'Letter 44' puts POTUS in a whole other space race

Brian Truitt | USA TODAY

There is a tradition for the outgoing president of the United States to leave a secret letter for his successor.

You'd imagine the message to be "Good luck," "Best wishes," "Don't screw up the country," that sort of thing. But what if it was really important?

Writer Charles Soule imagines such a missive with his new Oni Press series Letter 44, out today and illustrated by Alberto Jimenez Alburquerque. It's already found a following, too — all 22,000 copies of the $1 No. 1 issue's initial print run sold out on the first day of release Wednesday, according to Oni.

In the first issue, 44th President-elect Stephen Blades receives his note from former President Francis T. Carroll the night before his inauguration and learns of a massive construction project in an asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter that is definitely not something mankind could gin up.

Uh-oh.

"I love sci-fi, but I also love political intrigue and things of that nature, and I find the office of the president to be particularly interesting," says Soule, who writes Thunderbolts and the upcoming She-Hulk for Marvel Comics and Swamp Thing, Red Lanterns and Superman/Wonder Woman for DC Comics.

"For me, it's partly about the characters — all of whom I love for different reasons, even the expendable one — and partly about the story I'm telling here. Letter 44 is structured to have escalating reveals that will change the game again and again."

The series has two parallel story lines. On Earth, Blades is making the possibility of a massive alien a top priority — at least internally — of his new administration. He visits Project Monolith, the secret headquarters of much of the research-and-development arm of the overall plan to defend the planet.

"In other words," Soule says, "lasers and robots."

Meanwhile up in space, the astronauts aboard the Clarke have already been in space for three years on their science/military mission to find out what exactly is happening. Readers will find out more about what's actually up there — though not everything, according to Soule — as well as meet the crew and how their mini-society doesn't always play by Earth rules, especially with romantic entanglements.

"The astronauts are so far away from Earth that the Prez — and mission control — have very little influence over what the ship and its crew are doing," Soule says. "They were picked to be independent thinkers and great improvisers, because they don't really have a choice.

"The crew of the Clarke is ready for everything from anthropology to a firefight — and we'll get to see both."

Soule had the original nugget of an idea for Letter 44 on New Year's Day 2011, but it was the official end of the Space Shuttle program later that year that historically influenced the series.

Not that he figured the Shuttle would eventually be the gateway to the stars for Americans, but Soule always found it to be a powerful symbol of the country's space achievements and ambitions.

"The idea that we were pulling back instead of continuing to push forward really bothered me, and still does," Soule explains. "I feel like we should have been on Mars by now, we should have a permanent presence on the Moon, etc. It was within our grasp, but once we won the Space Race, the impetus was somewhat diminished, and we never really pushed that hard again.

"The main idea behind Letter 44 was to ask what would give us that verve again — what would force us to go back up there, no matter what? Finding a huge, mysterious alien construction project in the asteroid belt fit the bill pretty nicely."

Soule made sure to do his homework when it came to presidents and space technology, reading books and making friends with Andy Howell, an astronomer at California's Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network who gave the writer a formula for calculating artificial gravity to make sure the Clarke was built accurately.

And communications between the president and the Clarke crew aren't instantaneous — Soule has a plot point in the story that it takes 28 minutes for one side to respond to the other due to the great distance of the astronauts in space and the radio transmissions traveling at the speed of light.

There are no redshirts on the Clarke, according to Soule. Each is vital from a plotting perspective, even the one who's in utero: One of the crew members is pregnant, and the baby is, like the mysterious thing a ways from their ship, potentially a gigantic problem.

"The consensus seems to be that having a kid in space wouldn't be the smartest idea, since it could have some serious developmental issues. That said, no one really knows, because no one's ever done it," Soule says.

"The crew of the Clarke is comprised of geniuses — every one of them is an expert in multiple disciplines. In particular, they have two very skilled doctors. If anyone's going to figure out how to keep that baby safe, it's these guys. Or let's hope so."

He is also enjoying the political side to Letter 44 as well. The dynamic of Blades and Carroll reflects that of Barack Obama and George W. Bush — the new guy is an idealist, the old guy isn't well-liked and was kind of a warmonger, though in Letter 44's case there's a good reason for that. (The writer also teases that Blades isn't just a president. "His past is pretty interesting.")

Soule throws in some familiar elements from history for readers — like Obama, Blades' stumbles during his inaugural oath — and while aliens may not have been mentioned in his note from Bush, "I can guarantee you that Obama learned things after he was elected that radically changed his view of the world," Soule says.

"One of the themes of Letter 44 is that being president is hard. There's a reason they seem to age at twice their natural rate during their terms. I don't care what your politics happen to be — my feeling is that getting elected is as much of a curse as it is a blessing."

The letter from Carroll to Blades explaining the secret space mission is crucial for setting up the entire basis for the series, and Soule figures he rewrote that sequence 50 times, making changes up to the very last pass in the lettering stage.

Still, he says he got a kick out of doing it. "Part of it was that I wanted to establish the previous president's 'voice,' since we don't actually get to see him in this (first) issue — although we do see his hand writing the letter in flashback.

As it turns out, the old president is just as much of a mystery as the odd and possibly malevolent science project in the sky.

"Hopefully the phrasing of the letter itself will suggest what kind of guy he is, although ex-President Carroll is a cagey S.O.B.," Soule says. "What you see — or read — isn't always what you get with that dude."