During the release week for HUXLEY: The Oracle, I spoke to acclaimed concept artist Ben Mauro all about his vision for the series and his experience working on Call of Duty, Halo, and more.

Mauro is known for being the artist behind well-known titles like The Predator, Halo Infinite, The Hobbit Trilogy, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, Elysium, and Chappie. He created the HUXLEY: The Oracle series as a prequel to his post-apocalyptic sci-fi graphic novel HUXLEY, which was released in January 2024.

Set during the height of the Oracle Empire, HUXLEY: The Oracle follows Max as he starts his career as a Ronin soldier designed to maintain order on the desert planet Fury‑7. Max becomes involved in a plot that threatens to destroy the empire while the AI-controlled empire fights brutal wars to maintain its control. His search for hidden secrets in the desert leads him to a path that will transform his identity while determining the destiny of the galaxy.

Huxley Inspirations

Talking about the difference between the original HUXLEY novel and this new prequel, Mauro commented, “The original HUXLEY graphic novel is very much a European-style graphic novel series. And the Oracle is much more of an illustrated novel sort of in the vein of Simon Stalin-type books. So it’s almost like reading a movie in a way, really big illustrations, beautifully illustrated. And then you can kind of dive deeper into the other stories from there.”

We also discussed his love for storytelling. Mauro said, “A lot of the movies I worked on, I’d have to illustrate moments of the story. You have to create this drama and evoke an emotion in the viewer that, hopefully, is so powerful, it ends up being part of the story. That was really good training to get better at visual storytelling. So hopefully when you read these books, it feels like watching a movie or TV series unfold.”

Early hardcovers of HUXLEY: The Oracle are shipping now. The public version from Amazon and bookstores is also available now in the UK. It will be available in the US and worldwide on December 2nd. Keep up with all of the latest updates at https://www.huxleysaga.com/.