Broken Frontier

This is the first of a two-part “Inter-Review”, a review and an interview in one (!)  looking at Finding Peace, a new war graphic novel by Tom Waltz and Nathan St. John.

Broken Frontier Review: Desert Storm veteran and regular comic scribe (and IDW editor to boot!) Tom Waltz shook hands with artist Nathan St John at the 2006 Phoenix Comicon, a team-up meant to produce a series of short stories all focused on the reality of modern warfare. Stories written from firsthand experience and art styled after the rough charcoal  sketches that served as the first frontline “war photographs” of the 19th century—so impressive was the final product that PhD Military Historian and New York Times Best-Selling author William R. Forstchen (The Lost Regiment, Gettysburg) chose to write the introduction to the book, praising its merits. With such a list of attributes, Broken Frontier took a thorough look, and then sat down to chat with both writer and illustrator.

BROKEN FRONTIER: So how long have you been nurturing this project?  What was the initial drive to write these stories and, Nathan, what was it specifically that drew you to the concept?

TOM WALTZ: Well, as has been mentioned, Nathan and I first met in January 2006 at the Phoenix Comicon. They throw a great little con there in Arizona, and in 2006 I think they got a bigger crowd, on both sides of the booths, than they were expecting, because a lot of the independent artists were stationed in a hall that was well off the main floor, and if you didn’t know they were there, you would’ve missed them altogether. As it was, my sister-in-law Ana found the makeshift artists' alley and it was she who first spotted Nathan, who had a table set up in the far corner of the hall.  She found me and said, “There’s this guy who has some great military drawings you should check out.” She took me to his table and, sure enough, Nate’s stuff was on full, glorious display, and I fell in love with his style immediately. He and I started chatting and I let him know I was the writer/creator for IDW’s Children of the Grave (with artist Casey Maloney). I told him I was looking to do more military-inspired projects eventually and wondered if he had any interest in collaborating. Long story short, he said yes, and the first seeds were planted for what would eventually become Finding Peace . The most important thing worth noting, I believe, is the fact that Nathan’s story “Convent”—which he wrote and illustrated and appears in Finding Peace—was one of the self-published books he was selling at the Con. I bought a copy and read it in my hotel room that night and knew, instantly, that whatever we did together, it somehow had to include that tragically beautiful story. To say I was knocked out by its raw power would be a gross understatement.

NATHAN ST. JOHN: It was a couple years in the making. I had been working on “Convent” for a little while before I crossed paths with Tom in Phoenix. Initially, this story was a just a series of images with a loose narrative—serving largely to give my artwork at the time some direction. Once Tom sent over his collection of short stories, we started talking about collaborating and realized these three seemingly disparate works could really balance each other in a strong graphic novel.  The reverse-chronological sequence of the book made this endeavor doubly fascinating to produce.

BF Review: The first striking thing about Finding Peace (to near-literally strike the reader) is its introduction, a fascinating opening essay, written by the above-mentioned military historian and, instead of simply talking about how he and the author met or the artist’s humble origins or anything more personal and therefore gratuitous, Forstchen speaks on how Finding Peace manages to secure a place in the tail-end of authentic war history. Delving into the past and the evolution of society’s attempts to chronicle that basest and darkest of its instincts, Forstchen remarks clearly that the chosen façade—the art and the voice of Finding Peace—seem directly plucked from the rough sketches and notebooks made by soldiers down throughout the most recent centuries.

BF: Was this a conscious decision on your part, Tom? To have the graphic novel drawn in a style that matched the sketches of military men and women? Was this what drew you to Nathan St. John’s art in the first place? Or was this a choice made by Nathan himself?

TW:  The easiest answer to this—and the honest one—is simply that this is Nathan’s style.  It was what was on display in Phoenix when I first met him, and it continues to be his style today. For me, it was love at first sight, but I’m sure Nathan would be the first to admit that his style tends to be an acquired taste. When I first showed it to IDW President Ted Adams, Ted said, “So, when will Nathan finish it?”  I laughed and said, “That is finished.” Ted just looked at me funny, but to his credit as an open-minded publisher, he took it home and read it, then came back to me the next day and said, “This is great, Tom. I wasn’t sure how I felt about Nathan’s style at first, but after a few pages, it made total sense and it’s really something special.”  He agreed to publish the book (in association with Charlie Foxtrot Entertainment) right there on the spot.

Later on, when we showed it to our wonderful introduction writer, William R. Forstchen, PhD, Nathan’s style was further validated as being absolutely right for this project. Honestly, we couldn’t have asked for a more perfect or educational introduction than the one we received—it was proof to me of the undeniable kismet that has been the magical foundation for this project from the very start.

BF: Nathan, did you use the old war sketches as models for the style of the book?  And did you find drawing in this way a challenge?

NSJ :  This style of drawing provided a large degree of artistic freedom, which I think benefited the project. I remember seeing an exhibition of Francisco de Goya´s “Disasters of War” in which the artist created a series of drawings documenting the horrors of the Peninsular War of 1807-1814. What made these drawings so powerful was not only their subject matter but the way Goya chose these roughly drawn black and white images to convey the brutality. More recently, Joe Kubert in Yossel showed how effective a looser drawing style could be in telling an important story.

BF Review: The graphic novel is displayed in multiple segments, approximately six short stories that run the gamut of peace keeping actions—riot control and dealing with a mass burial site, snipers and bomb raids and then smaller, personal stories. The majority follow around US military personnel as they receive letters from home, react to the people and conditions in a land far from the world they know, a land plagued by ancient blood hatreds. The stories are uniformly told via a detached narrative: it’s always the voice of the protagonist involved, and yet these men and women’s voices, though they themselves are embedded deep within the events unfolding, remain that of observers - as though the violence of war can only ever be seen by an individual as something that’s outside of the self, something that can be interacted with and moved through, but never a thing that can be directly effected.

BF: Following up on the comparison of the art to that of 19th Century war sketches, did you mean to have the voice of the stories come across just as honest but detached observations, in a similar way to the war sketches of old?  Was that the intent or simply the result of vying for a translation of your feelings on the subject?

TW :  For me, it’s just a matter of showing folks in the military matter-of-factly talking about the grim realities of the work they do in the way they would do it if someone asked them to share. I had a lot of fun writing Children of the Grave, with bullets flying and grenades exploding, but to tell a real story about men and women in the military, I thought (and think) the best way to do that is to show the human side first and foremost, because that way the heroism and horror that is part of their everyday lives in a warzone become more understandable and, therefore, more effective and endearing to the reader. Hollywood-style bulletfests are fine and have their place in popular culture, but the real stories—the ones that make a difference—come from the heart, not the barrel of a gun.

NSJ:  It was this common narration that worked to hold the project together. The images intentionally do not lend themselves to the kind of dialogue one would typically find in comic books. We saw this approach as a way to step back and let the drawings themselves do most of the talking.

BF: Are the stories in Finding Peace from your own experiences, Tom, and/or others that you’ve known?  Did you find the voice of the narration difficult to manage due to its personal nature and sincerity, or natural?

TW:  The first story, “Keeping the Peace,” is based more on stories I’ve heard from other folks in the military and their experiences. I’ve never been in a riot, but I’ve trained for them many times and know soldiers and marines who have been caught up in that kind of mess.  I’ve never been to a mass grave—at least not in the way the story depicts it—but, again, I know people who have, and their descriptions come through in my narrative.  I have experienced the long weeks of hoping for mail from home, and I know the deep loneliness of being so far away from loved ones. As for my second story, “Sergeant Henderson,” that is absolutely based upon something that happened to me in Desert Storm—the names are made up for the narrative, but the tale is true…there really was a “Sergeant Henderson,” we really spent time together in bomb shelters hiding from SCUDs, and she really was as hard-assed as Nathan and I portray her in this story. It’s been many years now since Desert Storm and I’ve forgotten her real name, but I’ll never forget the person…or that time in my life.

NSJ:  The news media shows footage of these tragic events all the time. It is shocking, we are affected by it, but ultimately we can change the channel. While not related to any one specific story, this project grew out of considering what any one of these tragic events mean to the people directly involved. 

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Join us tomorrow at Broken Frontier for the second part of this inter-review...

For more on Finding Peace and for preorders, go to the website of Charlie Foxtrot Entertainment, who produced the GN alongside IDW Publishing.