We Only Find Them When They're Dead

Al Ewing and Simone Di Meo launched this BOOM! Studios series in 2020. Captain Malik and the crew of the Vihaan II gather resources from enormous divine corpses found at the edge of human space.

Malik's desire to find a living god drives them beyond their ordinary work. The voyage stretches across space and time as their assumptions about the universe begin to fail.

The book makes cosmic wonder inseparable from extraction. The dead gods are awe-inspiring, but people also treat their bodies as a supply chain.

That contradiction gives the captain's obsession force. Finding life might change the meaning of an economy built around death.

The ships operate at a frontier where material scarcity and metaphysical mystery meet. The crew can cut resources from a god's body without knowing what a god is.

The premise asks whether exploration is possible without exploitation when survival depends on harvesting the unknown.

Di Meo's luminous colors and sweeping cosmic forms make the gods feel immense. Tiny ships against them emphasize the crew's limited perspective.

The visual excess suits a story in which labor takes place amid the sublime.