The Immortal: An Interview with writer Ian Edginton

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The Immortal: An Interview with writer Ian Edginton

01/24/2012 12:37pm

Dark Horse Comics: What’s been the biggest challenge to adapting The Immortal for the new series?

Ian Edginton: With adaptations, especially of literary works, the biggest challenge is almost always a technical one, namely how do you fit that big-ass book into four twenty-two-page issues and do it justice! It was no different here, but rather than simply try to cram the whole thing into four issues, the consensus was that the series would focus on roughly the first third of the book. Each chapter of the novel is set several years or decades after the previous one and tends to be self-contained but with plot threads that run through the whole timeline, from the 1800s to the 1940s.

By concentrating on the first couple of chapters, we have a neat, self-contained story, which follows the triangle of Amane, Natsu, and Yasha over the years but leaves enough tantalizing plot threads dangling which can then be picked up in another series if need be.

DHC: What can readers expect from issue #2?

IE: Well, we’ll have moved on twenty or so years. Amane is now quietly plying his trade as an exceptionally gifted tattooist and trying to keep a low profile so that no one notices how he hasn’t aged a day.

He’s thrown something of a curveball by fate when he’s obliged to help a young girl who, it turns out, is the daughter of an old enemy of his. We also see the initial handiwork of our “big bad,” whom we’ll see more of in issue three onwards.

DHC: What do you think the steampunk elements add to the story?

IE: To the story itself, not a great deal, but they do make for some spectacular set dressing. The original story was a supernatural samurai saga and at the request of the original publisher, they asked if I could make it a supernatural, samurai, steampunk saga, which I admit did have me scratching my head for a few days, wondering how I was going to work in that new angle.

In the end, it wasn’t as tricky as I’d first thought. The opening chapter of the novel is during the time period when the West began to have a significant martial, financial, and commercial influence on the East. I just took that idea and turned it up to eleven in a Spinal Tap kind of way. Rickshaws and carriages are now drawn by steam-powered mechanical men. Fire tenders are these huge airships with great dragon motifs on the side. That sort of thing. At the very least, it’ll make for some spectacular visuals!

DHC: After The Immortal are you working on anything new?

IE: I have several new series for 2000 AD over here; there’s the fourth series of the steampunk gothic Stickleback with artist D’Israeli; the eleventh and final series of the pirate fantasy The Red Seas, with Steve Yeowell; and the first of a new science-fantasy series, The Brass Sun, with I. N. J. Culbard of Vertigo’s New Deadwardians fame.

The Recruit, my graphic-novel adaptation of the first of Robert Muchamore’s CHERUB teen spy novels, is out this year, as is my Torchwood audio adventure Army of One. There’s also my adaptation of John Carter of Mars and, later this year, Gods of Mars, both for SelfMadeHero. My biggest news is that I’ve got a regular, creator-owned book starting this year that I’m under pain of death not to talk about!

Oh, and a novel.

DHC: If you had a superpower, what would it be?

IE: Easy. To freeze time. To make a minute last an hour. That way I could get my work done, fix up the house, and spend time with my children. As it stands right now, it’s the house that gets short shrift!

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The Immortal: An Interview with writer Ian Edginton

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