOHN SMITH Art by BUTCH GUICE, ALEJANDRO BARRIONUEVO, and WAGNER REIS Inks by TOM PALMER with BUTCH GUICE
Script by with
Colors by and
Letters by and
DIEGO RODRIGUEZ WES DZIOBA
SHAWN LEE GILBERTO LAZCANO
Editing and Story Breakdown by Series Edits by
MICHAEL BENEDETTO
DAVID HEDGECOCK
Special thanks to Jeff Webber for his invaluable assistance and participation in production of this series.
Art by
TULA LOTAY
Art by
TULA LOTAY
Art by
TULA LOTAY
Art by
TULA LOTAY
Art by
TULA LOTAY
I discovered World War II when I was eight, in a mildewed trunk in the basement of a house under renovation. Workmen had left a kid-sized gap, through which I’d crawled to find World War II waiting, in the form of a small color print of dueling aircraft. Perhaps it had once been attached to a wartime calendar. Its back was blank, yellowed. It was the product of some unfamiliar process, perhaps a species of lithography. The colors were dull pastels. One of the two fighters, I would learn, was a RAF Spitfire, but at that point the roundels on its wings meant nothing to me. Neither did the Luftwaffe crosses on the other plane. It caused me, somehow, this image, to experience a sort of conceptual vertigo, things in my head falling rapidly if only approximately together. How the grownups all referred to a time called The War, about which I had known, really, nothing, except for gathering somehow that during The War, which the grownups all remembered personally, things had been different. I found, looking at that print, the ability to conceptualize a previously unimaginable whole. I had seen black-and-white fragments of The War on television. I had seen The War in comics. There were plastic model kits of planes and vehicles from The War (but I was too young to build them yet). Yet I had never recognized these things as having The War in common.
In those days there was no way for a curious child to instantly access everything about The War with a few keystrokes, but eventually I would learn quite a bit about The War. I found my way into my own favorite aspects of it, which might be thought of as The Weird War: the history of the OSS, of various resistance organizations, all the most secretive and/or deeply peculiar military operations, dubious narratives of Nazi occultism, wartime proto-UFOs… So it was The Weird War that came back to me, several years ago, when my friend Michael St. John Smith first told me of a German producer he’d heard of, someone looking for material about Germany in World War II, for a German television miniseries. “Nazi flying saucers,” I said, remembering the Third Reich’s most wholly mythological secret weapon. I then told Mike whatever I remembered of foo-fighters and ghost rockets. Word of our discussion being eventually conveyed to the German television executive, he expressed, we were told, the frank disgust he felt for the utter goofy tastelessness of our suggestion. As sometimes happens, though, this rejection became our moment of collaborative triggering.
And that moment eventually became Archangel, though initially as several drafts of a feature screenplay, but culminating in a deal with IDW to turn it into a five-issue limited series. While I’ve never doubted that comics are fully a medium in their own right, the experience of being part of creating one continually underlined that for me, and often in surprising ways. I realized that I’d never become as sophisticated a consumer of comics as I had of novels or films. I hadn’t understood the number of creative decisions that have to be made, or the number of people required to make them. Meanwhile, our story, having always involved an alternate time-track, found itself being revised in order to accommodate changes in the world (ours) in which it was being published. In the end (literally the very end of the book, and only amounting to the content of a few frames) it now concludes in a way that neither Mike nor I, as co-authors, nor anyone else involved, none of the other people crucial to its production, could possibly have imagined, when we began work on our first issue. In Fritz Leiber’s The Big Time, “change winds” blow, when one or the other side in the Change Wars succeeds in altering the course of history. And change winds have blown over Archangel, since we began to publish. The radioactive retro-future ruled over by President Henderson and Junior now seems quite differently possible, and will continue to, I imagine, one way or another. So our narrative, in order to belong more meaningfully to its day, must reflect that in the end. And does, I think, the message being delivered by a single windblown sheet of newsprint, and then by that final expression on the Pilot’s face. Knowing exactly how he feels, in June of 2017, we wish you all well, and most particularly everyone who helped make this series possible. – William Gibson 8 June 2017
Art by
BUTCH GUICE Colors by DIEGO RODRIGUEZ
Art by
DAVID FABBRI Colors by DIEGO RODRIGUEZ
Art by
JAMES BIGGIE
Art by
BUTCH GUICE Colors by DIEGO RODRIGUEZ
Art by
JAMES BIGGIE
Art by
BUTCH GUICE Colors by DIEGO RODRIGUEZ
Art by
JAMES BIGGIE
Art by
JAMES BIGGIE
Art by
ALEJANDRO BARRIONUEVO Colors by WES DZIOBA
Art by
JAMES BIGGIE
Art by
WAGNER REIS Inks by TOM PALMER Colors by WES DZIOBA
Cover inks by
DAVIDE FABBRI
Unused character design by
BUTCH GUICE
JUNIOR HENDERSON:
U.S. Vice President of the dystopian alt-reality 2016. His father is the president. From page one, he takes the appearance of his Grandfather, Major Henderson (see below). He and his father are both horrible assholes. They never look like they aren’t assholes. They are cruel, smug, narcissistic uber-thugs, wrapped sanctimoniously in what’s left of the flag. Junior travels to our reality’s 1945 to corrupt it for his own purposes.
Tricky bit: Al, Junior’s grandfather, wasn’t an asshole, but by the time we meet Junior, his face has been altered to look exactly like Al’s. But the asshole still has to show through.
MAJOR GUADALUPE TORRES:
Face a study in determination, she pilots a noisy electric wheelchair and wears a brace on one leg. Her fatigues are faded and patched. Her uniform is a little shabby. Her world is ragged military, post-apocalyptic. They don’t have a lot of stuff left, are running out of things, mending things, making do. All the spit-shine is reserved for Junior and his dad. She’s hellbent on stopping Junior’s plans in 1945.
DAVIS:
Addressed as Doctor or Jack, in his fifties, tired-looking but resolute in the face of his present task. He’s the genius physicist behind the Splitter. He’s loyal to the Hendersons more out of loyalty to what’s left of the idea of America. He’s a flawed character but not inherently evil. He accidentally winds up being the one who has to try to talk Torres out of wrecking their plans.
PILOT:
Male, Marine, Hispanic. Dark tattoos from head to toe. Marine haircut, very short sides. Dressed in his camouflage/invisible creepsuit. The tattoos are black-work, like present day gang tattoos, extending up the neck and onto the sides of his skull. Tattoos look something like the style of MS 13 tattoos, La Mara Salvatrucha, but hybridized with USMC and apocalyptic symbols. Ornate “olde English” lettering styles. He’s sent to 1945 to stop Junior.
“MY MOOD BOARD: ATMOSPHERIC. MELANCHOLY. OMINOUS. DIRTY.”
ONE and TWO, A and B: Junior Henderson’s personal
bodyguards. Hulking, intimidating Blackwater contractor types. They are never named in the series and are the only characters that should have the hyper-muscular, “superhero” physique.
AIR COMMODORE GORDON TULLY: British. Naomi’s commanding officer. White-hair.
NAOMI GIVENS:
British. Royal Air Force (RAF) uniform. A flight lieutenant, early 30s, attractive without seeming to try. She’s our hero in 1945. Believes in the supernatural and unusual. Tully says of her, “Difficult enough being a woman in British Intelligence. Being a smart one is quite unforgivable.” She is determined to succeed in male-dominated military.
“I HAVE A CERTAIN KIND OF OVER-THE-TOP FEMALE CHARACTER WHO JUST NEVER GETS KILLED. THEY MAY NOT BE REALISTIC BUT I LOVE THEM, AND A LOT OF PEOPLE EVIDENTLY DO.”
CAPTAIN VINCE MATTHEWS: American army
uniform. Formerly romantically involved with Naomi. He’s her male/ U.S. counterpart throughout the story. Vince struggles between doing what is required as part of his position in the military and helping Naomi, whom he still loves. He’s tough and doesn’t believe the Pilot at first, but ultimately we like him and root for him.
FRITZ:
Young, German. A decidedly unmilitary figure, his attempt at sharp civilian attire has been artfully assembled from available remnants. Has a sort of young Bowie élan. He’s charming and clever. Acts as Naomi’s street-smart driver and black market specialist.
“EASILY THE MOST EXCITING ASPECT SO FAR HAS BEEN SEEING BUTCH BRING IT TO LIFE ON THE PAGE. TO ME, THAT’S ACTUALLY MORE AMAZING THAN SEEING SCREENPLAYS OF MINE FILMED, BECAUSE IT’S NOT THE RESULT OF HUNDREDS OF PEOPLE AND UMPTY MILLIONS OF DOLLARS, BUT OF THE TALENT OF ONE PERSON, SOMEONE WHO JUST SITS DOWN WITH A PEN AND *DOES IT BY HAND*. THAT CONTINUES TO BLOW ME AWAY.”
MR. BABY / HERR SÄUGLING:
Who does indeed look very much like a newborn infant. Hairless, pink, rosebud mouth, no visible teeth. He’s only five feet tall and dressed in an immaculate pale pre-war suit. German nightclub owner, black market specialist.
“I AM CONSTANTLY AMAZED BY BUTCH, AND HAVE A HORRIBLE FEELING THAT I AM GETTING HOPELESSLY SPOILED BY THIS FIRST EXPERIENCE!”
COLONEL YERMAKOV:
Soviet. Intelligence officer. Tully’s equivalent in the Red Army Air Force.