Summary

• The Hunger and the Dusk is a high fantasy series that offers intricate detail, political intrigue, fantastical worldbuilding, and romantic entanglements.
• The story is set in a world at war, where humanity and orcs must form an unlikely alliance against a monstrous threat. It explores themes of personal drama, political tension, and complex relationships.
• The series, co-created by G. Willow Wilson and Chris Wildgoose, has received enthusiastic response and praise for its refreshing take on familiar fantasy elements and its impressive worldbuilding.

The new high fantasy series The Hunger and the Dusk from New York Comic Con 2023 to talk about her and Wildgoose's newest creator-owned endeavor.

The Hunger and the Dusk #1, one of IDW's new originals, debuted in July 2023, introducing readers to a world at war. In an already-crumbling world with a long-forgotten history, humankind and orckind must band together against all odds to battle the encroaching threat of the Vangol, a monstrous band of creatures previously thought extinct. Along with action, fantasy, and some Game of Thrones-like political intrigue, The Hunger and the Dusk also boasts a complicated "love quadrangle" between its four main characters: Cal, Tara, Troth, and Faran.

Above the din of a Saturday at NYCC, Wilson spoke with Screen Rant about her fantasy influences, her collaboration with Wildgoose, the promotional hashtag #HotOrcSummer, and much more. Check out the full interview, edited lightly for clarity, as well as The Hunger and the Dusk #4, available December 6th from IDW.

G. Willow Wilson Discuss The Hunger and the Dusk, High Fantasy, World of Warcraft, Romance, and More

Screen Rant: I’ve been really looking forward to The Hunger and the Dusk since it was announced however many months and months and months ago, so to have it finally in the world is exciting for me as a fan. How does it feel for you to finally see this book out on shelves and in readers’ hands?

G. Willow Wilson: It's been really great. The enthusiasm of the response has been super rewarding. There's not a lot of high fantasy out there in comics right now, so it felt like kind of a swing for the fences. Because you don't know what the market's going to be like and how people are going to respond. So to see that enthusiasm is wonderful and a huge relief, because I know that myself and Chris [Wildgoose] and Michele [Msassyk] the colorist, and Simon [Bowland] the letterer, we've all put tons of time and effort into this book. It's our baby and we love it, and to have readers love it just as much is fantastic.

Can you tell us a little bit about the conceit of the book? What is The Hunger and the Dusk about?

So it's a high fantasy set in a world that is shrinking. Less and less of it is habitable, there's droughts, there's fires. And all of the peoples who once lived in this world are mostly gone — except for humankind and orc-kind, who have been battling for this little last piece of habitable land. And into this conflict comes a bunch of giants who were assumed either extinct or gone for hundreds of years. And now they're back, and they've changed. So the orcs and the humans have to get a sort of fragile alliance together and fight against this threat.

There's a lot of interpersonal drama, there's a lot of political tension, but there's big action scenes. There's romance. There's a love quadrangle between four different characters. So it's a lot of fun! It's a lot of fun. You will see a lot of ideas and conceits from fantasy shows and books and video games that will feel familiar, but there's twists that I think will make a lot of people go: Oh, wow! I didn't think of that. So if we've done our job right, it's familiar ground in a new way.

That's one of the most fun things about the book, right? It feels so familiar, and yet the characters also feel fresh and new. Can you talk a little bit about, like— you know, you talked about the quadrangle, the love triangle — love quadrangle! Who are those four main characters, and what are their motivations? What are they doing in this world, what drives them?

We've got several different people who are thrown together in a way that creates a lot of drama. The fate of this alliance rests on how they're able to work together. We've got Cal, who's a human leader of a scrappy mercenary company who’s fought many battles against Troth, who is the leader of one of the orc dynasties. But now, all of a sudden, they have to be allies.

And as a show of good faith, Troth has sent his cousin Tara to serve with the mercenary company that Cal runs. She's an aristocrat. She was born into a very high-ranking orc family, but her family is now in disgrace. So she’s experiencing an extreme reversal of fortune and is very out of her depth.

Troth, meanwhile, is engaged to be married to Faran, who's the daughter of another very important orc family. It's a political marriage. They don't know each other very well, and it's unclear whether feelings will develop or not. It's a really interesting rich tapestry of characters with very different personalities, and they're all trying — against all probability — to hold this very fragile alliance together, sometimes literally with their own lives.

And we've got a huge cast of ing characters. This is very much an ensemble book. We get to look into Orc culture and all of the families — who’s in tension with who and all of those politics. And on the other side, we have the humans and their history — and the world itself, which is also in a sense a character in this book. So, yeah — very much an ensemble story.

I'm really struck hearing you talk about the book with such — obviously you're the writer, but — such confidence! The scope of it is so impressive.

It's pretty big.

What was it like worldbuilding for this book? Especially with collaborators.

It was so interesting because I think I could not have asked for a better collaborator and co-creator than Chris Wildgoose. Like, the man is a machine! I have looked at pages and pages of prep work that he did — before there was even a single script — to figure out not only what the characters you see on the pages are wearing but what's underneath. So he's designed not only those costumes, but he knows: there's a tunic under there, and there's this symbol, and here's what it means, down to really the finest detail — almost like production work for a movie. I have never seen that level of worldbuilding detail. Ever.

It comes through, I think, in every single , because we have to do a lot with a little, doing a high fantasy in the format of a 22-page monthly comic book. Because there's really no room for error — you can't have paragraphs of text saying this is what happened 500 years ago. You can't have these little digressions where we see something unrelated to what's going on now. None of the leeway that you would have in a film or a TV series or a novel is something that we have the leisure of here. We have to know exactly what we want to say, and the art really has to do a lot of the heavy lifting to show us what kind of world it is that we're living in.

We’ve got these wonderful, elaborate ruins; we’ve got these beautiful, giant skeletons of ancient beasts. And all of that goes to show us that this is a world whose peak era has ed, and everybody who survives now is kind of living in the ruins of the great civilizations that have come before. And all of that is done through the art, really. It tells us a lot that we don't then have to use real estate with text to explain.

I have never seen that level of worldbuilding detail. Ever.

Do you have a favorite detail from the art that you didn't expect going in that Chris added in?

Yes! I mean, every single issue he will add something that I'm like, Ope, alright, well, let's put it in the bible! We have this ongoing document where we'll just add things that we put in.

In the script it calls for some of the characters [to] camp in this ruin. And instead of just drawing some toppled down columns, he made these six statues that he called the Six Sisters, and they're all different, and they're all holding different things. And he's like, “So I think, one of the civilizations that's come before, these were some of their deities — we think, or possibly their leaders, we don't know! But clearly important.”

I was like, This is incredible! It's one , and you came up with an entire belief system! So now that's going in the bible, and that becomes part of the world. And what's great about this is that — you know, the fact that this is a world in collapse really works for us, because the characters themselves have forgotten a lot of this history. I think about it a lot in of early medieval Europeans living in Roman ruins. They've forgotten the language, they couldn't reproduce a lot of the technology, they couldn't have rebuilt all of this stuff. And they're just sort of sheltering in a civilization that's functionally lost to them. So it's a lot of the same idea. Like, we don't necessarily know what these statues mean, but neither do the characters. So I think it brings us closer to the point-of-view characters who are equally mystified by these civilizations that are now gone.

You're talking about the worldbuilding, all these details — what I'm thinking about is the newest issue that just dropped this week [The Hunger and the Dusk #3], and we're talking about the art, but I'm really interested in how you're adding to the worldbuilding through the language. Because you were talking about medieval Europe and medieval England, and the language of the monsters — the Vangol — feels so much like— I started reading it, and I was like, I feel like I'm reading Chaucer!

It’s like Old English or Latin, yeah!

What was that like, building that kind of linguistic landscape?

It was fun for me! I'm a bit of a language geek. I don't this a lot, but I love learning languages. Some of them I use in daily life and some of them I don't. But I wanted the bad guys — the Vangol, these giants who have returned, who everybody thought were gone forever — to be speaking a much earlier dialect of the language that the main characters speak. And so it sounds like a totally different language.

But, you know, you're going along, there should be words that kind of jump out and you're like, I think I know what that means. So it should sound, as you said, almost like Chaucer, where there's hints of things that you think you catch, but you're not entirely sure. And the characters discuss it. They say, What language is this? And Tara, who's the most well-read of all of them, is like, This is our language. It's just a dialect that has not been spoken in 500 years.

Part of the great fun of building a world like this is having those [moments]. You know— what does this mean? And then we find out and we're like, Oh my God. It rewards the curious reader, where you're like, Oh, I think I know what that word means! Or, I've seen that symbol before! And then it ties back in later. So that's been really fun.

I got really excited as, like, also a language geek. I was like, Oh! I can see this!

I got to decide verb order! Like, what’s the verb order? And like, how do you conjugate stuff?

Yeah, it felt very musical in the way that Chaucer, when you read it in [the original], feels musical.

Gosh, that's very high praise! [Laughs]

[Laughs]

Yes, for listeners or readers, this is not Chaucer! This is a pale imitation of Chaucer. But that's kind of the vibe that we were going for, for sure.

[Laughs] You know, we're talking a lot about worldbuilding and the high fantasy, which is one of what I think are the two most compelling things about this book. The other thing, of course, is the interpersonal drama and the romance that we're balancing. High fantasy and also, you know — I think of this, as a reader, as a romance book.

Yeah, absolutely.

What's it like balancing the high fantasy tropes — the action, the war — along with these interpersonal, tender romance moments?

It feels very important to have both because, you know, wars are fought by people — by individuals, not just faceless armies. I think especially in times of high tension, our hearts can lead us in directions we don't expect. So, you know, the romance angle was one of the first things that came to me when I was first conceptualizing what the series would look like and feel like. And it's really at the center of the story, these burgeoning relationships. Will they, won't they, and we fight and we make up, and Oh my gosh, what's happening to us!

It feels rewarding — to me at least, especially in the times in which we live — to see that even at the end of the world, that survives. Love, ion, desire, friendship, loyalty. All of these things survive as long as we do. So in a sense it's me comforting myself, like, yes! Even if this is the end of the world, there's still an element of humanity that survives.

That’s beautiful! [Both laugh] Oh, comics are so good!

I know, right?! Every day I'm kind of like, wow!

It feels rewarding — to me at least, especially in the times in which we live — to see that even at the end of the world, that survives. Love, ion, desire, friendship, loyalty.

And you know — that said, all of this is still wartime. How do those interpersonal relationships influence the stakes of this world-ending war that’s happening?

I mean, they're really massive because the relationships that the characters have with each other will determine whether or not this alliance succeeds. In this most recent issue [#3], we have Faran, one of the orc characters, kind of going to bat for the alliance. Some of the other orcs want to jettison — you know, like the humans are weak, let's hit them now. And she's one of the ones that say no, let's do this. It shows her loyalty to Troth, and their relationship is by no means certain yet. So, you know, the choices that we make in these larger conflicts influence our interpersonal relationships and vice versa.

When it comes down to a world in collapse, where so few people are left, the choices that everybody makes matter. I think that comes through in a lot of these romances, these alliances, these marriages, hopefully in a way that feels both high-drama and satisfying. [Laughs]

[Laughs] The sweet spot!

The sweet spot, yeah! It's hard to get to. You’ve got to thread the needle.

I want to pivot for a second, because, of course, I also adore your licensed work. is one of my favorite books being published right now, I love it.

Thank you so much!

I really wanted to ask you, because I think it's interesting: what is it like as a writer to move between the superhero genre fiction, the licensed work, and something that is so totally your own that you're building with your collaborators?

You know, it's very different, and it requires a very different mindset. When you're working in an established universe, in some aspects it's easier, because you can draw upon a ton of source material that's come before. Continuity that, in the case of somebody like Poison Ivy, is decades old. So you can say, Okay, has this scene ever been shown before? Has this location ever been shown? Have these characters ever met? And you just google it, or you look in one of these encyclopedias or a fan forum or what have you, and it's all right there. You’re like, Okay, great! You have to do less heavy-lifting on that end.

On the other hand, you're also always conscious of honoring the past, but also writing a book for the future. And that can be a delicate balance, because people get very attached to characters that they grew up with, and they get very attached to the iteration of that character that they grew up with. And that's tough when, in a universe that's been around for a hundred years, those iterations change every fifteen years or so, and it could be completely different now versus when that reader, who ionately loves that character, got into the story. So that's quite a tough balancing act.

In creator-owned work, you have none of those expectations, but, at the same time, you have to build everything from scratch. There's no fan forum. There's no Wikipedia entry. There's no back issues that you can go and look at and compare to other things, and all of that stuff. It's all on you, which puts you all out there. So you have more control but also more margin for error. [Laughs] So there's a trade off.

[Laughs] The Wild West!

That's right. Yeah, there's a trade off. But I love them both. I feel very lucky to be able to do both. But yeah, very different mindset.

At the same time — you mentioned it earlier as well — there's so clearly a lot of influence from different kinds of — not just properties, but like ways of being a geek in the world, I guess? There's clearly a lot of DnD [Dungeons & Dragons] influence on the book.

A ton, yeah.

Can you talk a bit about that? Are you a DnD player? Is that something you were thinking about when you built the world?

I have had some iteration of this classic, trope-y, Western fantasy world in my life from birth. My dad read the whole Lord of the Rings to me when I was very young. That's part of my formative memories about what makes a good book and an exciting story. I played some DnD as, like, a tween and a teen. As an adult, I’ve played World of Warcraft, I've played in the Elder Scrolls universe. So I've seen many different interpretations of this shared universe that have language in common, and yet at the same time can be very different from— I hate to say property to property, it sounds so corporate. But from iteration to iteration. Yeah, all of that is for sure there.

What's interesting to me is, like, having started at the beginning of these commonly used — elves, orcs, humans, all of that stuff — and seeing the progression through all of these different games and movies and stories and things, you see — almost like a superhero book — you see each new interpretation reflecting the changing norms of that era. And so, you have Tolkien, who was very comfortable saying: these are the good guys, these are the bad guys, the bad guys are ugly, the orcs are bad, everybody's terrible. But then when you get to, like, World of Warcraft, you start to see orcs in kind of a heroic role. Anybody who's played World of Warcraft has had a crush on Thrall at some time or another. At least I did!

For those of us who've grown up with classic, you know, “orcs are stupid, orcs are ugly, orcs are the bad guys” fantasy, it was really interesting to see that new interpretation, kind of: “Whoa! What's up here? There's something in here.” So I very much see this book as a continuation of the continuation. It's a world — it doesn't belong to a single company, unlike some of these superheroes. It kind of belongs to all of us. But it's gone through those same reinterpretations decade to decade, and I definitely see this as a continuation of that.

I have had some iteration of this classic, trope-y, Western fantasy world in my life from birth.

That makes me think of, in the run up to the book’s release, the promo — the “hashtag hot orc summer.” Why is that the perfect tagline for this book?

Oh my gosh, so the amazing Katie Pryde from Books with Pictures in Portland, Oregon came up with that slogan. She was totally stoked about this book. She was like, This is amazing. We have to do something for this. This is gonna be hot orc summer! And I was like, You're a genius. That's amazing!

So I started using the hashtag, and then IDW started using the hashtag, and it kind of spread. But I have to credit Katie Pryde at Books with Pictures for coming up with that. That was not me, but it was perfect! It was perfect. I was like, Oh my God, yes! That is exactly what this is! Let's not pretend it's something else. Come for the hot orcs, stay for the political drama and, you know, the commentary on climate collapse. But come for the hot orcs! [Laughs]

[Laughs] You really gotta hook ‘em with that!

Hook ‘em, yeah! You gotta tell people what to expect.

Very memorable hashtag!

Yes, yes, all credit to her for that.

I have one more question for you, and then we can rest our voices. There are so many characters here — as you said, it's a huge ensemble cast. But, of these characters, which would you want most on your side in the war?

Oh! That is a good question. See, I've been asked several times which is your favorite, which I absolutely cannot choose.

No, I would never ever ask that! [Laughs]

Because they need each other! You take out one block, and the whole building collapses, so I can't choose between them. But, if we were to go into battle today, I would want Troth on my side. He's the best general. He's the best able to organize large groups of people and maintain a steady way of thinking and not get ruffled at all. So, yes. I would be like, I'm lining up behind this guy! [Both laugh] He knows what he's doing!

The Hunger and the Dusk #4 is available December 6th from IDW Publishing.