If I was castaway on that mythical desert island with a single palm tree beloved of cartoonists I’d want to be washed ashore with a crate of books.  But that shouldn’t be taken as an admission that I regard other mediums, such as movies, and in particular comicbooks, as any less legitimate.  Which is why I was so thrilled at the prospect of an Orcs graphic novel.

I owe artist and film director Joann Sfar my thanks for kicking it off.  Joann, a leading light in the new wave of French comicbook creators, recommended my Orcs novels to Mark Siegel, Editorial Director of First Second Books, an imprint dedicated to publishing high-quality graphic novels.  I loved the idea of moving my concept and characters into a different medium, and Mark suggested that rather than adapt any of the existing novels I might like to come up with a new story.

While I was putting it together, Mark was busy auditioning artists, and eventually choose Joe Flood, best known for his HELLCITY strip.

I’d worked on two graphic novels before, back in the ’90s, when I adapted David Gemmell’s LEGEND AND WOLF IN SHADOW into graphic novel form.  I also wrote a handful of short strips for comicbooks.  What I did then was write scripts in the traditional way.  I described what a panel should show and what should go in dialogue balloons and captions of exposition.  But this wasn’t an adaptation like the Gemmell books; it was an original story.  I had to assume that at least a portion of the graphic novel’s readership would be coming to my orcs universe for the first time.  I felt I needed to introduce new readers to the set-up and the point of view I was adopting.  I also had to convey to Joe the feeling I wanted to put over – the texture of the story, if you like.  So I decided to write the thing as a short story, a fully rendered piece of fiction, as I might if it was intended to be published in an anthology.  It ended up running to over 20,000 words, and was called FIT FOR PURPOSE at that stage.  Later, it became ORCS: FORGED FOR WAR.

My intention was that once our editor had approved it, and Joe was happy with how it flowed, I’d move on to writing it as an actual script.  But Joe reckoned the story was descriptive enough that he could work directly from it, and he effectively adapted it himself.  I think he did an excellent job.

The story takes place before the events in my two trilogies of novels ORCS: FIRST BLOOD and ORCS: BAD BLOOD.  (The third volume of the latter, INFERNO, is published by Orbit in the US this month).  This is a time when my orcs warband, the Wolverines, were still enslaved to the malevolent sorceress Jennesta.  Maras-Dantia, the world where the story’s set, is inhabited by multiple species, with orcs reviled as much as they’re feared.  The balance has been thrown out by the arrival of the most dangerous race of all – humans.  When they’re not busy trashing the place, and bleeding the land of the energy that powers the magic some species command, many of the humans are engaged in a religious war.  Against this background Jennesta allies herself with a goblin magician who promises her an awesome new magical weapon.  Despite the deep animosity that exists between orcs and goblins, she orders Stryke, the Wolverines’ captain, and his band to act as bodyguards while the weapon’s field-tested.

I try to write my novels on two levels, and have done my best to carry this over into the graphic novel.  The surface level is, hopefully, pure entertainment.  If readers want to get no more than that out of them, that’s fine.  But if they dig a bit they’ll find a little more.  In the case of the orcs novels and the graphic novel those concerns include how we treat outsiders, environmental issues and the nature of faith.  But I wouldn’t like to give the impression that my books are polemics or rants – I’m not trying to lecture people.

There’s a certain mechanism involved in novel-writing, whereby the different elements – plot, structure, pace, characterisation, dialogue, etc – are entwined to form a coherent whole.  There’s a process in the creation of graphic novels too, of course, and much of it’s the same as in a prose novel.  But there are crucial differences.  An obvious factor is achieving the correct balance between pictures and words, with an emphasis on the former because this is, after all, a predominantly visual medium.  You come to realise that captions, if you must have them at all, are superfluous unless they tell you something the panel doesn’t.  You see the wisdom in not overloading dialogue balloons; how a narrative sequences can flow better when unhampered by wordy explanations; and the power of colour.  (Sometimes, the power of the absence of colour.)

My collaboration with Joe went very smoothly, and I can honestly say it was nothing but pleasurable, although we have yet to meet in the flesh.  The whole thing was undertaken by email and the occasional phone conversation  – the sort of collaboration that would have been very difficult, if not impossible, before the advent of modern technology.  We were greatly helped by First Second giving us an almost entirely free hand.  They believe in the integrity of the creators and left us to get on with it.  That was a demonstration of trust we greatly appreciated.

The upshot was that we had the gratification of finishing a 200 page book – an enormous amount of work on Joe’s part – that we were pleased with, and seeing it enter the New York Times bestseller list the week it was published last October.

Much as this writer of prose might hate to admit it, in the context of graphic novels a picture is worth a thousand words.