The end of the world is here…and, appropriately enough, it sounds very punk.
Hitting bookstores in June 2022, WHAT’S THE FURTHEST PLACE FROM HERE? depicts a world with very little refuge outside of music. At the center of this sonic, post-apocalypse is The Academy, one of the many gangs roving the wasteland. Gang member Sid, however, is looking to go “solo.” Apparently, something is calling out to her in the vast nothingness, and nobody is going to stop her. So she thinks…
In the following interview, writer Matthew Rosenberg about WHAT’S THE FURTHEST PLACE FROM HERE?, reuniting with 4 Kids Walk Into A Bank artist Tyler Boss, and… playing those post-apocalyptic hits.
Diamond: Catch us up to speed. What is the setting for What’s The Furthest Place From Here?
Matt Rosenberg: Our story is set well after the world as we know it has ended. What we’re left with are the ruins of our past lives, a lot of questions, and gangs of children. Each gang has taken up residence in various buildings and themed their gang around that building. So the kids who live in the police station dress in blue and travel around enforcing their own rules, the kids who live in the bank horde things they perceive to be valuable and trade with all the other gangs, and so on. But our story follows a gang called The Academy, who are sort of outcasts of this new world. They live in a record store and devote their lives to protecting the records in their care. Someone described it as the High Fidelity version of Mad Max, which it really isn’t, but it was funny so now I’m saying it to you. Probably not helpful.
Diamond: What made you want to set this in a post-apocalypse?
Matt Rosenberg: When Tyler Boss and I were finishing 4 Kids Walk Into A Bank we were very conscious of not trying to just make the same book again. We both loved making that book, and people seemed to really connect to it, so it’s an easy trap to fall into. So we set out to make a book that had all the stuff we love and didn’t get to do in 4 Kids. With that in mind, we just combined a bunch of stuff we love and whipped it all together until it made sense. What we ended up with had some sci-fi world-building, epic fantasy adventures, nagging mysteries, and some creeping horror. From there came this post-apocalyptic world we find ourselves in. It’s really a case of the story informing the world as much as the world informing the story.
Diamond: Tell us about Sid. Why do we follow her through this story, specifically?
Matt Rosenberg: Sid is the heart of the gang. She is one of the youngest members, so the others often seek to protect her. But she’s also a wide-eyed dreamer. She believes that a different world is possible from the one they live in and she wants to find it. It’s up to the others to protect her, both emotionally and physically, from her own hopes and dreams. But she’s also stubborn and independent, so trying to stop her once she has an idea in her head is nearly impossible. In the first issue, we see her determination prove to be both a blessing and a curse.
Diamond: How did What’s The Furthest Place From Here? come about as a project?
Matt Rosenberg: The honest answer is that it came from Tyler and myself knowing we had more stories we wanted to tell together. As we wrapped 4 Kids Walk Into A Bank we were going back and forth about a dozen different ideas, all stuff we want to get to eventually. We finally chose this book because we kept coming back to it with new ideas. To me, when you have a story idea and it keeps expanding in your head when you’re not working, that’s a good sign and you should chase that. So in a lot of ways, this is just the story that wanted to be told the most.
Diamond: How did you and Tyler go about visualizing your post-apocalypse? Did you pull from particular comics or movies or something else entirely?
Matt Rosenberg: We sort of pull from everything. I know it’s very in vogue for creators to try and obscure and distance themselves from their influences but we’re pretty passionate about the stuff we like and are always down to reference it. The list is long but for comics stuff like Sweet Tooth, Y: The Last Man, Akira, The Walking Dead, Judge Dredd, AAMA, Wasteland, Tank Girl, East of West, Days of Future Past, The Dark Knight Returns, The Eternaut, Something is Killing the Children, X’Ed Out. Stuff like that. But also we’re inspired by stuff like The Road, A Canticle For Liebowitz, A Boy and His Dog, I Am Legend, The Dark Tower, Mad Max, The Warriors, La Jetée, Logan’s Run, Lost Highway, Escape From New York, and old punxploitaition movies like Suburbia. We like a lot of stuff.
Diamond: In terms of audience, who is this book for?
Matt Rosenberg: I’d like to say…anyone? I guess that’s a copout answer. It’s for fans of adventure tales, and sci-fi epics, and coming-of-age stories, and great art. There’s some horror and there’s some humor in there too. At its heart, it is a character-driven story growing up and outgrowing all the things you thought would be your whole world, and it’s about found families, and forged identities, and the awesomely fragile power of things that separate us. And it’s about looking for a future in a world that doesn’t have one. And it’s about becoming your parents. If any of that makes sense to you, give us a shot.
