Mix one-part Da Vinci Code and two parts X-Files, and you've just about got The Foundation. Described as a "secret society version of a police procedural drama" by writer John Rozum, the graphic novel collection of the inaugural miniseries is scheduled for a September 2008 release. Interest in this book spiked with the early purchase of the film rights to the book, and the miniseries' first issue sold out days after its release at the end of 2007.
"The concept of The Foundation originated from a conversation I had with a friend," said Kody Chamberlain, the book’s creator. "I commented that psychics never seem to be able to prevent the things they've predicted. If I were a psychic and was presented with information of a horrible future event, I'd probably try and do something about it."
Written by John Rozum with artist Chee, The Foundation centers on the enigmatic writings of Nostradamus and a hidden organization he founded to prevent the most catastrophic prophesies from coming true. Financed by the sales of his books, the Foundation has flourished for over five-hundred years to become a global organization.
"The Foundation's agents range from recruits pulled from various police, military and government agencies; scholars ranging from historians to scientists and poets; accountants and business leaders; cryptographers and puzzle solvers, and even psychics," said Rozum, the inaugural story's writer. "All of these people pool their knowledge to try and decode the various quatrains of Nostradamus in order to determine an actual real world scenario that they can actively manipulate, usually to prevent it from coming to pass."
Nostradamus' predictions live on well after his death, becoming part of pop culture in the 20th and 21th centuries. The subject of hundreds of fiction and nonfiction books, his quatrains have also been attributed, sometimes falsely, to predict such tragic events as Hurricane Katrina and the September 11, 2001 attacks.
In the Foundation, longtime field agent Stephen Valentine finds himself at a crossroads in doing the work of the Foundation. " The argument he's wrestling with really comes down to the difference between predeterminism and free choice," Rozum explained. "He doesn't like the idea that his entire life is a predetermined chain of events, but unless it is, then the entire reasoning behind the Foundation is false. He also doesn't like making decisions on which people in the world should be saved and which people are expendable to a greater good that has been deciphered from vague prophecies made nearly half a millenium ago."
In June 2007, Paramount Pictures preemptively purchased the film rights to The Foundation. This is one of many film adaptations that publisher BOOM! Studios has acquired for its library of titles. The company's founders, Andrew Cosby and Ross Richie, have a history of comics-to-film adaptation that began long before the genesis of their company in 2005.
Mining the on-going intrigue of Nostradamus' predictions for the general public, The Foundation series seems a potent mixture bound for future stories. "Because of the premise of the series and the size of the organization it depicts, there is already plenty of implied back story and room for expansion for future stories," said Rozum. With almost five hundred years of history and over one-thousand quatrains as source material, you can be sure there’s more to come from The Foundation. .
