Broken Frontier

Welcome back to the Inter-Review—a review and an interview in one!

Continuing our look at The Age of Insects, a new five-issue sci-fi thriller action epic 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

Read the first part HERE .

Broken Frontier Review : Throughout the second installment of the mini, writer Greene delves deep into Flynn Morgan’s adult life and plays copiously with flashbacks, dreams, and skewered reality to both inform (without lame exposition) and give readers a rising sense of the character’s dislocation. Alongside this, new players are introduced, most notably a female Chechen agent of Purity who, by showing her on assignment to lure in a hybrid, shows us Purity’s M.O. in action. Greene balances the intricate details of Flynn’s life, the Chechen agent, and even the side-stories of on-the-run hybrids, Purity’s leaders, and the threads that bind them together, like a true pro. His drama is a finely-tuned blend of the sort of overstated drama that four-color comics require, mixed with a nuance and sincerity that tend to keep it from spilling into the unbuyable. Even the “ephemera” of Book 2 are more enlightening rather than muddying, which the deluge of information dropped in Book 1 often seemed.  AOI becomes something electrifying with its second issue, something that readers will be hard pressed to ignore or leave behind if they wade through its many pages.

BROKEN FRONTIER: Did you find this second issue an easier thing to write than the first, or maybe harder? There seems to be more natural sense of direction here that really makes the book click on all number of levels.

SPARKY GREENE: By Book 2 we had some sense of what was needed to ramp up the story.  There was much intense discussion, rewriting and re-conceptionalizing. 

BF: Who’s your favorite character to write? And how did you go about choosing your main guys and gals for the story and crafting them? I guess what I’m asking in round-about fashion is: what was the creation process like?

SG: The problem is I like most of the characters for different reasons. I have the advantage of knowing their back-stories, which are sometimes more interesting than their place in the current story. As an example, Amadeo, who is Flynn’s father, is also the father of something much bigger than any single man before him has created. This will be revealed in Book 3 but even then we won’t know where Amadeo originally came from and what struggles brought him into the 21st century.  he only hint is that Amadeo’s early life experience was not unlike that of the boy in Jerzey Kosinski’s The Painted Bird.

Then there’s Zasha, the beautiful & ruthless Chechen tracker. Her life before this story will hopefully be the basis for a terrific series. She’s definitely one of my favorites.Flynn, who seems to be the main character, will also reveal more of his origins soon but more on that I can’t reveal. 

Darwin, who graces the cover of Book 2, will be one of the most important characters and returns in Book 3.

Marvel, the boy who bites off his own tongue in Book 1, has a future that I can’t wait to write. 

Barkov is driven to exterminate the “Brids” but there is much more to it than the desire for human purity. This will become clearer in Book 3, which contains the Age of Insects Origin Story.

There are characters that have been introduced whose importance is central to the story but who seem at this point as background characters. You could say that Age of Insects is structured like a Greek tragedy, with Flynn’s reversal of fortune and struggle to survive. But I think it’s more like an epic, like those ancient war poems sung by the bards with a huge cast of characters, many of who could support their own series. I could write volumes about every character, even the troopers and Hybrid characters. Ultimately each character could and should be my favorite!

BF: I’ve heard that Book 3 more-or-less completes the “set-up”, introducing the final major players and setting into motion the finale in Books 4 and 5. Can you give us some hints of what to expect in these middle and latter chapters?

SG: Not the “final major” players, but the ones necessary to finish the first story. We will see much more of the Hybrids, their psychology, the intersection of Zasha and Flynn, the beginning of conflict that will change the course of human history, and surprises that can’t be even hinted lest I be stung to death in my sleep.

On second thought….I will risk giving you some small hints in the form of images.

(Editor’s Note: see the next three images in the article, starting with this one…)

BF Review: Now, a captivating story is rare to find nowadays, but no comic succeeds on its textual credits alone, and writer Greene was lucky enough to find artist Louis Pieper via a recommendation from local Los Angeles comic shop, Hi de Ho Comics, and the rest can now be called history. Pieper works in a solid mainstream technique with a flourish of underground mini-comic-like dynamic that really makes the book look like no other. Most readers will like it or lump it, but it’s an indelibly remarkable and striking look, and in AOI’s oversized format it gets to shine. Pieper’s pages for Book 2 manage a quiet but visceral evolution, looking grittier and more solid than his freshman attempt in Book 1. The slight change works well with the story, too, as the tone itself grows more intense, noir-ish, and surreal. I was very happy with Pieper’s work before, but he looks to be a true force to reckon with by the time Book 5 rolls around.

BF: So Louis, what is your art background?  Any other unpublished and/or unknown gems floating around out there that interested readers can get a hold of?

LOUIS PIEPER: I am self-taught but only in as much as I haven’t been formerly trained at a school or institution. I’ve had many mentors and creative professionals who have had a hand in my artistic progress including Jorge Pacheco, who is a Kuebert School Alum and long time artist of Harvey comics, Archie comics, and Hanna Barbara books of years past. More recently I count among my mentors Charles Zembillas, head of the Animation Academy in Burbank and private instructor/fine artist John Park of the Concord School in Santa Monica. These guys have helped me take a hard look at what I do and shown me ways I can improve. As for unknown gems… there isn’t anything else of mine on the market yet, but that doesn’t mean you won’t see A LOT more from me in the coming years!

BF: How have you found the experience of working on AOI? Daunting? Thrilling?  Educational? All of the above? Is Sparky a true slave-driver or a total pushover?

LP: Working on this book has been the chance that comic book artist hopefuls dream of.  So much in this industry is about paying dues and building a network that can take years to develop into a position as a creator, or on the opposite end you could go for broke on a self published thing and sink or swim. With Age of Insects I have had the opportunity to try the latter except with the support you would get in an industry setting, I also get to wear many hats as I help Sparky with the marketing, the conventions, the website, I even got to do the illustration for the company logo and design the signature “love Bugs don’t eat them” bumper sticker that we love to hand out. It’s like I was dropped into the seat of art director right out of the gate! It’s fantastic.

BF: Where do you go after Book 5? Will you be working on the side-sequel featuring the “Purity” army folk? Or something else for you?

LP: I will likely have a role in that book’s creation. I may only do layouts… But I am so Busy on this series I haven’t really thought about the next book or what else comes next I know Sparky has other stories he would like to do and I have a few of my own as well but for now we are concentrated on the remaining books!

As for the “side-sequel, that’s definitely being planned. The Purity Force will have a thousand and one weapons, detection methods, and other fiendish things to employ in their quest to eliminate all the “Brids”.

BF Review: The Age of Insects is one of those books that make you believe in the comic industry again, not just as an unstoppable movie-making machine, but as a viable place for breakthrough artistic talent to in fact break through and into. It was a long uphill struggle to make, though. Diamond rejected the book four times before the creative team’s presence at the SDCC in 2007 (with a mascot called “Insect Girl ”—a gal in a see-through dress with live insects running all about its insides) convinced them that maybe there was something different to Sparky and Co. than the morass of other contenders. So AOI is here to stay, and it deserves ever red cent of its cover price. I highly recommend this series to all comers, across the board.

BF: How is it being writer, publisher, and marketing guru all at the same time?

SG: I like the multiple roles as each is has its specific challenges  -- however, I could use an assistant or two. It’s tough writing, overseeing art, planning/implementing promotion, meeting retailers, communicating with readers, figuring out how to pay the bills, and running to FedEx myself with cartons of books. And this is only a small taste of what’s involved. 

The rewards of such an enterprise are simple: we can see a dream come to fruition and that’s nonpareil.

BF: While I give you massive props on coming up with so outlandish a mascot as Insect Girl, do you think there should be a better way to gauge a book’s quality and worth? I’m stunned that a book looking as glorious as AOI could have been rejected again and again. Why do you think the distribution side of things is as overwhelmed as it is, and any pie-in-the-sky suggestions as to what might help broaden the field?

SG: With respect to “Insect Girl”…why not? The idea of a transparent dress of live hissing cockroaches may be outlandish.  Putting the dress on a beautiful girl cool enough to not only like the bugs but wear them is a piece of performance art that certainly got everyone’s  attention. “Insect Girl” is a combination of my two favorite things… girls & insects. That’s not so bad is it?

It’s also a way to get people to look closer at the insects themselves and accept the fact that all insects need not be squashed, that the natural world is so fantastic….more fantastic than anything I could invent.  And to maybe consider that ultimately there are almost 1,000,000 species of them while there’s only 1 species of man. Finally, remember we’re competing with Marvel, DC, video games, cinema, television, Indie books, books, the Bible, and sex.  Insect Girl may have nothing to do with the Age of Insects story but it may be a way to get someone to pick up a copy and read it.

The question of Age of Insects "many rejections by the only distributor, Diamond? Only Diamond salespeople can answer this question but I do think that there is a place for Indies in the Diamond catalogue. And most importantly I think that there’s a way to make it profitable for Diamond. 

As you may know, Diamond won’t carry many Indie titles and will drop titles they’ve distributed if the numbers aren’t sufficient. The truth is that there is a business model that would allow Diamond to carry most books in their catalogue and still make a profit. Check out the various Amazon programs. 

I’m not a Diamond executive so my opinions are pretty meaningless. Diamond has a very successful business that even Marvel or DC can’t compete with. The economics of publishing, distribution, and retailing is a subject much too large for this interview.

BF: So of course the big-big and only question we could possibly end with…what’s in store next?

SG: Not Human life forms that will change the balance of nature. Man will no longer be the undisputed ruler of this Earth.

LP: Great, great things for readers attached to the characters and new comers!­­ The third issue is a great jumping-on place as the origin of the whole conflict is revealed and the action just goes through the roof!! There are some scary moments in there as well.

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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.