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Q:Why Canada?

Brian: Well, most of my closest collaborators have been Canadian, including artist Fiona Staples on Saga, Pia Guerra on Y: The Last Manand Adrian Alphona on Runaways. Something unique almost always happens when creators from our two countries get together, so I figured something equally interesting would happen if I forced our friendly nations into bloody conflict. My wife Ruth McKee is very proud to have been born in Ottawa, but when she became an American citizen several years ago, she literally had to vow to take up arms against her birthplace if her new homeland ever demanded it. We always joked about what hilariously unlikely scenarios would have to arise for our countries to go into battle against each other, but then I started researching something called War Plan Red, and it turns out that the United States has been seriously considering just such a possibility for a very long time.

Q:Will the series be set during the invasion or sometime after?

Brian: We’ll get a taste of the invasion in our first issue, before jumping a few years into the future, during the American occupation of Canada.

Q:Will we learn what’s behind America’s invasion plans? Will there be an American perspective?

Brian: There’s an inciting incident in our first issue that leads the U.S. to invade Canada in what the Americans claim is a war of necessity, but most Canadians believe that we’re really just coming to take your water, especially because our future United States is suffering from the kind of “mega-drought” many scientists believe is a real possibility. We’ll see some of the American perspective, but I really wanted this story to be told primarily from the point of view of the Canadian insurgency. Our story is set in a far-out hypothetical future, but I took a lot of inspiration from Das Boot and an incredibly relevant old film called The Battle of Algiers, both of which challenged me to try to understand and even sympathize with the enemy, an idea that’s always interested me.