Andy Lanning and Ant Williams are experts at making gold from any sort of property. Whether it’s Guardians of the Galaxy, or a revamped video game property like Slave Zero X, these are folks that can take even, say, a line of action figures and turn them into a graphic novel.
Surprise! That’s just what they’ve done with Meta Travelers, a line of collectibles with a deep backstory created in conjunction with the duo.
“We’ve been developing these ideas for over 3 years now and the current series is allowing us to expand and enrich the ‘storyworld’ and lore we created for the Nibiru stories,” Lanning told Comic Book Club over email. “We’re adding more characters, more concepts, more worlds, and more conflict. And all of this tied to the fantastic, unique, Legendari action figures.”
As Lanning notes, there’s there was an extremely successful funding campaign for the Legendari action figures back in May. That was followed by the 64-page comic Legendari: The Fall of Mira Prime, which hit IndieGoGo around the same time.
To find out more about the project, including how the duo turns “story worlds” into, you know, story, read on.
Comic Book Club: Not that this is anything new for the industry, but how do you take action figures and turn them into stories? Or was the story already there, and it was more figuring out a way to mash them all together with that pesky thing called “plot”?
Andy Lanning: We’ve been working with the team at Meta Travelers for over 3 years now, helping them create a story world to support their initial digital collection of avatars called The Nibiru. We produced over an hour of motion comics that introduced The Nibiru, an alien race of interdimensional explorers and our protagonist, Matt, a human who gets caught up in an intergalactic war between the Nibiru and The Spyte, their malevolent nemesis, which takes him across the farthest reaches of the cosmos and the many planets that make up the Chainworlds.
When the MT team moved on to create the Legendari toy line, we used the existing story world as a starting point for the origins of the individual and unique characters that make up each of the action figures.
This gave us a fantastic opportunity to expand the world in different directions and introduce new factions, characters and intrigues. The main story, which was designed to focus on the most popular figures from the action figure Kickstarter campaign, used the existing continuity from the motion comics as a starting point. We took the main event from that series, the attack on the Nibiru homeworld, Mira Prime, by the Spyte armada, as the springboard to launch a bigger adventure that brings together all the main characters.
General question, but the word “storyworld” is used here, which has been bumping around for a while, but seems to have really come into vogue recently (could be entirely wrong here, but I heard it twice this week). What is a storyworld, and how do you begin to approach one?
For us, a storyworld is akin to a comic universe: the main background for continuity that stories and characters act against.
It’s just the current phrase for worldbuilding.
A fully developed and realised storyworld should be the thing that gives the series depth, texture and richness. It’s the springboard for your characters and adventures and, done correctly, makes your characters and stories take on a life of their own.
You’ve been involved in the Meta Travelers universe for a few years now… How has it developed and changed from the initial conception of the world?
As we said earlier, we’ve been developing these ideas for over 3 years now and the current series is allowing us to expand and enrich the ‘storyworld’ and lore we created for the Nibiru stories. We’re adding more characters, more concepts, more worlds, and more conflict. And all of this tied to the fantastic, unique, Legendari action figures.
Be honest: do you play with the action figures while you’re writing the books?
We totally would but there are only a limited number of prototypes atm and they are kept in a vault at Meta Traveler HQ. We are waiting patiently with the campaign backers for the toys to finish production and be shipped out later this year. Though we are using all the designs and photos of the prototypes as reference for the artists on the stories and covers.
More seriously, does it change how you approach the characters when you have a physical version you can hold in your hands? You’ve of course had figures made of your characters, but this is the opposite direction.
While we don’t have our hands on the physical action figures yet, we do have a huge amount of reference shots of them. What’s most impressive and challenging as an artist is the amount of intricate detail and care that’s gone into designing each character. While there is always room for interpretation and each artist brings their own unique style, we also have to remain faithful to the designs.
What is it about this universe that makes it unique? What’s intriguing about it for you?
One of the most attractive things about playing in the Meta Traveler universe is working with the team, Jeremy and Marko are committed to producing absolute quality products and both have serious creative chops. The process of creative development with them has been brilliant and their support and input has created a world, characters and stories that we are really proud of and really enjoy working on. We love working on cosmic-level sci-fi, it’s in our DNA. The Nibiru series and now the Legendari story has given us the opportunity to tell a vast galactic saga with a cool set of alien races and its own unique cosmic lore. This is never not fun!
What can you tease about the Meta Travelers comic? And what’s next for the franchise? Games? A cartoon show?
The comic we just completed, Legendari: Book One: The Fall of Mira Prime is 64 pages comprising 3 stories, a new 22-page story drawn by the wonderful Gustaffo Vargas, plus a 10-page backup story, drawn by Ant, plus the original motion comics story reformated for print. The book also has an editorial section that showcases characters, the world, artefacts and more. The main cover is by Gustavo but we also have variant covers by Ant, Todd Nauck and Liam Sharp. Colors by Marco Lesko, Steve Canon and Prasad Rao, Lettering by Rob Jones.
We’d love for this book to do well so we can move on to book two of a planned four-part series.
You can check out a ton more info on Meta Travelers at their official website.
