Kieron Gillen Says Its Time To Roll The Die

by Vince Brusio

The reference to Narnia wasn’t lost on writer Kieron Gillen when he talked with PREVIEWSworld about his latest Image Comics series, Die. Yes, he is a big fan of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. But there is so much more potential for fantasy, especially if you’re a gamer. Which he is. Armed with his love of RPGs, and an artist that was equally driven, writer Kieron Gillen gives us his personal best with Die #1 (OCT180012), which arrives in comic shops December 5.

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Vince Brusio: The Wicked & The Divine is electric and eclectic comic chaos that’s nothing short of a wrinkle in time. Will Die be something similar in tone? Or will this book be more generalized, more like a drama? From the preview pages, it looks like a bastard Hellraiser/Narnia hybrid written by the ghost of C.S. Lewis.

Kieron Gillen: The Wicked + the Divine was always about a monument to everything I've ever loved, which we proceeded to set fire to. It was always meant to end up with me kneeling in the ashes, looking around and whispering "What Next?" I knew I never wanted to do anything like WicDiv ever again.

I wanted to write something starring adults, ideally people at least as old as I am. I wanted to write something with more emotions nearer the surface. I wanted to write something sadder, believe it or not. I wanted to write something that was clearly by me, and a continuation of my obsessions, but touching on stuff I've never written before.

Die was my answer.

"Goth Jumanji" is my jokey description of the book, which entirely doesn't give you the tone. Your references aren't innaccurate. As you note, the Return To Narnia aspect of the book is right there. It's forty-year olds dealing with the fantasy world they thought they escaped back as teenagers. It's that midlife crisis "have I wasted my life?" kinda vibe, comparing your teenage fantasies with where they've ended up.

It's a book with drama at the core, with six defined characters with their own compelling issues. Its mood leans dark fantasy to horror – I suspect my idea of dark fantasy reads as horror to most people. It's heavily autobiographical, drawing on my own love of role-playing games and a whole mass of insecurities. It doesn't skimp on the genre thrills, but it's not what the book is about, and not why you'll be coming back every month.

It's also a lot. It's very much the sort of book I can only do at Image, which tries to do everything. As well as this personal story around the cast, the whole thing basically is a Planetary-but-for-Fantasy-and-RPG deconstruction of the various elements that gave birth to the modern conception of games and fantasy. And as well as that, it's also an entirely coherent, and hopefully enchanting fantasy world summoned by Stephanie. It's a lot.

It doesn't aim low.

Vince Brusio: What sort of work ethic have you adopted to take on the responsibility of making a monthly series?

Kieron Gillen: Some of this is just scheduling issues. It's a question of having enough in the can, and planning gaps. It's very much the season model, but applied to comic. We're clockwork on the months we're coming out, and then work towards the next season. As all Image books have now, we had three issues in the can before soliciting which helps.

Vince Brusio: How did the two of you come together to make a pact that resulted in this Image comic? What makes this chemistry work? How do you complement one another?

Kieron Gillen: Stephanie and I first met on Journey Into Mystery at Marvel, when she did the covers and drew the final issue – which is one of the best single comics I've ever been involved in with my life. We've always been talking about doing something together since then, and did bits and pieces – a couple of issues of WicDiv, parts of the Angela books for Marvel... but we had to find the time, the place, the right idea. Eventually the time is now, the place is here and the right idea is Die.

Stephanie is like collaborating with the ocean. She creates with enormous force, with big ideas, and you have to respond to what she summons. It's one reason why it is so different from something like WicDiv – Jamie and I work like engineers, with all precision lines and sniper-shots. With Stephanie it's more about mood, scale, atmosphere, the whole magical grandeur of it. I give her masses of information, and she gives me masses of information back. It leads to something that's just dense, and real. Half the art of fantasy for me is bringing the deeply engrained reality to every panel.

Vince Brusio: How did you each of you put your spin on the book’s main characters? What give-and-take between you both helped to bring out the individual voices and mannerisms? Is the character development in any way personal to either of you?

Kieron Gillen: It's my most collaborative book of my career. I'd done my usual amount of too-much-work and Stephanie stayed at my house and we talked about a whole bunch of things. She talked about how she responded to the characters, and things from her own life in the period, which I then worked back into the book. That one of the characters ended up French is a good sign of that. When we got to the designs, it just went back and forth, and round and round. And when I say it's "more collaborative" it's not as if I've done less stuff than I normally do. I've done all the usual amount of massive over-work...and then Stephanie has done a whole bunch more on top of that. It's been fun, and inspiring.

But yes, everything is always autobiographical to me, one way or another. Not 1:1. I'm taking widely, from many places, and creating new people, but they're all trying to create something that feels like a credible social group, of people I could have known.

Vince Brusio: Tell us what’s fun about this book. How does it get you jazzed? What makes it a shot of adrenaline, and how is it going to hit us like a hurricane?

Kieron Gillen: I've said a lot above about what drives the book, but let's say one really basic thing: it's a book that will look like nothing else on the shelves. I've been showing artists the first issue on my phone and they've been incandescent in their joy at seeing something like this.

But really? It's Goth Jumanji. The first issue sells itself like nothing I've ever written.

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Vince Brusio writes about comics, and writes comics. He is the long-serving Editor of PREVIEWSworld.com, the creator of PUSSYCATS, and encourages everyone to keep the faith...and keep reading comics.