(W) Steve Orlando (A/CA) Matthew Dow Smith. NEW SERIES! Sasha never saw his younger brother...until the secret police made him disappear. Sasha Vasnetsov left Thrice-Nine-the dirty folklore world that limps along in the wreckage of a Technomagic War-thirty years ago and never looked back. But word that the secret police have sent his brother Gena to a work camp for the socially degenerate drags him back* with a promise to free Gena and return him to their mother before her fiftieth birthday. The only problem? Sasha isn't a fraction of the tough guy he tries to be* so if he's going to break back into Thrice-Nine...he'll need help. Sasha's only hope is Maria Kamenaya* a former Technomagic Warrior with hundreds of enemy kills to her name* betrayed by the country that made her when her honor conflicted with their agenda. Thrice-Nine took Sasha's brother* and it took Maria's heart. This quest is how they get both of those things back* in the steaming* lawless land of decapitated states...the land of DEAD KINGS. Like True Grit set in the world of Final Fantasy* DEAD KINGS is unrelenting with its passion and thrills* massive in scale and unflinching as it peers into the underside of the obligations that drive us all: to family and country. It's a classic Wild West revenge cast against a haunting* awe-inspiring vision of a future where we've mortally wounded the world* and the prisoners are the only ones left to run the penitentiary. Written by Steve Orlando (Batman/Shadow* Crude* Midnighter* Virgil) and drawn by Matthew Dow Smith (October Girl* Suicide Squad* X-Files) DEAD KINGS continues Orlando's in-depth ex-ploration of retribution in all its dark* complex forms. Having burst forth from the restrictions of the modern world's flesh and bone* Orlando and Smith create a whole new world of iron-and-oil fantasy* paths walked by a redemption-fueled older brother and the abandoned* rusted out* vindictive tool of a bygone war that protects him-this is us AFTER the World Wars of Mechs and Magic* broken hearts and busted fists included* a world you would ONLY find at AfterShock!