Alexandra Grant has announced an upcoming comic book series, Nanowhich she says was formed during a severe bout of COVID-19.
The three-part science fiction series, created with Matt Kindt, began with Grant revising a novel she had written twenty years earlier.
“I got super sick, I had super COVID and tested positive for 16 days. I mean, I was hallucinating,” she said People.
“On day six I thought, what do I do? I couldn’t leave the room. So I went to my computer and found my novel from 20 years ago, and I rewrote it, but I rewrote it in my dream phase of COVID fever.”
The idea was reworked into a comic strip centered around Sana, an agent leading a secret organization and a high-stakes mission, and then shared with Matt Kindt, who wrote the text. BRZRKR series with Reeves.
“Matt had been at our house a lot working with Keanu,” she explained of Kindt, who then offered to work with her through Dark Horse Comics.
“So I got to know him, and he had told me to send him something sometime. I asked if I could send him something else instead,” she recalls. “He didn’t answer for weeks! I thought, ‘Oh, he hates it.’ Then he finally wrote back and said, “I want to offer you a comic book deal,” through his imprint at Dark Horse comics.
She continued, “I brought the story and the characters, and he [Kindt] helped shape the storyline.”
The process also included selecting an illustrator, for which Grant went out of her way to choose Brazilian artist Natasha Bustos after being given a list of “white men.”
“Natasha had never been given a comic book to do from start to finish… and she is completely exceptional,” Grant said. “She took the words, imagined them and embodied them perfectly.”
Grant describes Nano as a collision between science and nature, bringing together themes of technology, magic and power. “I wanted this character to be completely kick-ass… smart… frustrated by the patriarchy. But it’s also about the power of nature and magic coming into conflict with masculinity, toxicity and authoritarianism.”
In a statement, Grant said: “Nano is a story I’ve daydreamed about for over twenty years – about two worlds colliding – that of science and technology and that of magic and nature.”
“I think we’re all still suffering in some ways from COVID, but the experience I had was one of creative isolation… it was a very creative time for a lot of artists,” she said. “We were isolated, yet connected… it was science fiction for all of us.”
Meanwhile, Kindt added, “This started as a literal fever dream that Alexandra had and shared with me. It was so vivid and complicated that I desperately wanted to see it come to life. It has such big and wild ideas that it seemed perfectly suited for comics, and I’m honored to be a part of it.”
