“Stan Nicholls takes his well-deserved place beside Robert Jordan and George R. “With grand-scale world building, labyrinthine plotlines, extensive backstory, and pedal-to-the-metal action, Nicholls captures adventure fantasy at its very best.” Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. The characters and events in this book are fictitious. The Orbit name and logo are trademarks of Little, Brown Book Group Limited. Orbit is an imprint of Hachette Book Group. Originally published in Great Britain by Gollancz, 2008 Visit our Web site at First eBook Edition: April 2009 Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher. The illustrations were drawn specially for NYCC, not taken from the book.Excerpt from Orcs:Army of Shadows copyright © 2010 by Stan NichollsĪll rights reserved. Here are some of the illustrations by Joe that appeared in the programme book for 2011’s New York Comic Con, promoting Orcs: Forged For War. I draw some consolation from owning the original. This piece of art by Joe, which I really like, unfortunately didn’t make the final cut.

The cover’s a wraparound, shown here before the final lettering was added: It won the 2011 Geek Life Award for Best Comic Book of the Year, and was awarded a Great GN Accolade by Graphic Novel Reporter, all of which was very gratifying.

The book entered the New York Times bestseller list. Orcs: Forged For War was first published in the US Pan Macmillan published the British edition (an import essentially, identical to the American edition) and Les Editions Gallimard issued a French hardback edition. Joe’s since gone on to produce several more fine illustrated books. The artist chosen was Joe Flood, and it was his first graphic novel. The publisher wasn’t keen on that and suggested changing it to Orcs: Forged For War. The book is a prequel, taking place before the first trilogy. Rather than going straight into a script I wrote it as a fully rendered short story, to give the publisher and the artist the best feel for what I intended.

I went about it in a slightly unusual way. When I was invited by New York publisher First Second Books to produce an Orcs graphic novel I wanted to write a new adventure, not adapt any of the existing novels.

Orcs by Stan Nicholls