Vault Comics has announced the May 2021 release of The Blue Flame, a new maxi-series from Christopher Cantwell, and Adam Gorham.
The Blue Flame is a cosmic hero. The Blue Flame is a DIY vigilante that fights crime on the streets of Milwaukee. The Blue Flame is a blue collar HVAC repairman named SAM BRAUSAM. In the wake of a horrific tragedy, the boundaries of the Blue Flame’s identity blur even further. Now, before a universal trial, the Blue Flame must prove that humanity is worth saving. But in order to do that, Sam Brausam has to save himself. Can he?
“Contrary to what Adam’s incredible cosmic art might suggest, the concept of Blue Flame was actually born out of a real feeling of helplessness,” said Cantwell in a press release from Vault Comics. “So far the 21st century has provided some truly intense and infinitely complex tragedy that I believe challenges the very idea of what it means to be human, let alone superhuman. Personally—in the face of so much compounding unprecedented anxiety and strife—I’ve recently been in full retreat mode culturally as an adult. I have found myself dreaming of farther and farther away places, and escaping into the more and more fantastical, if just for some way to stay sane. That’s because the truth remains that we are all struggling in a very difficult contemporary reality with all sorts of seemingly insurmountable problems that don’t seem to be easily solved by anything.”
“So as someone who has found solace in super hero books since a young age, I thought, what if we took that very solace away, even from the super hero who is supposed to provide it? Our story is bifurcated into two “worlds”: one is a high stakes cosmic quest that is so daunting it threatens to overwhelm even this idealized noble hero, and the other is the daily survival of a real man in a real world beset by all kinds of real problems. It feels at times that we are all constantly living in the wake of tragedy or on the crest of impending doom. Has the weight of that become so heavy that the idea of an ever-reliable hero is now irrelevant?”
