Dark Horse teams with synthwave band The Midnight for a new graphic novel

Music and comics will collide in a new graphic novel this fall, as the synthwave band The Midnight teams with Dark Horse for The Midnight: Shadows.

Written by Zack Kaplan with art by Stephen Thompson and artist Jahnoy Lindsay, the graphic novel is about a soon-to-be father who gets literally sucked into a cyberpunk video game from his youth called The Midnight. Colorist Thiago Rocha and letterer DC Hopkins round out the team.

“Before I got the privilege to write this graphic novel, I was a fan,” Kaplan said. “Intoxicated by the immersive beats and heartfelt lyrics since their very first demo. It was no surprise to me to see them become one of today’s best synthwave bands. Their presence is so narrative that it was dying to be shared in this form. And it’s been a joy to bring it all to comic life, to partner with Dark Horse for such a vivid and mind-bending series, and to create this electrifying world with a powerhouse creative team, Stephen, Jahnoy, Thiago and DC, that will blow your mind with one visually stunning page after the next. Whether you are a listener of the music or you just love a good sci-fi adventure, we cannot wait to take you to that place half in dark and half in light, where arcade dreams are a reality, where heroes battle monsters. Get ready for a truly epic, synth wave adventure.”

Here’s the description from Dark Horse:

Twenty-something young man Jason is on the precipice of parenthood with his childhood sweetheart. Struggling with the loss of his adolescence, Jason is sucked back into THE MIDNIGHT, a cyberpunk game from his childhood. As the helmeted hero who travels to the post-apocalyptic Neverland in the year 2085, he is the hero who once vanquished the shadow monsters, and they believe he has returned to his actual reality to do it again.

With two different realities beckoning him home, Jason must reconcile which world he belongs to and how he can embrace adulthood without losing himself.

“The creative MO of The Midnight has always been to ‘combine not confine,’ said Tyler Lyle of The Midnight. “We noticed early on that creative people in other fields were taking our music and adding video, VR worlds, digital art, photography and the world of The Midnight kept expanding. We were thrilled to be able to work with Zack and this amazing creative team to help to add even more flesh on our creative skeleton. What is nostalgia? Does it indicate an escape from ‘normal life’ or does it provide the wisdom to help us escape INTO it? The graphic novel is a medium that allows a much bigger and more complex story to be told, and we couldn’t be more excited to watch that story slowly become real.”

The Midnight, made up of Lyle and his musical partner Tim McEwan, have been making music for about a decade. They’ve released five studios and, most recently, a live album. In addition to the standard edition of the graphic novel, the band will be selling limited and deluxe versions on their website, which include things like art prints, guitar picks, a 12″ vinyl LP picture disc and other items.

Look for the graphic novel to be released the first week of October.