Ridley Scott, the director behind Alien, Blade Runner, and Gladiator, is venturing into comics. His Scott Free production house is partnering with Mechanical Cake on the graphic novels Hyde, Modville, and Nick.

Mechanical Cake is a production company created by CEO Jesse Negron and COO Tom Sanders in 2015; they recently named Dave Elliott (co-founder of Radical Comics) as the Editor-in-Chief. Tom Moran, Scott Free’s Senior VP Development & Production, is overseeing the projects. Artists working on the graphic novels include Bill Sienkiewicz, Chris Weston, Dan Panosian, Brian Rood, Hendry Prasetya, and Eko Puteh.

“Mechanical Cake is a terrific company. They understand the art of graphic novels,” Scott said. “As an artist and painter, these projects are exciting to me, and I look forward to collaborating with Jesse, Tom, Dave, and the Mechanical Cake team.”

“Ridley and Tony Scott are known as great filmmakers (Alien, Blade Runner, Top Gun, True Romance), but few people realize their shared first true love of painting and art is what drove both of them into filmmaking,” Moran said. “For the first time in Scott Free’s history, we are excitedly diving into comics as a new way to explore art and storytelling.”

Modville mixes science fiction, southern gothic, and crime drama in a story about AI humans set in the future in New Orleans. Hyde sees Robert Louis Stevenson’s character Mr. Hyde living and doing experiments under the streets of London. Nick is a yule time war story that involves Norse legends.

Modville is up first with book 1 of 8 featuring art by Prasetya and Puteh. It will open for preorder in March 2025, including first issue previews of the other titles.