WonderCon 2024: Talking ‘The Scale Trade’ With Steve Orlando And Megan Huang

Carm Tritos might be new to the Dragon Conservation Agency, but he’s passionate. The question is whether that passion will be enough to hold illegal scale traders accountable in writer Steve Orlando and artist Megan Huang‘s new series, The Scale Trade. With letters by Shawn Lee, find out why Orlando and Huang wanted to do a series about dragons in the following interview:

Rachel Bellwoar: While the circumstances of this series are fantastic, poaching is a very real issue. What made you want to tell this story about dragons instead of, for instance, elephants?

Steve Orlando: For me, it was all about reaching the broadest audience possible. Scale Trade isn’t an “issues” book per se. It’s about empathy, it’s about compassion, and it’s about caring in the face of demand and consumption. And the fact is, if we used any one real world creature, it’s likely people would’ve already made up their minds. Instead, this is about protecting what nature itself stands for: wonder, power, and majesty. Through defending dragons, we can speak about those things and captivate folks along the way–we can connect a bit of the fantastic to the wonder and draw folks in even faster.

Megan Huang: For me personally, I love dragons, and anything with dragons is good in my books! But honestly, I think using dragons in this instance subverts that almighty Smaug or Drogon expectation and shows the dragons as victims vs legendary beasts. I think it’s unique, while still shedding light on poaching. I hope that after reading this and maybe caring that these legendary monsters are being slaughtered, perhaps people will look at our world and dig into the tragic real-life poaching that’s going on.

Bellwoar: It’s revealed in the first issue that dragons are able to crossbreed, resulting in numerous hybrid species. How much of a gift is that as a writer and as an artist?

Orlando: As a writer, it’s an exciting concept. I’d wager it’s perhaps even more exciting on the art side, since it opens up opportunities for how our dragons are depicted like never before. We just saw a rough for a snail-dragon hybrid, it was so cool! On the writing side, it’s a moment to connect our lore to something a bit more adjacent to science. Obviously, this is a modern fantasy book. But it’s science fantasy. So we want to make this feel detailed and textured wherever and whenever we can. The dragon hybrids let us take a soft science lens to our fantasy creatures, and the book is all the better for it.

Huang: It’s a lot of fun to work with! I gave Steve a list of my favorite animals I wanted to draw as hybrids. I’m a big fan of animals! An animal nerd you might say… so I’m excited to make some really fresh designs!

Bellwoar: Tritos is surprised by how easy the hiring process is at the Dragon Conservation Agency. Too easy, perhaps?

Orlando: Maybe! But to be fair, we haven’t seen the process in full, we don’t really know what the process is like in detail. But Tritos is certainly naive, and he’s shocked to learn the DCA is hard up for recruits and even harder up for people that stay on for long. Of course, as soon as he’s dropped in the deep end and sees the horror of the Scale Trade, he realizes no intake interview, no thesis, and no classwork could ever prepare him for the job he’s chosen.

Bellwoar: Tritos ends up getting partnered with Agent Cutter. What was it like establishing their rapport and showing their different reactions while in the field?

Orlando: Honestly, Tritos and Cutter embody two sides of my personality–so their rapport is often ripped right from my own internal monologue. Like Tritos, I am often indignant about evils and cruelties so base it’s almost naive to say so out loud–a visceral rage that things just aren’t better than they are, and that people can do such horrific things. But like Cutter, I’m also a born cynic who has been living with the cruelties of the world since the first kid tossed change at my feet in elementary school and joked he was going to throw me in an oven for being Jewish. Like Cutter, I have no illusions about the reality of the world in all its savagery. So, their voices are a push and pull within my head. The key is deciding which I think wins out in a given moment.

Huang: Definitely interesting. As parts of the story are revealed to me as I work through the issue(s) I started to realize that Cutter had micro-expressions that make him who he is. That’s all I can say without spoiling who he is. But Carmen hasn’t seen it yet—or hasn’t noticed. So, it’ll be interesting to see how that develops in later issues. Overall, at this stage Carmen is much more idealistic and green in the field, whereas Cutter is calculated and seasoned.

Bellwoar: Are there any rules you created for yourself on what the dragons in this series should look like?

Orlando: Early on, we decided that the fire breathing aspects of dragons would exist in this world as anti-dragon propaganda, but would be a hoax. So, we had that rule. But once we realized that our dragons could hybridize and still reproduce, we quickly saw that there would be relatively few rules at all when it came to their appearance. In fact, the sky was the limit!

Huang: For me, they should all have wings, even sea dwelling dragons. They should also all have scales. Horns, spikes, fins are optional. But those are the staples I personally go by.

Bellwoar: Public opinion doesn’t exactly seem to be on the DCA’s side. Is Tritos in for a rude awakening with this job?

Orlando: He undoubtedly is! But the catch is, that rude awakening may not just be coming from the public. The real heartbreak, the real shock, might be coming from inside the room–from an Agency too underfunded and overburdened to be effective, and from a system that only appears to be interested in helping DCA agents do their jobs.

Huang: Oh yes! He definitely is. He goes in with a righteous attitude and will come to realize reality is not so black and white.

Bellwoar: Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Steve and Megan!

The Scale Trade #1 goes on sale May 1st from Magma Comix.