Broken Frontier

Cracking the elusive children's market is something of a Holy Grail for comics publishers but a new project from Army Ant hopes to do just that. Pitting nature's greatest predators against each other in a series of one-shot editions, writer Sean J. Jordan is seeking to provide a comic strip experience that both excites and educates a younger audience. In the second part of a two-part interview Sean tells Broken Frontier about Code of the Wild. Click here for Part One.

BF: Was it difficult finding the balance between keeping the stories scientifically accurate from an educational viewpoint and exercising dramatic license in terms of making the matchups as exciting as possible? And just how graphic did you feel you could be in your depictions of the animals' conflicts?

SJJ: I originally went to school to be a journalist, and one of the things I learned when I was reporting the news was that there is drama in almost every interaction in nature, and that the role of a storyteller is simply to find the right angle to make that drama interesting. Even amoebas can make fascinating characters if you're given some interesting context to help explain the dramatic action in their lives. TV documentaries can do this with a powerful narrator with a gravelly voice. And comic books can do it with captions that explain the thoughts and feelings of the animal characters.

When I was researching the animals we would eventually use in the first Code of the Wild book (a wolf and a wolverine), I was constantly asking questions about how these animals really behaved, and I consciously avoided writing what I thought I knew about them. For example, it's a common notion that wolverines have retractable claws because there's a popular comic book character of the same name who does. But it's not true; and while some sources do say that their claws are semi-retractable, you can look at a wolverine's footprints and see that its claws are out all the time – not just when there's a fight.

But those claws allow wolverines to do something else that's really interesting - climb. I was really surprised when I started reading stories about wolverines climbing trees and rocks and then ambushing other animals, because it'd never occurred to me that they could do that. I was also surprised to learn how clumsy they are. You don't think about nature's meanest predator tripping over itself in the snow, but it happens, because wolverines are only good at moving fast or sitting still. when they walk, they lumber around. One of the reasons they're so dangerous in a fight is because they move so awkwardly that the other animals have a hard time anticipating their movement and getting ahold of them.

That sort of information is far, far more interesting than anything I could come up with on my own. There is some dramatic license involved, of course, in finding a reason for a wolf and a wolverine to fight, but then again, this sort of thing actually happens in the wild, and you can actually find videos on Youtube of wild wolves and wild wolverines beating the snot out of each other.

Jason Maranto, the artist on the book, has done a fantastic job of keeping the realism of the fighting without introducing a lot of gore. These fights don't last very long in nature because these animals are capable of wounding each other quite severely with just a quick movement. If they go on for more than a few seconds, they tend to get pretty bloody, and there's usually a kill that's being contested that also gets dragged into the mess. We have to tone that down, of course, for our audience, but we're working hard to keep the action as true to nature as possible.

BF: Perhaps ironically for such a different book, what does strike me as actually quite traditional about Code of the Wild is that almost interactive response it could provoke in its readership. In a way it hearkens back to familiar fan-ish games speculating on who would win in, for example, a Hulk/Superman fight. How consciously were you thinking about this level of reader investment in the animal characters when you came up with the concept?

SJJ: We want the kids to get involved emotionally, because that makes the whole thing more exciting and dramatic for them. In fact, that tagline for the book is "Who Will Win?"

Being a long-time comic book reader myself, I've certainly been influenced by those classic matchups, and it's no accident that we've selected the wolf and the wolverine - two very popular, very well-known predators - to launch the series. But what makes Code of the Wild a little different from traditional comic books is that there are no heroes or villains in this story. Some people are going to sympathize with the wolf - who has a name, and a story of his own - and some people are going to sympathize with the wolverine, who also has a name, and his own reasons for getting involved in this conflict. I'm certain, if this initial Code of the Wild book is successful, that we'll see at least one of these characters again.

BF: Looking at some of the preview pages the project's illustrator, Jason Maranto, has produced some stunning work. How did he become involved with the book and what can you tell us about what Jason has brought to Code of the Wild?

SJJ: I've often said that success is about being in the right place at the right time, and Jason and I met up under some extremely unique circumstances. I started looking for an artist for this project in April, 2008 with the intention of getting some conceptual comic book-style artwork together to show to potential investors.

At the same time, Jason had decided to take some time off from his career as a fine artist and painter and look for work in the comic book industry, where he'd worked as an inker, letterer, colorist and art director in the past. Jason saw my ad on ConceptArt.org and couldn't believe that someone was actually going to produce a comic book based around nature - a dream he'd long had himself, but always told himself would never be commercially viable. He immediately cranked out about 30 wolf sketches and sent them to me, telling me he wanted to paint the book himself.

What I appreciate most about Jason is that he has been passionate enough about this book to see his vision for it through. A lot of artists would be really timid on this project, and just draw what the script said without a lot of concern for the authenticity of it all. But Jason was jealous that the script was going to introduce the readers to so many facts about these animals, and insisted that his artwork was going to teach our readers lessons that the script couldn't: how these animals move, how they express themselves, and how they relate to each other and the environment around them.

He assured me that even without the text, you'd be able to pick this book up and learn from it. Given the fact that I wanted this book to be educational even for at-risk readers, how could I say no to such a bold vision for a comic book?

I have to hand it to Jason, too - he's really taken my idea and given it a life and soul of its own. I never intended for Code of the Wild to be such a stunning, breathtaking experience as it's turned out to be, but Jason's really made it into something unique. It began as my project, but it has become a true collaboration.

BF: What was the research process like for both you and Jason? How did you ensure the stories you were telling were as realistic as possible in reflecting the animals concerned and their worlds?

SJJ: I spent about 3 months researching and writing the script for Code of the Wild: North American Wolverine vs. Timber Wolf, and I compiled a couple hundred reference photos, many of which I included into the script to give Jason a rough idea of what I was seeing in my head when I wrote each scene.

Jason went out and compiled thousands of pieces of reference art and tracked down every video he could find on wolves and wolverines, because he was really concerned with things I never even considered, like how the fur breaks when they move, or how far their feet sink into the ice and snow.

There may be places here and there where some liberties are taken because there simply wasn't reference available to help us make sure we were depicting things realistically, but overall, we've both worked very hard to match almost every page and every panel to our sources.

BF: Wolverine versus Timber Wolf is the opening predator match. What combinations can we expect to see in the future?

SJJ: In 2010, we'll launch the rest of the first series, which will include Indian Mongoose vs. King Cobra, Emperor Scorpion vs. Horned Tarantula, and my personal favorite, Bat Falcon vs. Vampire Bat. If you've never heard of a Bat Falcon before, it is literally a falcon that preys on bats, and it's got this cool, black hood on its head that makes it look like a superhero.

The vampire bat, in the meantime, is probably one of nature's most misunderstood creatures, and I'm hoping readers are going to walk away with a newfound appreciation for how cool these guys are. I'm not going to skimp on the setting, either - it's going to take place in the skies above the Mayan ruins of Tikal in Guatemala, with a mother bat who takes her son out on his first hunt, only to get separated from him. and who has to survive a harrowing trip back to the roost while a bat falcon hunts her down. Just thinking about it gets my blood racing, and I think it's going to be an exciting way to conclude the first series.

But beyond that, we have plenty of other ideas on the horizon. I've got twenty Code of the Wild concepts planned out so far, and another thirty or so written down just in case we need them. It really depends on how successful the first series is. We'd love to do a series with dinosaurs down the road, and we'd love to do a series with insects. We'd love to do one featuring army ants, since our publishing company is named after them.

Before we get to that, though, we've got to stay focused on seeing this first book through. We've had a lot of people tell us that what we're trying to accomplish is a fool's errand, and that there's no way to make money in children's comics. We hope we can prove those people wrong, because when we sit down and read over the proofs, we all feel a little bit like kids again. We're just hoping that magic translates over, because it'd be awfully sad to realize that we're living in a world where kids really had outgrown comics.

For more information on the project check out the official Code of the Wild website or check out the first edition on YouTube