Broken Frontier

B. Alex Thompson is the main writer and publisher via Approbation Comics since 1992. At this moment the biggest comic from Approbation is Chaos Campus: Sorority Girls Vs. Zombies, which can be viewed as a tongue-in-cheek take on pop culture and the Zombie sub-culture and where humankind's only hope is three remaining buxom members of the Epsilon Alpha Zeta Upsilon (EAZY) sorority. Expect loads of cheesecake, action and entertainment!

BROKEN FRONTIER: Alex, you first started your adventure in 1992 with xerox copied mini comics. Why did you start that way and how did it lead up to this point?

B. ALEX THOMPSON: I did it that way because I didn't know any better and wanted to make comics.  Around 1992 was when I first got into actual comics. I knew of comic characters before, but from other mediums such as cartoons, movies, so on - but never actual comic books.  So I had stories I wanted to tell and to do it I wrote, drew, lettered, and xeroxed them all myself. I had a readership of about 50 people due to the pen pal sections they ran in The Maxx and Wizard around that time.

BF: Besides Chaos Campus, do you have other titles running amok in your company? What is that status of those?

BAT: The Evil Inside and Amour anthology mini series have concluded and will be released soon in TPB form. I'm really happy at how those experiments turned out. They aren't my best work, but I learned a lot about fitting a large amount of story in a very limited page count.  I also learned a lot more about the horror and romance genres. In further production is Blood, Shells, and Roses which might FINALLY be done sometime soon and hopefully  solicited through Arcana Comics within the next few months. Hopefully Lynx Comics will be able to release the new Lethal Instinct series very soon. A few possible irons in the fire, but right now I'm pretty focused on Chaos Campus.

BF: Your BuxxXom ladies really threw me off guard and I loved every minute of it! Can you tell me a bit about the creation of Chaos Campus? Show us the inside of your seedy mind!!

BAT: Coming up with the concept threw me off guard, but I ended up loving every minute of it!  My friends and I were joking about all the “blank versus blank” movies that were starting to become popular and how Hollywood will take a decent selling idea and run it into the ground (remember natural disaster movies, buddy comedies, and now comic movies and '70s/'80s TV). So we were messing around with what they could come up with next and one of mine was “Zombies vs. Cheerleaders.” Then with another set of friends we had a game of how adding "zombies" to any known property would make it even better. Like Married with Children could be "Married with Zombies" or "Zombies with Children"... and so on. So all that stuck with me and I was like, "This is a great idea! Too bad I can't write comedy." But for like a year it kept hammering at my subconscious and fnally I discovered a way I could write a one-shot... that grew into a two issue miniseries...that became a six issue first storyline arch... and so on.

BF: Which issues have been published by now and where can one get those?

BAT: So far just issues #1-4 along with the Student Survival Guide have been published and available for purchase.  Right now you can only order them online via Indyplanet:
http://www.indyplanet.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=2010
http://www.indyplanet.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=2011
http://www.indyplanet.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=2368
http://www.indyplanet.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=2352
http://www.indyplanet.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=567

BF: What is your next step? I have seen some nice characters, like Dogwitch and Winky!

BAT: The next step is to get the next eight issues out and then continue on from there.  Oh, there are going to be TONS of great new characters popping up as the series progresses.  Wait until you see Tess Raven in #7 (which is also the first appearance of Winky the One-Eyed Monster)!  But yeah, Dan Schaffer lends us Violet Grimm/Dogwitch and company for issue 11. I can't wait to see that issue in print!!!

BF: How did that crossover came to be?

BAT: Dan is an awesome guy like that!  I was a champion for the Dogwitch series since it started and over the years began conversing with Dan. Jamie's surname was given in his honor. He was one of the first people I showed Chaos Campus #1 to many moons ago and he gave a lot of great feedback and positive energy. He wrote the intro to The Lazarus Factor: Perceptions TPB and ended up using a quote from me on the back of Dogwitch TPB 3. So it sounded like a fun idea, I asked him about it, he liked the idea, I sent him the full script and he dug it, so away we go!

BF: Are there more crossovers planned? I have seen a name before...Winky from Randy Queen?

BAT: I actually never heard of Randy Queen's Winky, but I'd love to do a crossover with Darkchylde and Chaos Campus! That'd be fun!

BF: Back to the first colored issues that came out this year. The first two issues rocked big time, but I noticed that every issue has a different artist? How did you plan this approach?

BAT: Nah, it wasn't planned at all. I just wanted the series out so I reached out to artists who were available and thought the project would be fun. All they had time to do was an issue, but I'm grateful to them for that!

BF: The first artist was to me the best of all the first four issues? How did you came across him and the other artists involved?

BAT: Actually the first artist was intended to do the whole series. He started off as a fill-in artist for Vampires Unlimited, but when I came up with Chaos Campus I presented it to him. We both had similar tastes in humor, horror, and cheesecake, so it was pretty good. But personal life got in the way and the series had to be shelved for a while. As for the other artists, many of them I worked with on the Amour and The Evil Inside anthologies.

BF: How does a particular day of yours look like, both comicwise and otherwise of course!

BAT: Busy, busy, busy.  I work a day job during the week and usually work on comic stuff third shift and during weekends.

BF: What/who are your main influences?

BAT: So many, I couldn't even attempt to name them all. Ever since I began Chaos Campus I've had many Buffy the Vampire Slayer comparisons, but 6-ish years ago all I saw was the movie. But early this year I went on a huge Joss Whedon kick and poured through all seven Buffy seasons and all five seasons of Angel.  Good stuff!  Lately Lost has been a huge influence on Chaos Campus. Originally I started like they did with the early stories and a rough idea on how it ends, but the middle was sprawling and unknown. Then they buckled down and really planned everything out and everything became tighter.  I ended up doing the same and discovered that I didn't want to do this series forever... I wanted to tell a story with a beginning, middle, and end. After pouring out all the stories I wanted to tell I learned that the complete Chaos Campus story would be 60 issues total broken into three 20-issue acts.  That's a pretty large order, so I have my smaller goals...if I can make it to issue #12 and have to stop for whatever reason, I'll be happy and just pick back up where I left off later. If issue #20 is my next stopping point, so be it. On and on like that. So we'll see... keep those fingers crossed, keep buying those issues, and please tell others about the series!

BF: How did you come up with the company's name "Approbation" (An expression of warm approval)?

BAT: I just needed an overall name to house my projects and something for everything to be listed in the Previews under. [laughs] I flipped through my trusty thesaurus and when I saw "Approbation" it was love at first sight!

BF: What do you read yourself?

BAT: Lately, mostly just books on writing.  I still read Walking Dead.  I still read The Boys.  I still read Hack/Slash.

BF: What is your dream comicwise?

BAT: To finally make it to the point where I can tell the stories I want to tell and make a comfortable living from it.

BF: How can people contact you for more information (hint: spam everything you are online-wise!!)

BAT: Pretty much everything you need is linked to http://www.approbationcomics.com/ somewhere, but the main two are:

http://chaoscampus.deviantart.com/
http://www.comicspace.com/alexapprobation/