The following is an interview with Rory Collins regarding his recent return to Kickstarter for the launch of Arks Proximan #2. In this interview, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief Barbra Dillon chats with Collins about returning to the world and characters of the bio-punk odyssey, the big plans for further universe building planned for 2026, and more!
Barbra Dillon, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief: You recently returned to Kickstarter for the latest installment within the Arks comic book universe with Arks Proximan #2. With this new issue, where will readers find themselves within this bio-punk odyssey?
Rory Collins: They’ll find themselves in a cave, with a boy who has just watched his parents die (classic comics trope I know).
The thing that killed them wasn’t human. It was a drone that looked like a girl – using a secondary bladder to siphon bacteria from her Syn Suit to create a bomb.
So the story begins at the point where survival should already be over.
Odd Bluford is trapped. With him are his AI snake, Stella, and a small group of transplanted animals – a goat, cows, a pig, a lamb, a couple of frogs. In any normal story, this is where things end.
But Odd had stolen something – a compound bar. A dense block of rare metals that allows him and Stella to grow a Reclamation Bag from his syn suit.
That bag – Burp – is what saves his life.
Burp is a closed-loop biological system that keeps him alive by recycling whatever it can. Skin, waste, anything. It’s bacteria produces iodine salts to fight radiation poisoning, synthesises food and water, and turns survival into something just about possible.
From there, the story opens out into a journey across 7,483 miles of radioactive wilderness, with the goal of reaching a Rapid Synthesiser that can “boot” copies of his parents.
But there’s a cost– Stella has already calculated it. To survive the journey, the system will eventually need more biomass than Odd alone can provide. Which means the animals travelling with him aren’t companions- They’re fuel.
We call it a bio-punk odyssey because structurally, it mirrors the Odyssey – a story about getting home, reframed through synthetic biology instead of mythology.
Odd is the Odysseus figure. A man trying to get home.
Stella plays something close to Athena – his omniscient advisor and tormentor. The animals take the place of Odysseus’ crew. And the girl – the drone – sits somewhere between Aphrodite and Hera. Something to be feared… and, over time, something he may not be able to stop himself from falling in love with.
It’s the hero’s journey run amok – part eldritch horror, part classical tragedy, part strange, wondrous sci-fi survival story – told by a teenage boy at the edge of the universe.
We’re taking one of humanity’s oldest narrative structures and forcing it through the consequences of the sciences we’re only just beginning to understand.
And if it works, I genuinely think it has the potential to be one of the greatest sci-fi graphic novels out there.
BD: In light of your continued collaboration with co-writer Natalie Malla, do you find that you have developed a creative “shorthand” in bringing the world and characters to life on the page? Likewise, what can you tell us about your creative process in working with artist Andrew Morris?
RC: Natalie and Andrew are amazing artists. I’ve had the ridiculous good fortune of knowing them before they’re incredibly expensive to employ.
Natalie Malla is the most talented writer and director I know, and Andrew Morris is a sleeping giant of the industry.
We’ve worked together for decades, so yes – there’s a shorthand, but it’s really just trust. I’ll write the first draft, and Natalie will come in and edit it – and if she changes something, I know it will improve it.
With Andrew, it goes even further. He doesn’t just understand Arks – he is a huge part of it. He’s drawn and designed around 80% of the world and, in many ways, probably understands it better than I do.
At this point, I build the framework – the science, the systems, the first draft – and then hand it over.
And what comes back is always better.
BD: In light of the current crowdfunding campaign, are there any specific backer rewards that you would like to highlight for readers?
RC: The ODDyssey: The Story So Far Bundle is probably the best place to start.
It gives you Arks Proximan #1 and #2 together, so you can experience the story so far, and it also includes this campaign’s companion comic, Burp: The Reclamation Bag.
And Burp isn’t just an add-on – it dives into the real science and nightmare bio-tech behind Odd’s journey. Because, at the end of the day, that’s the dream – sci-fi lore that is actually based on real science.
BD: Why do you feel that crowdfunding has become such a valuable asset to independent creators and publishers?
RC: For us, it’s essential.
Kickstarter removes the gatekeeping. You’re not waiting for permission or trying to second-guess what an audience might want – you’re building a body of work in public, with the public essentially .
It’s not always smooth. Campaigns can stall, things can go wrong in fulfillment, and you hear about it when they do. But that’s also the point. You’re learning every part of the process in real time. I’d genuinely advise anyone starting out to run a Kickstarter rather than study comics in isolation – if you can fulfill one campaign, you’ll understand the business in a way that’s very hard to replicate elsewhere.
It also gives you the freedom to take risks. You can make something unusual, specific, or ambitious, and if it resonates, it finds its audience without needing to be softened or reshaped to fit a traditional model.
Would Arks Proximan exist in its current form with a dozen editors involved? A hard sci-fi with no formulaic “save the cat” moment in the opening ten pages… a protagonist who’s deliberately a bit annoying for most of the first issue… who, through horrible trauma, becomes the savior of humankind – whilst killing both of his parents twice, resurrecting a demon, and eating his own toes?
I don’t think so.
BD: In the next 12 months, you have plans to release 5 new books. How would you describe the process of building this shared universe, and what will you have in store for readers?
RC: We’re currently working on three parallel storylines – Arks, Arks Helices, and Arks Proximan. Arks Issue 6 is coming in 2027, but this year we’re focused on completing the first volumes of Helices and Proximan.
Together, they form the opening storylines of The War of Light – a decades-spanning sci-fi pantheon that charts humanity’s expansion from its first f**k ups pollinating and terraforming exoplanets… to the species’ strange and terrifying fate: hiding in the gravity of a corpse star at the end of time.
Arks Helices is a limited series set at the “end of time” – around 34,962 AD – where the last remnants of humanity are hiding from, of all places, Earth.
Proximan, on the other hand, sits at the beginning of the timeline – around 9000 AD – on our nearest exoplanet, Proxima Centauri, following one of humanity’s first successful “analogues” of Earth… and the mysterious force back on Earth that is trying to destroy them.
That tension – between the Arks scattered across distant worlds and whatever is reaching out from Earth to erase them – is the central mystery at the heart of the story.
Because the scale is so large, we’ve made a deliberate choice not to tell it linearly. Instead, we’re building it from multiple points in the timeline at once – the beginning, the middle, and the end.
The idea is that readers start to piece things together themselves. You get clues – snippets from each of the stories – or, as we call it, “pre-shadowing” and “un-spoilers” – that only fully make sense when the different strands connect.
It’s an unusual way to build a universe, but it allows us to tell the complete story faster and, hopefully, for the incredible people supporting the books, makes the experience feel less like reading a story out of order and more like piecing one together – like a detective trying to solve a case.
BD: Lastly, what is the best way for our readers to find out more about Arks Proximan and its Kickstarter campaign?
RC: Arks Proximan #1–2 is currently live on Kickstarter here.
And once the campaign ends, you can find out more about the wider Arks universe at www.clickysproutwife.com.
