Monkeys Fighting Robots spoke with Ram V and Dev Pramanik the creators of the science fiction comic book PARADISO, the first issue hits your local comic book store on December 6. Image Comics provided a five-page preview of the book as well.
Take a listen to the conversation:
MFR: Paradiso has a complex sci-fi narrative. How much backstory and history do you have outlined or written down?
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RAM V: A lot actually but it’s not written down in any kind of organized manner. We actually started working on Paradiso long before I even contemplated writing comics. The idea for Paradiso actually came up from a discussion that I had with a friend of mine an architect called Rajiv (Bhakat), and we had contemplated the idea of setting the story inside a sentient city. At the time you know we didn’t have a kind of sprawling narrative that went through the entire story. So we just wrote short stories and vignettes. All of the characters and the locations that you see are actually things that came up while we were writing those pieces of short fiction. So in that sense, there’s almost a Tolkienesque backstory to everything. It grew organically. If that makes any sense.
MFR: How hard is it too set up a universe in one issue but also create a compelling story?
RAM V: I think the hard part is probably in trying to be subtle about it because you can foreground all of the information, to begin with. But that feels very inelegant and heavy-handed. So the hard part becomes about being subtle and giving people information without feeling like you’re front-loading all of it. But if you really thought about the story, and you’ve given people compelling characters to follow, then everything else becomes almost ornamental and that the world building exists only to serve the characters.
About PARADISO #1:
Story by: Ram V (Grafity’s Wall, Black Mumba)
Art by: Dev Pramanik (Nightbloom, Black Mumba)
Colors by: Dearbhla Kelly (James Bond: Moneypenny)
Letters by: Aditya Bidikar (MOTOR CRUSH, Black Mumba)
Synopsis:
The Midnight Event forever changed the world. Now, centuries later, Jack Kryznan arrives on the outskirts of Paradiso City, haunted by fragments of childhood memories and in possession of a mysterious device—one with the power to change the destiny of this living breathing metropolis: the people who dwell within, and the guardians who strive for and against it.
Will you add PARADISO #1 to your pull list?
