Templar Sneak Preview
Just back from a visit to LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland‘s San Francisco studio, where they’re hard at work drawing Book Three of our Knights Templar graphic novel trilogy, Solomon’s Thieves.
I’ll post as soon as we know the release date. There’s a lot of work still to do — the full trilogy will weigh in at over 450 pages, in full color. To all those who read Book One (published last year in paperback) and are waiting for the rest of the story, many thanks for your patience!
Meanwhile, here’s a sneak preview of a couple of inked (not yet colored) pages from the third book:
I’ve posted these in an album on the Solomon’s Thieves facebook page, plus a colored sample page from Book Two.
(By the way, the Sketchtravel auction was a huge success and raised over $100,000 for the charity Room to Read. Yeahh!! Looks like some kids in Southeast Asia are getting a library.)
Awesomest travel sketchbook ever
The amazing husband-and-wife artists LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland (my collaborators on Solomon’s Thieves) recently participated in a project called “sketchtravel.”
It’s one sketchbook with a bright red cover that’s traveled the world for over four years, passed from the hand of one artist to another — literally. Shipping the book in the mail, or giving it to an intermediary, is not allowed. Each artist gets a few days to do a “sketch” in the book. No do-overs, no mistakes.
The sketchbook eventually reached over 70 artists, including such living legends as Quentin Blake, Hayao Miyazaki, Peter de Seve, Carlos Grangel, and Tadahiro Uesugi — and, I’m proud to say, LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland.
Here’s Uyen’s page:
You can read more about the project at www.sketchtravel.com.
The original book will be auctioned in Brussels on October 17th, with proceeds going to a charity called “Room to Read” that builds and furnishes libraries for children throughout the world. I really, really envy whoever gets it.
For the rest of us who don’t come up with the winning bid (I think it starts at something like 20,000 euros), a reproduction of the book is being published by a European house called Chêne, and can be purchased through amazon.fr. There’s also a super deluxe collector’s edition complete with a wooden box.
Pre-ordering mine now.
Solomon’s Thieves released
I’m excited to announce that Solomon’s Thieves, my first/second, First Second graphic novel illustrated by the terrific LeUyen Pham and Alex Puvilland, is now on sale in bookstores and on Amazon. It’s just gotten its first review on Newsarama.
Based on the historical events of the fall of the Knights Templar, Solomon’s Thieves is a swashbuckling adventure about a bunch of outlawed knights who band together to attempt the greatest heist of the 14th century.
It’s the first book in a trilogy — and a career first for me, in that it’s not based on a video game. I hope Prince of Persia fans who like graphic novels and/or historical adventure fiction will check it out.
You can read more about it here.
The sandstorm begins
My second/first graphic novel, Prince of Persia: Before the Sandstorm, is now out in stores and on Amazon, in paperback and hardcover.
It’s a stand-alone, book-length prequel to the upcoming movie, written by me and illustrated by six terrific artists — Bernard Chang, Tommy Lee Edwards, Tom Fowler, Niko Henrichon, David Lopez, and Cameron Stewart, plus a cover by Todd McFarlane — and if you’re wondering why one story has six different illustrators, well, that was part of the challenge and fun of writing it.
Kotaku has a nice review (one that also includes the great news that the next volume in the Dungeon series, by two of my favorite French comics creators, Lewis Trondheim and Joann Sfar, is now available in English).
I’ll post more later about writing the book, and how it relates to the movie and the original 1989 side-scrolling video game. In the meantime, I hope Prince of Persia fans and graphic novel aficionados will check it out.
The next six weeks will also include the release of my first/second book Solomon’s Thieves (written first, published second, from First Second) on May 11, and my first movie, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, on May 28. So this really is the beginning of the sandstorm.
Same vineyard, different grapes
I get asked a lot about the adaptation process from/to video games, movies, and graphic novels, so I was interested to read writer Craig McDonald’s thoughts on the subject over on the First Second blog:
They say a picture’s worth a thousand words. Speaking as a writer, I’ll grudgingly confess there’s too often some piercing truth to that cliché.
The novel and the graphic novel are very different beasts.
The great danger in adapting a novel into a graphic format is ending up with a sea of word-balloon bracketed talking heads, yammering on. So you’re always looking for ways to change the camera angle, so to speak. You look for new ways to shorthand matters through visual means. All that prose you spent all that time polishing and honing goes straight out the window.
This page from Kevin Singles’ graphic-novel adaptation of Chris’s prose novel Head Games says it all.
It’s a book!
Just had to share the excitement I felt on opening the package from my publisher and seeing an advance copy of Solomon’s Thieves, my first original graphic novel.
The book won’t hit stores until May, but you can read about it here, or even (blatant self-promotion alert) pre-order it from Amazon. (return to subtle self-promotion)
