Fantasy is all the rage these days thanks to some book-turned-show about a violent game of musical chairs, and in comics it’s no different. We’re seeing new fantasy titles pop up left and right, all of them putting their own new spin and definitive stamp on the fantasy genre. So the question then becomes: how do we sort through all of the new fantasy books and find the best?
Easy: we go to Image.
That may sound like a sales pitch, but really, just take a look. Whether it’s older books coming back like “Skullkickers,” newer titles like “Umbral” and “Rat Queens or next year’s “Paradigms,” Image is at the forefront of the new fantasy landscape in comics.
And today? Today we tell you about your next favorite fantasy comic: “Sovereign,” written by Chris Roberson and illustrated by Paul Maybury.
Read on as we talk about everything “Sovereign,” from its genesis to where it is now, full of fiefdoms, clans, magic and more, as well as show of your first exclusive preview of the book (prepare to drool over Maybury’s art like woah).
If my understanding is correct (admittedly based on a comment from my site), Sovereign is a book that has been in the works for quite a bit. Can you talk a bit about how the two of you came to work together and create the book?
Chris Roberson: I spent a year or two doing the “worldbuilding” for the project that eventually became SOVEREIGN back before I broke into comics. I’d always wanted to do a big, sprawling “secondary world” fantasy (as they’re called in the prose world), and had wanted to do a story that was about different cultures in collision, with their various philosophies and religions and outlooks. Oh, and undead monsters from beyond space and time, of course. So after spending a LOT of time building the world and the characters, I found that I couldn’t quite make it work as a novel, which had been the original idea. So everything went into the file to simmer for a few years. Fastforward to a couple of years ago when I was talking with Eric Stephenson about doing a project at Image, and I realized that the material that I had generated would actually make for an interesting comic. Paul’s was the first name that sprang to mind when it came time to start talking about artists, and he was interested, and when one thing led to another we were doing SOVEREIGN TOGETHER.
Paul Maybury: I was just coming off doing a couple of graphic novels, and was itching to draw a monthly title. Chris emailed me about this pitch, and it was sort of a no brainer for me to not only jump back into fantasy, a genre I had previously explored, but to work with Chris and Image on something that felt massive in scope.
How has the back and forth process and evolution of the book been while developing this new series together?
CR: It’s been interesting. These characters and their cultures lived in my head for a LONG time before we started working together, and I had lots of descriptions and reference material and such in hand. But all of that was transmuted by Paul’s imagination into something entirely different, and so what we’re left with is something that takes my original ideas and evolves them in ways I couldn’t have anticipated, and the end result is something that’s not like anything else that’s out there.
PM: In a way, the world has similarly existed in my head prior to hooking up with Chris. SOVEREIGN has given my thoughts and ideas of fantasy a structure to wrap around. I think that’s a recipe for a good book. Two people that are bringing years of ideas to the table.
I’ve been noticing it a bit lately, but I think we’re seeing a massive surge in interest in fantasy comics. What do you guys find is fascinating about the fantasy genre?
CR: My tastes as a reader and as a writer are fairly catholic, in that I don’t like just one kind of thing. I love superheroics, and science fiction, and mystery, but I also really enjoy fantasy stories. And to be fair, “fantasy” is a pretty big umbrella, when discussing various genres and subgenres. What we’re doing with SOVEREIGN would technically be classified as “secondary world epic fantasy,” if we’re splitting hairs, and that’s a subgenre that I’ve always enjoyed as a reader but never spent much time working in as a writer. So this is new territory for me!
Continued belowPM: I agree with Chris, fantasy is a big umbrella. What’s interesting is I don’t even think Chris and I necessarily draw from the same well of inspiration, nor do we need to. I think that’s the potential of the genre. Fantasy has such a wide range of accessibility. Whether your entry point was Tolkien or Zelda, I think everyone has at least one story that’s grabbed them.
Without even getting into specifics about the book (yet), what aspects of fantasy do you find you’re most looking forward to exploring, or deconstructing?
CR: There are no heroes and villains in our story, as such, no plucky band of heroic underdogs banding together against an implacable dark overlord. There are just a bunch of different characters from different cultural and social backgrounds, each doing the best they can according to the dictates of the cultures that produced them. Oh, and sword fights, and magical powers, and attacking hordes of undead monsters from outside of time and space.
PM: One of the most overlooked aspects of fantasy comics is how they’re colored. You wont find any green or orange tints over everything in this series. SOVEREIGN won’t be confined by any visual rules. It’s fantasy, and I aim to show you something fantastic with the visuals.
I like that you guys both say you’re not planning to just do routine fantasy with this book, but are there any tropes in particular that you’re looking to get away from or even deconstruct?
CR: From a story standpoint, I’d like to run away from as many expected tropes as possible. We’ll have sword-fighting and monsters and such, but we won’t be seeing any knights errant or wizards or damsels-in-distress.
PM: Simply as a comic, I want to get away from the idea of every panel being perfect. I think it’s okay to be clumsy, or to reveal a weakness in your art while stretching towards a new idea that hits you in the middle of a page. Visually, the characters will refine and evolve along with the story that Chris writes. As a reader, I think there’s something endearing about watching a book grow in that sense. I also think there’s something inspirational about that for aspiring comic creators. The idea that creativity has more merit than polish.
So it sounds to me like we’re going to be working with a rather large cast here, like you said, instead of a plucky band of heroes. What can you guys tell me about some of the characters we’ll be meeting in the series?
CR: We follow several different groups of characters, actually, with each group coming from a different culture or country. A lot of the focus of the story is on the conflict between these groups when they come into contact. The majority of SOVEREIGN takes place in the country of Khend, a country rocked by a war of succession, inspired largely by India in the seventeenth century at the height of the Mughal empire. The Khendish have traditionally followed a rigid caste system, but they are ruled by the Tamurid, who invaded and took over the country several generations before. Another group of characters are from Albelund, an island months away by sail, that is modeled on early renaissance England. And finally, there are a trio of Luminari, sword-wielding, masked undertakers who have been living in seclusion since the invasion, but who are going to the capital with news about a big supernatural threat that’s on the way.
I imagine that having different groups of people with differing ideologies, religions, etc, opens up a lot of room for exploration. Are there anything you guys are looking at for inspiration, both in terms of the written and visual narratives?
CR: Most of my inspiration came from history, rather than fiction, looking to accounts of various cultures in late medieval and early Renaissance era South Asia and elsewhere.
PM: I looked at a lot of South Asian art in preparation for this series, but I didn’t really study it. Part of what I like about fantasy as a genre is the idea of it coming from within. If I have to draw an elephant, I first want to draw whatever default elephant is in my head. Then I’ll go look one up and bring some of those details into the drawing. The same goes for people and architecture. It keeps everything loose, and leaves the door half way open to follow history and culture just enough to give you an idea of what to expect, but also allows me to pull from different cultures and ideas that might not be historically or even geographically present.
Continued belowCan you guys talk a bit about the overall design of the series? Fantasy landscapes are usually very involved, with kingdoms and fiefdoms. How do you both approach the world-building aspect of the series now that it’s a comic series?
PM: To hold as much of the world in my head as I can, I have to keep it in my daily thoughts. A good way of doing that is to pursue some of my personal interests within Sovereign. I like transformative details as a theme in my work, so each panel is an opportunity to explore that further. One way that I’ll approach that is to insert small personality traits into my subjects, to make sure that I’m always genuinely thinking, and not zoning out at the drawing table. For example, Argus is a pale squinty man when he’s calm. When he’s angered his face gets hot and red, his eyes widen with dilated pupils making him more shark like in appearance. It’s a great advantage comics have over film. I also have to mention the logo designed by Dylan Todd. My initial input was that I wanted it to look like a passport stamp, and to feel foreign. He came back with something that suits the series perfectly, and has a nice modern edge that compliments the interior lettering by John J. Hill.
How are you guys finding the challenge of following these characters across different places and scopes? Is it easy enough to hop back and forth around the settings, or do you each find you have to be in different moods for different clans?
PM: I wanted to give each setting and character group a palette that would thread the series together and follow them from scene to scene. The Luminari travel in twilight and purple. The Albelunders are browns and copper. If I found I favored drawing one set of characters on an issue, I would spend the least amount of time on them the next. I also used a few video game soundtracks as theme music when I was alternating between Catalyst Comix and Sovereign. Earthbound for SNES on Catalyst Comix, Suikoden 2 for PS2 on Sovereign.
Since this isn’t the fantasy stereotype of “underdog hero vs. dark lord”, what can you tell me about what the structure of the series is like?
CR: As I mentioned, we follow these disparate groups as they move across the landscape, and eventually see what happens when they come into contact, or collision even, while this larger supernatural threat is emerging. From that point, it’s anyone’s guess what happens next!
And in terms of the magical/mysticism aspects of the book, how have you guys found the challenge of setting up new new rules that defy our known concepts of science?
CR: It’s actually not something that will be addressed directly in the comic itself, but the “magic” system in Sovereign doesn’t defy science, exactly. It bends it considerably, but is strictly rationalized. See, fantasy stories have often used “elemental magic,” in which characters can manipulate the archaic elements of earth, water, fire, and air. I wanted to do something a little different, and so devised a magic system in which characters could manipulate the four fundamental forces of the universe: gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force. It’s dressed up in fancy fantasy speak, but that’s what is really going on in Sovereign.
PM: Some of the same magical powers are depicted in various levels of intensity. At a low level of magic, a character with electric powers can control wispy delicate bolts that dance around them. At a higher level, the bolts become thick globular tendrils and begin to absorb surrounding metal objects. It’s a lot of fun dreaming up how those powers work, and how they will interact with other powers down the line.
So out of everything that this book holds — and it sounds like an awful lot — is there anything in particular you’re excited about? Any particular beasties, or storylines or settings?
CR: There are some simply stunning visual sequences that are coming up in the second and third issues, that I can’t wait for people to see.
Continued belowPM: One of my favorite aspects of this world is that we have extinct animals running around. They’re mostly in the background for the first few issues, but there’s so much potential for them to play larger roles as the series progresses. Not to mention, it’s just a lot of fun researching a Chalicothere.
How far down the line are you guys planning things out currently? I can only assume there’s a particular endpoint you’re hoping to hit.
CR: It’s open ended, dependent on reader interest. We could tell a satisfying story in a handful of issues, or we could run for years. We’ll see!
PM: I’ve committed to an ongoing series. Granted, sales are always a factor, but from what Chris has told me there’s a pretty big world to explore. The first arc definitely sets up some grander story lines that I’m excited to get to.
What is it you are hoping fans and readers will take away from the series?
CR: Well, as always, that their time and money was well spent!
PM: I hope we’ve created a series at Image that feels unique enough to convert a few skeptics of the genre. My ultimate fantasy is seeing Sovereign cosplay at a convention. In fact, if you come at me in full Sovereign cosplay at a convention, I’ll draw you a quick sketch of that character. Go on, make me regret saying that.
“Sovereign” #1 is in stores later this month on March 19th from Image Comics. You’re prooooobably going to want to add this one to your pull, folks.
