The works of Charles Dickens are beloved for the author's evocative language, memorable characters, and, perhaps most significantly, timeless themes. The traits that make Dickens' stories so beloved also make them prime material for reinvention and reinterpretation. This week, Dark Horse releases the first issue of Olivia Twist by acclaimed Half a Life author Darin Strauss, co-writer Adam Dalva, and BREAKS and Life is Strange artist Emma Vieceli.

Olivia Twist reimagines the story of Oliver Twist, but set in an oppressive, futuristic world (you can get a glimpse at this grim world in the exclusive preview art for Issue #2, found below). CBR spoke with Strauss, Dalva and Viecelli about the series, which boasts a more active role for the central hero, as well as appearances by other Dickensian characters.

CBR: Darin, Adam and Emma, I'm hoping you can start by telling us a bit about the world you're creating here. The opening pages paint a dark future with some ripples clearly emanating from our present.

Darin Strauss: It begins by hewing close to Dickens, and we open it out to something much wider, much stranger, much more our own -- by which I mean Adam and my own, and also of our world’s own, sad time.

Adam Dalva: As Darin and I built out the world of 2050 London, it kept feeling more urgent -- which is a testament to Dickens. The weird trust we put in corporations, income inequality; the cruel, arbitrary separation of the perceived other -- that was rooted in him. We wanted to modernize those fears and put them in a glimmering, neon world, an increasingly possible future.

Strauss:  There’s a mile-high tower filled with American corporations; America has been destroyed by an EMP device to prevent the singularity; internment camps for illegal immigrants (an idea that has been in the script since 2014!) spot the edges of town; orphans have to work on assembly lines; most poor people have to shop in a black-market called America Town.

Dalva: But, at the same time, the world will always have beauty, and Emma has created something beautiful here. The comic lives as much in the outsider space of artists as it does in sleek sci-fi tech or shocking grime.

Emma Vieceli: I'd say a dystopian near-future pretty much sums it up. We see a possible, horrific outcome of some of the paths the world is already on. Paths that make my heart hurt.

In terms of visuals, I knew that I was building a future London, but one that also needed to reflect and incorporate Dickensian visuals and class differentiation. To that end, I sort of mashed together a whole bunch of aesthetics into my main cast, so that the Dickensian element could be seen as just one facet of a varied world.

Olivia and Pip come from the workhouse -- so they are the most Dickensian looking of the lot. Fagin has some Turkish vibes, harking back to her roots. Charlie is harnessing his true-blue American blood with sports-wear combined with Fagin's aesthetic. Therese is probably the most "future" looking of the lot, but she's a tech-head and super excited about gadgets and technological progress. Nell and Dodger look practically contemporary, but -- in their minds -- they're retro. Dodger, especially, is a fan of "old" music like Guns 'n' Roses.

On the streets and in the vertical city, you'll see a mix of the '30s, "retro" and what's contemporary to the London of this story. You'll see some more futuristic elements in there, but we're not THAT far ahead, so most of my ideas have stemmed from what we're already using.

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Darin and Adam, already in the first issue, you've departed quite a bit from the source material -- not only in setting but also in structure. What aspects of Dickens' story do you think are essential to keep, where do you find room to innovate? Are there things you feel absolutely have to change for modern audiences?

Strauss: We wanted to use the whole bookshelf -- Dickens thought of as a Marvel crossover project. Pip from Great Expectations, Thérèse Defarge from A Tale of Two Cities, Nell from The Old Curiosity Shop. But modernized; the characters part of a gang called the ESTHERS -- a group of people who don’t identify as male.

Dalva: We had to make it new. Oliver is such a passive, young character in the book, and we didn’t want to tell a story about a helpless person. Because of her desire to protect Pip, 18-year-old Olivia steps up, makes something of herself -- and changes the world. We wanted to keep the morality question of the original, and the episodic nature of Dickens, and the gang of thieves (who can resist the Artful Dodger?). But it was most important to us to make it diverse.

Darin and Adam, this is both of your first foray into comics. What made you want to dive into the medium, and how did you end up paired for this project?

Strauss: I'm a professor at NYU, and when Adam and I were there together, we bonded over our shared love of Dickens, the NBA and comics. We thought -- if we can bring two of those together, it would be pretty awesome. Nothing NBA-related in the works, though. (Unfortunately.)

Dalva: It's been a dream of mine to write comics, and it has been better than I’d hoped. Especially working with Emma -- collaboration is something that we don’t really get to do in novels, and to have a partner who is such a gifted storyteller in her own right, as well as an extraordinary artist, has been a thrill. Having Darin shift from a professor to a friend and peer has been a blast too.

Darin, your first two books were based on historical persons, and you've also written about tragic events in your own life. Are there similarities between re-imagining a classic novel and writing about real-life events from history? How are the processes for these types of story alike or different?

Strauss: Wow, what a great question. I think all narrative writing is more similar than different -- short stories are like comics are like novels are like screenplays, in this one particular. You have to make it move, and you have to make it about great characters. But, of course, there are differences. The visual dictates here are so strict -- picking one image to stand for an entire scene, sometimes. That was hard -- and made me a better writer, I think, for whatever medium is next.

Emma, how did you approach the visual aspects of building this world? It's a future setting, but the styles seen in the opening pages seem inspired by (but not precisely the same as) the Victorian England of Oliver Twist.

Vieceli: I'm so glad that's how it came across! My main artistic choice for this title was to go with the rougher pencil lines you're seeing. I felt like solid inks would feel too clean in a world that we were trying to build as this fusion between old, contemporary and modern at the same time. Steampunk wasn't an option in a world built on technology, so I wanted a way to really age the world, even whilst drawing characters with tech augmentation... and so, I chose to use the pencil line approach that I use in titles like my BREAKS comic or my Tara piece for The Wicked + the Divine. It's rougher, looser and somehow feels, I don't know, "dirtier?" It seemed a good fit for this story. And, when it's combined with Lee's amazing colour choices, I think we've been able to make pages that don't leap out as instantly looking sci-fi, even though that's exactly what they are.

Along with more futuristic architecture and clothing, there is also a shift in color palette between the workhouse scenes and the broader London in which Dodger lives and operates. How do use this to shape readers' perception of these worlds, and what does this convey about how Olivia sees them?

Dalva: Because we're both fiction writers, we've always had to do tone shifts with black ink, paper and the reader's imagination. Short sentences into long sentences, altered vocabulary, that was the palette. Now, we can really go to town. Olivia's angle on the world -- her mood, her experiences -- are conveyed by Lee Loughridge’s use of color. Olivia’s first look at the London of the future is unforgettable because of it. It’s like the technicolor splash of Singing in the Rain.

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