Broken Frontier

Our talk with Alex Grecian concludes with the fans and future of Proof as well as an annoucement.  You can read the first part, here; and the second installment entitled Establishing Proof, here.

BROKEN FRONTIER: The second trade is in stores now. What is the story told in this volume?

ALEX GRECIAN: In "The Company of Men" Proof is lured to The Congo to try to save a baby dinosaur from being killed and eaten by a bizarre big-game hunter who specializes in cryptids. What he doesn’t know is that it’s a trap. The hunter really wants to taste some Sasquatch burger. "Proof: Volume Two" collects issues six through nine and includes the full script for issue nine and a paper doll section at the back.

I was inspired by two things with this book. Riley sent me a painting he’d done (which we included on the back cover of the trade) of a dinosaur in a martini glass. For some reason, that reminded me of the movie The Freshman, which is about a club that serves endangered species to its guests. I’ve always loved that film and the idea of taking that idea one step further excited me so much that we pushed our second arc back so we could do this story first. "Thunderbirds Are Go!" was originally going to be our second arc and if you look, you may be able to see that Riley’s style evolved a bit between the first six pages of issue 10 (which he drew before starting issue six) and page seven of that same issue. It was a weird juggling act, but we ended up being very happy with that arc.

BF: I know with the first volume there was some "cleaning up" of the story. Would you like to talk about why you felt the need to do this? Is this true of this new volume?

AG: I don’t know if I cleaned up the story, per se. Aside from some color corrections, very little changed. But I originally structured the main story and the backup stories to fit a monthly comic book and that wasn’t going to work well for the trade. It would’ve been a choppy read. So I moved the backup stories around and nested them within the main story so that new readers would have a smoother experience. The first trade’s just more linear than the original issues were.

I didn’t have to do anything all that complicated with the second trade because we didn’t have backup stories for that arc. I did eliminate the last page of issue nine, but only because it fed directly into issue 10 and was initially there to tease the next issue. I may go ahead and include it in the next trade. It’s very pretty. Riley did a great job with it and it should be seen again.

BF: The Thunderbirds arc is now coming to a close and things have gotten deadly for some agents. Are there any more deaths in the future? (Not Elvis, I really like him, he has to get things going with Ginger, so he’s safe right?) Was agent Smith merely a red shirt? Was there something else going on there? I know there is a following for the character online, any chance we will get some background on him in the future?

AG:I’m guessing you’re an Elvis fan? J

I’ve been saying that "Thunderbirds Are Go!" ends the first act of the three-act Proof saga. So now that we’ve established the characters and their relationships to each other, absolutely yes, there will be many more deaths. That’s really the beauty of doing a creator-owned series. We don’t have a franchise that needs to continue for the next 60 years. We have a five-year arc for this entire series. Proof’s on a journey of discovery and once he finishes that, we can end this book if we want to. And part of that journey is going to include the loss of people close to him.

There are definitely fan-favorite characters who are going to die, but Riley and I have known that they’re going to die from the beginning, so they’re on their own little journeys. I promise that their deaths will seem inevitable and even satisfying by the time they happen.

Agent Smith is another story, though. I think I called him "Harold" in the script. I often give people "placeholder names" in my scripts and then worry about what they should actually be called when I’m at the lettering stage (which I consider my final draft). Between writing and lettering that issue, I decided that one of our ProofReaders had really gone above and beyond… Michael J. Smith was posting about Proof all over the Internet. He’d taken over the Proof MySpace page and started a Proof website. He’d really done a lot to pull in new readers and Riley and I really appreciated his efforts. So I named this doomed minor character after him.

That became a bigger deal than I’d intended. And it got bigger yet… I needed to cap off the arc by having all the agents gather at The Lodge to wrap things up and launch the next arc. It seemed logical to set that story at Agent Smith’s funeral. And if we were going to have a funeral for a fan in the pages of Proof, we decided we had to have some of our other outspoken readers show up, so we sent out invitations. Happily everybody agreed to participate and issue #16 turned into a really fun issue. Of course, it’s also new-reader-friendly, but we were pleased to be able to thank the people who’ve been supporting the book. Even if someone isn’t in the issue (we couldn’t include everyone who reads Proof), this was our way of letting ProofReaders know how much we appreciate them all.

BF: Speaking of Agent Smith and his following online… You guys have made quite a little community on the Image Message Boards. It must be reassuring to have such a great fanbase. It seems to me that it is one of the more active forums on the board. As active as some of the bigger names. Do you think that is true? Why do you think your fans are so active and enthusiastic about the book?

AG: I know this sounds trite, but without a readership there wouldn’t be a book. We don’t do anything just because we think the readership will respond to it and we don’t shy away from doing things that may upset the readership, but we really do appreciate that there are people out there willing to trust us every month. We have a story to tell and we’re incredibly grateful that there are people who want to read that story.

So, yeah, I set out specifically to make that board a good place for people to hang out and talk about the book, or whatever else they wanted to talk about. The Proof board was a perk that came with having an Image book and there didn’t seem to be any point in letting it just sit there. I check the board multiple times each day (usually when I’m stuck writing a scene or bored lettering a page) and I’m always happy to see people showing up and talking to each other. I jump in whenever I feel like participating, but I definitely keep an eye on what’s going on with our core fanbase.

And I think maybe that’s a part of why ProofReaders go there. It’s kind of replaced the letters column (even though Proof does run a letters column) in that it’s a place for readers to weigh in and be heard. It’s a community of people who have something in common and whatever they have to say will be read by Riley and me.

BF: I understand there is a little contest going on. I think it has something to do with promoting the book, would you like to touch on that? What are the prizes?

AG: Oy! I announced a contest a while back, but then got too busy to follow up on it. The next arc is called "Julia" (have I mentioned that?) and involves a number of circus performers and human abnormalities. The idea is that… if someone can do something that isn’t annoying or illegal but does demonstrate their love of the book and it helps Proof get a little attention, we’ll make that person a character in the arc and give him or her a page of original art. Not a cameo, not just their name or likeness… That person will be a significant character in Proof. If it’s a tie, they’ll be conjoined twins. (Of course, there’s plenty of legal mumbo-jumbo that goes along with this, but that’s the gist of it all.)

Personally, having a cameo in a comic seems like it might be fun, but becoming a character in a comic is probably the coolest prize I could think of.

We still plan to follow through with this, I just haven’t had a chance to write a press release and get it out there.

So if you love Proof, you could be a part of the book!

BF: Alrighty, I’m no dummy. Julia. When does it start? Do you have a spoiler-free teaser?

AG: Issues 16 and 17 are largely stand-alone stories that wrap up some bits of continuity and introduce other bits. They’re the coda to "Act One." We’ve tried hard to make them new-reader-friendly and bring folks up to speed on the story so far, but issue 18 begins "Act Two" and is an absolutely perfect spot to jump on the book. It starts a brand new arc, that’s not continuity-heavy, called "Julia."

A Lodge agent recently discovered the body of Proof’s long-lost love in the basement of a museum in Oslo, Norway. Proof and his partner Ginger Brown will be flying there to bring Julia home for a proper burial. That’s the framing story and we’re going to be flashing back in time to see how the romance between Proof and Julia blossomed in Victorian England and what eventually happened to her. We’ll also be dealing with the most famous cryptid of that time-period: Springheeled Jack. We’ve got Proof in a top hat and gloves, riding around in hansom cabs and we’ve got steam-powered androids, circus freaks and a very cool Scotland Yard inspector whom I’ve been itching to introduce.

Riley’s covers and sketches so far are amazing and we couldn’t be more excited to tell this story. Proof’s past is a big part of what separates this book from all the others on the racks and we’re finally showcasing that in a big way.

Proof Book 2: The Company of Men is available from Image Comics priced $12.99