Broken Frontier

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

Today we speak with Peter Simeti, president and publisher of Alterna Comics and writer/creator of the original graphic novel The Chair , which debuts today, August 6th, with a nationwide release via Diamond.

Purchase the book for the special direct-order price of only $10.46 at the Alterna Comics online store, or at the retail price of $13.95 at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or at your local comic shop with Diamond code JUN08 3610.

Broken Frontier Review: The Chair was originally serialized in electronic single issue format on Wowio.com, but now readers can get their hands on the whole story, and as the real collected deal, the printed publication, the one-and-only OGN TPB (original graphic novel, trade paperback, respectively). Written and atmospherically toned by Alterna Comics president Peter Simeti, with wonderfully dark pulp-inspired pencils from newcomer Kevin Christensen, The Chair is visually, instantly gripping, especially considering its horrific, midnight-movie flavored cover, cobbled together by the same main creative duo.

The story opens on a lone figure, sitting inside a prison cell, a cell within a block we quickly learn is death row. The figure is Richard Sullivan and he’s a man guilty of murder (though he claims this judgment spurious), and now he spends his days surrounded by hard-boiled killers and child rapists, along with those who carried out less categorical crimes. This, as a set-up, seems little more than a comic version of Dead Man Walking, populated by a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest cast of crazies, but quickly the situation shifts to the bizarre and borderline-occult as strange events occur in the shadows, and even stranger fates (far stranger than death) befall the inmates of this particular penitentiary. Rumors abound of experiments, tortures, and the guards behave as vicious and cruel as any criminal. Few seem to survive to the time of their proper death sentence….

Broken Frontier: Welcome, Peter!  So beyond writing The Chair, you also wear the hats of president and publisher of Alterna Comics (one of the finest new comic publishers to emerge in the past two years, I must say…).  How did that opportunity come about?  What was the keystone moment that led to the creation of Alterna?

PETER SIMETI: Wow, thanks for the tremendously kind words! I think Alterna came about because I was looking for a way to get my own work out there under its own sort-of label. Alterna started off as pretty much just being like, my alter-ego (and who in comics doesn’t want one of those!), but then it turned into something more when I started receiving e-mails from people submitting their work to me. I was just floored, sitting there going, “I’m just some guy trying to write and draw comics for the first time in my life…I don’t know a thing about how to PUBLISH the stinkin’ things!”. So those first few submissions were met with a very kind explanation that Alterna wasn’t so much a publishing company as it was just a label for myself. 

After a while though, maybe about two months or so, of still seeing this trend occurring (the original Alterna site was just a Myspace page for cryin’ out loud!) I decided to try my hand at publishing. I saw that there was a lot of good creations from people just like me, being rejected and told they weren’t “good” enough to sell. (One of these creations ended up being Michael Bracco’s Birth . His work just floored me from the moment I saw it.) And after a lot of work over the past one and a half years, we’ve come to the point we’re at now. And I couldn’t be happier about it.

BF: Being a writer and a publishing figurehead—that takes passion.  What’s been your exposure to comics in the past, and how did you come to turn your energy toward making comics: writing, certain art duties, and also running your own company?

PS: My love of comics has evolved so much over the years that it should be slapped with a cool name and be given free admission into the X-Mansion (laughs). Like most kids, I played with the toys and knew the characters long before I could even read. As far as drawing goes, I think it started out when I was about 5 years old; drawing from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon and making up little scenarios on paper. Just stuff that a lot of kids do at that age. Then it turned into a love affair with actual comics when I could begin to read, I think Jim Lee was huge at the time and I remember reading the X-Men books he drew. Back then I always thought that the artist and writer were one person. I mean, that’s how I was doing it, so I didn’t understand that there was a collaboration going on. How could I?  I was like 6 and could barely read properly, let alone understand what the heck the credits section meant (laughs). For a time, making comics was all I wanted to do with my life.

Then the comics bubble burst, Marvel filed for bankruptcy, it seemed that making comics was just a pipe dream that would never come true. I stopped drawing comics as a teenager and started to just do more “regular” art. By the time I got into college though, my love of comics was re-established with Spider-Man movies. Nothing kicks you in the teeth like nostalgia, and it got me missing my old comic drawing days.

I started drawings characters again and tried to start reading comics again. I found though, that for the most part, comics didn’t grow up with me. At least not the books that I used to read. I found that a lot of mainstream comics just seemed “gimmicky” to me, and I turned to other publishers like Image, Dark Horse, SLG, etc. for my reading material. That’s when I realized that there was a much bigger comics world out there, one that didn’t just have super-heroes. Stories from creators with something personal to say; it was great to see how expanded and accepted these genres were. This led me to where I am today and I’m grateful for that.

BF: Moving to the graphic novel itself, The Chair combines a slew of different genres and recognizable influences.  Where did the basic foundation for the tale arise?

PS: I’ve always been interested in criminal psychology and what makes people tick. Similar to stories like The Killing Joke, I’ve always thought that it takes the right chain of events to drive a person into madness, heroism, cowardice, or bravery. People can either rise to the occasion, or become the victim of tragedy.  With The Chair, I’ve tried to make a story that was filled with subtle psychology and little hints that there was much more beneath the surface. I always thought the best books were the ones that were open to interpretation – like any piece of art. Art of any kind is so subjective; it’s more about how you perceive it to be, rather than what it actually is. That’s what makes it beautiful.

BF Review: The Chair opens at a slow and steady pace, an intentional, almost Samuel Beckett-like quality—a spartan use of dialogue and event. The story’s narrated, for the most part, by main character Sullivan, and so the reader perceives the odd goings-on through his eyes and understandings alone. This keeps things uncertain and purposefully opaque. Most of the activities of the guards and the actual fates of the prisoners, not to mention the motivations behind any small piece of it, are kept tightly under wraps. Sullivan’s journey toward his final fate is a movement about discovery, so nearly nothing is offered up front. The reader is kept in complete suspense, utter darkness (often mirrored in the pitch, shapeless backgrounds of the book’s pages), and an ignorance that rarely surpasses Sullivan’s own.  We know what he knows, which isn’t bloody much.

Interestingly, in a similar effect to staring at an M.C. Escher sketch over a protracted period of time—wherein the more you study the more you realize it isn’t just a complex design, but most of the mind-boggling shapes are in fact optical illusions, things impossible to in fact exist—the further the reader delves into The Chair , the more bewildered they’re going to be, realizing a lot of what they’re being fed simply can’t co-exist alongside the other. Simeti uses revelations both as illuminations and red herrings, and not far into the book it’s apparent that half the battle is determining which parts of Sullivan’s struggle are real and which are unerringly false. By the halfway mark, this book is downright byzantine. Sticking to his guns, Simeti forces readers to know only what Sullivan knows, and Sullivan, throughout, suffers from mental manipulations on more than one level.

Thankfully, Simeti manages this approach, a thing usually disheartening or even outright frustrating, in a way that keeps the pages turning. There’s never a sense of hopelessness, or despair in understanding the minutiae.  The Chair reads like it’s everything that it’s meant to be, and Simeti drops enough bread crumbs along the path that no matter how dark and dense the forest gets there’s a natural sense of direction (pay attention to the word balloons and captions as you get further in—there’s a huge hint there!). Part of this comes from how quickly the reader is forced to lose his or her bearings. Instead of a gut sense of being led astray, we feel that poor Sullivan’s already in a state of massive situational flux. Things are already bizarre and unnatural. Everything, from the art to the dialogue to the layouts to the grey-scale tones, makes in painstakingly clear that everyone knows the score: which is, there is no score. Have fun!

BF: Was Sullivan’s story in The Chair a thing you knew through-and-through when you sat down to write it, or is the final product a bit of an amalgamation, a thing that grew out of different ideas cobbled together as you went? The story seems tightly plotted, but (without giving anything away) did any part surprise you? Did you have certain scenes or ideas you knew you wanted to toss in there but didn’t have a clue how to reconcile until you got to that place?

PS: My approach to story-writing is that it’s a very organic thing. It’s something that lives and breathes and even changes as it grows. I think there was one original draft to The  Chair and as the book went from single issue printing, to digital issues, to a final OGN/TPB – it must’ve seen a subtle re-write on almost every aspect from the script, to the plot, to the ending.  I had a definite idea of what I wanted the reader to “feel” from the book – and if the reader doesn’t feel “uncomfortable” at the end, then I think I failed. People always feel uncomfortable when they are forced outside their safety zone. I think (or should I say, I hope!) the book manages to do that.

BF: The supporting cast of the GN, most notably the other inmates, is one wild crew. Any particular place these characters came from? Representations of your own take on the great evils of the world, or simply society’s generic ones? Something else?

PS: I wanted to make the other characters represent archetypes we have in the world today.  I think you can judge a society by its laws and especially by its prisoners. Human beings are creatures of habit and territory. We like to do what we want to do, when we want to do it, and where we want to do it. We also happen to be easily controlled through fear; which is why for the most part, laws and religion work quite well. There’s a point in the book where one of the inmates is tortured and killed – and Sullivan actually feels pity for him. The irony in this moment is very true to human beings in general. We try to be logical in all situations, but at the end of the day, we are all slaves to our emotions.

BF: There’s a nifty aspect of the book wherein you refuse to draw a line, of any kind, between the guards and the inmates. This is something readers have seen before, but you take it to a further extreme than most. Do you feel there’s often little distinction between criminals and their wardens outside of the distinctions we make for them?

PS: Honestly, I’m a law-abiding guy. At least, I try to be as best as I can. I have a lot of respect for what our law enforcement and military do, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t situations where they abuse their power. No one wants to view themselves as the villain – it’s always the other guy. You can be a terrorist to one person and a hero to another. It’s all about perception.

BF: Parting shot for “Part 1”—who would you say are the best writers in the comics field today? The best publisher outside of Alterna (which is of course the bestest best of them all)?

PS: (Laughs) Bestest best of them all, eh? Flattery will get you everywhere!

As far as the best writers go, my favorites right now are Robert Kirkman, Jeff Lemire, Grant Morrison, Steve Niles, Dwight Macpherson, Jeph Loeb, Brad Meltzer, and I’m sure there’s more.

Be sure to join us tomorrow for part two of our Inter-Review with Peter Simeti and his OGN, The Chair.

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The Chair OGN can be ordered at the Alterna Comics website for the special direct-order price of $10.46.

Alternately, it can be purchased through Amazon or Barnes and Noble or at your local comic shop with Diamond code JUN08 3610.

And don’t forget to check out Alterna’s vast catalogue of low-priced digital comics at DriveThruComics.com or Amazon Kindle!