Alexandra Grant has announced an upcoming comic series, Nano, which she says was shaped during her grueling battle with COVID-19.
The three-part sci-fi series, created with Matt Kindt, began when Grant revisited a novel he wrote two decades earlier.
“I got really sick, I got super COVID and I tested positive for 16 days. I mean, I was hallucinating,” she said. People.
“By the sixth day, I was thinking, What am I going to do? I couldn’t leave the room. So I went to my computer, and I found my novel from 20 years ago, and I rewrote it, but I rewrote it in my COVID fever dream phase.”
The idea was turned into a comic focusing on Sana, an operative navigating a secret organization and a high-risk mission, and then shared with Matt Kindt, who writes the BRZRKR series with Reeves.
“Matt came to our house a lot, working with Keanu,” she said of Kindt, who then offered to work with her through Dark Horse Comics.
“So I became acquainted with him and he asked me once to send him something. I asked if I could send him something in return,” she recalled. “He didn’t respond for weeks! I said, ‘Oh, he hates it.’ Then finally he wrote back and said, ‘I’d like to offer you a comic-book deal through my imprint with Dark Horse Comics.’
She added, “I came up with the story and the characters and he (Kindt) helped shape the narrative.”
The process also included selecting an illustrator, for which Grant went out of his way to choose Brazilian artist Natasha Bustos after being sent a list of “white men”.
Grant said, “Natasha has never been given a comic book to do from beginning to end… and she is completely extraordinary.” “She took words and imagination and completely embodied them.”
Grant described nanotechnology as a collision between science and nature, a mixture of technology, magic and power. “I wanted this character to be completely charming… smart… frustrated by the patriarchy. But it’s also about the power of nature and magic’s conflict with masculinity, toxicity, and authoritarianism.”
“Nano is a story I’ve been dreaming about for over twenty years – the collision of two worlds – of science and technology and of magic and nature,” Grant said in a statement.
“I think we’re all still suffering from COVID in some way, but what I experienced was one of creative isolation… It was a very creative time for many artists,” she said. “We were isolated, yet connected… It was science-fiction for all of us.”
Meanwhile, Kindt said, “It started as a literal fever dream that Alexandra had and was sharing with me. It was so vivid and complex that I was desperate to see it come to life. It has such big and wild ideas that it feels perfect for comics and I’m honored to be a part of it.”
