DF Interview: Jacob Murray asks if anything should last forever in ‘The Eighth Immortal’

By Byron Brewer

Curipan has spent her immortality protecting humanity from the threat of an ancient prophecy. But time and a secret trauma have worn her down, forcing her to choose between her duty and her sanity. The Eighth Immortal is a scandalous fantasy that asks the question: should anything last forever?

From Source Point Press comes The Eighth Immortal, written by Jacob Murray with art by Alice Li Barnes. DF caught up with Jacob Murray to get the full 411 on this limited series.

Dynamic Forces: Jacob, before we get to your book proper, The Eighth Immortal, tell us how you came to be a writer -- and then a comic book writer.

Jacob Murray: I’ve always enjoyed writing, but first began writing creatively in high school, jotting down short stories while not paying attention in religion class. Or maybe by making stuff up on paper I was honoring religion class, but I digress. Heartsick over a girl and not terribly comfortable talking to anyone about it, I had nowhere to place *all these feelings* other than in a thinly veiled diary I pretended was a short story. Two days later I wrote a story about an unseen monster in the forest who was terrorizing a group of adventurers. The monster, it turned out, was transformed from the beautiful, unassuming woman in the party. No idea what inspired that.

My inability to write beyond my own frustrations materialized wonderfully in 2009 when a friend and I started a hockey blog called Surly & Scribe. I was Surly.

I work primarily in television production as an Associate Director, and have been writing scripts since college. It never occurred to me to write a comic until 2015, when I had a weird, nonsensical dream that demanded I turn it into a story. In trying to find my way through this vague and quickly fading memory, I got nowhere writing it as a script or as prose. I just couldn’t see it in either medium. But this woman’s voice and her haunting prayer was on repeat in my brain. I don’t know when it dawned on me to try writing it as a comic, but the thought fit the moment I had it. So I researched how the heck to do that, got some advice from a friend who worked for Marvel, and wrote five terrible scripts.

Around that same time, a friend of mine made a Facebook post about needing some articles for the Sideshow Collectibles blog. I had recently grown tired of maintaining Surly & Scribe, and thought writing goofy listicles about pop culture would be fun. I got several notes about not being brief enough and suddenly it occurs to me I still need to work on that.

Anyway, I pivoted from the blog to writing a graphic novel for Sideshow called Court of the Dead: Shadows of the Underworld. Towards the end of that process, I took a look at those first five terrible scripts and set out to rewrite them into what is now The Eighth Immortal.

DF: What can you tell us about the world in which this story takes place?

Jacob Murray: The world of The Eighth Immortal is our world. It’s a world defined by passion and trauma. Whatever animates us guides our actions, and this is how the world is made. We shake out of this concept a world in which seven immortals arose from the past, the benefactors of an ancient spirit. At the center of their world is a question they can’t answer: why do they exist? Were they ordained by a god and granted a sacred mission? An experiment of a bored deity? Or are they pawns in machinations that reach beyond the trifles of humanity? These questions don’t just concern immortals. They concern us all. Immortality is a vehicle for exploring the limits of humanity, and of consciousness itself.

DF: Introduce readers to Curipan. What is the significance of the title I am assuming describes her, "the eighth immortal"?

Jacob Murray: The story begins with a vow -- “Seven immortals walk this earth. Never can there roam an eighth.” This is the vow that has defined Curipan’s life. As one of the seven immortals, Curipan has walked through the millennia unable to satisfy the most innate drive of all living creatures, procreation. To further compound her torment, Curipan possesses the unique and critical power to dissolve immortality wherever it takes root in the world. She is a woman saddled by burdens. We meet Curipan when she is around 7,000 years old and at her breaking point. She is a wan and dour figure, who is searching for some light in her dark world. The one thing she is sworn to defend against is the one thing she craves, and who is the Eighth Immortal, and the consequences of its arisal will fall to her.

DF: What other characters do readers need to be on the lookout for in this limited series? Can you introduce a few of them here?

Jacob Murray: Of course! We’ll meet Curipan’s “family” of immortals, and some will play bigger roles than others. The first issue introduces her husband, Kikan, and her brother, the clan’s leader, Lucan. Kikan is a kind soul, but has become disconnected from his wife over the years. He spends his days just trying to maintain the status quo and find a little pleasure along the way. Lucan is more along the lines of what you’d expect of a powerful immortal. He is a glutton, given to lust and vanity. Each immortal brandishes unique powers, born of their particular talents and predilections. Then there is a precocious and lively boy, Daniel, who Curipan meets when she is tasked with dissolving his latent immortality. Later on in the series, we will meet two ancient spirits of the forest, Ngen and Gualichu, and the malevolent General McLeod, who poses the one true threat to beings that cannot die.

DF: Tell us the general storyline of your coming comic. (No fair using the Source Point Press solicit!)

Jacob Murray: But… but I wrote that solicit. Not that I remember what it says. Life and death are complementary forces at war with one another. Immortals were introduced to tip the balance in favor of life. The Eighth Immortal follows Curipan as she deals with the psychological impact of roaming the earth, stripping immortality away from nascent immortal children. Coupled with an enforced vow of celibacy and the loss of her own child long ago, Curipan can’t handle much more. As she reckons with what it means to be immortal, miserable and carrying the burden of preventing a dark prophecy from being fulfilled, Curipan is forced to weigh what she loves about the world against the future of the world itself.

DF: With the ongoing pandemic, the question of dying too soon is on many people's minds. I think it's a great juxtaposition that one of the questions Curipan is dealing with, if I'm not mistaken, is about living life for too long. Talk about the latter question as it has to do with your book.

Jacob Murray: At some point, we all wonder the same thing -- is life a good thing unto itself? Our entire society is built upon trying to answer that question. It is the genesis of religion, of political systems, of economics and philosophy. This question arises because we all recognize that suffering is a common experience in some form or another. So what does the experience of great trauma say about life? Does it reinforce it or invalidate it? The Eighth Immortal uses the breadth of time to break down these questions, and meditate on the various things that keep us invested: love, lust, companionship, and ego. Joni Mitchell said, “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone,” and I think some facsimile of that is a fundamental truth. It’s baked into our transient experience of the world. Curipan turns the idiom on its head by asking “What do you really know about the things you’ll never lose?”

DF: Tell us about the art of Alice Li Barnes.

Jacob Murray: Alice is a powerhouse. She has a deep love for anime and manga, and I knew the moment I saw her work at a local convention that I wanted her to draw this book. I was lucky enough that she enjoyed my pitch and was willing to work with me. She has a natural sense for storytelling, and is a very expressive artist, unafraid to infuse her characters with a sensual vibrancy that can be enthralling or uncomfortable given different contexts. She’s very easy going to work with, has her own vision, but is also a great collaborator. If you can’t tell, I’m a fan, and I think anyone who picks up the Eighth Immortal will become one too.

DF: Jacob, what other projects, inside or outside comic books, that you might be working on can you tell readers about?

Jacob Murray: Well, as I mentioned before, I have another graphic novel that is still available from Sideshow Collectibles and Insight Editions called Court of the Dead: Shadows of the Underworld. If you’re a lore nerd and love a deep, complex fantasy world, you’ll surely enjoy the series and the other media surrounding the Court of the Dead franchise. I’m working on a couple of other comics I can’t talk much about at the moment but hope to launch by the middle to end of the year. And outside of comics, I have a short film out for sci-fi lovers called Circadia, and I actually work primarily in sitcom television. I was the associate director on the new show Call Me Kat and I’m currently working on another series called United States of Al, which should premiere sometime in the next couple of months. Both are worth checking out!

Dynamic Forces would like to thank Jacob Murray for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions. The Eighth Immortal #1 from Source Point Press is in stores now! Issue #2 is slated to be on sale Feb. 24^th!

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