The Dresden Files - SciFi Wire: Q&A: Butcher On Dresden Comic

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(Please follow the link for the complete q&a with Jim Butcher at SciFi Wire. Photos from the comic book at the site.)



12:00 AM, 06-NOVEMBER-08

Q&A: Butcher On Dresden Comic

Jim Butcher, the best-selling author of the Dresden Files series of novels, told SCI FI Wire that he's adapted his franchise, about wizard-for-hire Harry Dresden, into a graphic novel, The Dresden Files: Welcome to the Jungle.

The author said he was using the new medium to tell a prequel story to his series of books, the next of which, Turncoat, is due in April 2009.

Butcher talked to SCI FI Wire about the graphic novel in this exclusive interview.

So this graphic novel is a prequel to The Dresden Files series of novels. What backstory does it cover?

Butcher: The idea for this story was inspired by one of the scripts from the pilot from the show that was on SCI FI [Channel]. So it's one of those cross-pollination things, I guess. In the original pilot script, at one point, Murphy's talking to Harry, and Harry doesn't want to help her, and Murphy's like, "OK, listen. I've got to admit you've helped us before. You know there was the Calumet Heights kidnapping, that mess at the zoo." And I said, that mess at the zoo--that could really work as a story. The original title of the story was "That Mess at the Zoo." And then I started trying to figure out what the mess at the zoo would be.

[So] there's been a murder at the Lincoln Park Zoo, and the only suspect is a gorilla who couldn't possibly have done it, but there's pressure from the city to hurry up and get the case closed. And Murphy's like, "Well, you know, I don't really particularly think we're going to accomplish anything by just killing a gorilla, because whatever did it is still going to be out there." So she has to get Dresden to come help. And Dresden gets on the trail, and he sort of winds up hooking up with one of the zoo staff and gets involved in all kinds of trouble and danger and explosions and so on. That part is just kind of standard Dresden Files stuff...