The biggest Image Comics launch in the past five years, thrilling readers and critics alike, has been the new ongoing comic book series Undiscovered Country. Written by Scott Snyder and Charles Soule and illustrated by Giuseppe Camuncoli, Daniele Orlandini and Matt Wilson, the creator-owned series takes place in a world where the United States has sealed itself off from the outside world for decades. As a global epidemic threatens to kill millions, an intrepid team of specialists from around the world pass through the barrier as the first group of outsiders in years and are confronted with a brutal, violent vision of America, complete with fantastical creatures and roving bands imposing a bloody rule on the former Land of the Free as they attempt to discover if the forbidden country possesses a cure to save the world.

In an interview with CBR, Snyder and Soule discussed the origins of the series, how it was informed by a surprise visit to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and provide an update on the upcoming film adaptation of the new creator-owned comic series.

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CBR: With the release of Issue 2, we're seeing more and more of the United States behind the veil. This series has really surprised me how far out it is. You've got all kinds of monsters, you've got roaming cities. What made you want to take the series in this direction?

Charles Soule: [laughs] I think Scott should take that one; this actually might illustrate our different approaches to writing.

Scott Snyder: I think this is deeply personal and very much about some of our real-world fears about not just the dangers of isolationism but sort of trends that we see everywhere that worry us for our kids. But we felt that the whole premise itself is so highly charged, and it's such a sort of divisive environment right now that the best way to approach would be was to make it something that would be kind of translated into, like, a comic book lunacy at first. And all the stuff you find in there -- just to be clear, like the monstrous, terrestrial fish and things you find later -- are all sort of extensions of real things that we researched beforehand.

There's different kinds of research that's going on through DARPA and American industries right now. So none of it is just kind of plucked from our fantasies, it's all sorts of extensions of things that are strategic moves. But we just wanted to make it something that felt immersive and wild and fun and sort of spoke to that feeling you get from old adventure stories that we loved growing up like Land of the Lost and things like that. We felt it was a really good sort of middle ground between something that would be urgent and immediate with the subject matter but would be transporting and almost feel like escapist entertainment on the surface when it's really not.

Soule: Something that we've been talking about for a long time with this and that we've been trying to implement is something that almost feels like an American Star Wars. And I realize Star Wars is American but like a Star Wars using American iconography and history and elements like that. Even with the kind of craziness that you'll be seeing in Undiscovered Country is also using a lot of the very powerful kind of American history and imagery that we all know and grew up with. And that's everything from folklore to historical elements to geographical to architectural, all of those things that have meaning to either Americans or people outside this country; you've just sort of grown up seeing these things as part of the American landscape.

But, at the same time, we really wanted to make it crazy comic book lunacy, as Scott said. It's important to take those things and remix them and make them feel very fresh and maybe new in a way and give readers a look at America through a different lens. And if everything looks just how you're used to, you're not really going to see it through a different lens, you're going to kind of bring your own sense to those things. But if it's crazy fish monsters and rolling cities -- but those things are derived from stuff you might feel familiar with -- it's kind of a crazier trip. And that's what we're trying to do.

From Undiscovered Country #1

Snyder: And the last thing I'll say about it is each zone is designed around a sort of vision of what America could become based on certain ideas about the direction in which we should go. So the zone you're in now -- with the crazy fish and the sort of NASA blanket closing and all of this -- you'll learn later why this land became exactly what it is. But the next zone they go to is based on another kind of ideological experiment and the zone after that and so on; each one has its own sort of ecology and population and everything. They're not sort of just random choices at all, they're meant to be some sort of closed ecosystem of thought of what might happen if America went in a certain direction. And each one is kind of distinct and wild and terrible and wondrous. And as you get further and deeper into the country and walk the spiral with the characters, you'll learn sort of the larger framework and the secret why the zones were created the way that they were and what happened in each one.

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You've got Sam Elgin who describes himself in issue #1 as the unsilent majority. Is he kind of a vision of what America had been before the isolation or this very different, divergent look at the United States apart from these zones?

Soule: Sam is a very complicated character with a lot going on. Obviously we chose him as the icon of the United States and as our immediate access points of what the hell's going on in the United States now. But he's not the most reliable narrator and source of information too -- there's something going on with him because he's the person who sent the message for them all to come into the country but, at the same time, he's not exactly that when they find him in the United States.

So it goes back to the last little answer I gave that we're taking American concepts and spinning them a little bit. What is America, right? America's many, many different things and the fact that we got two very different Sam Elgins in the first issue, I think, is a signpost to the way we're approaching this. Like Scott said, there are many different Americas -- all of us carry an America within us. And we're going to try and reflect that sort of in the themes and characters and visuals of the series.

You mentioned you really wanted to go bombastic and fantastical but also keep one foot grounded in more real-world things. Would you call the relationship between Daniel and Charlotte kind of the emotional core of the series?

Snyder: Yeah, definitely. We did a lot of work to make sure everybody on the team has a really rich backstory and, you'll see with issue #3, that we kind of go around the carousel of characters and give you a little glimpse of their backstories and why they were chosen for the mission and what kind of secrets lie in their past and all that. But, for the purposes of the first arc, we really wanted to focus on Charlotte and Daniel partially because they have completely different views of America and whether to continue inward or get out. Charlotte is idealistic and really believes this is the place where they might find the cure for this global pandemic that's wiping everybody out. Daniel clearly has secrets and has sort of been holding back any kind of hope that this place has anything to offer other than what he needs to get in and get out. There's more to him than that but I don't want to spoil it because there's obviously more twists with him in issues #3 and #4. But that said, yeah, they're sort of the heart and soul, their relationship in the first arc, at least.

Soule: Scott nailed it. This is a story that's massive and it has all of the crazy high concept stuff but neither one of us has forgotten it's really about people experiencing this. And, if you don't have that, what's the point of reading it? That's how, I think, we both approach telling our stories: Who are we going to experience the story through. And, as it goes on, there's a lot of stuff that we have planned that I think will be really cool.

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Scott, as you're ramping this up, you're wrapping up Batman: Last Knight on Earth which also has a post-apocalyptic vision of America despite being two very different stories. How did that shift come about?

Snyder: I think if you look across all of Charles' work or all of my work, we're the kind of writers that approach a certain theme or certain subjects from different angles through different books at once; I love that about his work and I love trying to do that myself. It's mostly because the subjects that we choose are the things that keep us up at night or our kids at any given time. So if you look across Last Knight, if you look across this, if you look across Justice League, they all come at a similar idea which really has to do with people making choices that are selfish versus choices that are generous and communal and expansive and brave.

And so Undiscovered Country, for me, is sort of a really pure expression of that thing I care very much about exploring right now which is the sort of frailty of human nature in that regard; the frailty of goodness. Here, whether or not it was a decision made by the population or whether it was something sort of brought upon them by their leaders, whatever happens, America has become a place that has become deeply self-interested to the rest of the world. And so, in that way, we wanted the characters on this team to be people that go in there with their own objectives and their own goals -- some are darker, some are brighter -- but everyone is almost self-interested in not particularly getting to know each other in this group. They're so wildly different and conflicting but part of the point of the story is these people have to learn not only to be a team but a family and learn that the only way they're going to get to the center and solve the problem of this sky virus is to band together and see beyond themselves.

Ultimately, my hope is when you see sort of repetitions or echoes of themes across work, you see what attracts me to certain writers -- like Charles -- what I see in his work is the desire to explore subject matter that matters to him and express and communicate his very personal thoughts on those things and hope other people can act on those that I aspire to do as well.

From Undiscovered Country #1

So abstractly, the idea of these very disparate people coming together and forced to work together provides a template for what America could be?

Soule: I think that's a read of it. I think, as the story goes, the great thing about this concept is it's enormous, right? We're able to explore about 50 different themes and concepts within it and -- I think Scott would agree -- this is a book that people are going to find their own way through like the characters through the United States. We're presenting a ton of different ideas and that's sort of the beauty of it that, as I said before, there are many different Americas. We all have one inside of us and, [with] the book, the process of writing it and reading it is kind of about finding yours.

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Charles, you've worked with Giuseppe Camuncoli for quite some time, all through [Marvel Comics] Darth Vader. What made him the right artist to bring this American vision to life for Undiscovered Country?

Soule: Cammo is fantastic, as are Daniele Orlandini and Matt Wilson on colors. Daniele does the inking and finishing and Chris Crank is on letters as well as Will Dennis editing so the whole team is amazing; all A-listers and we're very lucky to be working with them. But with Cammo specifically, he and I did a run on Darth Vader for 25 issues that was one of those things that was just really important. When you're working with an artist, I think, if you can get somebody that you can work with consistently and have the issues come out and have them feel the same way -- I love that Scott has been able to have that with Greg Capullo on so much of his Batman work -- so with Cammo, every issue was on time and every issue looked incredible and not just the logistics of it but also the artistry of it; I felt I could ask him to do these weird, abstract Force landscapes to exactly what I wanted with a Clone Trooper looking with his rifle exactly [how I wanted] and the detail work would be perfect.

So it's both the kind of versatility of an artist and their ability to hit those deadlines month in and month out. I understand completely why artists change on superhero runs and all that stuff and that level of skill and technical skill is through the roof. But I kind of feel like when you change artists midstream, it's almost like a movie is changing its cast halfway through the film and that can be a little disorienting and it can take people out of the story. And so I think it was important for both Scott and myself to get somebody on board for the whole run and make it feel like every time you come back to this world, no matter what happens to these characters, they're still the same people going through the same struggles and adventures. And Cammo is going to deliver, he's awesome and he is absolutely our full-on co-creator. So things are going well so far and we have nothing but high hopes for the future.

Undiscovered Country was optioned for film before the first issue even dropped and is one of the highest-selling Image Comics debuts in the past five years. How did the option come about and can you divulge anything about the progress of the film?

Snyder: What we can say is all the success and all this support behind the book has been something that's been really overwhelming for us in a good way. We're so, so grateful to comic book fans for driving the book to such heights. When you do an independent book this, you're not under a franchise like Charles as done at Marvel and Star Wars or what I've done at DC; you never know how fans are going to react when they follow you into a world that you're creating from scratch with such enthusiasm, there's no better feeling in comics. We were hoping it would be successful but it caught us by surprise that it was so successful and it's a real testament to the dedication of our fanbase and we really feel like we have the best fans.

In terms of the film, I think a lot of it was we have a great agent, Angela Cheng Caplan, but we were excited about the project and had a lot of it figured out. As much as it sold before we had a first issue, we had an outline and endgame in mind for all kind 30-50 issues. She felt it was strong enough to go out with at that point and we were lucky enough that the company that picked up the option, New Republic, hired us to write the screenplay. We're literally just about to start; we're with them on the phone later today to basically commence work on the screenplay. We're really thrilled and, having a partner like Charles, when you get to work with a best friend on something that you care deeply about, there's just nothing better. So it's scary and exciting and overwhelming and, above all again, we just can't say thank you enough.

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You had mentioned earlier you talked to the CIA and DARPA. How did all that come about?

Soule: It's kind of fun. There's this guy that we both know who lives near Scott, so Scott knew him first, but he introduced me and we all got along. He's a retired associate with the CIA -- not an agent or operative -- but he's someone that's worked with the CIA for a long time. And I'm going to put "retired" in air quotes because he still seems to be pretty involved with those folks. So we got to talking to him and he's a super, super interesting guy and had an incredibly interesting career and we told him about the premise that we had for the story and he was like "Hey, you know that's something that we're actually doing!" and we were like "whaaat?" and he was like "There's a concept called Fortress America."

[It's] the idea that if the United States did have to seal itself off from the rest of the world -- no trade, no travel -- how would it do it? And it's not really a war plan but a logistical plan for what would we need to stockpile, how would we operate, how long can we do it before we had to open the borders again. What a resource he is; that led to a kind of real world versus the concept. And then Scott and I kind of spun out into crazy fish monsters and things like that which is very cool.

And, as part of it, he was like "Would you like to go and see CIA headquarters?" which was an incredible day; Scott and I got to go to Langley in Virginia. It was beautiful and inspiring just to see all the things that the agency had accomplished. And, at the same time, we got to go talk to DARPA -- the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency -- which is kind of like the American mega genius think tank where they speak of the technologies America will need in the next 30, 50, 100 years and then they start making those things. So it was a hugely eye-opening couple of days and our friend has still been a massive resource to us. But that's kind of how it all came out: Lucky connections and people being interested in the content we're working on; we're just really fortunate.

Just to take us out, what can readers expect in the next couple issues of Undiscovered Country as we get deeper and deeper into this world?

Snyder: I hope what's clear from issue #1 to issue #2 is how expansive the world is and how deep we're going to go with the characters. We tried to put as much as we could in issue #1 just about the high concept just to really get people on board and really just had the room, above all, to introduce you to Charlotte. But we hope with [issue #2] you're going to realize as readers that we're going to go through every character's background and history and it's a team that we spent a lot of time creating and really hope that you'll stay with us for 50 issues, essentially. And it's a world that we created, it has a mythology and geographical design and everything that's really planned out and we've been just dying to get further and further in and show you more of it. I hope it's sort of that issue #1 gives you the pitch and issue #2 gives you a better sense how this series is going to progress and all the things you're going to see and all the cool people you're going to meet along the way.

Undiscovered Country #2 is written by Scott Snyder and Charles Soule and illustrated by Giuseppe Camuncoli and Daniele Orlandini. It is on sale now from Image Comics.

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