Here’s a preview to get your mind off the midsummer heat: A first look at Snowpiercer: Extinction, the prequel to the original Snowpiercer graphic novel… wait, it’s complicated.
The original Snowpiercer series was published as four volumes in French, with art by Jean-Marc Rochette and scripts from three different writers: The Escape, by Jacques Lob, The Explorers and The Crossing, by Benjamin Legrand, and Terminus, by Olivier Bocquet. When they were published in English by Titan Comics, The Explorers and The Crossing were combined into a single volume.
The series has an absolutely smashing premise: In a post-apocalyptic ice-ridden world, the remnants of humanity travel across the snow-covered landscape in a very, very long train. As in life, there are different classes with different levels of privilege aboard this train: The wealthy ride in luxurious quarters toward the front of the train, while the less well-off travel in squalor at the rear. What’s more, that train can’t run forever, so change is coming no matter what. When some folks from the rear start to move toward the front, the entire equilibrium is upset. The first volume was adapted into a film in 2013.
Now the train is leaving the station again, this time with a new writer, Matz, who is well known as the author of The Killer, Headshot and Triggerman, among others, with Rochette as artist once more. This prequel is set before the environmental catastrophe that ushers in the ice age in which the other Snowpiercer graphic novels take place. Titan will release Snowpiercer: Extinction in September 2019, and in what is probably not a coincidence, the TV adaptation of the first volume will launch at the same time on TBS in the U.S. and Netflix worldwide.
