Thirty years ago, fantasy author Terry Brooks made history with his Shannara series by writing the first fantasy novel to make the New York Times bestseller list. Millions of books sold later, Brooks is set to take yet another leap with a new Shannara tale slated to hit shelves on March 25—not as a novel but as a manga. Created by Brooks, the story will be adapted with the help of writer Robert Place Napton and artist Edwin David, and published by Del Rey.
PW Comics Week: You’ve resisted moving the world of Shannara beyond the novels for some time. How did the Dark Wraith of Shannara manga come about?
Terry Brooks: Del Rey formed its manga department a while back for the purpose of trying to get an early edge on the market, which [it] pretty much did, I think. So my editor said, “Hey, we’d really like to do Shannara. You’re our major fantasy seller, and we think it’s appropriate to do it.” They particularly didn’t want an adaptation, but a fresh piece of fiction. The most difficult thing to do was to figure out where you jump into the saga of however many books and about a thousands years of history, and decide what story might work. So after I got past that point, it wasn’t so bad.
PWCW: So what made you decide upon this particular point in the chronology for Dark Wraith of Shannara?
TB: I don’t know. It just sort of suggested itself. I’d done a short story called "Indomitable" a few years back for a Legends collection, and it was an attempt to pick up on what happened with Jair Ohmsford, who was one of the two main characters in Wishsong of Shannara. He was just a boy in there, and I thought I’d grow him up a bit. After I finished it, it just seemed like there was more to do with Jair if I chose to do it. At that time, though, I was moving ahead with the stories and didn’t really want to spend any more time on that generation.... But when it came time to do the graphic novel, I thought, this really is a good place to pursue it.
PWCW: In terms of target audience, were you shooting for a younger demographic with the manga format?
TB: Probably not. I’ve never really written anything for a target audience, except everyone. Or maybe anyone who would pick it up and read it. That was sort of how I started out, and I still write as if maybe this is the last book anyone will ever buy. I don’t think in terms of who that audience would be. It’s changed so much over the years. When I started out writing in the late '70s, it was a young male audience, but it’s evolved tremendously since then. I think, obviously, there’s a whole manga world out there, and I don’t know how much [familiarity] they have with Shannara, if any. So it would be nice to bring some of those people into the reader fold. And if that would happen, I would be more than pleased about it.
PWCW: If most of your readers were young men when you started writing, what percent of your readers are women now?
TB: Oh, I’d say at least half and half. It’s interesting. That’s been a steady evolution brought about by the fact that girls and women now lead—mostly fantasy, I would guess, more than science fiction. But you’ve got so many writers that are women [who] are working in the field now that weren’t there—there were maybe one or two back when I started out.... When I go out to sign, and I get letters from the readers, it’s pretty evenly split these days.
But you know, a lot of that has to do with the fact that I write fantasy that’s very close to the mainstream. I’m not really a cutting-edge kind of writer doing things that maybe will only appeal to a target audience of a small size. I really do write for what I perceive to be a very large audience of all ages. Nothing I write is unavailable to any age group that has some maturity or interest to read the material. So that’s helped a lot, and I think it’ll help a lot with this manga, too.
PWCW: What’s the process of adapting a story to a graphic format like, for you?
TB: I’ve never been fond of the idea of collaboration. I’ve rejected it repeatedly, when asked to do it over the years.... But my sister’s a playwright. She writes plays for theaters and young audiences, and she has disabused me of my selfish attitude somewhat by explaining how [collaboration] works for her. So I kinda went into this with the idea that well, fine, if Del Rey can get good people, that’s all I’m really asking. And beyond that, I’ll just try to not be controlling. I’m going to supply the story, do character descriptions and be available for questions about what’s going on, and then let the artist and writer do what they want to do. And then look at it, and if it isn’t right, [we] can make changes. That was my expectation, and that was pretty much the way it went.
PWCW: What was it like working with artist Edwin David to create your characters visually for the first time?
TB: I've always had the attitude that once the books are out there, they belong to the individual readers. So their perceptions of the characters are their own particular perceptions. And I've never particularly felt like the cover art, for example, or the illustrations captured the characters the way I thought they should be. But I understand it's just a representation, so you have to let go of all that. That was what I did with Edwin. The only thing that I found I needed to do was occasionally make a comment about the way a character's clothing or hair looked, or the features in general, so that it squared with the general perception of what was required. Allanon was a character who started out looking much older and more Gandalf-like, and I said, no, I don't think that's quite what we're looking for here. So we talked a little bit about how it might work.
With the Croton Witch, [Edwin] said, "What does she look like?" And I said, “I don't know! You're the artist. Be inventive!” And he was. The person working on it has a stronger attachment with the material if they're given some latitude, instead of saying, "These eyes should be like this!" So as much as I could, I basically said, "I want you to use your talent to envision it the way you think it should be. And if something's wrong, I'll fix it.”
PWCW: Do you think you would ever be interested in actually scripting a manga or graphic novel?
TB: That's a good question. I get asked that a lot about screenplays, too. And I guess the short answer is, when in the world would I do this? I have to do a book a year.... I guess if the right circumstances presented themselves, or if I felt strongly enough about keeping control of the material, I might insist on doing it. But I haven't really felt the need so far. When Robert [Place Napton] did the work on this book, for example, there were a couple places where I didn't like the tone or the feel of it, but I'd just script for him and send it back, and say, “Take this and work with it.” And he would. And that was sufficient to make it feel like it was going where it needed to go.
PWCW: So you feel like you have enough control over it.
TB: Oh, sure. You know, the other problem is that if you're a long fiction writer, as I am, it's very hard to write anything short. I've written a couple short stories, and it's just about killed me. It takes me about as long to do that as it does to do a book, because I can't do it! I can't think in those terms. And I have a feeling that trying to write something in graphic novel [script] form would be very difficult, just because I would struggle so much with wanting to put lots of words in there.
PWCW: Moving from novels to graphic novels, how has that affected the way you tell a story?
TB: When I do my novels, I'm working with multiple characters in several different story strands that I'm anticipating is going to become a 500-page manuscript, at least, when I'm done. So it is a broader canvas on which to paint. And I'm working here with 100-200 pages of representation when the [manga] is finished. But it's the impact of the visual that conveys the story to the reader. That's really what's different, because in a book, you've got to do everything with the words. To set up whatever the readers are going to imagine, you've got to give them the opportunity to meet you halfway. But with the visual, you can do so much more just with a single image.
