(Slight spoilers ahead for issue #1)
It’s not exactly a new story for non-comics creators to enter the industry. But it’s nonetheless still interesting to see how some folks get on when making their comics foray.
Nelson Greaves is perhaps best known for writing for TV, with credits on Joe Pickett, 24: Legacy, and several other titles. He, alongside artist Davide Castelluccio, colorist Francesca Vivaldi, and letterer Frank Cvetkovic, is making his comics debut with The Carlyle School for Kings (from October 30 from Dark Horse Comics).
“It was definitely a learning curve,” said Greaves. “I’d read comics of various sorts and graphic novels and stuff. But the actual process of sitting down and thinking about how much story I’m able to tell. When writing TV and movies, there’s basic guidelines. An episode of TV can’t be longer than 60 minutes, and for a movie, I like to aim for 100 pages.”
But within that structure, Greaves found the space to understand how to tell truly impactful stories.
“You really have space to push and pull on what parts take longer and what parts are faster,” said Greaves. “I have 22 pages, which is what Dark Horse uses. So, what is the maximum amount of story that I can tell that is also going to emotionally land? And that’s also going to be a journey within itself, but still something you can tell in so few pages. I feel like between the first issue and the second issue, I just had such a crash course.”
He added, “The first issue was very difficult for me, and I had so much story in there and it was only by very consciously taking things away and seeing things like, ‘You know what? I want to save an entire page for something cool.’ So it has a big emotional landing and that requires me have discipline with these other areas.”
However, Carlyle wasn’t always the most positive or robust experience; Greaves also had real issues adapting to this storytelling medium.
“I am proud of it, and it’s just doing everything I wanted it to do,” said Greaves. “But, for instance, the first time the letterings came in, I read it and I was just like, ‘Wow, I cannot track what is going on.’ Because I had really been approaching it like a screenplay where there’s so much else moving and there’s so many other elements to tell the story. You need to choose exactly what you are telling people to guide them through this story. I think in a good way, there isn’t a lot of room for shades of subtlety and you really have to be like, ‘This is the story I’m telling and I’m going to tell it elegantly but also to the point.’”
Still, the process was fruitful overall, and Carlyle has already helped Greaves develop his writing in a much larger sense.
“So I definitely didn’t know what to expect. And then I really got the hang of it,” said Greaves. “I’ve actually found it’s improved my other writing and my approach to writing and thinking about story as these individual segments, which I think having a limited number of pages also helps you do because what is one page of story? Or, one unit of story? I actually literally outlined a TV pilot of mine, putting (it) into 22 pages just as a mental experiment. It was very helpful.”
Issue #1 cover by Davide Castelluccio. Courtesy of Dark Horse Comics.
It helps that, if comics and TV/movies do share anything whatsoever, it’s that a good story is a good story. And in the case of Carlyle, Greaves had something deeply personal to offer.
“I wasn’t working professionally as a writer, and I was in a writer’s group when I happened upon this idea that was loosely based on the experience I had going to Harvard, which was a very difficult, very trying, and very frequently thus unpleasant experience,” said Greaves. “I felt like I was in competition with all of these people who were ready to stab me in the back in order to succeed. And I grew up on a ranch outside Fresno.”
Greaves added, “And for me, it was this real culture shock of being at a place where people wished you ill and where people weren’t above doing very shady things in order to get ahead of you. And so I think it really came from that place where you’re surrounded by both people who are extremely exceptional — some of the smartest and most ambitious people in the entire world — but at the same time, these are people who would stab you in the back to get ahead.”
The idea is central to Carlyle: Emmeline “Emme” Heron is a member of a fallen house, but even she’s still invited to the Carlyle School for Kings, where students are “trained in matters of heart, strength, and mind, and the one who is deemed most exceptional will be crowned king for the next 30 years.” (So, yeah, think Harry Potter meets Battle Royale.) Carlyle, like Harvard, is a place where the best and brightest battle it out — even if they don’t really have to.
“Well, and that’s the whole tension between it, right? Where you have these two people who are these childhood friends, who truly have a deep bond and the push and pull between wanting to work together,” said Greaves. “And yet at the end of the day, only one of (them) is going to be king. How can you still hold on to your humanity and hold on to what’s good, but also be reaching for that highest goal? And I think it is very hard. Stick around with the series. If we get four volumes of this, maybe we’ll get to answer that question.”
Despite the fantasy elements at play, Greaves readily believes that Carlyle is very much this primal, decidedly universal story.
“I think that there’s a very natural story that has existed as long as children are going to school together, where there is this formality of students working together and competing with each other,” said Greaves. “I think though, specifically with this story, it starts out very much that this is a story about all these kids going to school together and competing with each other. But at the end of the first issue, Emme reveals she’s not here to compete — she’s here to kill the king. And so ultimately, as we go in the story, and again, I hope I’m lucky enough to tell the story that continues, it really becomes an analysis of these kids not versus each other, but versus the adults in this world who have put them into this situation.”
Still, it wasn’t just about referencing our world and its myriad of sociological issues. Carlyle was very much a chance for Greaves and company to build this dynamic fantasy world, complete with giants and medieval wars.
“This was my first experience fully going through and building a world,” said Greaves. “As a writer, I have a tendency to gravitate toward things where I have to build worlds. I really envy people who are able to tell super compelling stories that are about three friends living in a house in suburban America. Not that those stories are any less compelling, but that’s just not how my brain works. And so I’ve got projects simmering in my cauldron that are like this, but this was the first one where I was truly able to make it happen.”
But perhaps unlike many other fantasy tales, Greaves wasn’t just interested in the battles. Rather, the story’s specific aim is as much about the people as the actual conflicts.
“I had to come up with this central conflict — the idea of this contest that happens every 20 years where a new king is selected,” said Greaves. “I needed to come up with who is the adversary ultimately. What is the danger to this kingdom? What are the inner workings of this thing? Who are these various people coming here? But in a lot of ways, I think that’s the most boring part.”
The real fun, then, is when Greaves really got to build the world — it’s there that he could exert a level of power he didn’t always have with other, non-comics projects.
“What I was very excited to experience is…I got to a place where I said, ‘You know what? I can put a statue in here that has meaning and that references a thing that I’m creating that is now in the lore and part of the legend of Godwit.’ It now gets to live forever and is solidly a part of it,” said Greaves. “So I found a lot of the texture and a lot of things that really surprised me, honestly, that came out of me. That just felt very natural in a way — when you’re writing a TV show, anything can get cut at any point. As opposed to getting to choose carefully and commit to details that are in.”
Issue #2 cover by Davide Castelluccio. Courtesy of Dark Horse Comics.
But, of course, there is also a “downside” to that process.
“Now, the other part of it that’s kind of frightening is being in a situation where I have to make a decision about a thing, and while ultimately the decision is somewhat arbitrary, that’s now in cement,” said Greaves. “I can’t take it out in the way that you have the ability to do when making a movie or a TV show.”
But in the end, the world-building stuff helped make for a better, more well-rounded story across Carlyle.
“I think my experience has been — between the first issue and issue #4 — how naturally I’m coming to reuse those things and how it really feels like the first issue sets up a group of ingredients that I was able to very nicely build upon,” said Greaves. “And then, I think, I wrap everything up in issue #4 while still blowing up into a larger story, which I hope I get the chance to tell. It’s been very surprising what a natural ecosystem that has developed. I almost feel outside of myself.”
A lot of Greaves’ takeaways came from within — he was learning the comics-making process by fire. But just as importantly, he had collaborators in Castelluccio, Vivaldi, and Cvetkovic. That team really pushed Greaves’ knowledge ahead, and helped him truly grow and extend as a storyteller.
“Regarding Davide, it was the most exciting thing in the world every time I would get new pages from him to see where his head was at and to see him bring ideas and bring subtlety to things that I haven’t really thought about,” said Greaves. “He picked up, for an example, the would-be kings in the story — their nickname is would-be’s. And in a page one time, I saw this little picture of a bee that had been carved into something, and he had just taken this idea and ran with it and realized that, yeah, this is something that would exist in this world.”
Greaves added, “And so in the same way that I was filling out story points that I would find within the greater mythology, he was doing that visually in a way that I was just able to grab on. Something that for me had been an off-handed idea, suddenly he puts it in the art. And then suddenly for me, that becomes a central, real, and a tangible part of the lore that I am then telling.”
It didn’t take long, then, for Greaves to figure out how to engage and work with Castelluccio — it was about space and trust in a way he hadn’t always been exposed to before.
“I also think, just via receiving the first issue, seeing him come back with this art and seeing what was possible and realizing how by giving him more space, I could make this thing more exceptional because he was going to bring this incredible level of work and artistry to it,” said Greaves. “I think I’m a visual thinker, but not at all like this. And in getting to work with someone who is just adding so much and bringing things to the table that my brain couldn’t ever conceive, it was just the most wonderful experience in the world.”
Greaves added, “Toward the end, I would purposefully do less, write less description, and give him a chance to really shine. There were some times I got things back and I would write notes, and I was just writing like, ‘Bravo on page six. Unbelievable.’ It was taking me places I really hadn’t thought about.”
Like Castelluccio, Vivaldi also offered Greaves some fresh perspective, and specifically about how some other players in this world developed.
“I think specifically with Francesca, a really solid example of her taking ownership of the story was with the giants,” said Greaves. “The tone that I had in my mind were the giants were just human-colored, large people.” By taking a different approach, Greaves said that Vivaldi “was able to take the story in a way that was really cool for me. Like, I don’t want just big people who were enslaving. I want the world to be bigger and more expansive.”
“And in getting to work with someone who is just adding so much and bringing things to the table that my brain couldn’t ever conceive, it was just the most wonderful experience in the world.”
Other “simple” coloring decisions had a really profound impact on Greaves and the story’s ongoing development.
“I think, really, the sense of space and lighting that Francesca brought for this great hall…just reaching for the things I had…it was just so Harry Potter-ish with these bright torches illuminating the whole thing,” said Greaves. “Seeing how she brought this, like, purple darkness and this feeling that, ‘This isn’t just a merry happy place where everyone’s casting spells.’ Like, there’s a weight and there is a darkness to this place.”
It ultimately got Greaves thinking about his past experiences and relationships in film/TV, and the role he could play as a writer.
“At a basic level, I think the relationship between a writer and a director is the same kind of idea where you’re writing something, you’re then putting into the hands of somebody else, especially in features, and you’re giving it to somebody else and then you’re seeing what that looks like,” said Greaves. “But I would say this process was a lot more expansive and interactive for me. There have been times where I’ve written something and I’ve watched it, and while I wasn’t involved in production at all, it’s like, ‘That was directly from my head.’ I can’t describe everything. But getting it back and realizing how much more this thing can be in ways that I couldn’t have thought about — it made me a better writer.”
The value of Carlyle isn’t just that it’s made Greaves a more effective storyteller, or that it speaks to ideas of friendship, competition, and confrontation that are as old as time. It’s also that Carlyle is especially prescient. For one, it really engages with youth movements, and those are especially vital in 2024.
“But I really thought there’s something bigger to explore, especially now — the youth is more empowered than they’ve ever been,” aid Greaves. “And I think their relationship to adults is different than ours was just because they’re able to organize and have power and have a sense of identity and to be able to push back in a way that I think previous generations weren’t able to. I really respect Gen Zers when it comes to things like self care and not working as hard.”
And one of things so interesting about Gen Z is just how much they’ve illuminated the real difficulties faced by teens/young people (beyond some stereotypical awareness).
“I think you did a very elegant job of saying what being a teenager is like, which you discover that you have thoughts and feelings and emotions and ideas before you have the capacity to use them and synthesize into who you’re later going to become,” said Greaves. “I think it’s unfortunate that as that is happening, you’re also being bombarded with all of these intense pressures of life. And you’re supposed to figure out all these things at the same time.”
But it goes deeper still: even if Greaves didn’t mean to, Carlyle very much reflects this very odd moment in time.
“In writing it, I was definitely not creating any allegory for our current political situation with the leaders that we have,” said Greaves. “But I think what you’re picking up on is, what I hope was flowing through me just in the zeitgeist and the nature of our world, where there are powerful entities out there. I’m not a QAnonist, but I’ve had family who are deep into QAnon to an extent of being lost to QAnon.”
Greaves added, “They’re not wrong about the basic premise, which is that there are people who are extraordinarily rich, who exist outside of the rules of normal society, doing incredibly messed up things who don’t care about the average human, and who are ready and willing to sacrifice us at the altar of their own greed. That doesn’t mean that they’re draining the blood of children and drinking it. They are deciding, ‘Hey, it’s OK if we give a bunch of people cancer because it’s easier for us to dump this toxic waste in a river than to process it.’ So I think that there are a bunch of people making all the decisions, controlling all of us and what our options are.”
Yes, it’s about bad people making decisions for the rest of us. But it’s also about how they manipulate us — as exemplified by two other “competitors” at Carlyle.
“When you look at Lane and Reagan, where they’ve been brainwashed so that they’re supposed to be militant and fight and represent their father,” said Greaves. “But he gets to be a powerful general who is doing maybe this necessary thing, but they don’t realize that they are victims in this way, and that they have been brainwashed into believing and looking at the world this way.”
“That doesn’t mean that they’re draining the blood of children and drinking it. They are deciding, ‘Hey, it’s OK if we give a bunch of people cancer because it’s easier for us to dump this toxic waste in a river than to process it.’”
Of course, in the world of Carlyle such manipulation is easy enough. All it takes is the right scapegoat, like the giants who everyone seems so obsessed with (despite some real issues with the “giants are evil” narrative).
“As long as the giant exists, he is a reason for powerful people to get to be powerful,” said Greaves. “The story very much goes in a direction of, without spoiling anything, where it becomes about the people in power wanting to keep power and not wanting to give it up just because that’s the thing they’re supposed to do. It doesn’t mean that’s the thing they have to do because I think, as we’ve seen in recent political events, you’re able to just not do the thing that you’re supposed to do. There’s no world police global enforcer who magically comes down and says, ‘No, but what about this?’”
But what arguably makes Carlyle relevant is that it’s less about old stories and current politics but very much how we deal with tragedy. Or, more specifically, how we let this rage and loss often control us.
“I think in this first issue, but certainly the first volume, (Emme) is this person who has taken the experience of her parents dying and she’s subsumed all of herself to that hatred of the king for what he did to her,” said Greaves. “It’s understandable because something so terrible was done to her. But she is filled with hatred. And you know, when she’s braiding her sister’s hair, she’s going through the motions, but all she’s thinking about is how angry she is and how much she wants to kill the king. As the story goes, it’s really about her discovering who she is and owning her own identity as opposed to just being this person who was victimized by the king and is after revenge.”
Of course, Emme’s process is very much aligned to Greaves and their “shared” history between Harvard/Carlyle.
“And so I think for me, really, she was like, ‘Let me take all the worst emotions that I have and put them into a character and then see that character discover things that are wrong with her and discover that she’s been serving this hatred as opposed to serving herself,” said Greaves. “And as opposed to letting herself just enjoy friendships and letting herself have romantic encounters, which happen in later issues, she’s instead just in service of this crazy hatred.”
Just as he’s developed as a person, Greaves is hoping Emme can also grow and learn.
“There is a simplicity to her — there’s been a single-mindedness to her and she hasn’t had access to other worldviews,” said Greaves. “And so another thing moving forward is suddenly she’s like meeting other people who have different worldviews and she’s going to be reflecting on her own place within this. She’s seen herself as solely the victim, but she’s starting to understand that, actually, this place is a lot more complicated than I thought. I thought things were black and white, but they’re not black and white. And it really builds to a really big finale where this thing that she believed was so true the whole time, suddenly she’s confronted with the idea that maybe it’s not true. And maybe I’ve been fooled and maybe I was looking at the universe wrong. Maybe I’m to blame and I need to reevaluate myself.”
But it’ll always be about relating with others, which also very much mirrors Greaves’ own journey in creating Carlyle in the first place.
“I like the way that Audie and Emmy’s relationship develops, but then the way that Emme and Arem’s relationship develops,” said Greaves. “And I think their relationship is one of the most important, if not the most important, in the entire volume. She saw Arem at the moment when her parents were burned, and she had this idea of who he is and what it means to be a prince. And suddenly she’s going meet this real guy who isn’t his brother, who is this perfect shining cartoon example of a prince. Suddenly she’s going to meet this other guy and he’s going to really confront her with a different worldview.”
“She’s seen herself as solely the victim, but she’s starting to understand that, actually, this place is a lot more complicated than I thought.”
There’s been a lot to learn and explore for Greaves across the development of Carlyle. But after everything he’s gone through, now comes the best part: when the story is ready for mass consumption, and people can see what the team is done. In short, a chance to really celebrate what Carlyle is really all about, and how much fun it can actually be to tell these kinds of complicated, emotionally involved stories.
“King Deus arriving isn’t just a small thing, and he sits off to the side the whole time. He very much gets right into this thing and is driving the narrative and is making Emmy’s life hard. And the stakes go from, ‘Oh, this is a dangerous place’ to, ‘Oh, this is a place you’re going to get killed’ very quickly and in a way that I’m really excited about.”
Greaves added, “It’s taking the idea of Lord of the Flies and being like, ‘OK, but what if it’s a little bit more fun?’”
