The world to the immortal warriors of The Old Guard, created by Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez’and recently a hit series on Netflix will be returning to the comic page in an upcoming six-issue anthology The Old Guard: Tales Through Time.
Debuting in April, the limited series will explore the expansive history of The Old Guard with the help of a starry roster of comics talent such as Brian Michael Bendis, Kelly Sue DeConnick, and more. Tales Through Time will venture across a wide array of time periods, settings, and storytelling genres from 13th-century Japan to the Old West to post-WWI Berlin.
In an interview published on the entertainment website Polygon, Rucka and some of the contributors to the project had the following to say about the project:
Brian Michael Bendis, will reunite with his Powers collaborators, Michael Avon Oeming and Taki Soma and said, “I love Greg. I love his worlds. His writing. His spirit. I have watched him build these amazing worlds with good-hearted envy. And now to be a tiny part of one, even for a few pages, is a huge honor.”
Citing how immortality opens philosophical doors for the writers on Tales Through Time, writer Robert Mackenzie had this to say about the \ different meanings from the cast’s endless struggles:
“There’s been a lot of coverage calling [The Old Guard] a superhero story, but what is it that they do? They don’t die, until they eventually do. Well, that’s true of all of us. So rather than living or dying, I think of it as a story about aging — and how age turns all of our lives into history, even while we’re still living them.”
Co-writing with Mackenzie is Dave Walker who along with artist Justin Greenwood will take readers to a monumental moment at the end of the 1960s: the moon landing. Walker had this to say, “It’s a period of profound change and conflict. The Chicago Seven, Stonewall, Vietnam, Woodstock, Manson, and of course, the space race — seem such a great lens for these world-weary characters who have to feel they had seen it all.”
Matt Fraction, also contributing to the series, said about The Old Guard:
“The world of The Old Guard, especially when viewed through the specific lens of this kind of anthology, gives us all the chance to tell stories about these more-than-human characters throughout the totality of human history. If what’s past is prologue, any story about where we’ve come from is ultimately a story about where we’re going. And I think these characters, in the specific, radiate out from a core of humanism: if dying doesn’t matter, then all that matters is how we live.”
Creators Greg Rucka and Leandro Fernandez had this to say about the project and the talent involved with the project:
“I’m always a little stunned when people want to come and play with our toys, to be honest,” said Rucka, who will tell stories with Fernandez in the anthology’s first and last issues. “And it helps me with my own writing. It’s easy to get set onto a track with a character or an idea — having someone come in from outside for a visit, so to speak, allows a fresh perspective, and pushes me to rethink my own assumptions and conclusions about these characters.”
Leandro Fernandez added,
“It’s amazing, and a beautiful exercise, to see how other minds conceive, understand and even suggest something over what we’ve done from scratch. This opens a new way to understand how these characters could be seen from other eyes. All of a sudden, they have a life, a voice of their own.”
Check out what the other contributors had to say check out the entire Polygon piece here:
The Old Guard gets a star-studded anthology sequel in Tales Through Time
The Old Guard: Tales Through Time is set to hit shelves in April of 2021.