Broken Frontier

This is an Inter-Review—a review and an interview in one!

Today we speak with Michael S. Bracco, writer/artist auteur extraordinaire whose graphic novel Birth sent waves of critical acclaim and positive fan response echoing through the corridors of comicdom. Now he begins his gargantuan encore undertaking: a 7-volume sequel, each GN released in 6-to-8 month intervals, which will chronicle the complete adventures of the lone child survivor of Birth’s catastrophic end.

Birth was published through Alterna Comics and can be purchased through Amazon or Barnes and Noble. Alternately, you can download the entire graphic novel for free at Wowio.com

Novo Volume 1 will hit shelves later this month (June 25, 2008) and can be ordered at Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and is also readily available for free download (as three separate chapters, labeled Issues #1-3) at Wowio.

Broken Frontier Review: Though he slaved away at mini-comics and self-published runs for long years previous, Michael S. Bracco officially made a splash (and therefore we can say he “burst”) onto the comic book playing field with his 88-page self-contained fable, Birth —a scif-fi/fantasy blend that acted as the ultimate cautionary showcase to the foibles of war, most particularly in relation to the strife running rampant in the Middle East. Simple in make and direct in execution (there are less than 150 words throughout the whole book!), Birth was a cunningly breezy reading experience, and ornamented by Bracco’s soon-to-be signature visual élan, it was a book captivating to pour one’s eyes over, like a health inspector inside the grimiest of restaurants imaginable: everything readers constantly look for, it was all right there on every page, in every panel, in intricate detail, demanding close study and numerous re-reads, upon none of which did the experience become tiresome or dull.

But Birth ended on a doozy of a cliffhanger: as the title suggests, it all culminated in the introduction of Bracco’s present-day hero, the child of Birth ’s two condemned species, the boy called Novo. Picking up precisely where Birth came to a halt, then, is Novo Volume 1: The Birth of Novo, which in actuality portrays everything immediately after that lad’s birth.  Novo finds himself on a planet with no-one else left alive; due to the nature of the war in Birth (which I won’t spoil here, but let’s just say it’s incredibly imaginative and effective and you must read that GN to see for yourself!), there is not one single living creature besides Novo remaining. He is alone. He is only in part educated by an aging grandmotherly figure, who herself has since passed away. Now he begins to begin an extraordinary journey that is truly “extra” of the ordinary.

BROKEN FRONTIER: Birth was your tirade against the inanities of war, especially regarding (as you’ve mention elsewhere) the war in Iraq, but accomplished in a way to expose “the base ideas of conflict [in] their simplest and most unevolved forms”. Looking back, do you feel you’ve said all you have to say on the subject? And is Novo in any way a continuation of these themes for you? Or is it something entirely different?

MICHAEL S. BRACCO: Anything worth writing about is based somehow in conflict and conflict will evolve over time as do the people who cause it. Birth was the start of an ongoing exploration into something that is limitless: our flaws as a species and how we deal with those flaws, for better or worse. I’ll never run out of things to say about present day conflict and in the same vein there will always be something entirely new to write about. Novo will hopefully resonate with the spirit of Birth without ever playing itself out in a tired way.

BF: Did you always plan on Novo when you were writing and drawing Birth? Or did the idea of this new 7-volume series spawn itself as you went?

MSB: When I finished Birth, I figured I had written a complete story that would be impossible to continue. My publisher, Peter Simeti, disagreed with me vehemently and was really pushing for me to continue what I had started. So I wrote an epilogue for Birth, sent it off to be published and thought, “Oh crap, now what am I going to do?”  I had created a totally dead world with a single living being on it (Novo) and now I had to write a whole series.

I came up with a hundred idiotic ideas over the next month that all were trying a little too hard to be meaningful. Finally, in frustration I came up with some ridiculous and sarcastic idea to my wife. She stopped whatever it was she was doing and said, “Hey, that’s not bad.” As the idea took shape and was fleshed out, it started to evolve into the perfect direction for the character, like it was always there. Novo now seems to me like the true main character of Birth who feels that he is destined to understand and atone for other’s shortcomings and dirty little secrets.

BF: Looking at the somewhat sizable back-stock of comics you made before crafting Birth, and thinking about the introduction you wrote for that GN, wherein you claimed that Birth was your attempt at making something that other people would like—what was it about that story and now Novo that you think finally appealed to a publisher, critics, and readers alike.

MSB: I thought that the best way to write for ‘other people’ was to write a story with characters that was just for me. If I do something that I feel good about and that appeals to my weird yet emotional sensibilities, maybe some others will connect with it as well. I also think that comics have a different place in the world than other narrative art forms. Novels have limits in that they don’t have images; they can only be as grand as the reader’s imagination. Film is limited by money constraints and how far the effects technology can translate the creator’s imagination. In a comic, anything is possible as long as you can think it and then draw it. I really wanted to make something that couldn’t be done with words alone and that would be the most expensive movie ever (if it was ever made) but that also had some literary merit. I hope I came close, but I know that I have a long way to go. Hopefully I’ll get closer to making something that achieves that with every try.

BF: And how did you come to shake hands with Alterna Comics?

MSB: Digitalwebbing.com has a classified section for comic creators. If you are trying to get started, I strongly suggest you use it. I found Peter Simeti (owner of Alterna) on there looking for creators and sent him the first 20 pages of Birth.  He was the twentieth person I sent it to. Other publishers who took a look at it responded well to it but thought that it was too risky a book to take on, especially since it was a novel length book. Peter’s attitude was great in that he was looking for quality risky stuff to base his company off of so that he could come into the business with something different.

BF Review: Novo Volume 1 is neatly divided into three chapters, with the first committed (somewhat disappointingly, but also, admittedly, rightly) to recapping the events of Birth, explaining how Novo wound up the sole survivor of an entire planet. Interestingly (the saving grace of this otherwise rehash-replay), Bracco continues his critique on cultural isolationism  by having Novo learn a distorted version of reality, painting one side of the war as the true-blue victims, and the other side absolute villains. Even for those who haven’t read Birth, the second chapter reveals the discrepancy and the purpose of having it—Bracco has lost none of his deft ability at presenting plainly a world as it is, or in this case as Novo finds it, and yet have all the nuances shine fluently through.

The story quickly moves to the world of that “other” culture, the species that Novo now pre-programmed cause to hate, though which he also shares half his genetic structure with. The scene is haunting and epic and pitch-perfect in effect; again Bracco’s simplicity proves more a solid net of image and text, rather than an actual airiness of content. The scenes are unerringly what you’d expect them to be. There’s not always a cavalcade of surprises, but what there is, can be called predictable only in the sense that it fits and fits to a monk-embellished capital “T”. Although, speaking of the lack of surprises, Bracco—in Birth and now here—holds out for just the right moment. Novo travels from the dry land arena of the Terans, to the underwater kingdom of the Aquans, and there he finds more than a small boy with no soul to confide in can possibly handle, and so he begins his true journey, to a plot twist in Chapter 3 that…is pretty much mind-blowing.

BF: After I read Birth , I have to admit that I was incredibly curious as to where the story could possibly go from there. Now having read some of your earlier work like Atty & Max, it seems the single character wandering through a relatively barren landscape is a fave of yours. It almost reminds me of Moebius. Can you place the influences on this element?

MSB:  Nothing gets me going more than the whole post-apocalyptic loner movies. Whether it’s the Road Warrior or 12 Monkeys, I love the idea of someone without any hope choosing a road to walk just to ease the pain and loneliness only to find hope unexpectedly along the way.

BF: Speaking of my mention of fitting story beats followed by sudden shock moments, one often reads the solicitation of a story, a summary more-or-less, and then reads the book and finds the execution lacking in ambiance and effect as to what he or she envisioned from the blurb or advertisement.  Birth and Novo are just about the most dead-on epic/quest stories (respectively) I’ve ever read in atmosphere and movement. Do you find yourself striving for this effect, or does this part come naturally? Is it something you also find missing in other comic or fiction work?

MSB: I like to think that a good story reads like it has a soundtrack written by the author that only plays in the mind of the reader. A good piece of sequential art should intro, set a pace, crescendo, climax and fade away leaving you hungry for more like a great song on your favorite album.  f it doesn’t then it would be like watching a [good] Star Wars movie without John Williams or Batman without Danny Elfman. I try to think of each page as a measure and each panel as a beat when I plot out from the script.

BF: Okay, enough with the praise, now for a tough question: what part of Birth and what part of Novo Volume 1 would you change if you could?

MSB: It’s actually been a long time since I drew Birth and I often look at certain panels and cringe in hindsight. I think that’s good though, if I wasn’t doing that it would mean that I  wasn’t improving. It keeps me frosty to look back.

I also think that when I look back at Birth it’s a bit barren, which it has to be because of the plot but it still bothers me. So with that in mind I write the story into environments that will push visuals in completely different directions. Hopefully, self-correction will keep what I do fresh for me and interesting for others.

Be sure to join us tomorrow for part two of our Inter-Review with Michael S. Bracco and his opus Novo.

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Birth was published through Alterna Comics and can be purchased through Amazon or Barnes and Noble.  Alternately, you can download the entire graphic novel for free at Wowio.com

Novo Volume 1 will hit shelves later this month (June 25, 2008) and can be ordered at Amazon or Barnes and Noble, and is also readily available for free download (as three separate chapters, labeled Issues #1-3) at Wowio.

And be sure to visit Michael S. Bracco’s personal website and Birth of Novo site.