Nerds rejoice! Those of you who've been hiding your copies of The Dark Knight Returns inside the pages of The Economist or Rolling Stone, and who've never thought of their hobby as anything more than just that, take heart. Writer and Brandeis alum A. David Lewis '99 is proving that comic books can be more than just a juvenile passtime. Founder of the Caption Box comic book imprint, Lewis has just published his newest work, Some New Kind of Slaughter, or Lost in the Flood (and How We Found Home Again): Diluvian Myths from Around the World on Archaia Studios Press. Born in Boston, Lewis grew up not far from Waltham, in Framingham, Mass. Throughout high school he engaged in extensive creative outputs such as writing and theater. He also, like any young mind worth its salt, had an interest in the comic book medium, more commonly known by its adult-friendly moniker, the graphic novel.

Lewis stepped onto the Brandeis campus in the fall of 1995. Although he had been interested in other schools, Lewis chose the University when it "sweetened the deal" with a Justice Brandeis Scholarship. However his interest was not only financial. "[I] just found the campus electric. [I] found a vitality there among the students that I didn't find at any of the other schools."

It was during his time at Brandeis that Lewis, who had initially read comic books "just for escapist fun," developed a more serious and focused outlook on the medium. Reflecting on his junior year, Lewis credits Prof. William Flesch (ENG) with giving him the direction and encouragement to pursue his interests. "[Flesch] was my advisor. I was taking a Shakespeare class with him and he knew of Neil Gaiman, who has since become a New York Times best-selling author. He said, 'Why not look at The Sandman academically? Why not use it in one of the Shakespeare papers?' And that ultimately led to my final project," Lewis says. The final project in question was a thesis that encompassed comic book icon Alan Moore's Watchmen, as well as Neil Gaiman's masterpiece series The Sandman. It was this experience that Lewis says "legitimized" the medium for him.

After graduating, Lewis began writing numerous academic and scholarly pieces about the comic book genre, garnering himself a good deal of attention from those in the field. Once Lewis made a name for himself, he was asked if he was interested in entering the creative field. The rest, as Lewis puts it, "is history."

Though Lewis claims that he is not particularly religious, his stories have an undeniable biblical influence. With this in mind, Lewis thinks his works would be "surprising to people who knew me growing up in Framingham or even people who knew me at Brandeis." His first collaboration with the artist Marvin Perry Mann, The Lone and Level Sands, tells the story of the exodus from Egypt, while Some New Kind of Slaughter addresses the story of Noah and the Flood.

Yet his stories are not simple retellings. With both his graphic novels, Lewis has spun the stories on their heads, "looking at it through other traditions," as well as other timelines and cultures' mythos. Despite his early aversion towards religion, Lewis says his problem was "not with religion .. I think that I discovered that my problem was a bad association with organized religion. It didn't allow enough room for the questions that I had."

However, Lewis doesn't want religion to color his entire body of work. "Probably my next work [will be] something a bit more secular," he says. "My next work is going to deal with the fantastic and modern baseball. So it's a little bit of a departure. I tend to enjoy stories that have already been told and taking them and spinning them and distorting them. So it will be similar in that context, but it won't be biblically based.