What came first as an idea - the Oz novel or graphic novel? Was it always planned that there would be two?
Not at the beginning. Early on, I had just decided to pitch it as a comic book because it just seemed like such a natural story to do as a comic, and I thought visually it would be great.
I wanted to know what that story was, what happened in the time between [Oz] departing and returning. But then... I was talking to my editor at Pocket, and I said, "You know, it would make a great book, what do you think about it?"
Her response was essentially [that] as long as it was alright with Dark Horse, they would be happy to do it, and as long as the book didn’t beat the comic book into the marketplace, that was fine.
So, the book is completely different, and I actually think the book is a much better read than the comic. I expected the comic to feel bigger, and it doesn’t. There were elements to the story that I wanted to include that it didn’t seem to make sense to use in the comic.
When I went to write the book, I wanted to try to get that classic American Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn sense of departing your home, leaving everything behind on a search for self. There’s something classic about that that I really enjoyed which wasn’t really in the comic.
Plus I really liked [werewolf hunter] Cain and I wanted to use him, so that whole element was added. And you get to see more of Oz’s life.
It was so difficult to write a novel over 300 pages where your main character, the protagonist, is one of the few characters with speaking parts in the entire book [who] doesn’t say anything.
Did you want to make it more dialogue-based?
Well, it couldn’t be, it just couldn’t be. And it’s funny, because in interviews people would always ask, "Who’s your favourite character to write, who’s the hardest character to write?" and my answer was always Oz.
[He’s] the most difficult character to write, and now here I am, the masochist, writing an entire novel around this guy. And I hope that he comes off in character. That was my biggest fear, that I would have to give him so much dialogue that he wasn’t in character.
