INTERVIEW: Dystopian graphic novel from Arcana to premiere at SDCC

San Diego Comic Con is an event filled to the brim with exclusives and comic debuts. One of the offerings at this year’s festivities is Wayne T. Young’s Children of the Fall, the new graphic novel from Arcana Studios.

Young, who will sign at booth #2515 in San Diego, has crafted a dystopian story inspired by a number of present-day challenges to Planet Earth.

First off, there’s overpopulation. Check.

Next up is fossil fuel exhaustion. Check.

In the novel, these two challenges combine together to create a world where humanity has spiraled into violence and chaos. Hoping to save the day (or at least survive the melee) is Lin Shaw, oldest daughter of a warlord. She teams up with her younger sister and a mysterious figure known as the Gunfighter to make a journey to the promised land of Valhalla.

Fans should expect a graphic novel in the same vein as Mad Max, Road to Perdition and Once Upon a Time in the West, according to a press release. Those are some lofty influences, but Young seems ready for the challenge.

Recently, Hollywood Soapbox exchanged emails with Young about the new graphic novel. Questions and answers have been slightly edited for style.

What inspired you to create Children of The Fall?

I’ve always been a huge fan of post-apocalyptic sci-fi, and, in my late 20s, after a lifetime of living in the States, I moved to Asia for a few years. The biggest culture shock for me was that you could be standing in a super futuristic skyscraper, go out, walk one block and be in an area that looked like post-WWII Germany.

On top of that, the characters of Lin, Kay and the Gunfighter were already rattling around in my head as a result of real people in my life that had been filtered through the lens of my imagination, so, the truth is, I never actually set out to create anything. All of those ingredients just sat simmering in my brain for a few years. Then, one morning, I woke up and there was a big pot of Children of the Fall waiting for me.

When imagining a dystopian future, do you consider what’s going wrong in the present?

That’s exactly what I did with CoTF. Rather than relying on the old standby apocalypse favorites (artificially intelligent machines, zombie plagues, etc.), I chose to take a good look at the world around us and realized that we don’t need any help with our own extinction. Terrorism, racism, immigration … all of these issues that people can’t seem to stop fixating on, to me, is just a bunch of folk polishing brass on the Titanic … and nobody’s looking out for the iceberg.

For starters, every element of our modern world is dependent on fossil fuels, and, as the name implies, that’s trouble. Still, even that’s weak tea next to what I believe is the only real issue our species faces. In the 40 years I’ve been on the planet, the population has gone from 4.2 billion (1977) to 7.5 billion (2017.) So, it’s safe to say that we’re close to doubling our population every 50 years.

As far as our planet’s carrying capacity, projections vary from scientific community to scientific community, but the high-end numbers are around 30 billion, and that’s when food and drinkable water become impossible to sustain. So, the math ain’t that hard.

In the novel Inferno, Dan Brown uses this example: If you have an organism that replicates itself every 60 seconds, and you drop it into an empty beaker at 11:00, and the beaker is completely full at 12:00, the exact time when the beaker is half full is 11:59.

Brown’s assessment that the clock is currently at 11:59 is something that I do disagree with, however. I don’t think our circumstance is that dire. It’s not 11:59. It’s only 11:58.

What made you center on these three main characters?

I tend to write very minimally, and CoTF is really a simple tale of redemption and salvation. It’s a story about the Gunfighter and Lin and Kay and their relationship to one another … so … the cast of characters is very small and intimate. I also had to draw the whole thing myself … so… the cast of characters is very small and intimate. Then I had to color and letter the whole thing myself … so… the cast of characters is very…

How long did you work on Children of the Fall? What was the hardest part of the process?

As I mentioned before, my whole creative process is very organic. I don’t like to force ideas. I just like to let them fester and grow until they burst out of me. So, with CoTF, from inception to completion, it’s safe to say you’re looking at close to a decade.

As far as ‘actual’ work, once the story matured in my mind, I wrote the first draft of the script in about a week. Drawing it, on the other hand, took a few years … and that was the hard part. But a lot of that had to do with the fact that this was my first piece of content, so both the script and the art went through several incarnations before I got it right. I probably re-drew the whole thing at least two or three times.

Do you envision this kickstarting a new franchise?

Yes, please! Every creator wants his or her creation to be successful, right? And CoTF is certainly designed as a story that’s just as much about the world as it is the characters in it. Much like Episode IV or Terminator I, it’s self-contained, has 180-degree character arcs, a conclusive ending and stands alone as an independent narrative. That being said, there are plenty of threads that are left open-ended, suggesting that this is simply the first chapter in a much bigger saga, which is the case. My most sincere hope for this project is that I’ve created characters that readers can become invested in and a world that audiences will want to see more of after turning the final page.

By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com

Children of the Fall by Wayne T. Young will premiere at San Diego Comic Con this summer. The book will be published by Arcana Studios. Click here for more information.