In an interview with CBR, award-winning comic creator Gene Luen Yang discusses how The Books of Clash is a fun adventure for Clash of Clans players.
For over a decade, gamers have dived headfirst into Supercell’s fantasy mobile game Clash of Clans and its spinoff Clash Royale. Expanding on the world of the games are the official tie-in graphic novels The Books of Clash, written by Eisner Award-winning comic book creator Gene Luen Yang. Focusing on different pairs of protagonists as they embark on epic adventures, from dungeon-crawling to treasure-hunting, The Books of Clash make the world of the games feel more personable and sweeping in its high fantasy scope.
In an interview with CBR at New York Comic Con, Yang shares his own personal connection to Clash of Clans, explains how he worked with his collaborators to show new dimensions to this fan-favorite realm. He also reflects on his work with Superman in the DC Universe, including the New Super-Man Kong Kenan.
CBR: What was your gateway into Clash of Clans?
Gene Luen Yang: My son, who is now a junior in college; when he was around 10, he started playing [the game]. He got his little sister into it; she’s now 16, and they joined a clan with Mark Siegel’s kids. Mark is my editor at First Second Books and worked with me on American Born Chinese and Boxers & Saints – pretty much everything I’ve done at First Second, he’s been a part of. These two families were connected by this video game, even though I lived on the West Coast and he lived on the East Coast, and that’s how I got interested.
I played a little bit; I was not as good as my kids. Mark was definitely into it for a little while and Clash weaved into our lives a little bit. When Clash Royale came out, my son played that for a while and I played that with him for a while. All the way through, Mark and I were interested in doing something in graphic novels within that world. Finally, it came together right in the middle of the pandemic. We had a meeting with Supercell and they were really into it, and we were off to the races.
Even though Clash of Clans has been around for over a decade, it’s a relatively blank canvas creatively. How has it been world-building within this fantasy realm?
It’s been a lot of fun, but it’s also been challenging. The biggest thing is that Clash of Clans and Clash Royale are not like Super Mario Bros. When you’re playing Super Mario Bros. you’re playing as Mario, this singular character, and you’re inside his head. With Clash, the player has got a god’s eye view of the world, and you’re not necessarily attached to any of the characters because they die so quickly. [laughs] One of the big challenges in doing [The Book of Clash] was bringing the reader from this god’s eye view down to the ground, so that they’re next to the characters and can identify with the characters.
Was that the idea behind having a rotating set of protagonists in each volume?
That was one of them, and it’s also hard to pick favorites among all these characters because they’re all so well-designed. Supercell does give each character a little bit of a backstory but in the context of the game, it doesn’t make as much sense because there are so many of them. One of the challenges, especially in the first volume, was that we had to individualize the characters and tried to weave that into the protagonists. With Terry the Hog Rider, who’s our protagonist in the first volume, he goes into the same town and as he gets to know these characters, they become individuals to him.
Did your and Mark’s families playing Clash of Clans together inspire the teamwork dynamic in The Books of Clash?
Some of that is just in the game. I haven’t played Clash of Clans in a while, but I do play [the spinoff] Clash Royale. Clash Royale really is about assembling the right team. Every character’s strengths offset others’ weakness to put them together on this team. The team that we put together in the book, if you actually put them together in Clash Royale, would not be a great team. [laughs] But we wanted their personalities to [accomplish] that; narratively they cover each other’s weaknesses.
How has it been working with arists Les McLaine and Alison Acton on the first two volumes?
It’s been great! Les McLaine is an incredible artist. Mark describes him as a chameleon artist that can take on many styles. He did this book called Old Souls with Brian McDonald that’s an adult graphic novel, but it’s amazingly well-done. I feel like he’s a little bit influenced by the Hergé school of clean-lined cartooning, but the style he settled on for Books of Clash is a blend of Supercell’s sensibilities with a little bit of Asterix and Tintin thrown into it that I thought was perfect. With him and Alison together, the art that they’re producing really replicates the charisma of the game on the page.
How would you describe your collaboration with Supercell?
Supercell is awesome! They’re just a quirky company. They began in Finland and have an office in San Francisco that I’ve gotten to visit a couple times. You walk in and the first thing you do is take off your shoes which, for me as an Asian, feels very comfortable. It’s in this big skyscraper in San Francisco and you exit the elevator into this office and there’s this door that says “Supercell” on it. As soon as they buzz you in, there’s a room right next to it that’s a slipper room. You take off your shoes, put on slippers, walk in and there’s a giant statue of a barbarian and a chicken from Hay Day. It’s a really quirky place.
One of the philosophies is that nothing is mandated from on high… They have these teams put together the games, the games move on through these stages of development, and they add on artists and developers. At some point, either the team chooses to kill the game because they don’t think it’s going to work, or it goes and gets released into the world. They give a ton of ownership to the creative team.
They’ve developed dozens and dozens of games, but only five of them have made it. It’s a very brutal process and, in each of those instances, it’s the team itself that decides if a game is not working. It’s all very hands-off from the perspective of the people on top. I think they took that philosophy with the graphic novels. We had a lot of early discussions, but I do feel like they’ve given me a lot of creative elbow room.
You’re quietly building an epic with these stories. How has working with editors like Heather Antos and Mark Siegel helped you structure The Books of Clash?
We put in a lot of work with the world-building in the first couple of books. Once the world felt set, it became much easier to tell stories. Mark and I have worked together forever; I think he and I have a unique way we tell stories. We also put it through the Story Trust. The Story Trust is a group of creators who all publish First Second books; it’s almost like a writers’ room inside of First Second. We’ll get together on Zoom and read each other’s scripts or thumbnails and give feedback. The first couple Books of Clash went through the Story Trust and then Heather came on later, and she’s a pro and it shows. She’s been great to work with.
American Born Chinese had a foot in the real world and another in fantasy. With The Books of Clash, you’re doing a complete deep dive into the fantasy genre.
Some of that is set by the game. I think another challenge with this book was early on, we were trying to decide how much of the game mechanics would translate over to the book. In one of the early drafts, we had a team of Hog Riders devastate this village, and then we had three stars show up in the sky — which is what happens in the game when you get a three-star win. At some point, we thought that it might take the reader out. We tried to find that balance, and it depends on the reader. I think the reader will decide whether we found that right balance. A lot of those fantasy elements are directly from the game.
Clash of Clans is organized chaos. How do you channel that manic energy into these stories?
It’s a little bit like Looney Tunes. Another challenge with Clash of Clans and Clash Royale [is that] when you’re actually playing, characters are just dying all the time and there’s no emotional attachment to them. There are so many barbarians and archers that you don’t really care about which ones live and which ones die — but that doesn’t necessarily work as a story.
We talked about a bunch of different dynamics, about having that problem. In the end, we just borrowed the dynamic from Asterix. Asterix [is] historical fiction, but it’s a Looney Tunes version of historical fiction where characters don’t really die. They just get knocked unconscious with stars going around their heads and that’s kind of what we did too.
Fantasy has informed so much of your work. What about the genre do you find creatively fulfilling as a storyteller?
In some ways, well-done fantasy is a heightened version of reality. Because it’s heightened, you can see things more clearly. When you’re in the middle of everyday life, there’s so much stuff coming at you all at once, and sometimes it’s difficult to see what life might be teaching you. But with fantasy heightening and adding color to certain things, you highlight what the story is about.
Kong Kenan has been appearing prominently with the rest of the Superman Family. What does it mean to you that he’s still a major part of the DC Universe?
It’s been awesome to see other characters play with him. We’re actually bringing him back; I did a short story with Viktor Bogdanovic, the original artist of New Super-Man. We did a 20-pager that’s [been] broken up into two parts for Action Comics and that’s been great, and it was awesome to do. It’s the New Super-Man and Bat-Man of China and their relationship with the Super Family.
You’ve been working on Superman since the New 52. Is that world easy for you to tap back into?
Yeah, and a lot of that is because of the relationships. I’m a big fan of Viktor, he’s really easy to work with. The editor Paul Kaminski and I are pretty good friends. I love Paul; he has a really great sense for storytelling.
Speaking of future work, The Books of Clash, Vol. 3 comes out in May 2024. What can you tease about it?
With Vol. 3, the main characters are a golem and a wizard. They [were] side characters in the first two volumes, but they take center stage in this one. It’s about friendship — about how two people who are really different figure out how to be friends with each other.
The first two volumes of The Books of Clash: Legendary Legends of Legendarious Achievery, written by Gene Luen Yang and illustrated by Les McClaine and Alison Acton, are on sale now from First Second Books. The Books of Clash, Vol. 3 is written by Gene Luen Yang, illustrated by Kendall Goode and Alison Acton, and on sale May 28, 2024.
