The Image series Roche Limit reaches its first trade collection this week as Roche Limit Vol. 1: Anomalous, written by Michael Moreci, with art by Vic Malhotra. It's one of those Image collections with a special low price, by the way, which I'm always grateful for, listed at $9.99. The series, collected here in its first 5 issues, is a sci-fi crime story set on an isolated colony, and pretty steeped in mythological and pop culture references, to judge from Michael Moreci's insider explanations.

Michael kindly agreed to share his writer's notes for Issue #1 below to celebrate this new trade release.

Michael writes:

To mark the occasion of the release of the first volume of Roche Limit (titled "Anomalous"), I went through and annotated the references made in issue #1. The book, throughout, is heavy in references—makes for a fun Easter egg hunt, and it also shows how meticulous I am in every inch of this book.

The numbers below stand for page-panel.

Enjoy!

1: Early on, I had the voice Ethan Hawke, as the narrator of Gattaca, in my head as I tried to set the tone of the book. The film is obviously an important influence on Roche Limit, as it deals with human limitations and pushing beyond where you're supposed to be, but the melancholy tone always stuck out to me. It's not a sad tone, just a contemplative and smart one.

2-1: The visual reference I sent to Vic and Jordan was the party scene in Eyes Wide Shut. One of the best-lit movie sequences I've ever seen.

2-2: Then we jump to our first glimpse of the colony, which I called, in the script, "full-on Blade Runner/Heavy Metal/Escape from New York.

3-3: In space, no one can hear you scream.

4-7: Obviously, some 2001 in the helmet reflection imagery.

6 and 7: The double page spreads were born of necessity. I don't like wasting dialogue real estate with characters dumping information—they should have much more interesting things to say. So, I came up with a different way to dump info—infographics. Thank God for design guru Tim Daniel, that's all I'm going to say.

7: Dispater, the planet that houses the Roche Limit colony, is also the name of the Roman god of the underworld.

8-4: Again with Blade Runner, in that overcrowded city street (where Deckard is brought in to see the chief). Lots of purples and pinks, neon.

9: One important reference that I passed along to both Vic and Jordan is the color scheme in the film Dark City. Not only does that movie inform much of what Roche Limit is—but are investigations into the human soul as a means to understand who we are—it also looks gorgeous. The world, the colors, the richness of detail—they combine to create a visual style that pops off the screen.

9-1: Dizzy's is a nod to jazz musician Dizzy Gillespie. The visual reference is the jazz club in one of my favorite movies—another existential romp—Le Samourai.

9-9: "So it goes." One of the best novel lines ever, from Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five.

10-1: "Trying to raise your kid sister"… the term "raise," used as "find" was something I stole from the movie Brick. I can't think of any film that has a better cadence than Brick—the entire thing has a brilliant language all its own. I'd listen to it at work and try to pick up on its rhythms for Roche Limit.

10-3: "Your mother dresses you funny." A line my buddy's dad, from grade school, used to say all the time that has stuck with me to this day.

11-1: Our first encounter with Recall, which, thematically, plays a heavy role in the series (the nature of memory, dreams, and reality, are all important). The name, of course, is a fitting not to the sci-fi classic film Total Recall as well as the Philip K. Dick story it was based on, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale."

12: Our first introduction to the Black Sun. I bet you didn't think that was going anywhere, didn't you?

14-2: Gracie's look was totally inspired by Ma-Ma from Dredd.

14-2: "Sweet Jane", the classic Velvet Underground tune.

19-1: "Wondering what happened to your wings" is obviously an Icarus reference.

19-1: Why Vic made Dode look like Crockett from Miami Vice, I have no clue. I love that he did, though. Also, the name Dode—another Brick-inspired choice.

19-5: This is the one time I hint at the Shakespearian influence on the story. If you've read the entire first volume and are familiar with Shakespeare's tragedies, you know what I'm talking about.

20-5: My Breaking Bad nod. This is such a Walt strategy, through and through.

20-7 to 20-8: Look how the steam points to the lighter's flame. Vic is the master of brilliant little touches like these, leading your eye put pieces like this together.

22-6: Moscow has been described by someone as a "samurai Rasputin," which I love. I'm pretty fascinated with Russian cultural, history, and literature. One of my favorite novels, in fact, is the Gogol classic Dead Souls. Which, you guessed it, fits seamlessly into the Roche Limit universe. The novel is more or less about a schemer who increases his holdings by buying dead people off of people and adding them to his rolls of servants, making it seem like he's wealthier than he is. Deception, manipulating life and death, souls…it's all there.

And here's a special look at Issue #6 as well: