Broken Frontier

With 80+ pages of story on DC's Zuda webcomics site Road has proved a real hit with readers. As part of Broken Frontier's Inside Look series Road creators Eddie Sharam and Jamie Woodhead give BF a three-part "creator's commentary" on the strip this week. Check back tomorrow for the final installment of this exclusive behind-the-scenes analysis... 

Read Part One

Series Premise

Felix is a 'Pilgrim of the Road'. In this world there is one road grander than all others and it runs possibly forever in length. No one knows if the Earth is no longer a sphere, or if it has just increased massively in size. All that is known is that there is a road with populated cities and settlements along it that you can travel down your whole life and it will never end or repeat. Once there was no road like this and the world was a nice manageable place.

The Pilgrims of the Road are a group devoted to finding the Source or Terminus of the Road, and they travel down the Road for their entire lives. When they die, each Pilgrim passes the task on to one of their sons or daughters and then they travel the Road. Chosen Pilgrim families have the knowledge of their ancestors stored in an AI implanted into their skulls. These are ancient artifacts passed through the generations, designed to accumulate knowledge of the Road and aid the current Pilgrim's progress by supplying information from past experiences.

We join Felix as he's readying to leave a city to join the Road again, but this time he's cutting all ties with the Pilgrims. He is one of the Chosen with an AI in his forehead. The Pilgrims are unlikely to let him leave freely without his obedience to their cause assured. Felix is on the run from his fellow Pilgrims and assorted city low-lives while trying to get out of the city and further down the Road.

Page 33

Ever gambled and lost? Well, here's where Felix has definitely lost. Captured by his former Pilgrim Sister allies in the heart of the Orphan base, surrounded by enemies with no allies in sight, he's not doing so well.

Road is almost entirely written and drawn in the evenings and into the small hours of the morning. In the quiet night, there's less distractions and it's easier to get totally lost in creating the Road world. Maybe hopeless situations like this one are easier to imagine too.

Themes of discovery versus blind loyalty and obedience are central conflicts throughout Road. Catalyst characters like Felix and Galen are interesting as they try and push the boundaries of what's accepted as unchallengeable facts.

Page 38

Kyde; too crazy to die, too extreme to live. It'll take more than an exploding building to spoil his day. Sometimes it would be nice to take the time out to maybe have more panels of wanton carnage. Like some of the sections of the Akira graphic novel where there is just page after page of meticulously rendered destruction. Sadly, there wouldn’t be much room left for plot.

Kyde has a good story which we're itching to tell. I don’t want to spoil it, so I’ll say no more.

Page 46

A fun page. The Pilgrims versus the Orphans; only one group will walk away from this. All the posturing is over and it's down and dirty, fight for your life stuff. We debated how exactly to show this big battle and in the end a big splash page seemed best. This is the only splash page in Road so far. I thought it would be quicker to draw than a regular page, but that proved not to be the case at all! There are so many characters in there.

Page 50

Is a fairly important one in terms of plot, as it is the first time the reader is shown the Dark Arms' power, which becomes important to the story later on. It was also a good chance to show the Pilgrim Sisters and the Orphan Elite having a showdown to see who was more badass. It looks like the Elite are winning. Miah's story thread has also branched off from Felix by this point and she gives the reader another perspective on the events that are unfolding as the Orphans attack the Pilgrim Chapterhouse.

We are not religious and didn’t really have the intention at the start to necessarily make the Pilgrims, Sisterhood and other factions out to be overtly religious at all. But as the planning for Road took shape, it just seemed to naturally fall into place. It seemed obvious that if such a strange event took place like that which created the Road, then a new religion would also emerge to try and make sense of it. The terminology and hierarchies were ready made for us to use and didn’t require any explaining to the reader.

There were originally many more factions in the story, but for clarity and sanity we decided to focus on the Pilgrims, Orphans and Sisterhood just to give a taste of the sectarian nature of the Road universe.

Page 55

This is where Felix and Kyde both prepare to steal data from the AI artifacts of other people. By having the two situations occur in parallel and using the same dialogue in the last panel, we thought it would help show the importance of what they were about to do and how deeply it would affect them both. It also ties Felix and Kyde's fates together. The two have never met, but one day….

Check out Road at the Zuda website here. To be continued tomorrow...