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The Graphic Novel (Preview) Kevin J. Anderson from a story and lyrics by Neil Peart September 15, 2015 |
Rush's Clockwork Angels is a testament to the band's creative versatility — from concept album to novel to international tour. Now, Rush drummer and lyricist Neil Peart, New York Times bestselling author Kevin J. Anderson, and acclaimed artist Nick Robles take it one step further with the Clockwork Angels graphic novel.
Owen Hardy, like all the people of Albion, has lived his whole life under the rule of The Watchmaker. His entire existence is meticulously planned, down to the exact second. But not anymore. Owen decides to go against the gears and finally start making decisions for himself.
Kevin J. Anderson
From a story and lyrics by:
Neil Peart
Illustrated by:
Nick Robles
Lettered by:
Ed Dukeshire
Cover by:
Hugh Syme
A Foreword by Kevin J. Anderson
- Chapter 1
- Chapter 2
- Chapter 3
- Chapter 4
- Chapter 5
- Chapter 6
Music, Words, Pictures
A Foreword from Kevin J. Anderson
Inspiration comes in many forms, and music has always inspired my writing—especially the music of Rush. Neil Pearl's lyrics and drums, Geddy Lee's vocals, keyboards, and bass, and Alex Lifeson's guitars have conjured epic stories in my head since I was in high school. The Rush album Grace Under Pressure provided a much-needed launching point for my first novel, Resurrection, Inc.
In turn, Neil Peart has always enjoyed my novels, so it was only natural that we would join forces someday. Neil was putting together the storyline and songs for Rush's steampunk fantasy concept album, Clockwork Angels. He bounced some ideas off of me, and together we developed the story, the background, and the characters.
That brainstorming, that world, and those ideas became so vibrant that we developed Clockwork Angels into a full-fledged adventure novel, which became a New York Times bestseller and an award winner.
But why stop there? The story of an optimistic young dreamer and his quest across a steampunk landscape filled with airships and alchemy, the Watchmaker and the Anarchist, lost cities, pirates, and a fabulous steampunk carnival was such a visual feast that it seemed to demand an illustrative interpretation.
And it just so happened that Ross Richie, the CEO and Founder of BOOM! Studios, was a big fan of Rush and a big fan of mine. Hmm, serendipity.
Over the years I've written numerous comics for DC, Marvel, Dark Horse, IDW, and other publishers, but I knew that Clockwork Angels: The Graphic Novel had to be something special, with artwork and page design that lived up to the rich potential of the story. We needed a special artist.
Enter Nick Robles.
BOOM! offered us samples of Nick's artwork to show off his deftness with figures, his framing of a panel, his facility with vibrant colors. Neil and I were pleased with what we saw, and when Nick actually started digging into the Clockwork Angels universe, his concept designs were even better. This guy understood the world we were trying to show!
In Clockwork Angels: The Novel, I did a little trick where I laced the prose (deftly and cleverly, I hoped) with key phrases, recognizable words, and even entire lines from Rush song lyrics—not just from Clockwork Angels, but horn four decades of their musical library. The key was to do this in such a way that true Rush fans would be delighted by the "Easter eggs," but that casual readers wouldn't notice jarring or intrusive quotes.
In a comic adaptation, we had an opportunity to add visual Easter eggs to the panel art. For instance, early in issue #1 young Owen Hardy looks up at the clouds and imagines that he sees dragons. In the artwork Nick Robles drew this to look exactly like the dragon on the cover of the Rush in Rio album. And that's just one example. (If you want to cheat, you can read the book Clockwork Angels: The Comic Scripts, which pulls aside the curtain and shows our detailed workings with the artist.)
By now, I've lived with the story of Clockwork Angels for years. It was 2009 when Neil first started brainstorming with me the story of the evil Anarchist, a fabulous carnival, and an optimistic dreamer who gets framed as a scapegoat in a heinous situation. In August 2010 we climbed a 14,000-ft mountain peak and developed the basic story and characters around the series of songs Neil had already written or had in mind. I mulled over the details for some time, and finally developed the specific chapter-by-chapter outline, working back and forth with Neil. In March 2012 I started writing the first chapters in Joshua Tree National Park—and in September 2012 ECW Press released the gorgeous hardcover to coincide with the launch of the Clockwork Angels tour. (Yes, those dates are correct: I wrote the novel in a frenzy, Neil read and gave his input on the draft chapters within days of delivery, and ECW did a phenomenal job of producing the book in a very short timeframe.)
Neil even went into the recording studio to narrate the audiobook version of the novel, bringing yet another dimension to the story.
And now comics! I was really looking forward to this.
When I was writing the novel, I had the freedom to tell each scene in as many pages as I desired. Comics, though, is a much more structured format. We had to tell a novel's worth of story in six individual issues of twenty-two pages each.
So I went back to my overall outline, blocked out the plot and divided it into six equal parts, which forced me to do a little shuffling for dramatic effect, distilling the story so that the high points landed in the right places, and the most lavish scenes fell on pages where we could give Nick large panels to play with.
As I delivered each script draft to Neil for his comments and approval, invariably I would hear back from him within an hour, maybe two, with fine-tuning suggestions that were always easy to implement. Then the script would be off to our intrepid BOOM! Studios editors, Ian Brill and Jasmine Amid, before it went to Nick...who brought all the panels alive and sent them back to us. Nick often picked up on connections that even I hadn't thought of.
And Hugh Syme, who had painted the cover of the Clockwork Angels album (as well as most other Rush albums) and provided lovely interior illustrations for the novel, has created a new cover for this collection.
The result of our graphic novel project was an immensely satisfying experience—the volume you now hold in your hands. A fully immersive realization of a story that started out with music, and then words, then pictures.
But we still can't get the land of Albion, the Watchmaker, the Anarchist, and all those quirky, fascinating characters out of our heads. Right now, we're writing another story, Clockwork Lives (as in, the plural of life), a companion to Clockwork Angels that will let us spend time with another group of friends, strangers, and strange friends... and those clockwork gears just keep turning.
Chapter 1
Clockwork Angels: The Graphic Novel at Amazon.Com
