How Comics Shaped the Storytellers Behind Worlds Beyond Number

The Kickstarter for the Worlds Beyond Number graphic novel had already reached "genuinely bonkers" numbers when Erika Ishii and Brennan Lee Mulligan sat down to talk about it. For Ishii, seeing numbers that high "evokes like a fight or flight response." But the project itself arrived fully formed: Skybound approached the Worlds Beyond Number team, not the other way around. "It came to us, which is unbelievable," Mulligan said. "As somebody who has sort of doodled scenes from D&D campaigns since I was in high school, to have it done for real by real professionals — that is mind-blowing."

The Children's Adventure as an Onboarding Point

The graphic novel adapts the "children's adventure" — the eight-episode prologue to The Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One, the first long-form campaign of the Worlds Beyond Number actual-play podcast. That campaign is set in Umora, a fantasy world inspired by Shinto and Celtic mythology and the works of Miyazaki, where magic flows between humans and the spirit world. The children's adventure follows the three main characters — Ame, Suvi, and Ursulon — during the magical summer they first met.