Diablo: Sword of Justice Comic Book Interviews

As today is turning out to be one of the slowest news days of the year, I thought I’d turn your attention toward a couple of new interviews with Aaron Williams and Joseph Lacroix, the writer and artist responsible for DC Comics’ newly released Diablo: Sword of Justice comic book mini-series. First up is a Q&A on Blizzplanet:

Will we see any major Diablo characters beside Tyrael?

Williams: It’s mostly limited to some small cameos by familiar creatures, locations, and races. Since this mostly takes place in Jacob’s home city in the Dreadlands, there wasn’t much opportunity to try and include some previously explored characters. Future installments, if they come to fruition, might have some, but as the game was being developed as this story was being written, taking Jacob and company into places that were going to appear in Diablo III was avoided. For example, in one draft, I had Jacob heading to the Forgotten Tower. If he’d done what I’d written there, players would wonder why there wasn’t the aftermath of the encounter visible, or why he’d gone there and not seen something painfully obvious when you play the game, etc.

When is the comic taking place in relation to Diablo II and Diablo III?

Williams: It’s happening about 20 years after the end of Diablo II. It doesn’t quite answer the question of what became of Tyrael, but it does chronicle what happened to his sword and some of the aftermath of the mountain’s destruction.

And then we head to the Q&A on Diablo Fans:

DiabloFans: How familiar were you with the Diablo franchise and lore before working on this project? How much lore was needed to be known in order to write this series?

Aaron: Other than the basic lore, I didn’t have to know too much else, it turns out. I think the goal was to not only help fill in the time between Diablo II and III, but to also introduce new players/readers to the idea of the lore the game has built around it. Thus, they didn’t want it to get too (in school,) I think. For example, the Horadrim were considered for some early drafts as either part of the adventuring cast and perhaps having an arc where his following Jacob restores interest in the order, which had been waning. I did have to be aware of newer lore and game mechanics (like the new wizard class) to make sure they were applied properly.

DiabloFans: How did your work with Blizzard and this project differ from the other comics you have written?

Aaron: The biggest one had to have been when I heard over a conference call that the developers were going to have fun with some of the concepts we were kicking around. I’ve written things here and there for some characters people have probably heard of, but none were going to see their story elements put into a major-release game! I could also fire up previous game titles on my computer and claim I was (working) or (doing research.) J The script approval process had a few more people in it than on other projects, but Blizzard has their teams pretty tightly knit; If I ignored any initials on the script notes, I would have thought I was reading a single editor’s instructions.