There are few characters in the DC Comics canon who have gotten as many issues published as Resurrection Man that can still be referred to as a “cult” character. But Mitch Shelley, who gets a new superpower every time he dies, is definitely that. And now he’s back in a new, six-issue Black Label series by Ram V and Anand RK — something that Ram V has been waiting a long time to do.
“I went, let me go pitch this character right after I had done a few short things at DC,” Ram V told Comic Book Club. “Well, you know, safe to say, I think when I pitched it, they went, yeah, maybe don’t pitch a character no one’s heard of in, I don’t know, a few decades as your big DC pitch right after you’ve done the first few things here. Keep that one in your back pocket. And I successfully did until a little earlier in 2024.”
Originally created by Dan Abnett, Andy Lanning, and Jackson “Butch” Guice in 1997, the initial series ran for 27 issues before getting canceled. The character was brought back for DC’s New 52 initiative, and was again canceled, this time after 13 issues.
Don’t worry, there’s no real chance this six-issue series will get canceled mid-run. But for an extra level of challenge, despite the Black Label line existing out of continuity, Ram V’s goal here is to reconcile the differing takes on the character through his as usual metaphysical and philosophical lens.
In advance of the book’s release on April 2, we talked with Ram V about his approach to the character, working again with Anand RK, and how this ties into some of his earlier work like Rare Flavours and The Many Deaths of Laila Starr. Plus, check out a preview of five, unlettered pages from the book, as well as a main cover by Jeff Dekal, and variant covers by Dan Panosian and Jackson “Butch” Guice
Comic Book Club: This title seems to bring together a lot of your fascinations, specifically eternal life and eating people.
Ram V: [Laughs] I would say, yeah, those two are definitely on the list.
Resurrection Man is very much a cult classic character. I mean, I think there’s not a lot of characters you can call that, but definitely him.
Yeah.
So when did you first become aware of the character — and what drew you to him in general?
This is a funny story that I imagine I will be telling several times over when it comes to this book. So a while back, there was a list going around DC editorial about, do writers want to take on any of these characters? Let’s rethink. Let’s look at new characters, new slates, some characters that have been haven’t been around in a while kind of thing. And while Resurrection Man was not on that list, I looked at that list, and because of my history with comics, because I only got into wanting to really read and write comics after reading Sandman in my twenties, I didn’t have this encyclopedic knowledge of, “Ah of course, this person showed up in this book for three issues.” So I went out and I bought a DC Who’s Who, which is this character encyclopedia.
As I was looking up some of the other characters, I came across this character called the Resurrection Man. I went, Oh, that’s an interesting name for a character, given my preoccupations, let me see. What’s the deal with this guy? And as I delved further into it, there was this rabbit hole of discovering all kinds of connections. Morrison used him in One Million. Garth Ennis, Hitman and Resurrection Man have had a sort of buddy hero team-up thing going on. And these were all creators that had gotten me into comics. So I went, “Wow, I should read this.” And, of course, discovering Andy [Lanning] and Dan [Abnett]’s work through reading that series.
This was back in 2019 I went, let me go pitch this character right after I had done a few short things at DC. Well, you know, safe to say, I think when I pitched it, they went, yeah, maybe don’t pitch a character no one’s heard of in, I don’t know, a few decades as your big DC pitch right after you’ve done the first few things here. Keep that one in your back pocket. And I successfully did until a little earlier in 2024.
How much of that original pitch survived? Obviously, you’re a different writer now than you were in 2019 so how much changed?
Not a lot, to be honest. This was very much the intention, largely because… I might be bad at explaining [this]. Sometimes I come up with pitches because I see things that are possible to do that should beccompletely obvious, and yet no one’s done them. It’s like walking into a living room and seeing this giant painting on the wall that’s skewed sideways and going, “Why the hell isn’t anyone just correcting it?” I’ve had pitches come up like this so many times.
And Resurrection Man was definitely one of those where… You’ve read the first two issues. The mechanism of how the story starts in issue one is such an obvious thing: what if he stops being a superhero and just dies like an old man? What happens to him? I guarantee you, somebody else has thought of this, just never executed it into a story. And so I went, come on, someone’s got to do this one. So that’s how that pitch came about. And those kinds of pitches are unlikely to change, because they’re born out of a very childlike obsession with one thing, and then everything else [comes] out from that.
Not to stick too much on the history of the character, but I was reading that Abnett and Lanning started it as a Mr. Immortal pitch, and then were like, “No, that’s boring. Let’s give him superpowers.” It almost feels like, with the series, you’re paring it back to that original idea a little — or maybe going 50% of the way there.
You’ve not read issue three. In Issue three, that concept is pretty overtly addressed, because there’s a DC character called Immortal Man as well that has connections. In Dan and Andy’s series, there’s an appearance by Phantom Stranger where he insinuates that Mitch Shelley has been around for far longer than he thinks. So there are all of these pieces that are connected by the connective thread of that opening gambit in issue one. It genuinely is that joy of going, “Oh, if I do this one thing, it pulls in these 15 other things and makes them sing together.
Part of the the joy of addressing it is that there’s a history to the character. And not only is the history, there’s also the origin that they came up with, and then the origin that was retconned in the New 52, and then how do you suggest, at least in this book, that both the origin and the retcon are accurate and make sense with each other? It’s been as much of an exercise in doing cool, weird, meta story stuff as it has been telling the story itself.
Given it is Black Label, how beholden do you feel to continuity? Or is continuity just another tool in the toolbox, because it’s not technically part of the main line?
I’m going to give you two answers that are going to contradict each other. The first answer being, because it’s Black Label, it doesn’t have to address the current, larger continuity of the DCU. And so that gives me freedom to do a lot of things there, and that I’m appreciative of. But I’m not one of those writers who looks at continuity as a burden. I’m one of those guys who looks at continuity as like, oh, this means I can pick the stuff that I need from it and play with it.
All of the Resurrection Man’s past is something that I look at, and I go: all of that happened, and all of those origin stories are true, and all of the contradicting retcons are true, and we’re gonna make all of them work in context of the story. Looking backward to his past, the continuity, is a blessing. Looking forward to his future, the lack of continuity is also a blessing.
Why Quantum Karma? What does that title indicate to you?
The thematic preoccupations of the story, as you suggested before, link to eternal life, but also, particularly in my case, to the philosophy behind the idea of reincarnation and a cyclical universe, and what that has to say about eternal life and what that has to say about mortality. Which is something you know, I explored with [The Many Deaths of Laila Starr] as well. But in this particular case, being the kind of book that it is, we’re looking at karma as as existential purpose. What is the thing that you were put here to do? And must you be cognizant of it, or is it better to live your life not knowing your purpose in the grand scheme of things? This is a question that we address in the book.
But then quantum karma, because the way we reconcile this with a DCU, with a character who’s existed in the history of the DCU, is to move towards the scientific angle of it, where quantum entanglement and existential purpose have explanations that cross over each other in terms of, maybe you were put here to entangle with other stories and touch them in ways you can’t even see. And yet, from a removed perspective, from a distance, you understand the tapestry. You understand the role of this thread and the greater purpose of things.
It’s a title that does my favorite thing, which is marry metaphysics and potentially mythological philosophy with science and logic and how those things meld together. Not to put too fine a point on it, this is what happened. People get to the fringes of theoretical science. Why scientists go, no, no, science is more art when you start getting to the edges of things. Because both philosophers and scientists are trying to explain the universe. Just from different ends of the continuum.
To keep going on this bent, like you said, you’ve written about karma, resurrection, a lot of these themes before. I’m sure part of it is the dictates of the story and the world that you’re creating. But for you as an author, how much does that evolve your relationship with those concepts from a philosophical perspective? Do you find that changing over time? Or do you find yourself coming close to some sort of unified theory for yourself?
As an author, my aim is less to evolve some kind of answer or theory from it. My endeavor is more just being fascinated by this thing that is in front of me and going, isn’t it cool? I haven’t thought of it this way. So if you look at this idea of eternal life and purpose and karma as one thing — in Laila Starr I was looking at it from the perspective of a God who had to come down to live amongst human beings, to understand it, understand their own greatness, but through human experiences, if you will. That was one way of looking at this.
And then with Resurrection Man, I’m saying: what if understanding the greater perspective is pointless, and the human perspective is the only thing that matters? Gods are pointless in the larger scheme of things, it’s only the little things, the human experiences, who you woke up with, who you had coffee with that’s the only thing that matters. Universes live and die. No one gives a crap about those. And so these are two almost opposed viewpoints, but both written by me examining the same thing, because I think all of our brains work that way. We go, yes, of course, this is how you look at it. And then two seconds later, you’ll go, no, but what if this is how you look at it? And essentially, storytelling is an exercise in generating those viewpoints and generating those questions, not necessarily in providing any kind of answers.
You’ve worked with Anand RK before. What works about the relationship, and what has evolved about the relationship?
This is a loaded question, and I wish Anand was here to answer it. Anand is one of my earliest collaborators, so I’d made comics with them long before anyone was paying any kind of attention to me making comics. I think the first thing we did was a four page comic that we literally stapled together and took around to conventions. So there’s been a long history. First collaboration made some ripples with Gravity’s Wall in the UK, and then got picked up by Dark Horse in the States, and then Blue and Green made bigger ripples with an Eisner nomination and a win. And so my history with Anand has been one of pure joy in just making cool stuff and knowing both of us are aligned in the story is most important thing. The book is the most important thing.
But then, at the end of Blue and Green, Anand and I were having a chat in a bar in India, and he said, you know, you’re the most intimidating person to work with. I mean, it’s a cool thing to hear, but I kind of felt sad about that. Like, why would you be intimidated working with me? Because, he went, you have an idea of what you want to do, and you dive in forcefully to where maybe disagreeing with you feels like an insurmountable task, but then it also works. So he said to me, sometimes I feel like I want to do things, but pushing back against you seems like pushing back against the waves. And I said to him, but you know, you always can.
You can see that growth in the relationship when you collaborate with someone, you have to have the conviction in your beliefs to say, this is how I think we should do things, and the other person must also have the same conviction in their beliefs, even if they disagree, to say, this is how we should do things. And at some point in that friction is where a good artistic vision evolves. No one person should feel like they’re giving in to someone else.
After having that conversation, to come here and do a book that is 120 something pages is a testament to the fact that you can be friends with someone, work with them for XYZ number of years… You need to evolve that relationship while still being interesting, engaged human beings with artistic conviction, convictions about their own work.
Before we wrap up, what can you tease about the series? What should readers know?
This book does really work with all of my preoccupations. It has this bizarre look at the DCU’s history. We go through World War II, but we’re also going through we meet The Atom and Cronos and those characters set in the 1980s. And then there’s an encounter with The Human Target further down the line, and the Phantom Stranger shows up. While being this grounded character and grounded take, it also has this tour the force, running through the DCU’s, I don’t want to say obscure, but more cult classic characters, if you will.
And then, while doing all of those things, it is also this grand philosophical, metaphysical question about the nature of human existence and storytelling and what we consider to be important in our stories, in our narratives, if you will. Beyond that, as we get closer to the end, it also does really zany metaphysical stuff with the comics itself where there’s characters coming out of the page, picking up panels from the book, and then there’s you reading somebody else reading a comic. It goes it goes pretty nuts from here.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Resurrection Man: Quantum Karma #1 hits stores on April 2, 2025.
Comic Book Club Live Info:
Discover more from Comic Book Club
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.