“Lots of people can write stories that tug at your heart or make you smile. Only Steven Grant can write stories that punch you in the face and steal your keys. He remains the best crime writer in comics.”
-- Warren Ellis, creator of The Authority and Strange Killings

Steven Grant's MORTAL SOULS
TPB Vol 1

Writer: Steven Grant
Artist: Philip Xavier
Readership: Mature Readers
Format: B&W, 72 pages square bound
ISBN:1-59291-003-3

The master of crime comics, Steven Grant, unleashes his most haunting work yet! Human beings are a merger of body and soul, but the two don't die at the same rate. Sometimes one outlives the other. When a soul outlives its body, we call it a ghost. We have no word for what happens when a body outlives its soul. But the Hebrew Qabalists did. That word is "qelipoth": meaning, literally, the husks of the dead. They're dangerous creatures, once men but now without souls, consumed by their own emptiness and hunger and hating the living for the mere condition of being completely alive. Pursuing an unpredictable killer, police detective Eric Sharpe watches his life turn into a waking nightmare as he gains "the sight" - and he discovers Qelipoth not only exist, but they are everywhere. And now they want him dead. Punctuated with bloody staccato action and underscored by a puckish world view, Mortal Souls blends the rhythms of horror comics and crime comics. And it's going places neither crime nor horror comics have ever been before.

Steven Grant's Mortal Souls TPB will be available in February 2002 at your local comic shop. Please support your local stores. If you can't find Mortal Souls locally, you may order it from our direct sales agent here.

Additional Artwork from Steven Grant's Mortal Souls

 

 

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Steven Grant

Phil Xavier

Jacen Burrows

Steven Grant Investigates Crime, Horror with Mortal Souls at Avatar Press

Avatar Press has announced plans to expand a line which has come to include the best writers in comics with the addition of Steven Grant’s Mortal Souls, a saga written by Grant with art by Phil (Heavy Metal, Frank Frazetta Illustrated) Xavier. A bloody, bitter mix of crime and horror, the trade paperback debuts in February 2003 from Avatar Press.

At a time when crime comics are ascendant with a handful of rising star creators, Steven Grant remains one of the few masters of the genre and to many, the preeminent crime writer in the field. “Lots of people can write stories that tug at your heart or make you smile,” says writer Warren Ellis. “Only Steven Grant can write stories that punch you in the face and steal your keys. He remains the best crime writer in comics.”

“Grant’s efforts in both mainstream and indy comics have been a major contribution to the evolution of the comics scene for over a decade,” notes Avatar Press editor in chief William Christensen. “His work on the original Punisher mini-series was a key part of the mid-80’s mainstream comics renaissance. Quality indy series such as his extensive Whisper run were vital to the indy companies’ rise to prominence. Steven has consistently been an innovator throughout his career, and I’m very pleased that he is interested in continuing his long run of groundbreaking projects with a creator-owned saga at Avatar.”

“You can't do what you want for corporate comics, which are now focusing on "safe" projects,” explains Grant. “They're not interested in creator-owned projects. They want to be polite, to not rock the boat, to maintain control. Only companies like Avatar Press now give writers free reign to do truly interesting or innovative work, especially work like Mortal Souls, with ideas and themes that really haven't been tackled before in comics, that mixes genres and hopefully breaks new ground. I don't get notes from Avatar saying things like, "make it more like Hellblazer" or "make the hero nicer so we won't scare off movie studios." The work is pure, it's clean, it's what I want it to be.”

Mortal Souls artist Phil Xavier is an up and coming star who began to garner notice for his detailed, intricate work on the indy series Legendlore, and has recently come to wider attention due to work in Heavy Metal, Frank Frazetta Illustrated, and Avatar’s own Threshold. “It’s great to be working with Steven grant doing what he does best... crime comics. And this one has a fascinating horror twist.”

A project grounded in both crime and horror, Mortal Souls reaches beyond both of those nightmare genres. Pursuing an unpredictable killer, police detective Eric Sharpe watches his life turn into a waking nightmare as the killer, in her last living act, gives him "the sight". He discovers the existence of "Qelipoth", which literally means the husks of the dead. They're dangerous creatures, once men but now without souls, consumed by their own emptiness and hunger and hating the living for the mere condition of being completely alive. The Qelipoth not only exist, they control the world. Now the only one who can tell who they are, Sharpe becomes their #1 enemy and target, and possibly the last hope of humanity on Earth.