Broken Frontier

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

Today we look at The Age of Insects, a new five-issue introductory series by newcomers Critical Mass Media Group.

With covers by super-star Ben Templesmith, an oversized format, a unique art style and epic story, and a highly unorthodox marketing scheme, it wasn’t long before this book started popping up on everyone’s radar.

Additional interviews from other sites that came before this one can be found HERE.

Broken Frontier Review: Book 2 of The Age of Insects hit stores recently, and that’s quite a coup for any small publisher, to reach a second issue, on time, and through Diamond no less. Sporting a ridiculously gorgeous cover by 30 Days of Night and Wormwood: Gentleman Corpse creator Ben Templesmith, it’s this and the oversized frame and high-quality glossy stock of the comic that first catches the eye of any potential reader. Then comes the cursory flip-through of the interiors, to see if they live up to the hype of the exterior. Right off the bat, it’s obvious that the page-by-page design of the book is painstakingly imagined, and excellently executed. The art nearly leaps from off the pages in-between what writer/publisher Sparky Greene calls “ephemera”, pages made to look like e-mails, notebooks, diaries, newspaper clippings, doctor’s notes, book reports, etc. Bits and pieces that all-together flesh out the full universe of AOI.

BROKEN FRONTIER: How were you able to kick-start your own comic publishing company in today’s climate?  With all the surplus of books and sheer capital needed to begin, how did you approach bringing Age of Insects to the modern-day comic shop?

SPARKY GREENE: Pretty crazy to be doing this…but sometimes in life there’s no choice. Seriously, no choice. This project began over five years ago as a screenplay and when the first couple of drafts were done, I decided not to try to set it up as a motion picture, but use this as an opportunity to do something I’ve always wanted… create a graphic novel/comic book. It’s been a lifelong ambition and it was as though I had arrived at a crossroads and heard the Siren’s call. Crazy. Not smart. …but precisely right. And after looking for an artist for over a year, I luckily met Lou Pieper. 

As for the $$$ part of it…that’s not easy. I work very hard to support the creation, printing, advertising, website etc. Working with me is Jillian Palethorpe, who is an invaluable muse, designer, and literary critic. Overall our overhead is low but startup costs are considerable. $$$, creation, promotion is unfortunately only a small part of the whole picture. Securing and keeping distribution with Diamond is likely the largest challenge. Perhaps more on that later…
What been a terrific help has been Ben Templesmith’s work on our covers and his personal support. I haven’t enough good words to say about his collaboration.

BF: How does it feel to hit the second issue of the series? And how has the general response to the book been thus far?

SG: The response has been good but our objective is to do better than “good”. Our goal at this point is to get an audience that becomes invested in the characters and story.  It’s kind of like wishing to spread an infectious disease. I’m considering at some point going to a monthly schedule, which should help build our audience.

BF: I’m assuming the unique look of the book, in all those respects, was chosen to distinguish it instantly from everything else on the rack. Do you think that wound up being a good decision, and will future Critical Mass comics be given similar treatment?

SG: EXCELLENT QUESTION!!! You’re correct that we wanted to stand out from the Marvel & DC comics, which use a smaller format. I wanted to give the prospective audience real value for the $5.99 which would be not just a good story and art, but more pages, great printing, excellent paper. Also, I think the large prestige format gives more breadth to the art. Even more importantly I like the aesthetic of the oversized issues.

Aesthetics, though, aren’t always the best arbiter of what to do with a startup. Business-wise…this may not have been a good decision. I visited many stores across the country and the problem is as you suggested is “racking”, which means where the books are displayed or shelved. Because Age of Insects Books 1 & 2 are installments of a story and are only 56+ pages, it’s hard to see them on a shelf with other books as the spine is so narrow. I’ve even seen them in the magazine section…which of course is the wrong place though it does get better visibility. In sum…OVERSIZED?—Likely, the wrong business decision.  It’s a typical art vs. business problem. 

After Book 4 or 5 which will wrap up the first Not Human story, I may change the format.

BF: I’ve got to say also, the AOI logo is bloody gorgeous. That and the “Purity” sigil and the rest of the book’s design: who was responsible for these?

SG: The AOI logo was designed by Neville Burtis and Sonny Geras at Art Machine in Los Angeles. Art Machine is the premier company for motion picture advertising campaigns. The “Purity” symbol was created by Jillian Palethorpe, who does all the chapter heading design and pages of ephemera in the book. Clearly the symbol is inspired by the German National Socialist (Nazi party) symbols. She understood that one of the underlying themes in the story is eugenics and preservation of the species Homo sapiens sapien.

BF Review: In Book 1, we were introduced to a hybrid human-insect boy on the run from a government organization called “Purity”, and given hints toward the larger conspiracy of how the ‘brids and a radical etymologist called Flynn Morgan may be connected to the other. 

That first issue was one highly intriguing read, with a narrative and overall pace that was dissimilar to most, and on the one hand this proved a successful hook (it keep me coming back for Book 2, without fail), but on the other hand Greene’s oddball approach gave me pause—the series was either going to prove itself an inventive new epic or else an unnecessarily opaque one (it’s always difficult to tell which way a unique approach will lead). Thankfully, Book 2 goes a long way to convincing me that AOI will indeed be a solid and entirely accessible sci-fi thriller by its end.

BF: Looking at the approach to the narrative of Books 1 and 2, and considering my critique that Book 1 seemed difficult for possibly avoidable reasons, why did you choose to approach the story in the way that you did? Is this your first written work or a culmination of long years?

SG: I’m still learning this craft and how to consider the reader’s patience when the story is being given out in installments separated by 3-4 months. I have a personal resistance to stories that are too obvious at the outset. I believe that discovery is an essential psychological component for the reader and if they’re asking questions like “who is this character”, “why are they being pursued” and “what’s the relationship between the characters” they’re likely to come back for the answers. 

Your word, “accessibility” is of course the ultimate goal. No good to have a poetic oblique story that the reader has no patience to invest in. It’s hard for me to say what the right approach is, but certainly as a writer, I have to create a trust with the reader that their time isn’t going to be wasted and their questions will be answered. Very importantly it’s up to us to reward them with a great story.

This isn’t my first written work but it is my first in this medium. This story is intended to be not simple fantasy but a speculation on a world that is not impossible to imagine. Read the news.Transgenics, gene splicing, gene insertion, new life forms. It’s not the future. It’s the now. And there will be humans and creatures alike that will be caught between the forces that will struggle for supremacy. It’s simple Darwinism. Adaptation and struggle. Biology as destiny. We are all part of it.

BF: I’d like to reiterate, though—I do find the style, as a reader, to be sincerely captivating and it made me dearly want to read the follow-up. Have you found that the orders on Book 2 support this?

SG: Orders have been good but not sufficient to call this yet a success. The goal is to bring this to the right tipping point when Age of Insects is enough in the public consciousness that it takes on a life of its own.

Join us tomorrow for the second part of the Age of Insects Inter-Review.

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To find out more about The Age of Insects, visit the company website.

And check out Insect Girl live and in action in the YouTube video HERE.