With the trailer for M. Night Shyamalan’s next film After Earth (due out on June 7) starring the father and son team of Will and Jaden Smith already playing in theaters and on the Internet, it should come as no surprise that there is already a one-shot prequel comicbook out now (from Dynamite Entertainment) that pre-stages the action from the film giving us a back-story to the events of the film itself. The comic After Earth Innocence (written by Michael Jan Friedman & Robert Greenberger, and illustrated by Beni Lobel) tells us the story of how over 900 hundred years after humans fled Earth in order to escape its toxic environment, the remaining survivors managed to colonize a remote planet and once again begin to rebuild civilization. However the society they wound up creating suffered from deep divisions, with scientific innovators and spiritual leaders often at embittered odds.
Innocence tells the story of Cypher Raige telling his son Kitai a bedtime story of how humanity came under assault by an enigmatic and ruthless alien species that wound up forcing the disparate elements of mankind that populated Nova Prime (the New Earth) to band together in order to protect their new homeworld. In the story, we learn how the humans settled Nova Prime and then are attacked by (and wound up dealing with) the alien attack.
The movie trailer shows how Cypher (Will) and his son Kitai (Jaden) are forced to crash-land their space ship on a desolate planet Earth, and now they are required to defend themselves against all sorts of terrifying and dangerous creatures who want to eat them. In addition to the Innocence comic, Del Ray has already launched a series of six prequel stories that are based on the concepts developed in the film. Each of these six stories are downloadable and available on all major e-reader platforms. The other stories in the series that are already slated for release include After Earth The official prequel Novel, After Earth-A Perfect Beast, Hunted - After Earth: Ghost Stories, Peace-After Earth: Ghost Stories, Birthright-After Earth: Ghost Stories, Savior-After Earth: Ghost Stories, Redemption-After Earth: Ghost Stories, Atonement-After Earth: Ghost Stories.
Needless to say, Dynamite also hopes to build a larger (comicbook) universe on the comic and stories that are being crafted (by Friedman, Greenberger, and Peter David). Prusumabley as the film approaches we’ll see more short stories as well as comics (including stand-alone, movie adaption, and on-going).
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