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.

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