Ten days ago, Scott Snyder and Tony S. Daniel lifted the lid on Nocternal, a brand new creator-owned series they’re funding through Kickstarter that promptly smashed its base funding goal the day it went live. The campaign is still underway, but Nocternal is making a little change — for the benefit of the series and comics that came before it.
As well as a look at some early artwork from Daniel’s interiors of the first issue, we can confirm that Nocternal is, well, Nocternal no more: after hearing concerns that the name might be a little too similar to other comics projects, the series is being retitled as Nocterra.
“What’s been exciting about the Kickstarter is bringing fans behind the curtain to see how comics are made,” Snyder said in a statement provided to Gizmodo. “The collector’s edition spotlights both Tony’s dynamic line work and how the story evolves from the initial script to what you see in the final comic, and then there’s all the behind-the-scenes stuff for backers, like the AMAs we’re doing throughout the campaign.”
But Nocternal, despite its immediate funding success, also hit a little snag about the process of comics creation its creative team didn’t quite intend, according to Snyder. “Sometimes you know a title right away, like I did with American Vampire,” Snyder continued. “Sometimes it’s a journey and that’s the case here.”
“It’s come to our attention that other creators had story titles that were too similar to Nocternal. Even though the subject matter and spelling were different, we’re changing the name of our series, both out of respect to the other creators and to not cause confusion for fans,” Snyder explained. “The series will [now] be called Nocterra, and we can’t wait to share it with you.”
The change might seem slight at first, but according to Snyder, it still fits for what is now Nocterra’s world — a near future where the sun has not risen over the world for a decade. “Noct suggests night, and terra suggests the earth,” Snyder concluded. “So for us this title says everything we want: The earth has become a planet engulfed in a never ending night.”
Being developed with colorist Tomeu Morey and letterer Deron Bennett, and edited by Will Dennis, Nocterra’s dark world follows a young survivor named Valentina “Val” Riggs, who makes a name for herself as a courier traversing the shadow-soaked plains carrying passengers and supplies between safe havens of artificial light. Which is a good thing, because if you spend too much time in the mysterious dark that’s covered the world, you slowly but surely turn into a monstrous being, dubbed “shades” by humanity’s remnant. Check out a few uncolored pages of Daniel’s work on Nocterra #1 below, making their debut here on Gizmodo!
The Kickstarter campaign for Nocterra isn’t actually funding the series itself — the ongoing comic will be published by Image Comics starting in early 2021, under a new label Snyder is beginning called Best Jackett Press. Instead, it’s to give fans an early sneak preview of the series in the form of a special, behind-the-scenes collector’s edition of the first issue, presenting not just the comic itself, but Snyder’s original script for the issue side by side, allowing fans to see just how a comic transforms into its final form. A pledge of $14 can net you a digital copy of the issue, as well as access to Reddit AMAs and art livestreams with the creative team, while pledges of $35 get you a softcover version of the issue, and $62 nets you a signed hardcover.
To see more, head on over to Kickstarter, where you can support the campaign until it closes on September 18
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