The Outrider Dialogues (part one)

Terrible Mayhew: Why prose for your next big project?

Bill Willingham: Prose because it was too big a story for a comic story. If I attempted to do it as comics, it would have been a “limited” series of a hundred issues or more. Having recently (at least ‘recently’ in continental drift terms) completed the long running Fables comic book series, I don’t believe I have another comic work of epic length left in me. Nor are there many Mark Buckinghams out there; being a rare breed of artist who’ll commit the next thirteen years of his life to drawing one extended story. And even if the first two objections weren’t applicable, I don’t have the funds to personally hire an artist to attempt such a thing.

TM: Isn’t it normally the publisher who hires the artist?

BW: Normally, yes, but here’s the thing with publishers (and corporate overlords) of any stripe: When they lay out that kind of upfront money (which is what it takes to keep even a single artist working), they expect to control every aspect of the project, no matter who’s listed as the creator and owner. The money always calls the shots, and the chief characteristic of money men is that they’re afraid. They’re afraid of losing the money. They’re afraid of making a mistake, which their bosses might notice. Hell, they’re even afraid of being noticed by their bosses, period. In the publishing world, as in most big business, one imagines, fear all too quickly metastasizes into brutish thuggery. The big publishing houses run almost entirely on fear, forgetting entirely the risks and bold moves they had to make early on to become big. And if they do remember the risks and adventures of the early days, they breathe a sigh of relief, glad that they don’t have to ever go through that again. I’m a cranky old man now, grown tired of troupes of interchangeable apparatchiks second guessing every creative decision I make in the telling of a given story. Where even an independent comics story has too many cooks in the kitchen, a prose story is crafted by one author, making all of the creative decisions. To even more horribly mix my metaphors, a ship needs to be steered by a single captain. Someone more erudite than me put it this way: A story is too fragile a thing to survive the mistakes of more than one author.1 I’m no longer interested in surrendering control of my storytelling ability to drones.

TM: You haven’t done much prose work.

BW: Some; more than most realize2, but no, compared to my comics work, I haven’t. But that only increases the challenge, which increases the allure. Prose stories are still new territory to me.

TM: Why a trilogy?

BW: Practicality mostly. While the entire saga tells a single over-arching story, it nicely divides into three nearly self-contained books, which combine to form the larger epic. I suppose it could’ve been done as a single huge volume, but it would’ve landed as a giant brick of a book, and while such things do exist, especially in the fantasy-adventure realm, I thought it worked better as three related volumes.

TM: Tell us a bit about Outrider.

BW: Outrider (sometimes The Outrider) is the name of the main character. That’s not his real name, mind you, but his is a world and an age where knowing someone’s real name can open the door for others to conjure against you. He’s known by many names and titles (the Black Knight of Abyssalem for example), but Outrider seems the most common. He’s a fighting man of great renown on the eighth (or is it ninth?) year of a quest, to retire an oath made to a dying friend.

TM: And the world in which he pursues this quest?

BW: Fans of the Conan stories will recognize it. No, it isn’t a copy of Robert E Howard’s Hyborian Age, but there are similarities. It’s a past age of our own world that never actually existed, full of warlords, sorcerers, monsters, giants, dwellers in the underworld, and so on. There are good men who fight for the right, and evil men who seek only their own advantage in power and riches.

TM: Of which type is the Outrider?

BW: I’m not disposed to say. Most who encounter him assume him to be a demon, up from the pits of Abyssalem. His armor, forged entirely of abyssal brimstone might be the clue that leads them to such a conclusion. But I’m on record of being tired of the overabundance of grim antiheroes in our adventure fiction, so make of that what you will. Maybe there’s more to the fellow than is immediately evident.

TM: The first book of the trilogy is called…

BW: The Giant, the Witch, and the Warlord. I couldn’t resist the wink at one of my favorite authors. But I assure you, as far as I know, there isn’t a single magical wardrobe to be found in Outrider’s world.

TM: To be published early next year by Raconteur Press?

BW: Yes.

TM: Why them?

BW: For many reasons. How much time do we have?

TM: If I weren’t doing this I’d be obliged to get back to work on finishing my own first novel3, so assume we have all the time in the world.

BW: Fair enough, but should we order lunch in before we continue?

TM: I could eat.

Look for Part Two of this extended conversation either tomorrow or the next day.