By Zack Quaintance — Vault Comics is preparing to release its first original graphic novel, the 200-page metafictional fantasy story, Brandon Sanderson’s Dark One, Vol. 1. The book is written by the team of Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly, and illustrated by Nathan Gooden (with colors by Kurt Michael Russell and lettering by Deron Bennett).

Today, Jackson, Collin and Nathan made time to talk with us about working with Sanderson, the nature of this new story, and giving shape to such a large-scale project…and when you’re done reading the interview, don’t miss our MASSIVE 25-page preview of the book. Enjoy!

INTERVIEW: Lanzing, Kelly, and Gooden talk BRANDON SANDERSON'S DARK ONE

ZACK QUAINTANCE: Can I start by asking all three of you how Dark One came together? I know it was an idea from Brandon Sanderson, but how did you work together to turn it into a full-formed graphic novel?

JACKSON LANZING: Truthfully, it came together just like any other project that Collin & I write together - through a mix of passionate argument, plot and character work, and a deep-and-abiding collaboration with our storytelling partners. 

In this case, the first of those partners was Brandon himself - who I met at Emerald City Comic-Con in 2019 after an introduction from the Vault team. Collin and I have been fans of Brandon for years, and he’d apparently enjoyed Zojaqan (our previous book with Dark One artist Nathan Gooden) - so when we got to talking about growing Brandon’s seed of a story into a full-fledged graphic novel alongside Nathan, it was a dream come true. Collin and I call ourselves “the Hivemind” for a reason: we love collaboration, our entire process is built on it, and getting to learn from and work alongside such an incredible and accomplished master storyteller as Brandon Sanderson was a singularly awesome experience.

COLLIN KELLY: So once we’d agreed to come aboard, Jack and I took the reins. We built Dark One off of Brandon’s robust initial story document and Nathan’s beautiful early concept work - keeping the core but rethinking a good deal of the structure and character work along the way. By the time the first book was outlined, it really represented a synthesis of Brandon’s world and magic with our character and voice. Then we wrote it in chapters, as we would any larger text, and then ran that through the brilliance of Adrian Wassel over at Vault. In some ways, it really felt like returning to the process of Hacktivist, our first comic, which we wrote alongside Alyssa Milano. 

NATHAN GOODEN : This was sort of, getting the band back together on a project, while adding some new friends. The three of us were already working together on a different project at the time, but it was very early in the process so we thought this was a chance we couldn’t pass on. Kurt Micheal Russell was coloring a few books for Vault at the time, and I absolutely loved his work. More so,  it showed  his ability to change styles and maintain them. Two separate worlds colliding is a key theme in Dark One. So his versatility would play a huge part. Rounding out the team was Deron Bennett on letters. We all have worked with him many times before. I think we all count him as a friend, and he's just an unbelievable talent that makes us all look good. 

ZACK: I absolutely loved how well this story played with and incorporated tropes from fantasy novels. What works of fantasy were an influence for you all, novels or otherwise?

JACKSON: [Looks at Collin like he was born for this question.]

COLLIN:  That is… quite the question. You don’t get into telling stories in the genre - or really telling stories at all - without first starting as a fan of those stories. The heart of Dark One comes from a simple, classic place: The Lord of the Rings. Specifically however, it wasn’t Aragon et al that we wanted to examine; our interest was in Sauron, and what makes him who he was? After all, every villain is the hero of their own story. From there, we knew that we would have a strong element of portal fantasy, which means you look to the classics once again; but unlike the Pevensie brood of Narnia-fame, this wasn’t going to be a sterile tail of wonder - no, this was going to be more like Wendy from Peter Pan, the story of a character who sees through the facade of Neverland, and realizes it for the trap that it is. The film The Fisher King also had a big place in our ideation; not just in its depiction of the fantastic charging through the alleys of New York, but for it’s empathic and humane depiction of mental illness, something that Paul struggles with from the very start of our story.  And lastly, to branch out a bit wider… if you look at Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves, you’ll find a story that cracks open the idea of what a story can be. We had no interest in making Dark One anything traditional - much like Danielewski’s work, our goal was to challenge the expectations that a reader may come to the table with… and of the very nature of storytelling itself. 

NATHAN: First and foremost, My love of anything fantasy started the first time I saw a Frank Frazette cover. Death Dealer always hangs on my wall, and this was my chance to illustrate ironclad knights on Horseback. At the time, I was reading and loving The Blade Itself by Joe Abercrombie.

ZACK: Was there any difficulty in writing and illustrating a story that is so clearly about stories, or did that make things easier? It seems like an interesting situation to be crafting a narrative when the narrative is such a prominent part of the story…

JACKSON: Not to reject the premise of the question, but it felt very important to us that this not be a story about stories, but rather a story about the people trapped inside those stories. We have a litmus test in the Hivemind: can we strip all the genre and action out of a story and still see the core themes? Do the characters still live in a way that you could place them on stage in a black box theatre and the story could still come through? If so, we’re hitting our mark. If not, our story is too concerned with the background and setting - and isn’t resonating emotionally enough.

 So in the case of Dark One, it would be easy to get lost in the weeds of trying to tell a story that Says Something Important About Stories. We could spend years debating the nature of narrative, of fantasy tropes and chosen ones and prophesies and grand battles - and at the end of the process, we’d have a thesis paper. So we kept the characters always at the front of our minds. Paul Tanasin, a young man who fears he may be a bad person - and who is given a powerful opportunity to embrace that darkness. Princess Feotora, a young woman who wants to feel the embrace of destiny but believes herself to only be an instrument of violence. Lin, a mother who has built walls around her heart by throwing herself into her work. Mister Caligo, a manipulative mystery of a man who just wants to die.

To us, Dark One isn’t a story about stories. It’s a story about people. And through their story, we hope the audience can consider the nature of some of the core fantasy myths on which our collective narrative is based.

ZACK: Nathan, it really feels like you’ve been the Vault artist from the start, at the forefront of some of the most interesting things the publisher is doing. How was it for you being asked to illustrate Vault’s first original graphic novel?

NATHAN: Well I am actually one of the founding members of Vault, with Damian and Adrian Wassel so I have been here since day one. As an artist, I love a challenge and a chance to try  something new. For me, it keeps my work fresh and constantly evolving. I think it’s a way to keep getting better and keep pushing the medium. Every new project is a chance to take what I have learned from the previous project and apply it. So being able to do Vault’s first graphic novel was a chance to learn and break new ground for myself and the company.

It was a very different workflow for me. I had to get my brain around two hundred pages rather than twenty, so learning how to pace this book visually, was the biggest challenge. I didn't want to give too many things away too early, yet keep readers turning the pages. It also allows me to offer advice to the other artists working with Vault.

ZACK: Collin and Jackson, how closely did you work with Brandon Sanderson on this project? Can you talk about what working with him on this was like?

COLLIN: Once the project started going, it effectively developed a momentum of its own. We worked with Brandon in the outline stage, then went to script the same way we would on any project. That’s when Nate would join as well, meeting us for coffee halfway between his city and ours while we brainstormed on the back of napkins about what this world would actually look like. 

JACKSON: From there, Adrian Wassel got deeply involved, helping elevate everything (as he always does - Adrian’s one of the best in the biz). Finally, once an outline or script was complete, it went to Brandon to collect any thoughts or notes from his side. That said, Brandon was mostly hands-off after the outline stage - he really treated us like trusted collaborators and respected our process. I think once Brandon saw the amount of love and care that was going into every corner of the production, he felt comfortable allowing us the space to really make this story our own. 

COLLIN: And let’s go ahead and give a special nod to Brandon’s in-house “map guy”, Isaac Stewart - we all worked tireless on the map of Mirandus that you’ll find in the front pages, which is proof of the entire team’s dedication to making a fully fleshed, cogent world that we’re incredibly excited for new readers to explore. 

ZACK: Finally, the way this book ends feels very much like the start of something bigger, rather than a neat ending. From all of your perspectives, where do you see this story going, and what can you tell us about the scope?

JACKSON: The story is absolutely not finished. Brandon’s story document only took us through book one, but there were several threads embedded deep in the storytelling that demanded more. By the end of Dark One, the Narrative by which our characters mark their lives has been seriously upended - and that’s going to have ramifications for Mirandus and Earth alike. So we think there’s tremendous potential - and in a perfect world, we’d love to travel back to Mirandus as soon as possible.

As to what happens when we do get there? Spoilers.

PREVIEW: Brandon Sanderson’s Dark One, Vol. 1

Dark One, Vol. 1 is due out May 5, 2021.

Read our full review of the book!

Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.