The acclaimed series The Wicked + The Divine will end in 2019, but there's good news on the horizon for fans of Kieron Gillen's writing. Kieron teamed up with artist Stephanie Hans to create an all-new Image Comics ongoing series called Die. The dark fantasy story line follows a group of adults who find themselves being pulled into a twisted role-playing game's universe that they escaped back when they were kids. Before the debut issue goes on sale, CBR chatted with Kieron and Stephanie about this upcoming series and asked the creative team why fans should check it out.

CBR: "Goth Jumanji." That description alone is going to make some people immediately add Die to their pull list. Others will undoubtedly check it out because they're big fans of your work. But for the fans who may not be familiar with your work or not immediately won over by that amusing description, what is it about Die that should encourage them to give the first issue a shot?

Kieron Gillen: It is a good one-liner, innit? As you've guessed, it's [more] relevant shorthand than the entirety of the beast. The modern Jumanji being released last year was fun in that it's simultaneously a little like some of the things we're doing, but completely the opposite in tone. This is a dark fantasy story for adults, and I suspect my idea of "Dark Fantasy" reads a lot more like Horror to most people.

For more, [what] I'd do is direct folks at the trailer, which should lure people in. For those who don't click: Teenagers mysteriously disappearing when playing a role-playing game back in the '90s. Two years later, they're found, unable to explain where they've been. It's now 2018. They're adults. And they're about to discover their abductor isn't quite finished with them...

Kieron, this is your first ongoing after the acclaimed The Wicked + The Divine. Stephanie, this is your first ongoing. How anxious are both of you to see the reaction from fans and critics? What have your peers said about the first issue?

Gillen: Obviously, it's nerve-racking. Something entirely new and quite different after something that was a runaway success. We're talking the week leading into the pre-orders, which is always the most anxiety-inducing period. But we're proud of the work, and the response of the people we've seen has been pretty overwhelming.

Who liked it? Well, if you even nose at my Twitter stream you'll see me retweeting folks who've read the first issue and tweeted about it. Let's have a think. Ta-Nehisi Coates and Ed Brubaker liked it. Marguerite Bennett ("Emotional evisceration awaits. I cannot recommend this highly enough") and Jen Bartel liked it. Doug Brathwaite. Emma Viceli. Gerry Duggan ("everything I love about comics"). Paul Cornell. Jody Hauser. Al Ewing. Jim Zub. Matt Wilson. Critical Role's Taliesin Jaffe liked it and also has playtested the RPG, which was a time. I've shown various folks in gaming as well, who've dug it, too.

Jamie McKelvie also seems to like it, but that may be just because he knows that WicDiv is nearly over and Stephanie drawing Die means he's finally free of me.

Stephanie Hans: I am currently in a strange place right now. I am anxious but not so much. I have been doing interiors for as long as I have been a comic book artist and I trust myself as a narrator. I am more anxious about being able to always convey Kieron's intentions the right way, or be able to achieve the magic that makes a story meet their intended readers. I always thought that there was some kind of miracle at play in any success. The right story, at the right time. It's a bit like when people experience love at first sight, it's a matter of who those both people are at that exact moment and the circumstances in which they meet.

NEXT PAGE: Building a Brand-New Fantasy Universe is No Small Feat

Kieron, what's it like building an entirely new fantasy universe? And what's it like seeing Stephanie bring the pages to life?

Gillen: It's an interesting one, in that I did this vast amount of research into the development of role-playing games, and then synthesized something as complicated as I've ever made... and then I gave it to Stephanie, who went and added a bunch more things of her own. I was expecting it to be visual flourishes and approaches, but it's actually core world-building, which I then integrated back into it. It's very much a collaboration.

As well as the long historical view, the the '90s was key in terms of thinking of the fantasy world. It's a world as conceived in 1991. What was the state of the art? Not just games, but in terms of culture -- like, Nevermind has just dropped, so we're literally at the birth of the “true” 90s. What sort of world would a bunch of precocious kids make up, then?

Seeing it visualized is something else. I knew the world had to be seductive and terrifying, and Stephanie has provided. It's a story about going to another world. That's what Stephanie gives. And really? "Let Stephanie Hans Visualize A Fantasy World" was my guiding principle.

Stephanie, what's the most rewarding part about working on your first ongoing series? And how much fun are you having with Kieron's script?

Hans: The most rewarding part is to watch this thing, that we have been talking about for years now, finally coming back to life, gaining flesh and bones. There is something mesmerizing in seeing those characters, who come as much from me as they come from Kieron, come to life after so much reflection. I also see myself growing as an artist, and I don't know if it's the same for everyone, but I always felt the need to get better, to learn as much as I could and, yeah, these days, I grow up a lot.

I love how Kieron involves me in the creative process. I am not really sure how that works usually because it is my first ongoing, but I think we usually both listen to each other a lot. But also, the fact that we worked together several times before helped us with the kind of trust we could throw at each other I think. I know he will write me a good story and I hope he knows I will do my best to put pictures when words are not necessary

RELATED: Stephanie Hans Explains Why She Loves Her Job

The debut issue looks great and it covers a lot of ground before ending with quite a cliffhanger. Please talk a bit about what the collaborative process was like crafting this first issue, and what it's like as you continue to construct this universe and its characters.

Gillen: I'm glad you liked it.

I've talked a little like that earlier, in terms of the world-building, but the character generation has been equally a strong collaborative element. I came to the book with these six character concepts and talked to Stephanie about them, and she came back with interesting angles which were integrated. Put it like this: It's unlikely that I'd have made one of the core cast French if Stephanie hadn't told me some fascinating things about the RPG culture we grew up in. That one of the characters was a sensitive metal head in his teenage years is also due to Stephanie -- that's a person I know from real life, but have never seen in a book.

In terms of execution of actual plotting, though? That's really my job, as much as painting issues is for Stephanie. Working out how to make the machinery of the issue turn, and introducing our core concepts. There's so much more to come, but I think the first issue really gives people enough to judge the comic.

NEXT PAGE: Die Will be Getting a Tie-in RPG That Recreates the Events of the Series' First Arc

How many story arcs do you currently have planned?

Gillen: Like anything I write, I know the end and am working towards it. It's a medium length ongoing. I'd say it's about half as long as WicDiv. Our issues are going to be longer than normal as well -- after the 35-page debut, individual issues are 24 to 25 pages long.

How do Clayton Cowles and Rian Hughes' involvement enhance the reading experience?

Gillen: He's one of the most talented letterers in his generation, and it's only a matter of time [before] he turns from Eisner-nominated to Eisner-possessing. He's enormously creative, makes great choices, generates his own ideas and also is uncannily good at executing specific examples of your weirdness. Look at the custom voices he did for the Wicked + the Divine, for example, with Woden's Vocoder effect. These are talents all which Die puts to use.

Gillen: Rian's a legend. I've known him for a few years, and admired his work for years before that, but have never actually worked with him. I approached him about doing the logo, and it soon expanded into becoming the designer. Rian's a meticulous, modernist in his approach, all growing from the work. For example, when presented by Stephanie's use of an exploded D20 on the cover, rather than use a traditional logo, he argued we should integrate the letters with that repeating symbol. That kind of thing -- it just entirely speaks to the look of the book. It's an RPG book, but it's not a usual RPG book. We're not doing any D&D or module homages, for example. Finding our way to make it speak to RPGs without pulling those sorts of moves is something that Rian excels at.

RELATED: Gillen, McKelvie, Wilson on What it Means to be 'Wicked + Divine'

There are plans for a tie-in RPG. Have you thought about the character you'll use the first time you play?

Gillen: Heh. Oddly, that's something I haven't actually thought about. In all the playtests so far, I've been running the game. As it's still in the stage where we're working through various kinks, that's the best. Hopefully around Christmas we'll move from where it is, to something I can actually give to folks to playtest.

In terms of publicly, I plan to release the first take of the RPG as a PDF when the first trade comes out. I was thinking Issue #1, but there's spoilers for Issue #5 in it, so I figured best to wait. In its initial release it's designed to be played across a couple of sessions, and basically gives you a chance to do your own version of the first arc of Die. Not in a “you experience what the cast does” but “you will create something which works like the comic, but entirely in your own way and be entirely unique and magical.” I'm talking around the problem, but will likely talk about this more in the back matter for the comic. After issue 5, I actually want to put additional gaming material in the back matter of the book too.

What's the game like? It's simultaneously something that's informed by modern design, while also being a fake 1991 period piece, designed by one of the characters. For example, as it's abstractly from 1991, the game runs off a dice pool system, because any pretentious teenager would have used a dice-pool system at that point. Equally you don't want to include the bad pieces of design from the period, as that level of faithfulness isn't helpful to any player.

Die #1 is available now, from Image Comics.