This "Destruction Rock Band" Made a Comic Book About Evil Robot Nazis

All photos courtesy of Ultimate Power Duo. Ultimate Power Duo is a three-piece destruction rock band, and they wrote a concept album and graphic novel about one man’s fight against robot space Nazis. Let’s unpack that. Firstly, the so-called duo consists of three members: Brennan Risling (bass/vocals), Scott Pilling (guitar/vocals) and Amber Kraft (drums/vocals); they go by the respective stage names The Riz, Scott RP and AKdoubleAK. Secondly, destruction rock sounds like punk via The Ramones and Pixies and looks like windmill strumming, full-body convulsion jam sessions and instrument smashing. Thirdly, Ultimate Power Duo released a concept album and accompanying graphic novel in 2014 called Space Joe: Ad Astra. The project is a punchy injection of nerdy goodness.

The 98 page graphic novel tells the story of Joe, a dreamer who has his sights set on the stars. He gets recruited as a pilot with humanity’s cooperative space and alien research program. One day, Joe questions his purpose and commanders’ intentions. He steals a spaceship and blasts off on a quest toward self-discovery. The graphic novel is best read while listening to the included 20-track concept album. You can also watch Ultimate Power Duo’s one-hour music video, which blends the entire narrative and images from the graphic novel. The comic book compiles the work of around a dozen artists, each one uniquely interpreting the look of Joe’s universe. While some pages grab readers with fine details and splendid colours, others mute the action as accent pieces. With the text mirroring the album lyrics, you’ll find yourself humming the soundtrack of Joe’s intergalactic journey as you read. I spoke with the mastermind behind Space Joe: Ad Astra, Brennan Risling, over the phone while he drove to take in the Ness Creek Music Festival near his home in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan.

Noisey: Ultimate Power Duo—there are three of you. Explain yourself.
Brennan Risling (The Riz): We’re the Ultimate Power Duo. If you’re ultimate, there should be three of you. We have too much energy to be confined to two. The full history is that when Scott and I started the group, we were a two-piece, and we would hire a drummer to play shows with us. And then when we met and played with Amber, we had her join. People say we should be the Ultimate Power Trio, but then there would have to be four of us.

What exactly is demolition rock?
The idea is, we come over and leave the building in smoldering ashes if we can. Watching The Who growing up, we saw musicians smash instruments and we thought that was awesome, right? The only issue is we can’t afford to replace them, but we smash them anyway.

Do you fear technology? I’m thinking of the comic and the concept album—there’s a struggle against robot overlords. Combined with the anti-establishment thing, there seems to be an underlying fear of the future in there.
The anti-establishment thing, yeah. You have to be critical at all times, even if things are going well. I don’t think I’m afraid of technology, but I just got a new cellphone. I find it fascinating, but I can’t keep up with it. Maybe you tapped into some deep psychological thing I didn’t realize I had with technology.

Why don’t you give the story pitch for Space Joe: Ad Astra.
It’s a concept album about a guy named Joe. He’s an air force army brat, and his dad wasn’t around a lot. He believes he’s meant for something bigger. He’s obsessively looking to the stars and he doesn’t know why. During this time, the earth has united to put on missions to find extra-terrestrial beings and do research. Joe becomes a candidate and excels in training. One day, he steals a spaceship and takes off to the moon and discovers a secret moon base that is running secret missions. He becomes part of that group and finds out more about what they’re about. He learns that they’re not as good as they seem. Eventually, he becomes the first person to go through the universal consciousness and find an alternate universe and time travel.

The story gets pretty dark. There’s one part when Joe contemplates suicide. Can you talk about why it was important you included that in there?
People go through different emotions. In that part, Joe has gone on his first mission and attacks a planet and kills all these creatures. He’s never told why, but he is congratulated. He goes out again and has this big moment of doubt about what his purpose is. That’s Joe’s point of disillusion. He’s left everything—the planet, his family—to follow this dream he doesn’t really understand. Right after that, when he gets shot down and taken prisoner, he realizes he’s stronger than he thought. Even if he doesn’t know what he’s bound for, he wants to discover bigger and better things.

What do you see is the relationship between punk music and comic books? Is there one? Or are you just a comic book nerd and music junkie?
I’m a comic book nerd and music junkie. It’s an easy collaboration. I thought it was a cool project. But there is a relationship there; the punk scene is all about DIY projects.

What was the collaboration aspect like bringing in so many artists to work on the comic book?
We’d never made a comic before. Our guitar player is the research guy. Together we made a list of artists we liked on the Joe Shuster website. We started emailing people. We gave each artist two to five pages, open to interpretation. We gave them the corresponding song, synopsis, character descriptions and a deadline. It was due on November 15, I think in 2011. The first story came back and it was just the artwork without any lettering. We said, ‘Did you want lettering?’ The artist said, ‘I don’t do lettering. You’ll have to find someone else to do that.’ We’d never thought of that. Some people couldn’t do it anymore because of their schedules. Some artists did three to five songs. Basically, it ended up being a longer process. It took a couple years.

What was it like seeing the different artists’ interpretations?
It was amazing. As a writer, I have these different ideas in my head of what I wanted to happen. Having someone else interpret it can be a little scary. Some people took song lyrics and based their illustrations off of those. I can’t even think which one is my favourite.

On a different note, are you into conspiracy theories? I ask because of lyrics from your past albums.
Yeah, I am. Maybe less now than I used to be. But I find them fascinating.

Are we talking full-on chemtrails type stuff?
I don’t really believe in them anymore. But David Icke and the whole reptilian shapeshifting thing –

You’re on that level?
Yeah. I enjoy it. I don’t believe it, but I like to research it. The Egyptian pyramids and ancient aliens. Maybe that’s how they got there, you know? I enjoy them as an intellectual exercise. There’s always more than what we’re being told.

I have to ask about the robot Nazi supervillain angle in the comic. Any comment on that?
That’s my small nod to Carl Sagan and his book Contact, in which the first radio signal sent out across the world was for Adolf Hitler’s Olympics. That signal ends up being the first radio signal aliens hear. I took that idea and ran with it. My idea was earth settled on a distant planet to mine dark matter for energy. Humans leave robots to do the work. The robots feel they aren’t being treated fairly, and they end up finding Hitler’s message in space. It’s their first contact with another civilization. They focus more on that signal and study it and eventually believe they are the next Reich. They believe they are being persecuted and need to rise up and overthrow the humans. They dawn Nazi ideals. For our next album and graphic novel Duophenia: Space Joe II—a play on The Who’s Quadrophenia—we’ll explore more of the characters. That’s a working title. There are going to be other conflicts with the Nazi robots.

Devin Pacholik battles Nazi robots and writes in Canada – @DevinPatches