Out this week from Bluewater Productions is a 4-issue comic book series about a man dealing with the trails and tribulations about being HIV positive.  Loosely based off writer, Darren G. Davis’ journal entrees this fiction graphic novel tells the story about being HIV positive from a different perspective.

The 4-issue mini series, Lost Raven, is drawn by Renato Arlem, Keu Cha and Sean Murphy.

After learning that he has contracted the HIV virus, attorney Zak Raven leaves his practice behind to set forth on a mission of relaxation-– until his peaceful trip goes wildly astray, leaving Zak shipwrecked on what he thinks is a deserted island with only the words in his own journal to keep him company.

Unknown to Zak, four miles below the surface secretly hides a government experimentation center where scientists are playing God by trying to artificially evolve a human based species that can survive evacuation missions in deep space. Within 900 years, earth will be dealt a deathblow by a mountain-size asteroid. However, so far they have only achieved creating living abominations. Zak and these creatures are on a collision course, and he must rise to the challenge!

Writer Davis, who has been HIV positive for the last 14 years, discussed some of the motivation behind the new comic:

I wrote the series because I wanted to make a difference in the HIV world and most of the movies and books were about people dying.  I wanted to tell it from the other side, the person that manages it from a living perspective. It’s not touchy-feely,” he adds. “It’s basically raw emotion. Plus, it has a lot of cool monsters in it.

It is based on my journal entries from when I was diagnosed being HIV positive. The book is almost like HIV 101 for the mental state. When I first found out about my condition I didn’t have any information and what wás out there was confusing even with help from doctors. This is no longer just a gay disease, so I also wrote the book so anyone can identify with it. I was even fired from a job after they found out I was HIV positive. Coming out about this subject is to help reduce the stigma of it… which has its challenges in itself.

Also being released by Bluewater is a biography on famed HIV artist Keith Haring called “Milestones of Art: Keith Haring: Next Stop Art”.