Fresh off the release on October 5th, Alliances: Orphans, the new graphic novel from the mind of Stan Lee, has brought intergalactic stories to a new level.
The Alliances series started with two audiobooks, A Trick of Light and A New Reality, created with the idea of bringing a new medium of storytelling to a wide array of listeners. With that, came the release of the next step, Alliances: Orphans.
The novel itself, alongside the universe it expands upon, was created and co-written by Lee, alongside Luke Lieberman (Red Sonja), and Ryan Silbert (The Coldest Case), with art by Bill Sienkiewicz (Moon Knight).
I had a call with Ryan Silbert this past week to talk Alliances: Orphans, and what it means to tell this kind of story.
DISCLAIMER: This interview has been edited for easier flow of reading.
Interview With Ryan Silbert
Why and how did you become involved with the ‘Alliances’ universe?
R: The Alliances universe is something that was cooked by me, Luke Lieberman, and Stan Lee. This was one of the last collaborations of his, and of his creative life. It’s something that was born out of a question that Stan asked, which is, “What is more real? The world we’re born into, or the one we create for ourselves?”
He always asked the question before going on the journey, but the nice thing about it is that Luke and Stan had a very long relationship as mentor, mentee for over a decade, which is at the point of which I joined up. Luke was a comic-con friend, he’s somebody that I had known from going to comic-con.
I knew his wife, and he’d been working with Stan on and off for many, many years. He gave Luke his first job, and when Luke left to go relaunch the Red Sonja franchise, which he still runs, he would comment and check in with Stan very now and then and tell him what he was curious about. He was mindful of his time, and some point had said, “You know I have this idea and I have this curiosity.”
They started talking and out of that came Alliances. For me, it was when I was in a really long process that was incredibly fun and creatively fulfilling, because we didn’t know the destination. We did not create this to be a movie or a television show or what it then ended becoming when we launched it, which is an audio drama, and then a book now, and we just wanted to create, so I think, for Stan that was very liberating. They would just work on characters and work on stories and work on ideas.
Is there anything you had to approach differently this time around, compared to your previous works?
R: So what’s cool is that we were able to include a piece of writing that we did with Stan very early.
It’s like the foundations of the Alliances universe, which is Traitor’s Revenge, throws back to Stan’s first work as a writer for Captain America, but very different, obviously, because this is intergalactic.
But in that sense this was the beginning. We were able to include this kind of piece that we’ve been holding back and holding on to, because we wanted to introduce the character that’s introduced in the beginning of the book to readers, and it’s very fantastical with the spirit of science fiction that we all love.
People know images can go really out there, and with adding Bill to the team, this was the best way to introduce the story. So for us, that was a treat in writing Alliances: Orphans.
Do you plan to expand more on the ‘Alliances’ universe in any other format than audio or print? And if so would you want it to be an adaptation or a continuation given the cross-format story you’ve already established?
R: It’s still a question we ask ourselves, because there is certainly a tremendous opportunity to adapt and transform and transpose. We’re into that, there’s certainly going to be opportunities to transpose orphans into an audio drama, for instance, by potentially doing that it brings something different to the table but not in terms of just introducing a new character.
That’s suited for an animated series and show in that, and in the universe, so it would be probably a mix of the two. But some of the fun is actually the adaptation process as well.
You can find Alliances: Orphans right now at your local bookstore, or online at Amazon!
