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Synthwave Band The Midnight Teams With Dark Horse For Cyberpunk Sci-Fi Comic

Dark Horse Comics has announced The Midnight: Shadows, a new original graphic novel inspired by the music of synthwave band The Midnight.

The Midnight: Shadows arrives in bookstores on Tuesday, October 1 — and in comic shops on Wednesday, October 2. The 136-page cyberpunk-style sci-fi comic teams writer Zack Kaplan (Kill All Immortals, Break Out) with artists Stephen Thompson (Star Trek, Batman Beyond) and Jahnoy Lindsay (Superboy), colorist Thiago Rocha (Hacktivists), and letterer DC Hopkins (Nocterra, Star Wars). Dark Horse promises that fans of The Midnight and newcomers alike will "enjoy an immersive universe that is engrossing and visually stunning."

Check out the cover art for The Midnight: Shadows below:

What is The Midnight: Shadows about?

"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," an official synopsis for The Midnight: Shadows reads.

"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," it continues. "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 Midnight discusses the new comic

"The creative MO of The Midnight has always been to 'combine not confine,'" The Midnight co-founder Tyler Lyle said. "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."

"Visuals have always been a huge aspect of the world of The Midnight," the band's other co-founder, Tim McEwan, added. "From the very beginning, our fanbase joined in by creating videos and art that expanded on our music and visual aesthetic. It was natural to take it one step further and create a graphic novel. We've been lucky enough to have an incredible team of artists and creatives, headed by the talented Zack Kaplan, who skillfully helmed this ship from the very start. Partnering up with Dark Horse is a match made in heaven and we feel so blessed to see this creation come to life. Thank you to everyone who participated in making this a reality but thank you first and foremost to our amazing fans, without whom none of this would have been possible."

The book's creative team chimes in

"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."

The writer concluded, "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."

"The Midnight has probably been the most challenging and interesting book of my career so far," Thompson added. "The task of bringing Zack's layered scripts to life, while simultaneously trying to evoke the flavor and atmosphere of the music of the band has been both a labor of love and a real artistic stretch for me. But the 1980s kid I am at heart felt right at home in this retro futuristic world and with the characters and vehicles which inhabit it. And high praise has to go to Thiago's colors, which add so much to the aesthetic we've created here."

The Midnight: Shadows goes on sale in October 2024 from Dark Horse Comics.

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Book Mr. Hands Reads In Cyberpunk 2077 May Be Relevant To Phantom Liberty's Plot

News video games 31 January 2024, 06:15

The detail smuggled in by CD Projekt RED is a curiosity for true connoisseurs of American literature.

When it comes to the detail of environmental elements, CD Projekt RED is a league of its own. In Night City, there are plenty of cleverly hidden easter eggs referring not only to previous games and local secrets, but also to contemporary pop culture. Catching all the cool stuff requires a careful look at every possible decoration.

We probably still haven't explored the full content of Cyberpunk 2077, with the Phantom Liberty expansion recently adding even more. Have you ever paid attention to the book that Mr. Hands is reading?

Here's how the story goes...

Mr. Hands is a fixer who provides jobs in Pacifica and Dogtown itself, whose face and identity were unknown throughout the three years of Cyberpunk 2077's existence. The businessman's role has increased with the release of Phantom Liberty, in which we can finally visit him in his elegant hideout.

As a man of culture, Mr. Hands spends his free time reading a certain novel -- and not just any novel. The Chessmen of Mars he holds have strong connections with the DLC, which is impossible to know without reading it, obviously.

Source: CD Projekt RED

Chessmen of Mars is a book by American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs, which is a continuation of the series presenting a dystopian interpretation of the Red Planet. The novel begins with an accident during which Princess Tara loses control of the ship and lands in a dangerous region of Mars. The prince Gahan, who's in love with her, sets out to rescue her, all the while hiding his true identity.

Remove the romantic thread and place the action in a futuristic universe, and the beginning of Phantom Liberty becomes confusingly reminiscent of the first chapters of the book. President Myers, representing the authority, ends up in Dogtown due to an accident, from which we have to get her out before she's killed by local mobsters.

Night City as a great chessboard

The similarities to Chessmen of Mars do not end with the first mission, however. At one point in the novel, Burroughs introduces the concept of human chess, in which -- as you might guess -- the pieces are prisoners fighting to the death. Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't offer such cruel entertainment, but in the game itself, we can find an allegory to Mr. Hands himself.

The fixer's plan is to take over Dogtown using others as leverages. The orders received for the DLC are aimed at disrupting order and getting rid of, or helping, people who could sooner or later undermine Mr. Hands' position. Just like in human chess, it is about using someone else's life.

It seems obvious, especially considering how Phantom Liberty begines, that this particular book was placed on purpose in the fixer's desk. Maybe it inspires Mr. Hands to be the man he is?

NVIDIA Beta GPU Driver Spotted Boosting Cyberpunk 2077 Frame Rates By 23%, But There's A Catch

NVIDIA has a new graphics driver in beta which seems to provide a substantial boost to frame rates in Cyberpunk 2077, especially in a test build of Windows 11.

We're talking about the game running 23% faster, in fact, although there's a noteworthy caveat here.

Wccftech spotted that Compusemble on YouTube ran some tests with Cyberpunk 2077 and NVIDIA's beta driver, with DLSS 3 on, and also with frame generation turned off, across different Windows 11 builds (stable and Canary).

The eye-opening discovery was the mentioned 23% uplift in the frame rate which was witnessed with beta driver version 550.9 and Windows 11 preview build 26040 (which just came out for the Canary channel).

What's going on here? Well, this does seem like a performance boost which is too good to be true, and as commenters on YouTube have pointed out, there appears to be something going on with the denoising process, and perhaps bits being skipped over due to a bug in the beta driver (which is entirely possible). As there are grainier graphics in some places, and so this skipping of denoising could be an explanation for the performance gain.

However, that's just for the driver side of the equation, and Compusemble acknowledges this, but points out there's a boost from the OS evident here too.

The YouTuber explains:

"It does look like denoising is being handled differently on each driver, but it's hard to say what impact that has on the difference without patch notes for the driver. There is also an OS related performance boost that can be seen when comparing the same driver on each Windows build with frame generation enabled."

We can't be sure what's going on under the hood exactly, but NVIDIA's next driver - and indeed the Windows 11 build - are definitely worth watching for Cyberpunk 2077 fans, as it looks like some kind of performance boost is in the cards (even if it isn't going to be to the tune of 23%).

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