Rush are bringing the story of their 2012 album, “Clockwork Angels”, to the world of comic books next spring.
USA Today reports the 6-issue Boom! Studios miniseries Clockwork Angels will launch in March.
Rush lyricist/drummer Neil Peart hatched the coming-of-age story of a naïve youngster in a turn-of-the-century world of airborne steam liners, pirates, carnivals, working alchemy and wind-up contraptions with novelist Kevin J. Anderson, who wrote the Clockwork Angels novel and is also penning the comic-book adaptation.
"Kevin and I had talked for years about combining a novel and an album in some fashion,” explains Peart, “but I guess the idea had to grow up as Kevin and I did — gaining maturity and confidence in our own separate crafts, while gaining the life experience necessary to give the story its scale and depth. So, rather than a longtime dream realized, this project is more like a fantastic new dream unfolding before us."
With a feel and tone of Norman Rockwell crossed with The Hobbit, Clockwork Angels introduces teenage Owen Hardy, an assistant apple-orchard manager in a small, out-of-the-way British country village who's in line to get a major promotion when he turns 18.
However, he wants to leave the Tick Tock Tavern and other familiar spots behind to find his fate in the metropolis of Crown City.
Anderson inserted Rush lyrics into the prose of the Clockwork Angels novel, and similarly he's sprinkling easter eggs in the comic, taking references from various Rush albums and sneaking them into back corners of panels and clouds in the sky.
"We think Rush fans are attentive and intelligent," he says. "It just gives them the extra thrill of seeing that this isn't just a straightforward story. There's a lot of interconnected things, too.”
Rush recently released a new live DVD entitled “Clockwork Angels Tour.”
The band were filmed and recorded last November at the American Airlines Arena in Dallas, Texas for the project.
See also:
VIDEO: Rush release Subdivisions from Clockwork Angels Tour DVD
Rush: Clockwork Angels Tour TV premiere announced
Rush stamp collectible available from Toronto’s First Post Office
Rush guitarist reveals band’s plans for 2014
Search Rush at hennemusic
