Broken Frontier

In late December, military veterans Gerry Kissell, Ernesto Haibi, Tom Waltz, Robert Scott McCall, Steven Fish and Michael Abrams, along with Richard Pille, who served as a civilian contractor for the U.S. military in Vietnam, banded together, but not to server another tour of duty.

While they won’t be doing any actual combat, that doesn’t mean that this band of brothers won’t give it their all to do the US army a service. Through their newly formed entertainment company CFE—short for Charlie Foxtrot Entertainment—they’re looking to produce comics and films that shed a more real life-like light on military activity in foreign regions.

With the title of their first project, City of Fire, having been announced, BF talked to Gerry Kissell and series artist Jon Alderink to get some more information on the how and why behind CFE, and its debut book.

BROKEN FRONTIER: CFE was formed, as the press release stated, to fill a void in the entertainment world. With the amount of diversity in the field having increased each of the past couple of years, how come the comics industry has overlooked military-based projects?

KISSELL: Well, it got started last summer, because I was frustrated over there not being any real films coming out about some of the sacrifice and sheer bravery performed by our me and women in uniform, serving in harms way.

ALDERINK: I think fear has a lot to do with it. It seems as if there’s a comic that deals with the war going on, then you have to pick a side, or it seems you have to pick a side. We’re not being political or trying to shove our views down the reader’s throat. We’re telling a story from the soldier’s perspective and it makes for a hell of a read.

This is coming from the one non-military guy in the group. I have to tell you, when I read the script for the first chapter, it blew me away. It was so powerful that any doubts I may have had were completely washed away. This is something everybody is going to want to read.

BF: How did you guys get together and form CFE? Can you walk us through the formation process from start to finish?

KISSELL: As I mentioned, I was floored over the absence of “presentation” of real modern war stories. I also saw that this absence was not just an oversight. You don’t just “forget” to make a war film. I think there is an attempt by many in the industry to not want to look at soldiers and what they do. Keep them at a distance.

This is a dehumanising thing, and as a vet, I felt it my duty to try and stop this destructive pattern, and help bring soldiers stories to the forefront, allowing people to see just how human these men and women are.  Part of the problem is that Hollywood in particular is populated by people who have never served. So, why would they care, and if they don’t, then who will care enough to tell the stories to this generation?  That was the beginning of Charlie Foxtrot.

So, it started with one guy, my sorry butt, and then came Ernesto Haibi.  I met Ernie through Colby Buzzell, author of the best selling book My War: Killing Time in Iraq.  They’d served together, and I’d told Colby I was writing a script about the battle for Mosul, Iraq, on June 24, 2004. Oddly, I didn’t tell Colby I was planning to tell the story from a combat medic’s perspective, because, well, I was a medic and felt we have a particularly interesting perspective on things—“trained to heal, trained to kill” is the medic motto.

Colby introduced me to Ernie, who turns out to also be the combat medic who was right in the middle of all the action. Not to mention, Ernie is a hell of a writer to boot. To say the least, Ernie and I became fast friends.  I discovered he shared my same frustration with Hollywood and other sources of entertainment. I should mention that the only form of entertainment in the U.S. with no shortage of modern war material was the gaming industry. They love war.

During that same period, when I met Ernie, I contacted Dale Dye and his wife Julia, two people who are huge supporters of ours. Hell, Julia has a seat on our board now, and Dale advises us on pretty much everything we do.  Ernie and I set off to plan a film. But, what starts out as a small idea, gets bigger.  He and I are not overly ambitious, but we are determined, and we saw that there was a gaping hole in the side of the entertainment industry, and we aimed to plug it. That’s the job of a combat medic.  Dale and Julia Dye were onboard for the film immediately. They loved the concept.

So, we worked and worked on the script, and then it hit me, during one of our many chats, that both Ernie and I loved comics. I had this epiphany, while reading a Joe Kubert comic—my brain said, “Do the film later, and do a comic first… maybe a graphic novel… maybe a whole series.”  Well, everyone I spoke to, on either side of the political fence, was hungry for a good modern war film. So, I believed the same must be true for comic fans.  So, I began asking, online and at comic shops. The response was a resounding “YES”.  So, we slowed our filmmaking gears and took a turn down comic book lane.

While posting online at one of the forums, I met this military vet named Tom Waltz, who is a prolific comic writer and creator of the critically acclaimed series Children of the Grave .  I told him what we were doing and “BAM!”, he was on board.  To say the least, I am starting to feel a bit like Dorothy, enroot to Oz, picking up her retinue of comrades.  So, I then met, through one of the comic artist sites, the only non-military member of our team, Jon Alderink, a fantastic artist and student of Joe Kubert.  I now had a full-fledged team.

So, we began working diligently to take the film script, and convert it to a comic script. Enter my best friend and fellow vet, Robert Scott McCall, aka Mac.  I’d worked with Mac on a couple other film projects, and Rob had worked on several films, including a Sci-Fi channel original yet to be aired called Alien Vs Alien .  He was in-between film gigs and I snatched him up to help on the script. Because he’s my best friend, I never paid him.

Now, we were growing and with it, we started to see the question more clearly “what is our company, and what are we all about”. So, we discussed it, and came to a conclusion relatively quickly.

       

We will do film and comics. Hell, if we have the chance, we will develop anything that tells stories, no matter the medium.  We were becoming a multimedia company, really.

Then, we needed a name.  That was a no brainer for me.  I’d had an incident once, while on FTX (field training exercise) in the army, and got on a radio and called out that our situation was a “Charlie Foxtrot”, which means a cluster fuck.  An officer didn’t like hearing non-official military jargon being called out over the air. So, he hopped on and asked for my name and who my CO (commanding officer) was. Realizing he had no clue who I was, I replied, “Uhm, charlie foxtrot, out”.  Turned off the radio and never responded to him again, and never got in trouble.  The situation was funny, and I knew that I wanted our name to be Charlie Foxtrot, because others in the military would find it funny that our name, in effect, is Cluster Fuck Entertainment. To a grunt, that’s just hilarious.

BF: Your first publication, City of Fire , focuses on the 1/23rd Blackhawk Company during the Iraq war in 2004. How much of your own experience serving in the military was put into the book?

KISSELL: It’s all Ernie, man.  I helped direct the project, to make sure we weren’t just trying to make a documentary but tell a properly structured story, so he used my original script as a guide. Ernie stepped up to the plate and began writing the same script, but from his perspective; the point of view of the guy in the middle of the action who was really there and saw everything unfold.  There’s a lot of action in the script. The story is graphic, bloody, realistic, heroic, tragic, sentimental and brutal. It’s a no shit real war story with the real guys who fought it. No one is made up. These are the real guys and what they did. For dramatic purposes, we added a couple of moments, but do so only to illustrate a point in the story.

BF: What else can you tell about the creative process behind City of Fire?

ALDERINK: It’s the craziest thing you ever did see. We don’t work in the typical comic book assembly line fashion. It’s much more collaborative. At the Kubert School when we’d get an assignment or script we would draw what was required from the teacher. What we’re doing with City of Fire is much more like animation in a way, where, Gerry will draw in some figures, and then it’s my job to put in a suitable background and place the Stryker tanks where they need to be. The tank itself is a 3D model I made in a program called SketchUp. I rotate the camera in the program to get the angle I want and then import it as a 2D image onto the page. Then I go in and finish the page off by inking it to give it more cohesion between Gerry’s and my style.

KISSELL: It’s a collaborative process. I’ll say that. We work like a military unit, so our being military vets helps in that regard. There are no individuals in this company. We only succeed as a group. Being called an “individual” in the military, by the way, is not a good thing. It’s all about team work. Everyone pitches in and no one succeeds unless everyone succeeds.

   

BF: Are there any other projects waiting down the line?

KISSELL: Yes. We are working with our latest team member, Richard Meyer, on the true story of a battle for a bridge in Baghdad that he fought in while in the marines. He’s now in the army and just got back from a second tour in Iraq, by the way.

BF: Why did you decide to ‘limit’ your production output to military comics exclusively? If they miss their mark, then what?

KISSELL: Simply put, we won’t fail.  We believe in what we are doing and we have so much momentum and support that I think it’s impossible to miss our mark. I promise you that. There is a real hunger and thirst in this country for what we are doing.  We will keep at it, because this isn’t just about making a living, this is about the men and women serving in harm’s way. We owe them that.

Two of our guys at CFE are still in active duty, and I feel we owe it to them. Ernesto could end up back in Iraq at any time, and we know it. I have several close friends that have been there and one is going back very soon. I do what I do for them. So, failure isn’t an option. We will find a way to make this successful, because the cost, to us, is too high not to.

Charlie Foxtrot is here, now. We plan to stay. We are here to speak up for those who speak up for us in foreign lands.

We have secured a partnership deal with the Wounded Warrior Project where we give them a portion of the proceeds from our project’s sales. This is just a small part of our effort to support our troops.

   

BF: Is Ape Entertainment going to act as your publisher? If so, how did the partnership come about?

KISSELL: We haven’t finalized the deal with them. But, basically, it’s a cooperative partnership deal.  Tom Waltz was the one who arranged the meeting between Ape and us.  All I know is that I am a huge fan of Ape and I love how they do business.  I am a goal-oriented individual and once we set our sights on Ape being the company we wanted to do business with, we pretty much set them as our goal. We could have considered Image, or others, but we saw a fit with Ape. It’s hard to explain, but it just made sense that it would be them.

BF: What are some of your favorite war movies and comics to date?

KISSELL: Blackhawk Down is my personal favorite film, because Ridley understands soldiers, and told the story from the soldier’s perspective; on the ground and in the middle of it.
My favorite war comic, growing up, was Sgt Rock, man. That cigar chomping, bullet spitting bastard was awesome to my young eyes. My personal favorite, as an adult was “the Nam”. 

ALDERINK: I have to pick Sgt. Rock too. No Joe Kubert doesn’t have a gun to my head… he’s much more frightening without one. Sgt. Rock is just a bad ass. Who doesn’t love that?

BF: Will we be seeing CFE on the convention circuit this year?

KISSELL: Yes. Without a doubt you will. We will make sure that no one can miss us, when we are there, either.

ALDERINK: I’m really looking forward to hitting the circuit this year. It’s a childhood dream come true for me and the fact that I’m insanely proud of being involved in this project is just gravy. There will be no doubt as to our presence at the cons. Just listen for the two idiots yelling at each other in their best Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonations. Oh, the shenanigans that will be had!

For more in Charlie Foxtrot Entertainment, visit http://www.charliefoxtrotfilms.com.