Christopher Nolan wrote an Interstellar prequel comic, and it’s pretty cool.
Spoilers for Interstellar will follow.
Of all the roles in Interstellar, none were more highly guarded than Matt Damon’s character of Dr. Mann. It did leak out that Damon was cast in the film for a super secret role, but that role was never revealed beforehand. Damon was never featured in an advertisement, he didn’t do any press for the film, and many people went into the film without knowing that he was in it.
Years before Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper led the expedition into the far reaches of space that is the present in Interstellar, Damon’s Dr. Mann led the Lazarus Missions that landed him alone with his robot KIPP on an ice planet. We first meet Dr. Mann when Cooper, Brand, and Romilly wake him up from a cryosleep, and this new comic written by director Christopher Nolan fills in some of the gaps.
It is revealed in the film that Dr. Mann falsified his data so that he would be rescued, and this comic shows the interaction between him and KIPP where this happened. It doesn’t especially add anything that can’t be presumed from the film itself, but it’s still pretty cool to see it played out. Mann’s actions were nothing short of terrible, albeit still understandable, and it’s interesting to see some of his transformation into this person.
Nolan debuted the comic titled “Absolute Zero” on Wired, and you can read it in full below: