The award-winning Die team of Kieron Gillen and Stephanie Hans turn their focus to a type of creature often found in Role Playing games in their upcoming original graphic novel titled We Called Them Giants this fall.
The Image Comics OGN by Gillen and Hans follows main character Lori, who wakes up and finds herself in a strange, dystopian, and empty world where she must try to avoid both roving gangs of humans and the titular and foreboding title characters.
“After we finished Die, we new we wanted to do something completely different. Rather than a sprawling ongoing, do something smaller, intimate, self-contained and really pure,” said Gillen. “So, in the middle of the covid lockdowns, I was left alone with my cats, staring at them, and them staring at me, and thinking about the miracle of relationships between beings of completely different kinds of intelligences, and the wonder of the jump across that gap. The image of the feral girl in the devastation and the giants came quickly after that, and we were away.”
Gillen believes that “People will fall in love and have their hearts broken—the full Hans/Gillen experience. Despite the post-apocalypse setting the story has an almost weird-fable kind of vibe, and ends up basically as a conversation between The Walking Dead and The Iron Giant. Basically, We Called Them Giants is the story of communication across a chasm at the end of the world. Folks have seen what Stephanie does on a month-by-month rush on an ongoing comic. Here, it’s a thrill to see her luxuriate—creating this single long story, and being able to shape the whole thing into a poignant, romantic, devastating single canvas.”
Hans said, “As an artist, it is always a joy to work on new challenges, especially when it is with such a great writer. Kieron wrote an emotional story in which he let me go wild on designs. It’s a new, beautiful end of the world tale, a little bit epic, a bit nostalgic and a bit contemplative. It’s nothing like we did before. In all the best ways.”
The We Called Them Giants OGN hardcover will be available at local comic book shop on October 30.
Check out the cover below and stay tuned to Conskipper for more Image Comics news.
