Broken Frontier

Mark Waid is filling many roles these days, with his work at Marvel on Amazing Spider-Man, his position as Editor-in-Chief at BOOM!, as well as writing several series for that publisher.

One of those is the THE UNKNOWN, a detective series that delves into the realm of the supernatural. Broken Frontier spoke with Mark about the series and what’s coming up in the second volume, THE UNKNOWN: THE DEVIL MADE FLESH, coming in September.

BROKEN FRONTIER: Why did you opt to do THE UNKNOWN as a series of miniseries?

MARK WAID: HA!  Honestly, it was always originally intended to be a standalone four-parter with no sequel--but between how much I discovered about the characters as I wrote them and the amazing artwork of Minck Oosterveer, when publisher Ross Richie threw out the idea of doing a sequel, I was all for it. Had the art not blown me away, or had I exhausted all I had to say with these characters, I would have called it quits after series one.
 
BF: Will each miniseries focus on resolving a smaller, more discrete case within the larger overall mystery and themes of the series?

MW: Yep.  Which, again, was never the plan going in--but once I started thinking about what we could do with a Series Two, I realized there were ways we could play off of the happenings in Series One without leaving Series One readers unfulfilled or in any way feeling as if they weren't getting the whole story.

I know that sounds like a pat, Mad Libs-style answer to an interview question, but in this case, it's very accurate -- there are now things that happened in Series One that even I have a greater understanding of now that I've outlined Series Two, moments that I thought had less significance when I wrote them (like our one flashback to Doyle's backstory) but now turn out to be lynchpins.
 
BF: The book so far has centered on the mystery of death and what lies beyond. Is this a topic that's been of interest to you even before coming up with the idea for this series?

MW: Yep. Always. One of the first books I can remember reading in this world was a Scholastic biography of Houdini, and his obsession with the afterlife and vow to pierce its veil from beyond if at all possible chilled me to my core and mesmerized me. Like Catherine, I'm not even remotely a spiritual man -- no doubt a bad reaction to the bible-thumping church experiences I had as a kid in the South -- and yet the romantic in me simply cannot wrap my heart around the idea that we're just bags of chemicals and nothing more.

I'm at constant odds inside my own head to reconcile my need for the hope of an afterlife with my utter and total confidence in science over parapsychology. Catherine has hope that there is something beyond our understanding, but no faith in it.
 
BF: You've called this book "Doc Savage by way of David Lynch." Can you expound on that?

MW: I wanted to do pulp adventure rather than polite drawing-room mystery, which is deadly dull in comics. Moreover, I wanted my characters to experience a wild descent into darkness rather than a linear adventure, a relentless spiraling-down into disturbing underworld.

When I first began writing, one of the earliest notes I made to myself (after watching Lost Highway and Mullolland Drive for the umpteenth time) was, "Unsettling on the page." Horror over gore, dread over destruction. And Minck delivered big.

BF: Any hints as to why this latest miniseries is subtitled "The Devil Made Flesh"?

MW: There are... I don't know, let's say "forces"... unhappy with some of the decisions Catherine made in Series One. Series Two has a more active, present villain. 

BF: This isn't your first foray into the detective genre; most notably, you did it brilliantly with RUSE at CrossGen. How does THE UNKNOWN contrast with RUSE?

MW: First off, thank you for "brilliantly," though without artist Butch Guice and colorist Laura Martin, I'd have been just another chimp typing whodunnits, so credit where it's due. RUSE was much more dialogue driven and, honestly, more linear in approach; Butch and I would discuss familiar detective-story tropes and how to bend them, whereas THE UNKNOWN as I said earlier leaves a little more mystery in its wake.

There are similiaries, though; first off, I obviously enjoy writing the Snarky Genius Detective whether male or female; and secondly, it only just now occurs to me that in THE UNKNOWN just as in RUSE, the assistant actually knows more about the truth of the case than the detective s/he's assisting. Huh.

BF: Tell us a bit about Catherine Allingham as a character. She's brilliant, obviously; but why is she so intensely skeptical? Did she have experiences early on that caused her to take that view of the world?

MW: I don't think she had an Origin Moment, per se. It's not like she was bitten by a radioactive atheist when she was a teenager. She just, like me, rolls her eyes at anything science obviously contradicts. Like me, Catherine's only true faith is in logic, and her biggest appetite is for finding out How Things Work.

BF: Before starting this investigation, what was Catherine's best guess about what lies after death? Why was she convinced that there's any mystery to uncover at all, rather than simply... nothing?
 
MW: Because she's got six months to live. Because she NEEDS for there to be some answer to the mystery of death, something that extends beyond it, because if we really are all just bags of chemicals that terminate like dead batteries, then there isn't a container in the universe large enough at the rage she feels for having her life capriciously shortened by fate.

BF: Is she afraid of dying?

MW: She would never use those words.  But, yeah. It's her second-greatest fear. Her first-greatest fear, which we'll touch on, has to do with something she failed to tell Doyle in issue one about her condition, something that's not been expressly said yet but which should, in retrospect, be painfully obvious to careful readers.

BF: A detective's most powerful tool is their brain, and hers currently has a tumor. Can she really continue to be effective at her job if she can't even trust her senses anymore?
 
MW: Not without an assistant, she can't. Not without a reliable pair of eyes. Which is why she needed someone at her side in whom she could have total and utter faith to always be honest with her. Boy, she chose poorly.

BF: Did the series go through some rewrites? I think I remember reading an early interview where Doyle was supposed to have been an aspiring detective who competed for the job among many other candidates, rather than a bouncer she met by chance.

MW: You remember correctly. Before I sat down to write issue one, I was talking with a good friend of mine, Eric Calderon--producer of the AFRO SAMURAI animated series and a smart writer--and he made the excellent point that I get more out of the Doyle/Catherine relationship by accentuating their differences rather than their similarities.

That made me realize that the dynamic is much more electric if Doyle's background and skills compliment Catherine's, and they do; Catherine understands facts but she's a terrible people person, whereas Doyle became in that first actual script someone who's not supernaturally observant when it comes to material clues but has an incredible knack for reading people.

BF: Since Catherine only has six months to live, how are you handling the passage of time in these series?
 
MW: That was the biggest hurdle in coming up with a sequel. What would the timeframe be now? Would she have FIVE months to live? Four?

Ultimately, I elected to start Series Two with these words:  "One year later."

BF: What's it been like working with Minck Oosterveer on this?

MW: Like finding a brother. Like stumbling across someone who immediately ranks alongside Barry Kitson, Paul Azaceta, Humberto Ramos or Andy Kubert in terms of partners I'm simpatico with. I'm not letting this guy get away.

BF: THE UNKNOWN VOLUME 1 HC will be out soon. What kinds of bonus materials does it have?
 
MW: We're going to have some unpublished Minck Oosterveer sketches and a gallery of all the great covers that we had for the book.

THE UNKNOWN: THE DEVIL MADE FLESH #1 and THE UNKNOWN VOLUME 1 HC will be in stores September 30th.