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We’ve seen actors branch out into all kinds of side careers, from rapping and banjoing to running an NFL franchise or a hamburger joint.
Chad Michael Murray – best known for making hearts throb on TV’s “One Tree Hill” and movies like “House of Wax” and “A Cinderella Story” – now adds “graphic novelist” to his resume’s job history with “Everlast,” a dark but spiritual tale about a hard-edged “soul-saver” in the days leading up to the apocalypse.
We geeked out with the amicable Buffalo, New York, native at October’s New York Comic-Con to cast the inevitable movie version.
So what inspired you to start writing graphic novels?
I can tell you that the story was inspired by a man who showed up on my doorstep, preaching about the end of the world, and he goes, “144,000 people are going to be let survive the End of Days. Do you want to be one of them?” And at that point I’m just like okay, I want to hear it. And it was really interesting. I heard this guy’s story and then I just kind of swallowed this idea and I went inside my house, and I just kind of contemplated it for a long time and thought, “What if it was true?”
Out of that I created Derek (Everlast), a soldier whose job it is to find people who are destined to survive the End of Days. And I just saw this as the greatest platform to launch it. It’s a really cool platform because you can do a little bit of everything with a little bit of ink. An incredible artist, obviously, can blow up your world for you, blow up a building instead of having to actually spend lots of production dollars, actually doing that, like some people.
Read More: 5 Questions With Actor-Turned-Graphic Novelist Chad Michael Murray | NextMovie.
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Bethany Joy Galeotti 
