The Dishonored Comic – Inside the Narrative

With the first issue of the Dishonored comic book series now available, and the second hitting shelves (both digital and retail) tomorrow, we sat down with Gordon Rennie, the author behind the endeavor, to discuss the four-part run (published by Titan Comics). Rennie reveals what it was like to craft a narrative for an existing franchise and expand Dishonored into a new medium.

What’s your history with Dishonored?

I play a lot of games – in my other life, I’m also an award-nominated games scriptwriter – and was aware of Dishonored and its popularity. When they asked me about writing the comic book series I borrowed my son’s copy of the game, played it and really enjoyed it. The depth of the game world of Dunwall was clearly evident, and persuaded me that this was something I wanted to do.

What sort of research did you do to prepare for writing a comic based on an established world and characters?

The guys at Bethesda and Arkane sent me a ton of background material. There’s so much stuff that hadn’t made it into the actual games, but that they still know anyway, and it really adds a richness and complexity to the world that a player picks up on, even when it’s not up there on the screen.

The online wiki for Dishonored was also extremely useful for checking up on things I was using in the comic book story.

Were you able to create any completely new characters? Do you have a favorite?

Other than Corvo Attano, every single character in my story is original. Favorites would be Martha Cottings, who’s a young and promising officer in the Dunwall City Watch, and who plays a major role in this story, and also two Dunwall criminals called Sly Harold and Dapper Rodney, whose dialogue was a lot of fun to write.

This book is pretty violent. Have you done a lot of action-heavy work before or was this a fairly new experience?

[laughs] Trust me, this is a walk in the park compared to some of the stuff I’ve written. In the game, you can choose whether you want to use stealth and non-lethal methods to subdue your enemies, or go full-lethal on them. We decided early on in the comic book that we would opt for a less lethal (and therefore more sympathetic) Corvo.

Check out some preview pages for issue 2 below:

Issue 3 will be available September 28, 2016. Issue 4 will be out on October 19, 2016. And the graphic novel collection will be available on November 29, 2016.