Matt Meyer
Internationally renowned publisher Humanoids announced today PROJECT ARKA: INTO THE DARK UNKNOWN, a chilling science fiction graphic novel set in a distant future where citizens of a dying Earth flee to a distant promised land in a massive colony ship, the Arka III, but soon find themselves trapped in a mysterious corner of uncharted space.
French science fiction novelist Romain Benassaya adapts his own bestselling novel, Pyramides, into
an original graphic novel featuring the lushly illustrative watercolor art of acclaimed Catalan
illustrator Joan Urgell. Available now for the first time in English on June 20, 2023.
In the not-too-distant future, the Earth has been destroyed, its orbit withering and its citizens
desperate to escape to the stars. The solution? Project Arka, a series of massive space vessels bound
for the distant planet of Leonis.
When the passengers of Arka III awaken from their long intergalactic journey, they realize they’re
not on Leonis. Not only that, their journey has taken much longer than the planned two hundred
years, and has landed them in a starless, seemingly endless void. Eric Rives, the ship’s second-in-
command, and his partner Jia Tang are sent on an exploratory mission to investigate the dark
labyrinth that surrounds them…but what they find is beyond belief.
Born in Nice in 1984, Romain Benassaya studied linguistics before leaving to teach French abroad,
passing through Canada, Uganda, and Thailand, where he still lives today. Passionate about science
fiction, deeply influenced by Frank Herbert’s Dune and Dan Simmons’ Hyperion, in 2016 he published his first book, the space-opera Arca with Critic. In the same universe, he published Pyramides in 2018, then The Last Ark in 2022.
Joan Urgell is a Catalan cartoonist, trained at the Escola Joso in Barcelona. After several years spent
as an illustrator at Disney and designer at various companies, he illustrated the two-volume thriller
La onzième plaie by Nicolas Tackian, published by Soleil in 2008 and 2009. He also worked on the
post-apocalyptic trilogy Dead Life by Jean-Charles Gaudin from 2011 to 2017 for Soleil, and the
series Clivages, an adventure of a young woman in a civil war in Eastern Europe, between 2019 and
2020.
PROJECT ARKA: INTO THE DARK UNKNOWN will be available in bookstores everywhere
(bookshop.org) on June 20, 2023 and in comic shops (comicshoplocator.com) on June 21, 2023.
Digital copies can be purchased from comiXology and other digital platforms.