DF Interview: Chris Condon & Jeffrey Alan Love unleash atomic horrors in their new miniseries, ‘News from the Fallout’

By Byron Brewer

In 1962 Nevada, a nuclear bomb test goes horribly awry and unleashes a contaminate into the atmosphere that turns people rotten. Otis Fallows, a private in the U.S. Army who is present for the test and is the only known survivor, flees the secret army base in search of a safe haven—but does such a place exist?

From writer Chris Condon (That Texas Blood, Ultimate Wolverine) and artist Jeffrey Alan Love (The Last Battle At The End Of The World, The Thousand Demon Tree) comes a stunning new sci-fi horror miniseries, News from the Fallout. I sat down with Chris and Jeff, and here is what they told me about their coming comic.

Byron Brewer: Chris & Jeff, what is the muse that has allowed you to put News from the Fallout together? What has inspired the notion of the tale, what has allowed for the artistic rendering of that inspiration? In short, talk about your collaboration on this miniseries.

Chris Condon: I’ve always had a deep love for genre, so you could say that genre was my muse. I wanted to do something that used tropes from atomic-era genre-defining films and television like Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Birds, Night of the Living Dead, The Twilight Zone, and The Outer Limits. Sprinkle in a little Stephen King and Kubrick—specifically Dr. Strangelove—and you’ve got the recipe I was cooking with. I wanted to do my version of a zombie story, because they all seem fairly one-note unless done extremely well. So what could I bring to that type of story that had something new or different to say? But everything got turned on its head when I decided to approach Jeff about working on the book with me. What he brought to the story through his art has been incalculable, and the way in which I’ve approached scripting has been with his unique style in mind.

Jeffrey Alan Love: I wanted to work with Chris after reading That Texas Blood for research for a variant cover I was painting for him. I really loved his writing, still full of all the wonderful genre spectacle I love and that makes comics great, but also approached with an emphasis on character, on real people, real feelings. The spectacle had meaning. With some people you just get the vibe that you could sit down at a bar and within ten minutes you'd be talking about how the first fifteen minutes of Once Upon A Time in the West might just be a crowning achievement of cinema, or how the hell did Kurosawa achieve that deep focus with just one camera in that one shot in Yojimbo, and hey, what's your favorite John Buscema run? I got the sense that we were kindred spirits, and the work so far has confirmed that. I feel very lucky to be collaborating with Chris and learning from him.

Byron: Jeff, I am definitely down to discuss my fave Big John Buscema runs with you sometime!… Chris, describe the world you are creating here. Will we remain in 1962 Nevada or does this thriller go on the road? Either way, tell us about the canvas you are setting up for this tale. Often in stories such as this (if there are any), that canvas will become seemingly a character unto itself (Gotham in Batman, The Forest in Bambi, as examples).

Chris Condon: We’ve set this story in the deserts of Nevada in 1962 for its duration. It’s the perfect setting for our story for several reasons. The deserts of the southwestern United Stares were where atomic testing was done, for one. Another is that we all know about secret bases out in the middle of nowhere Nevada – look at the infamous Area 51, as an example. I think there’s something inherently creepy about being out in the middle of nowhere, out in the desert. Add to that a mysterious base and an even more mysterious thing afflicting all those who encounter it, and you’ve got yourself News from the Fallout.

Byron: Introduce readers to Otis Fallows. Who was he, who is he now, and what horrors is he facing (without spoilers, of course)?

Chris Condon: I don’t want to get too much into who Otis was as that’s actually something we explore in the comic a bit, but in general, Otis is a man who has made a habit of running. He’s a man living in America in a rather dark time. We all tend to remember the early 60s as this golden era for America, one filled with hope and the promise of starships and men on the moon. But America in the early 1960s was also a terrible, terrifying place to be if you happened to be a person of color, which is what Otis Fallows is. He’s a Black man. So, Otis is a man who has had to run throughout his life. He knows it like he knows the back of his hand. He’s been in sticky situations and he knows how to handle them. He knows bad men from good. He knows when to get out of a bad situation fast and that ability might just help him and the other folks inside of Old Joe’s roadside diner.

Byron: Jeff, did you take the responsibility of designing the characters? If so, tell us about that process please.

Jeffrey Alan Love: Chris was great at giving a telling detail to each character in his script, such as a pipe or a certain style of glasses, but for the most part I just tried to make each character's silhouette descriptive of both their emotional quality and physique and also distinct from the others. With my technique of working, it is really trying to contain chaos, and so many things are out of my control as the materials do their own thing and I react to them, so having the big shapes be distinct was important – I wanted the characters to read at a distance in the same way that you can recognize a friend walking down the street a few blocks away – body language and shape being more important than the details within the form.

Byron: There are a thousand little things artists must do in storytelling (change of scene, changes of emotion in “actors”, background and angle changes etc etc.). Explain, and I always find this fascinating, how you use your artists’ tool box to accomplish these and many, many more of which we the readers are probably unaware.

Jeffrey Alan Love: Clarity is always at the forefront in comics for me, making sure the reader can "read" the panel, the page, that things flow and that the reader can lose themselves to the dream of the story and not be brought out of it by a moment of confusion. There are a lot of constraints in comics – making sure whoever speaks first is on the left often, keeping the 180 degree rule in mind when staging characters, etc. – but it is always the constraints of an art form that allow creativity to express itself. For myself, I am always impressed when artists make bold choices, big decisions, instead of playing it safe, and I tried to find that balance of clarity and clear storytelling with making big bold decisions.

Byron: Chris, tell readers a little about what ensues after the unleashing of the contaminate – to the general public, to the world – and how Fallows involves himself in this, if he does at all. What other characters are important in this miniseries and can you spotlight a few here?

Chris Condon: Chaos, really. It starts small, as these things do. Do you recall the early days of the pandemic? It started as whispers on the wind until it grew into a raging storm. The world doesn’t know what’s happening in Nevada. Not yet, anyway. General McCoy is a pivotal character in this. He’s become obsessed with a shard of black obsidian rock—at least, it’s presumed to be so. But something about it has affected his mind and has led him to take drastic, insane steps. The events of News from the Fallout are a result of those steps. There’s also all of our patrons at the diner, whom we get to know across the six issues of the series. Folks like Old Joe, Mad Rob, Nancy, Charlie, and Irene. They each have a unique role to play and I love getting to dive into their backstories to explore who they were before and what they’re doing now.

Byron: Jeff, was there a character you put more time in on that most, one that became your favorite to illustrate and “direct” as the story went on? Was there a set piece you really loved doing, or one that was particularly challenging?

Jeffrey Alan Love: I've grown to love them all. I think that is testament to Chris's writing, that every character has been developed in a way over the course of the story that you get to see them not just as a "hero" or "bad guy" but as a person. And to be honest, I've found everything about comics to be particularly challenging! Comics are hard, there is so much work involved, so much to take into account. But it is enormous fun, and I'm enjoying being pushed by it. My respect and admiration for all comic creators has increased beyond measure from working on this.

Byron: Jeff & Chris, what other projects do you have coming up, each of you individually, that you can tell readers about?

Chris Condon: I am working on Ultimate Wolverine, Green Arrow, and am preparing to return to Ambrose County for another arc of That Texas Blood with my pal, Jacob Phillips. I also have The Goddamn Tragedy, which is out in May, and Far Down Below, which is a five-issue Mad Cave miniseries. But right now, my focus is on News from the Fallout. I want people to discover this book and enjoy it. It’s a unique piece and I feel strongly that people will find that News from the Fallout is like nothing else on the stands.

Jeffrey Alan Love: I am finishing up the last three issues of News from the Fallout, and I have a new graphic novel – The Last Battle at the End of the World – along with new expanded editions of The Thousand Demon Tree and Notes from the Shadowed City coming out this year.

Dynamic Forces would like to thank Chris Condon and Jeffrey Alan Love for taking time out of their busy schedule to answer our questions. News from the Fallout from Image Comics is slated to be on sale June 25!

You can read my interview with Chris on The Goddamn Tragedy by clicking: https://www.dynamicforces.com/htmlfiles/interviews.html?showinterview=IN02242505105

2. 05/06/2025 - MARC GUGGENHEIM

3. 04/29/2025 - DAVID PEPOSE

4. 04/22/2025 - CURT PIRES

5. 04/15/2025 - MILES GUNTER

Show All