Jason Jones, the co-creator of the Halo and Destiny franchises, has spent years writing about a world overrun by artificial intelligence. Now that project is the centerpiece of a new company, and the studio behind it is starting with comics.
The idea began in 2019, when author Margaret Stohl was handed a manuscript by Jones. The two had worked together at Bungie. Jones wanted her opinion on an oral history of the fictional AI uprising, told through around 100 characters spread across 40 countries, each describing events from their own perspective. Stohl saw potential beyond a single book.
“I was floored but not surprised,” Stohl said of her reaction to the manuscript. “He’s a worldbuilder who builds at an epic scale. And his worlds are these huge stages that invite in a ton of other collaborators and creators.”
The pair formed a company to develop the universe across multiple formats. They call it Stone Kite, a “worldbuilding studio” that aims to bring together talent from different fields and build out the story in a platform-agnostic way. The studio currently has 22 people on staff and works with a network of more than 250 contributors.
Stone Kite is starting small. Earlier this month, it released the first chapter of One Zero One, a four-part graphic novel. Today it is publishing a chapter from Jones’ original manuscript. The studio says it will release other chapters in the future, though it has not said whether the original story will be published as a standalone book.
The plan is to begin with faster-turnaround formats such as comics, then refine the story based on feedback from contributors and readers. If that works, the studio may move on to movies and games.
Stone Kite spent several years in stealth mode. Stohl said much of that time went toward figuring out how a multiformat studio would operate in practice. Writers, she said, need to think about how a story will work as a film, a comic or a book from the start.
“It’s so different to have those conversations in an early phase,” she said. “It’s about investing in a bunch of characters and stories, trying a bunch of formats, and respecting the people you’re telling the stories to and letting them help you guide it.”
The excerpt Stone Kite published today, titled “Total Carnage Airsoft,” follows a group of Russian airsoft players who are beaten by machines during a game staged at an oligarch’s birthday party. The chapter is narrated by a former radiologist and centers on a tense battle between humans and AI-powered bots. The players discover too late that their opponents are machines, and the machines win by exploiting the players’ anger and overconfidence.
Stohl said she wanted to release the chapter now because of how relevant it feels. She pointed to the behavior of current AI systems.
“The cheating, the bullying, the worst mirror of humanity that you see starting to come out with some of that agentic behavior right now,” she said.
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