Interview: Kieron Gillen discusses deconstructing the fantasy genre in DIE

Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans’ series, DIE, has been rushed back to print innumerable times. At TCAF 2019, Gillen talked about what makes the series different from other RPG comics.

Kieron Gillen’s love for gaming, pop culture and comics is evident from his detailed afterwords following every issue of Image Comics’ DIE. It is no wonder, then, that the series which we described as ‘Jumanji meets Stranger Things’ has captured the imaginations of comic readers across the board (no pun intended).

The first volume of the series, ‘Fantasy Heartbreaker’ is out on June 5, and to promote the book and the conclusion of The Wicked + The Divine (Gillen’s acclaimed series, created with Jamie McKelvie), Gillen attended Toronto Comic Arts Festival 2019. I caught up with the writer, who is unabashedly courteous, enthusiastic about his work and full of awe for his DIE partner-in-crime, Stephanie Hans.

DIE Volume One: Fantasy Heartbreaker is out in June – could you tell us a little about people’s reaction to the series so far?

Keiron Gillen at TCAF 2019

Kieron Gillen: Positive! I think overall, it’s probably been the best reviewed book I’ve ever done, even more than WicDiv. WicDiv was quite divisive, in some ways. People who loved it, loved it, and that’s why it ended up on so many end-of-year lists. But the people who disliked WicDiv, really disliked it. Bless them. Whilst DIE, people have seemed to responded to it in a very broad way.

What I find most interesting is, part of it is down to how well-timed it is. When I was starting to think about it two years ago, D&D [Dungeons & Dragons] was a bit bigger than it used to be, but it wasn’t like as it is now. So, it [DIE] has hit the zeitgeist in an interesting way. And it’s the timing that’s helped. There’s so many great RPG comics, or comics that are about RPGs. Where DIE kind of differs is that it’s so bleak. Like, most D&D comics are playful, leaning into the fun and games side of it. And DIE is the absolute opposite – this is like, ‘let’s do a serious deconstruction of why
we do fantasy games’. It’s in a popular area, but it’s not something that’s really been done.

The thing that makes me most happy is – the people who like RPGs, that’s not a real surprise, that’s like saying people who like music like phonogram. What makes me happy with DIE is, I regularly get people who come and say, ‘I’ve never played RPG, or I don’t even like RPGs but this works for me’. Which is kind of the hope in that it’s a fantasy world comic, so it’s a story about going to a fantasy world. That’s like accessible, that’s not D&D necessarily.

And, of course, people are just drooling over Stephanie [Hans’ art], which is kind of the endeavor. Stephanie Hans must be a superstar and this is our pitch for that. So, that makes me very happy.

Can you tell us how the story of DIE came about? And how did it evolve over the five-issue arc?

KG: The first five issues were my initial pitch. They arrive in the world, we meet the characters, we kind of have a Tolkien detour, and then by the end of the first volume it’s clear that the story isn’t going to be ‘this is a fantasy quest and then they go and beat the baddie and then they go home’. No, this is about the interactions between these five and six people and their personalities. My idea for DIE completely came in those first five issues. And then it sets up this new status quo that’s an exploration for the rest of the trade [paperback]. This is a deconstruction of the fantasy genre in every way we can.

Why did you choose a table top gaming for DIE? Can you tell us your experience with gaming?

KG: That’s an interesting question. Part of it is just the origin. Me and Jamie [McKelvie] and Ray Fawkes were walking around San Diego Comic-Con, and we were just joking. And, one of us said, ‘whatever happened to those 90s kids in the D&D cartoon?’ And Jamie mentioned that there was actually a final story where they got home, but that was never filmed. And we just made a lot of jokes.

That idea stuck with me, like whatever happened to those kids? By the end of the evening I kind of realised why it obsessed me. So, it was kinda like taking the idea of kids who went to a fantasy world and then meeting them years later. In the 1980’s D&D cartoon, Stephen King meets
Stephen King’s It, so it’s kind of what I thought. It was a really interesting way of doing it.

I used to be a games critic, mainly video games. I count video games, board games – they’re all the same to me. They’re all different expressions of the same art form. So this, kind of, is me looking at that, I guess. It just felt very natural.

Why RPGs over any other form? I think it’s because I do have that relation with RPGs. I was a teenage person who played a lot of that stuff. I fell in love with RPGs for the same reason I fell in love with pop music – it’s these fantasy worlds you lose yourself in. And, of course, lose yourself is a very loaded phrase. That’s part of what DIE is about, it’s not just about the upside of fantasy. Eventually, you’ll get some positive stuff, but it is about ‘are we sure this is a good thing?’

Die no. 1 cover (Credit: Image Comics)

Talking about Ash; he’s Dominic in the real world, and he’s the female character Ash in the DIE world.

KG: People always ask me what pronouns to use for Ash, and my answer is, he seems to use ‘he’ in the real world, and ‘she’ when they’re in DIE. Ash’s conversation with how he approaches gender is certainly part of the book. He was one of the two original characters I thought of. You know, we say the word ‘fantasy’, but fantasy is just thinking. The idea of fantasy is like the idea of a survival mechanism.

How Ash thinks about gender and sexuality; it’s impossible to avoid a queer reading of Ash. And, I wanted to write about it, because I’m somebody who’s used fantasy in various ways to approach my own identity, I guess. With DIE I’m less interested in straight line answers; I want to write something that’s genuinely mature and messy. Dominic will navigate the space and decide what it means – we did that a bit in issue four. Like, this is how Ash sees themselves in the world of DIE.

How did you come up with the mechanics of DIE?

KG: With great difficulty. I’m full-speed developing my own RPG at the same time because I’m an amateur game designer. My writing of the comic was also at the same time as writing the game and how the two fed into each other. What was interesting in one and how you change it for the other, and the strengths and weaknesses of the other medium. The easier ones are the specific character classes. I wanted each of these six archetypes to be riffs on a classic D&D character class.

There’s this big 12,000-word document where I just sat and riffed; that’s how I work. I think a lot and then I try to explain it. It’s simultaneously a comment on these D&D character classes, while also an extrapolation of something really interesting.

Like, the Godbinder is like the Clerics in a classic D&D game, their relationship with the gods isn’t really like a priest. It’s more transactional. So, Clerics are like, they’ll heal the wound but only a little bit. That’s lunacy. It [the Godbinder] is common to what I think Clerics are in D&D. At the same time, they’re not Clerics in D&D, they’re their own thing. And immediately, they’re kind of quite sexy and cool and interesting. You know, the idea of you seeing them whispering to a god and saying ‘I’ll do this for you’; that’s fun by itself.

The idea has always been, how to take these classes, find something to say about the origin and at the same time make something new and iconic.

You’ve mentioned you would be coming back to DIE. Have you already started work on the next volume? What plans do you have for the characters?

KG: It’s called ‘Split the Party’ and the characters are all over the world. The first arc’s been quite
driven, and this one is more about the depth of DIE, the politics, the regions, the kingdoms and [how] the players get involved in it. But most importantly, it gives us a chance to dig into the cast.

The first arc is mainly about Ash; the other people are there, but it’s mainly Ash’s story. And in this arc, so far, each issue features a strong perspective of one of the characters. Issue six is very much about Angela; issue seven is about Chuck. Issue eight, which I’m writing at the moment, is very much about Matt. We get to put some meat on them and talk about their issues – what really drives them. So, you get to know everybody, at the same time you get this wider, political mess they’ve dragged themselves into.

We spent a lot of time in the first arc saying that they’re trying to avoid their past. If they’re in the
world for a while, their past is definitely going to catch up with them.

What else are you currently working on?

KG: Sleeping! We’ve just finished off WicDiv; I’ve just finished off the first draft of the final issue, which is good. I need to polish it. Just finished off Peter Cannon, Thunderbolt for Dynamite. I’m halfway through a book called, Once & Future at BOOM! which is coming out in July, I think. That’s like six issues, with Dan Mora; great fun. And, the DIE RPG should be released when the trade drops. It’s a beta, but it’ll be coming out then.

Grab a copy of DIE Volume One: Fantasy Heartbreaker when it hits shelves on June 5, and if you’re into RPGs, check out the DIE game as well.