Gentle Moirai

Once upon a time, I wrote a story I described as "a fairy tale of blood and bullets."

It was, on its face, an action-adventure that centered on an immortal woman – a warrior – who was at least 6,000 years old. I liked the idea that, if experience is the best teacher, and that, if our greatest lessons come from our mistakes, that she'd be the most lethal person in the history of… history. Six thousand years of fighting, I figured she'd made just about every mistake it was possible to have made. Since the ones that would've killed her didn't, she was the walking, talking proof that "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger."

Andromache the Scythian, art by Leandro Fernández

I thought about all she'd have seen and experienced, and how much that would've changed, especially in the last three centuries. How the world was accelerating. How frustrating it would be to her, and how exhausting. I thought about the fact that, when a new weapon or tactic or technique came along, she could just slip off and spend a year or five or ten mastering it.

I thought about the fact that, after all her time, with all the places she had gone, the languages she had learned and forgotten, the people she had met, the cultures she had experienced, all she'd seen, she would have no patience for racism or bigotry or prejudice. Her personal experience simply wouldn't allow it. She would have long ago determined that, wherever you went, people were always just… people. Some were good, some were bad, and most were just trying to get by. It didn't matter how they looked or who they loved. They were people.

Then I thought, given all this, that kind of bullshit would actually piss her the hell off. It would make her angry. Cruelty would make her angry. Exhausted and worn down by life she may be, but cruelty would always bring her back to the battle.

I thought about how lonely her life would be, and what a double-edged sword (or labrys?) her continued existence would have become. I thought about how impossible it is to move through the world without making some connections, how impossible it would be to defend her heart for centuries upon centuries. I thought about how we fall in love when we absolutely do not want to, and I thought about how many times she had fallen in love, and how many of those loves she had lost.

Nicolo di Genoa and Yusuf ibn Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ibn al-Kaysani, called al-Tayyib, or Nicky and Joe, if you'd rather. Art by Leandro Fernández

I thought about the existential dread of never dying. The cold horror of outliving the planet. The galaxy. The universe. Of everything being gone… except you. 

I really liked this woman, but that wasn't a story. It was a character, but it wasn't a story.

For a story, I needed more. There needed to be others like her. Not many. Very few, in fact. And to complicate matters, and to highlight that existential dread, I decided that sometimes these immortals could die, but they didn't know how or why, that it would just sometimes happen to them out of the blue. The wound that had never claimed them a hundred times before suddenly would. They didn't know why. They didn't know when.

Sébastien le Livre, a.k.a. "Booker." Art by Leandro Fernández

So this woman, she was the oldest of them by far, and yet she kept going. Her time just wouldn't come, and she was so tired, genuinely tired of life, and so worn down and so repeatedly disappointed by the world, and still, as friends and lovers and brothers-in-arms passed, she continued.

Writing all of this, that sounds grim, but the thing was, the story I wanted to write wasn't meant to be grim. It was, sincerely, meant to be fun. I mean, I'd created this group with this woman and these two guys who'd fallen in love trying to kill each other during the First Crusade, and this other guy who'd been conscripted into Napoleon's army, and they did what they knew how to do. They fought. They were soldiers.

And since they couldn't die, I could pretty much do to them anything the Road Runner did to the Coyote in those cartoons, you know? 

Blow 'em up, drop an anvil on them, drive them headlong into a cliff, you name it, I could do it. 

I could do it because Leandro Fernández was going to draw it, and Leo's got an amazing art style that is at once emotive and cartoony. Things that would look turn-your-guts disgusting in another artist's hands instead looked icky and goofy, not gross. Leo understood the absurdity as much as he understood the emotion. Bonus? Leo is something of a history nut, and if I said a scene was set in 1478, he'd get to work finding reference.

The first story, the introductory story, was pretty self-evident. There was a new member to the group. This new member, contemporary, she'd be our way in. 

Nile Freeman, by Leandro Fernández

And this first story would set the foundation, which meant that it had to set stakes, but it had to define the world. Mythology could wait. In truth, I didn't want to ever explain why they were immortal. I think far too many stories are obsessed with explaining the why, and I think it cheapens them. Nine times out of ten, the why doesn't matter, and answering the why very often leads to betraying the promise of the premise.

Beware the why, my children, for that way lies midi-chlorians.

I was writing the fourth issue of the original series of THE OLD GUARDwhen I realized – as I have remarked before elsewhere – that I was really writing about the death of my father. I was trying to make sense of it, not specifically (fuck cancer) but generally. Why do we have to die? What is the merit in it? What is death's benefit?

I've found some answers, one or two that satisfy me. But I still wrestle with it. I suppose that's one of the things life demands, that we wrestle with this question.

I wrote the initial series not expecting much of it, honestly. I'd lucked out big time when Leo had agreed to draw it, I knew that, and I knew the book looked amazing, what with Leo's art and what Daniela Miwa was doing on colors and Jodi Wynne was doing with the lettering. But I didn't really have high expectations for the book. I figured, eh, maybe people will enjoy it. That's not dismissive – if some people enjoy my work, that's pretty much the win condition for me.

I just hoped some people would enjoy it, that was it.

THE OLD GUARD is arguably the most successful thing I've ever written, comics or prose, which just shows you how little I understand the market and my own audience, I guess.

One thing led to another and Hollywood came calling, and the folks at Skydance were willing to let me write the screenplay. This amazing director, Gina Prince-Bythewood, read the script and wanted to direct it. Then this actress nobody had ever heard of before agreed to play Andromache the Scythian. Skydance brought in Marc Evans to produce. The movie did well enough that Netflix wanted another one.

And here we are.

I hope it makes you laugh, and maybe makes you cry, and most of all, gives you a chance to slip into a fairytale of blood and bullets, if only for a short time.

Most of all, I hope that you enjoy it.

As a little celebration, I made a First Day Cover (FDC)-esque commemorative stamp collection with all the released character posters. Should also work as a desktop wallpaper as well I think? But anyway, A R T