Sometimes it's good to be by yourself. The world can be a hectic and challenging place and when it all gets to be too much it's good to have a quiet place to go and be alone with your thoughts. Away from the mutants. And the killing. Somewhere silent and still. Away from the flesh eating zombies and robotic assassins. A place burning with radioactive fallout and deadly nerve agents... a quiet, still place where a person can gather their thoughts. If there's one person who understands this need for silence it's a man named LONE. But there's a good chance that you wouldn't know this about him just by reading the comic that bears his name. His zen-like sense of inner peace could easily be overlooked as he toasts mutants with a flame-thrower, single handedly decapitates zombies with his bare hands, or guns down a marauding biker gang (and their skanky and vicious robot girlfriends as well). Yet Lone's deep serenity is always there, under the brim of his hat, behind those beady, steel-cold eyes, just the other side of his genetically enhanced cerebrum, hidden back down somewhere near his medulla oblongata. Peace and calm, which from time to time is overshadowed by bone snapping brawls which would make even a video game jealous.
Tapping into a character like Lone isn't easy. You need someone who understands both the chaos and the quiet. Someone who can find a sliver of heaven while surrounded by hell. Possibly someone who worked as a comics editor for a number of years. Fortunately the call to write Lone was answered by just such a man -- Stuart Moore. From his subterranean bunker in Brooklyn, Stuart has been able to channel the future and put it down in writing. Like some post-apocalyptic Nostradamus, Stuart sits staring into a bowl of Cheetos, pen in one hand, clutching his aching head with the other, as horrific, exciting visions of Lone issue forth and are put down on paper.
But words alone aren't enough to convey Lone's story. Pictures of his hellish future world are necessary to truly express what his existence is really like. Thankfully fate smiled upon all of us when the artistic genius of Jerome Opeña was discovered. A reclusive genius, Jerome sits in the quiet solitude of his private castle on a man-made mountain near San Francisco where he puts down the thin lines of sublime mayhem which make up Lone. Opeña captures the fine detailed clutter of a world which has been wadded up and tossed away, and the people of that world who have pulled themselves from the rubble to fight and live yet another day.
Together Stuart and Jerome will transport you to this future. A future where adventure and peril blow like a hot wind out of the dusty west. A future where nearly anything can happen. A future guarded by a man just looking for a little peace and quiet. A man named LONE.
Dave Land
Editor