Interview: Adam Rose on creating HUGE DETECTIVE and its possible film adaptation

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By Ollie and Avery Kaplan

Something HUGE is coming! The Beat caught up with Huge Detective writer Adam Rose to discuss the upcoming October 22nd release of the comics TBP edition, what readers can expect from the universe in the future, and the possible upcoming film adaptation.

OLLIE & AVERY KAPLAN: Please introduce yourself to our readers.

ADAM ROSE: Adam Rose, writer of Huge Detective, published by Titan Comics. Issue 5 came out in June, and the Collected Edition is coming out on September 24, 2025. Magenta King is the artist, and Dalts Dalton was our surprise epilogue artist in the final issue. It’s been an amazing ride and fun having the book out with Titan and seeing people’s response.

KAPLAN: Can you give a quick pitch about Huge Detective for people who haven’t read it?

ROSE: It’s set in a world where 30 years ago an Omega event occurred, and GYANTs were reactivated from a slumber deep within the earth. They rise, they’re hungry, and humans are a great food source. Then, both groups quickly realize in this horribly traumatic war that we could all end up destroying ourselves with our nuclear capabilities, so peace is achieved by giving them Australia.

Cut to the present, where the story really begins, and there’s this young man who has schizophrenia and sees the world in many different ways. One is that he thinks himself to be a Huge, and he is our primary suspect or witness to these gruesome murders, but he only agrees to talk to a Huge. So, for the first time, a Huge is coming onto human soil.

So, it’s about relationships between different types of people, metaphorically, and getting over traumas. It’s about seeing each other through the fog of what may have scarred you in the past, and hopefully, seeing past that and seeing who you are now. And then, Tamaki has gone through some serious shit. This is a spoiler, but she lost a parent during the Omega event, so she’s very jaded about working with this Huge. So it’s about them building trust during this, and also him resisting that urge of eating one of us “beans,” as humans are nicknamed.

KAPLAN: Why are those themes important right now in this current climate?

ROSE: There are so many reasons, like there’s so much going on right now. I guess you can pinpoint all kinds of historical moments, but I think people, especially in media bubbles, see only what they want to see, or the algorithm feeds them what they think will make them feel satiated. So if you suddenly meet that othered individual in person, you realize, “Oh, wait a minute, there are similarities. We can come together. We can break bread together and see each other for who we are, not what we’re told we are.”

KAPLAN: What has the response been like?

ROSE: Positive. I felt strongly about it from the get-go. But today, people came up to me dressed as Batman, Hawkwoman, and Harley and said, “Hey, Adam, we love you and Huge Detective. Let’s all get a picture.” It’s surprising to see who’s saying great things, like some creators I respect. I met Mark Russell, and he told me he’d read it and really enjoyed it. That meant the world to me. So, the reviews have been nice, and it’s been a fun reception.

KAPLAN: Is this your first time interacting with fans around the book?

ROSE: Revenge Of has a cool creator con, and it was nice of them to invite me last year. Magenta came up from Brazil and stayed with me, and we got to go to this thing together. He sketched, and it was terrific. So that was an introduction, but being here these last few days and hearing random people mention the comic’s name feels great.

KAPLAN: What is your collaborative process with Magenta?

ROSE: I wrote the whole thing. But I pitched him cold when I pitched because I knew of his work from Dark Horse’s Jenny Zero—the Kaiju in there and the scale and scope of that comic, I thought, “I got to get this guy.” At the end of the pandemic shutdown, I had a lot of time at home, so I just reached out to him. Next thing I know, we’re on Zoom. At first, he said he was really intimidated by what I was trying to ask him to do with these GYANTs, the size of skyscrapers, interacting and having regular conversations with humans of human size. But he was sold on it. And then we met almost twice a month. He’d send me pages, and we built out the world with every panel of this book.

Something tells you that this is a very lived-in world. The relationship between the Huge and the humans goes back about 30 years to the Omega event, at which we start the story. Although we don’t get into it, you see the scars of that trauma for both the Huge and the humans. You see, some people are still resisting the idea that Australia has been given to the Huge. There are still Australians fighting to be there and using whatever means necessary to say, “Hey, I’m not leaving.” So, a lot is happening in the background and the relationships that are now being reintroduced because a Huge is being allowed to help the humans solve a crime for the first time.

KAPLAN: Was there any moment when Magenta’s art surprised you and changed the story’s direction?

ROSE: Well, this is not as much of a surprise. But in my head, I had visualized Detective GYANT as Michael Shannon, and Magenta drew him to look like Shannon, and so that was an incredible, synergistic surprise.

Then, here is some of what Magenta could do. For example, there is a sequence of scenes where Detective GYANT has to go into a crime scene in an underground underwater cave and go through a lake to get there, and I gave him as many descriptions as I could. I didn’t know how he was going to do this, but what he returned with was awesome; he nailed what he was initially scared of.

Also, what could he do to cheat these interactions visually? Like we had this splash page where GYANT and Tamaki meet for the first time, and GYANT is crouching and using a Walmart as an armrest. He’s sitting there, so we brought in vats, like cement trucks, filled with milk and whatever else, to keep him satiated. Then, there’s Tamaki, who’s tiny, but Magenta used a technique that reminds me of David Aja and Matt Fraction‘s Hawkeye, with a little circle that zooms in on Tamaki so that it all works. So that was a pleasant excitement.

KAPLAN: It also reminded me of Alex Ross’s early work.

ROSE: Absolutely, and you don’t have that in many places anymore. For us, just playing with the perspective alone became a part of the story. So that was cool.

KAPLAN: What’s it been like working with Titan Comics?

ROSE: It’s been fun. They’ve been really great about trying to get the word out. Of course, they had their challenges with Diamond, but the timing of our book, we took less of the brunt of that, luckily, in some ways, but they’ve been really supportive. One thing that I didn’t know if they would go for was that I wanted to help build out the world with these journals, like case files, that are basically short stories at the end of each issue. But they went for it, so it was awesome to fill in these gaps in GYANT’s life before all this. Tamaki as well. And then, I flipped it on its head with the fifth issue. Instead of having one of those, we brought in Dalton, another amazing Brazilian artist, to do an epilogue, like a little bonus comic that wrapped up everybody’s circumstances.

KAPLAN: You brought up Diamond, so I must ask how it impacted you.

ROSE: So, there were a couple of delays with the issues. We had a bigger gap between issues four and five than I would have liked. But before that, it wasn’t so bad. As Ricky Claydon of Titan said, “You know, some of those delays seem to help you,” because there was a moment where Magenta and I needed a little more time for some pages. So, the delay benefited us at one point because we missed some of the messier stuff, especially now with the collected edition. As much as I wish I had it to give you right now, the timing of when Titan had the TPB all ready also helped because they had distribution sorted out. They’re now with Lunar, and it will be an easier distribution situation in the future. Did any of your books get tied up in a warehouse somewhere? Some of the single issues might be floating somewhere, but I’m unsure.

KAPLAN: With the collected edition coming out soon, what value can readers who might have gotten every issue as it comes out get from it?

ROSE: There’s quite a bit. Again, this goes back to your other question about how Titan’s been. They’ve been awesome and generous about what I wanted to do with this collected edition. We have some great sketches that Magenta has included, a cover gallery that’s got almost all the variants, like, we have the Paul Pope variant in there, and Robert Hack, and then a little back and forth interview, where Magenta and I interview each other and talk about our whole process and, like, where we started and where we ended up. And the cherry on top, Patton Oswalt, a big supporter of the series, gave us a beautiful blurb for the cover.

KAPLAN: There is a schizophrenic character, so what was your research process, or is there somebody in your life?

ROSE: There’s one in my life, or I know people, and I was very careful with that. I hope I was very respectful. I was aware of how I was going to portray that, and just some of his tics, which are also beautiful, which makes him a very beautiful, interesting character. So, I paid attention to how that portrayal came to be.

KAPLAN: Do you plan on expanding the universe more?

ROSE: I hope to. I have a lot of ideas written out. It’s just a matter of timing, with other projects and Magenta’s schedule.

KAPLAN: Can you tease any of those ideas?

ROSE: One that’s really stuck with me, and this too, requires some careful research. But during this ongoing event, there is also a Huge eruption that nobody knew about. In fact, they erupted before the Omega event, but they were treated like a deity deep in the Amazon jungle. Because of Magenta and Dalton are Brazilian, and I asked them, “Hey, I want to do this right. So, which kind of tribes should we look at?” They gave me a suggestion, and I did some research. But all that is super early stuff; it’s something I’m having a lot of fun exploring.

KAPLAN: What were some of the influences?

ROSE: Oh, boy. Well, Roald Dahl. I mean, BFG is there. Then, this is an older movie, Enemy Mine, with Lewis Gossett Jr. and Dennis Quaid. Like, Dennis is a human, and Lewis is an alien. Their races hate each other, and they crash land on a remote planet and end up having to get along. It’s also kind of a Robinson Crusoe story. And then another series that was also a movie, Alien Nation, where this slave ship of aliens crashes. Whoever is subjugating them is somehow not on the ship, or is dead. I don’t remember how they explained that, but they all need a home, so they are refugees in L.A., I think. I live in L.A. now, but I didn’t when I watched that. And one of them becomes the first alien cop, and his partner is kind of bigoted towards aliens, you know, a grizzled detective? So, those are influences.

KAPLAN: Are there any future projects your fans should get excited about?

ROSE: There are things coming up that I’m excited about, but I can’t quite announce them yet. I’m not naive, but we’re working on developing Huge Detective right now. Like, there’s interest from a producer that’s got us scripting out a feature version.

KAPLAN: Like a film?

ROSE: Yeah. Live action is what we’d be going for.

KAPLAN: Dream casting, then.

ROSE: Michael Shannon. Gosh, as for the other characters. Well, the dream would be Timothee Chalamet. I would love to have him as Manny, but he might be a little too old now, which is so funny to say. And then, Greta Lee. I love her so much from that movie, Past Lives, this Korean film that came out last year, where she ended up emigrating to the United States, but she grew up in South Korea, and she and this guy fell in love. She’s an amazing actor. I wept the whole movie.

KAPLAN: So, because we were discussing this, does SDCC feel different to you this year?

ROSE: Big time. In some ways, although DC and Marvel Studios have movies out, they’re not here, so their presence is different. Someone said it to me the other day, and I agree. It feels like the year before, when all the strikes made it super comic-centric. I’m saying it in a good way. There’s more purity magic this year, where the main floor is filled and artist alleys are happening, so that’s exciting.

KAPLAN: We haven’t made it to artist alley yet. I hear it’s a different layout this year.

ROSE: Well, this is the other thing I’m noticing: the stuff is selling, and it seems like the vendors are doing really well this year. The stuff is selling out, which is good for everyone.

KAPLAN: I like it when it’s more comic-centric, though we never got to experience it only when it was comics.

ROSE: I’m dating myself, but as a kid, I went to this small con in Boston, Massachusetts, and Kevin Eastman was sitting at a table. So, my sister got these silly pewter Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that he made and signed. She can’t find them, though, and I always give her a hard time about it. We may dig them up someday.

KAPLAN: And lastly, anything else you want to add?

ROSE: I appreciate your time. I’m a big fan of what you all do, and I appreciate just getting to share this with you.

The Huge Detective TPB arrives October 22, 2025, from Titan Comics.