Posted in: Boom, Comics | Tagged: boom studios, brzrkr, keanu reeves, kickstarter

Keanu Reeves Spills The Secret Origins Of The BRZRKR Comic

Keanu Reeves has been talking at length about his upcoming (now delayed until February) comic book BRZRKR he is writing with Matt Kindt and drawn by Ron Garney, published through Boom Studios but also Kickstarted.

Keanu Reeves: The structure of the story is, in the modern day, we're following a character named B and then so we have the origin story of this character where we learn about his parents, how he was born, how did he become a kind of a half mortal half god. At the same time we're in present day America where our character B has made an agreement with the United States government, where he can hide in that with his violence and what he has his compulsion to do, which he doesn't really want to do anymore. But in exchange they're studying him and so there's a kind of scientific emotional/psychological kind of background in his present day. The origin story that kind of flashes back and so these parallel worldscome into this moment through the architecture of the piece. We're hoping for 12 issues. I mean that's what we're aiming to do…. Right now, Matt and I have completed issues one to four and then Boom Studios contacted Ron Garney and then so we're kind of starting to hand it over to Ron

Ron Garney: Yeah they had incriminating photos of me I couldn't turn it down. I was young I needed to work… I had an opening and this sort of just fell on my lap and they told me about it and when they said that, "Oh Keanu really loves your work", I thought it was a joke, you know, at first and then they said "Oh you can do a Zoom meeting and there he was, so I was like okay I guess this is real."

Keanu Reeves: I was talking to the director of John Wick, Chad Stahelski, well, I've got this idea and I just want to do this thing where like a guy punches through someone's chest or rips an arm off or slices someone in half and  maybe fights through different eras and times. He's a viking, he's with the Roman armies and the Napoleonic army. He's in the first World War and then started to turn into, well, who is that person, who is that guy, who can who can be that vessel, what's that story. And then this kind of origin story of… I don't want to give too much away. His dad's not immortal, and then that turned into the kind of potential of this guy who's kind of cursed. He's compelled to violence but he doesn't want kill, he finds life precious but he can't die. And so I thought that was an interesting problem and I thought it was a kind of interesting psychological journey – for us time speeds up, for him time is slowing down and he wants it to end, he wants his mortality, he wants to not be compelled to this violence. And I thought that this also could shine a light on some of our own nature, and just having this kind of the pathos to this character, who's got trauma. He can remember everything but he's got memories that he doesn't want to remember, so I thought that was psychologically interesting and something that we could all relate to.

Keanu Reeves: He's kind of dealing with his past to be in his present, I found that interesting and then. Also if we're going to study him, if you want you know are they going to clone him, is it like super soldier so they're looking for immortality? And then I thought that could be really interesting because we could just open up the playground and say, well, we could we could play with his DNA, we could talk  about kind of quantum mechanics with his energies and his body and spirit. And then he goes into this other plane, that goes into the kind of immortal… and then this guy who's compelled to violence who has to hide in violence, so he has to fight, but then how can he love?

You can watch the whole panel below.

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