How I wrote Verissimus
A Graphic Novel About the Stoicism of Marcus Aurelius
I’ve been immersed in writing a graphic novel about the life and philosophy of Marcus Aurelius for the past couple of years now.
I get lots of questions about the project so I’ve decided to finally break my silence and write about the whole experience of creating Verissimus: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius. From what I’ve learned, people approach writing comics and graphic novels in lots of different ways. This article is about how we went about things and what our experience has been like so far.
The book will be available in roughly a year’s time, published by St. Martin’s Press. It’s going to be about 250 pages, full colour. The illustrator, Ze Nuno Fraga, has just started inking and colouring the pages. So I figured it was a good time to pause and reflect on the experience as we’ve reached a crucial stage.
About that Title
We chose the working title Verissimus. At first it seemed a bit obscure and puzzled people but as the months passed I noticed that it had caught on. Everyone remembered it; so we kept it. One of the Roman histories tells us that as a child Marcus Aurelius was nicknamed Verissimus by his adoptive grandfather, the emperor Hadrian. It’s an odd nickname. Marcus’ family name was…
