When Joe Quesada announced he was coming back with Amazing Comics, one unfamiliar face sat on the panel. Unfamiliar to Comic-Con, at least, but as it turned out, Quesada’s co-writer on Disciple has long been working in independent film as an actor, writer, producer, and with 2021’s Barbarians, director. A quick IMDb check popped up many movies off the beaten path that I’d enjoyed in the last few years.
When the two of them talked about Disciple being inspired by Hamlet, that just sealed the deal for me. Amazing Comics is going to be amazing. Whether or not I got to talk with Dorfman at Comic-Con (his first con ever), I told him I needed to talk to him sometime, because any comics writer who wants to play around with Shakespeare has my attention.
Luckily, my scheduled interview with Quesada was delayed to the next day, when Dorfman would also be signing at the Mad Cave Studios booth. We got to talk in the chaos of Comic-Con, and I hope it’s not for the last time.
Derek McCaw: You’ve been working in film for a while, on some terrific indie films (including executive producing Satanic Hispanics). And Joe said you came to him with the pitch for what became Disciple. At what point did you decide to make it a graphic novel?
Charles Dorfman: I started writing after I finished my film Barbarians, which was the first one that I wrote and directed. I started thinking about what would the next thing be. I liked the idea of a revenge story and I started looking for inspiration and the idea of thrillers being a mixture of horror and detective stories, I like that as a sort of concept. I’m familiar with Hamlet, big fan.
So I had this idea, and the original idea was actually more set over a very finite amount of time over a weekend at the wedding. It would have been the final act. And I wrote it keeping the names, and my intention was to change the names. But after writing it, I thought, maybe it’s not such a crazy idea.
But I know the industry, the film industry, I wasn’t sure how they would take it with the names. And because the world that I started creating was quite heightened, I thought that it would be well-served to create some piece of material that people could sort of touch and feel.
I set about trying to turn it into a graphic novel, which I had no experience in doing. And in my travels, I very fortunately got introduced to Joe through Mike Savage. And yeah, that was the beginning. I think that was pretty much it.
Derek McCaw: You’ve got one of the best people you could. He’s no slouch. Are there moments where you realize oh, yes, you can do this in a film script but not the same in a comic?
Charles Dorfman: Sure. Firstly, there’s no budget restrictions, which is an enormous relief and frees up your creativity. But then you’re constrained in the sense that you have to tell the story in a single image, which is an art form in and of itself. But Joe and I really focused on the story. We really nailed down the story in the world and the mythology that we were creating. Then once we nailed that down and had the internal rules then we actually set about writing it. It was relatively straightforward after we nailed that. maybe that was the tricky bit.
Derek McCaw: I made a note at the panel this is set in an assassin’s world, almost a John Wick-ish thing. Help me to a better explanation.
Charles Dorfman: I mean it’s tricky. I’m so used to keeping this thing a secret, I’ve got no idea what I can and can’t say. He lives in a world of assassinations and we find him at the beginning serving as a disciple of that group.
We wanted to incorporate the ghost not as an add-on and not something that wouldn’t make sense because it’s not the world of Christianity that the play is based on. So we really focused on that making sense and being integral to the story and the plot. So, yeah, it’s… Yeah, he’s had some training, that’s for sure.
Derek McCaw: You’ve been an actor as well, and I’m sure will be again. How did you first come to Hamlet?
Charles Dorfman: I first came to Hamlet, I think it might even be in the book (it is in the convention exclusive preview edition), but I got, there’s an open-air theatre in London, the Regents’ Park open-air theatre, and I got taken there when I was, I don’t know, 10, 11 or something like that, and it started with we went to see Hamlet. I went there, my birthday was June and typically the weather’s good but in London it is what it is. It started raining and the actors sort of threw caution to the wind and really went for it and it really sealed in my brain because it was incredible. That was my first experience of Hamlet, but I studied it at school as well.
Derek McCaw: You have the bug for graphic novels now?
Charles Dorfman: Absolutely. I mean meeting Joe and spending time with him has been amazing. As Joe said, it’s the greatest moment of my life.
But meeting all his friends who are from the industry, it’s much more collegiate. It’s much more encouraging. Everyone’s very focused on story, very focused on creativity, very encouraging to one another. It’s like a dream. It’s actually really, really lovely. and a little bit different to the film world.
But this is the first time I’ve been at Comic-Con, and Joe has always talked about the audience and the readers, and obviously in his Substack. When he writes, he talks about the readers, and it was always a concept it’s hard to really put your finger on. But sitting here and meeting people I now have it firmly in my head what this is all about and everyone’s so passionate, Yeah, I think I’ve got the bug.
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