Broken Frontier

Fans of Doctor Who will be well aware of writer Tony Lee’s recent work on the critically-acclaimed Doctor Who: The Forgotten from IDW. In a couple of months, though, they will also have the chance to check out the trade collection of his Markosia limited series Hope Falls (Diamond code MAR094036: HOPE FALLS) – a supernatural thriller illustrated by frequent collaborator Dan Boultwood. Tony provided Broken Frontier with this exclusive "writer’s commentary"to pique your interest...

Hope Falls started its life as a five part series called …Of Vengeance in 2006. The original setting was a Western, High Plains Drifter with a female in the role, but after a while I found I just couldn’t make it work. I was stuck, with writer’s block. It was my friend and housemate Craig Andrews who suggested bringing it up to date, to effectively make it The Crow meets Twin Peaks, and from that moment, the book was there, complete, in my head. But over the months we spent working on the first version, the artist (the incredibly cool and talented Rantz Hoseley) had other commitments hitting him, had to drop off the project – and with no artist or publisher, the book was shelved.

In 2007 though, a passing conversation with long time friend and collaborator on several projects Dan Boultwood ended with Dan throwing his hat into the ring. He was aware that he’d be radically changing his art style for the book, now called Hope Falls after a passing comment by Larry Young about the name of the town. Harry Markos of Markosia agreed to print it after seeing Dan’s concept art. And Szymon Kudranski came on board to paint some of the most amazing covers in the world. We had a book, suddenly. The story of Helen Gane, a small town waitress who returns to the town she was murdered in, twenty years earlier, not looking a day older – and looking for vengeance for the three men (Treadwell, Martin and Edmeir) involved in her death, and the fourth man (McClusky) who violated and killed her.

And in May, it’s released as a collected trade, with an introduction by comics celebrity chum Ben Templesmith, Diamond code MAR094036: HOPE FALLS. And the nice guys at Broken Frontier thought it’d be nice to go through the first of the five original issues, ‘Homecoming’, and give an idea of what was going through my mind when I wrote it…

COVER

We were lucky enough to have Szymon Kudranski painting our covers, and I really think it added something to the book – I lost count of the amount of people who picked up the book purely because the sight of an Angel, her wings blazing, storming through a graveyard caught their eye.

All five covers were incredible, and each one got better.

Page 1

Welcome to Hope Falls. It’s a standard build up, but I wanted to start showing some of the four men involved in her death. I wanted to start each issue with a one page ‘prologue’ so to speak, a flashback to that night, twenty years earlier where we see the younger versions of the four men she meets – but with the first issue I wanted to build up to that, and so I started with a fictitious tourist brochure for this Nebraskan mining town. But, during this you see Treadwell’s ‘Vote for me’ poster, you see Martin outside his Sheriff’s office and you see McClusky’s mill. Of the four, only Edmier is missing, and you just know he’s turning up soon, as we see the silhouette of Helen walking over a rise…

Page 3

Welcome to Marie’s Diner, where Helen used to work, two decades ago. I wanted to have all the flashback scenes in sepia, so that you could see that they were, well, flashbacks – and Dan did an incredible job of ensuring that even the most cosmetic of changes was there. One thing we were going to do was put movie titles on the cinema to the side, to show that this was back then – we had PALE RIDER as the eighties movie, which was rather apt – but then we realised that this dated the book, whereas without that, we didn’t have a set timeline, it was linear.

I also wanted her to be simply a customer at this point – almost as if she’s settling back into a role that she hasn’t played for many years, remembering from the other side the conversations that she had with customers when she was the waitress.

Page 6

Helen finds Edmeir. He’s the editor of the local paper, and again we have a sepia flashback to show him. This is also the first time that anything that isn’t of the norm happens. Helen had the flashbacks on page 3 and 5, but this is the first real time that you see something more behind the eyes. And you can see that she’s angry, by the burned hole in the paper at the end as she leaves. But how did she do this? This is the first clue that she’s more than she says she is. I wanted Edmeir to be the one of the four that she couldn’t kill, the one who actually regretted what had happened, but even I didn’t expect what happened to him until I was writing issue #4.

Did he live? Buy the book to find out…

Page 8

And another stranger arrives at Hope Falls – the enigmatic Michael. And this time it’s pretty clear that he’s got powers right from the start – because he can dry himself out and groom himself in a second. Yet I still don’t say what or who he is just yet, as it gives away what Helen is – although to be honest, you already know. I wanted Michael to be a foil to Helen, someone to try to stop her – but in earlier drafts he actively assists her from the start. I think the final version of Michael, the devil’s advocate, the man who stands futilely going ‘are you sure about this’ works. But does he stay that way? Does anything truly stay in one particular way?

I also originally saw him as a George Clooney-esque character and even toyed with the idea that Michael and Helen had been lovers up in the clouds, but in the end, Dan took the designs and made them his own. The white hair unnaturally ages him before his years, and he could pass from anything between forty to sixty. And, as he’s an ageless Angel – that’s kind of apt.

Page 11

It’s Treadwell’s re-election speech as he’s stumping for votes - we’ve already had a page of Treadwell telling the town what he stands for by this point, interspersed with flashbacks where Helen remembers Treadwell as a teenager. And suddenly, in mid sentence – he sees her. Standing. In the crowd. I wanted to have Treadwell to be the one seeing her, and I wanted him to have had a drinking problem, as I wanted his ‘vision’ to be ignored as fanciful ramblings. But it was Rantz Hoseley who came up with the manner of Helen’s revenge later in the story, stemming directly from this addiction, which caused me to rewrite chunks of #1 to solidify his illness. I particularly love Dan’s colours here, where he fades out everyone bar Helen. It’s subtle and yet so well played. Is this Treadwell’s view? Or is it Helen, making sure he sees her?

Pages 12-13

The first meeting between Helen and Michael. Or should I say reunion… It’s here where you finally see the reasons for why she’s here – and the reasons why Michael will do anything to stop her.

The Diner is a location that I wanted to use in each episode, almost as if Michael can’t leave – but as the story goes on, I found he started to take up more and more of the tale and had to be in other locations, and so I let him leave. This scene also has one of my favourite parts of the entire book in it – the ‘Then I’ll take a book’ line. It shows that Helen really doesn’t care what happens to her – she’s all about the revenge now.

A two page scene of talking heads really isn’t that interesting, but it was one of those pivotal moments that had to be in the first issue, and Dan really knocked it out of the park. At no point during these panels do you feel as if it’s the same old thing. Using colours and angles, he adds tension to a scene in places I hadn’t even considered – and made me look good by default!

Page 18

After visiting her one time home, Helen is mugged and, after fighting back, shot in the head by two hoodlums. Here we have them arguing as the sun goes down about what to do – while the obviously dead Helen rises, scares them off and then cures her wound. If the reader hadn’t worked out that there was something special about her by now? This would be the point where they do. And of course there’s a great ‘healing’ effect by Dan, as Helen decides that there’s been enough playing about, it’s now time to go play with the big boys.

This was mainly done as I realised that a whole comic of Helen wandering around was a little, well, dull. And I wrote the two page ‘mugging’ to add spice. But when it was finished I almost removed it, because with the art and letters added in, the issue was far more than I’d actually expected, and Helen doesn’t really use moves like this again. But I kept it in as it really does show her mindset, as well as her abilities.

Pages 20-21

The meeting between Helen and her killer, McClusky. I wanted her to spend the first issue getting her bearings, building up to this moment. After all, it’s no easy thing to face your killer. And McClusky, who’s believed that Treadwell’s vision was booze related, is now faced with the very woman he murdered all those years ago. And is left alone, confused and lost. He turns to the things that he knows – a gun, for example. And she knocks him back without a second glance.

McClusky was always going to be the endgame, but as he was the catalyst for the whole thing, I wanted a starting scene, one where the cards were laid on the table. By the end of the issue, there’s no doubt in the reader’s mind exactly what’s going to happen here. And I don’t think anyone wants to be in McClusky’s shoes – and again, I wanted him in this mindset in the beginning – begging, desperate – because it’s such a contradiction to the McClusky you see at the end of the story.

I wanted the first issue to be a gradual build up, because I knew that if I leapt straight in with Angelic conspiracies and the bloodline of Christ and Voodoo priests and McClusky’s religious father etc etc it would all get confusing. I needed to lay the groundwork first. And by the end of the issue, we have all the pieces in place, and the game can begin. And as ever, there is only one winner. But is it who you think? Probably not. But if you want to find out, then please, go to your comic store right now and order a copy to read. You really won’t be disappointed. And feel free to suggest that they order one for the shelf, too…

Hope Falls comes out in May and is currently solicited in the March Previews: MAR094036: HOPE FALLS.