Interview: Stan Lee presents 'Alliances Orphans'

Orphans blasts readers into the heart of our galaxy alongside William Ackerson, a man lost in space on a quest to find the source of his uncanny abilities. As gravity waves ripple across reality, warping time and space, he meets the Orphans. They are each the last of their kind, all their kin having been wiped out by the alien Hive: Little Boy, their giant childlike leader; Haze, a caustic creature of pure vapor; Rascal, a self-loathing zealot with dark secrets; and Critter, a being that's equal parts monster and puppy. This ragtag group find themselves in over their heads when their space-heist is hijacked. Turns out that they have a stowaway with her own agenda.

In the following interview, Alliances Orphans writers Luke Lieberman and Ryan Silbert take us inside...

Though this is the first coming to a graphic novel, Stan's original signature medium, this is not the kickoff of the Alliances universe. Orphans follows the novel A Trick of Light and the A New Reality audio drama. For newcomers, how would you describe the Alliances mythos?

It all started with the question, as millions of fans heard Stan proclaim in his introduction to the Alliances Universe, “What is more real, a world we are born into or one we create ourselves?” How technology shapes our reality and our identity was the original question that propelled this new universe of characters and stories. The dream of Alliances was to not only find new fantastical corners of our ever-evolving techno-sphere but to also jump into space and explore the kind of pulpy sci-fi stories that Stan began his career with in Tales of Suspense and Journey into Mystery and his cosmic curiosities leading up to the Marvel Age of comics.  

Orphans really stands on its own, introducing a whole slew of new characters who find their home among the stars.   

There are so many talented creators involved in telling these new tales, and it all goes back in part to Stan the Man. What roles did Stan Lee play in crafting this world and its characters? And how do you guys and the rest of the team then take those pieces and carry them out into the full final work that readers will be enjoying?

What is incredible about Stan is the breadth of his career – he had immersed himself in storytelling as diverse as Shakespeare, from poetry, to sci-fi serials. And, by the time he was in his late thirties, he had already written thousands of comic pages, only to create the Fantastic Four, Spider-Man and the X-Men when he was in his forties.  He never stopped generating ideas, he worked every day of his life - for decades on decades.    

We spent years developing the framework and characters of what would become the Alliances universe with Stan. Orphans builds on this and includes a special prologue, the Traitor’s Revenge, which he co-wrote and was one of the earliest scenes we developed with him when first embarking on this creative journey. This is really the origin story for Alliances, and we wanted to save it for the right moment. The idea of an alien Inventor enslaved, forced to use his genius to create weapons for his enemy and then turning his greatest device against his masters. The title is an homage to Stan’s first published comic book work “A Traitors Revenge’ which debuted in Captain America Comics #3. 

The first stories in the series, A Trick of Light and New Reality, were launched as audio originals at Audible. Stan and our team were excited to invite readers to hear those tales and envision the stories for themselves, for each listener to become the artist, the Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko. But we knew that once we brought Alliances to the page, we needed a visionary artist, and we ended up with not just one…but two! Bill unleashed his imagination on Traitor's Revenge and Szymon balanced the cosmic stakes with the intimate characters moments beautifully.     

In this graphic novel, fans will be meeting the Orphans, the ragtag, misfit crew taking on this quest to save the very fabric of reality. Can you tell us a bit about the cast of the book and which ones did you enjoy writing and fleshing out the most?

The Orphans are each the last of their kind, all their kin wiped out by the evil Hive. The Hive let them live, selecting them for captivity as genetic relics. Stan had a mantra when it came to storytelling. "It's all about the characters." They are the heart of the story - their relationships to one another. His attitude was, if the audience identify with the characters, then they will follow those characters on the most fantastical journeys. Little Boy is the Inventor's mentee and from an ancient species that ages slowly but he's basically an overgrown child. His best friend Haze is made out of pure vapor and sarcasm. Their pilot Rascal is a cynic with a heart of gold. And Critter is their pet monster. But there is no way we would describe the Orphans to you in a few words - it took us 180 pages to explore them.  

The human, William Ackerson is a character with a lot of history in the Alliances Universe, this story meets up with him after the events of A New Reality, the second book on Audible (Will Wheaton is the audio reader, check it out!). We meet him deep in space, plagued with his powers, searching for a cure. Then there is Samsi, our space samurai, and Ekol Razel our villain - he likes to eat lower life forms, and he considers everyone else a lower life form.    

They are all left to deal with the aftermath of the Inventor’s revenge - which includes a black hole the Inventor experimented on that is… malfunctioning.

This book has not one, but two legendary artists to bring your script to the page. Bill Sienkiewicz is of course one of the most prolific and acclaimed creators in comics, with his contributions to Moon Knight, New Mutants, Elektra, and much more. He's also joined by fan-favorite Szymon Kudranski, known for Spawn, Punisher, Batman, and more. How has it been collaborating with these two and the rest of the team, and seeing the book fully form?

Bill is a master. He has influenced a generation of storytellers and his work redefined dynamic multi-layered characters like Moon Knight or Warlock in the New Mutants. We knew that to tell Traitor’s Revenge properly, we needed someone with a wild imagination - that is what Bill has. His work is organic, energetic and captures the epic weirdness of that story.  

Szymon draws these characters so that you feel an internal cosmos exists within their soul. He is able to work on this massive scale, but finds all these intimate ways to bring emotion into the characters.  

Bill works at such scale and Szymon draws these characters so evocatively, it’s an incredible pairing to introduce fans to the first Alliances graphic novel.  

As we mentioned, there are a couple other pieces of the Alliances puzzle already. Of course, people can jump right into this graphic novel completely blind. But for those who want to dig deeper or are returning fans, can they expect any neat connections, or teases of what more could come next?

Of course, it’s all connected but you don’t need to know the canon to enjoy Orphans. The prologue, Traitor’s Revenge, is essentially a prologue to the entire series, including the New York Time’s best-seller, A Trick of Light. Orphans has nods to the first two projects, including spotlighting the fate of William Ackerson, a brilliant inventor whose actions are central to the plots of A Trick of Light and A New Reality - and for close-eyed fans, teases the future.