Broken Frontier

With this past Wednesday’s release of The Killer #1, Archaia Studios Press has officially brought Matz and Luc Jacamon’s European comic Le Tueur to the US market. The series saw five episodes released in French and has since been translated in five other languages. Now, you can add a sixth to that list, as Archaia will break down each edition of Le Tueur in two parts, with new issues released on a bi-monthly schedule.

BF spoke to writer Matz to give you the lowdown on the series. Get ready to enter the mind of an assassin…

BROKEN FRONTIER: Since having one of your projects translated on the US market is a new thing to you and the US reading public, please introduce yourself to an audience not familiar with the name Matz…

MATZ: I’ve been doing comics in France for quite some time, under the pseudonym of Matz. My first book was published in 1990, and Cyclopes #2, which was just released, is my 15th. I did a three-book series with Colin Wilson, which would probably be called “Headshot” if it was ever released in the States. I’ve recently started another series called Shandy, which has an Englishman for a hero and is set at the beginning of the 1900s at wartime under Napoleon; it’s doing very good.

I also published a novel in 1993, that one under my real name, and my day job is to work on scripts for videogames. I also co-wrote a short movie and did some obscure work for TV, which I will not name under torture (thank God I used another pseudonym).

I am interested in all kinds of storytelling and all sorts of writing. I have a special fondness for novels as a reader, but as a writer, I have developed a great love for comics. It’s free, it’s fast, it’s fun, it allows many interesting things, there is no limit to what you can do, and the visual aspect of it is a real challenge.

BF: How excited are you about Le Tueur/The Killer being offered on the US market?

MATZ: I am extremely excited about it. Actually, this is something I have been expecting for a long time. I always hoped it would happen someday. I always believed The Killer could work in the US. I’m a big fan of American literature and movies, I often travel to the USA, and I’m quite fond of it, so it’s great for me that this happens now, at a time when I pretty much thought it would never happen.

The Killer has already been translated in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, and Dutch. There should be a Chinese version soon too. I just love for the books to be translated everywhere, and reach out to a much larger audience.  Not having a US version was very disappointing to me.

So, I’m looking forward to it. I hope it does well and that people in the USA read it and like it. And that I will get a few copies!

BF: Once Archaia Studios Press had shown interest in adapting the book, how did the deal evolve from there?

MATZ: That’s something that was directly handled by my publisher in France, Casterman, and Archaia. I was just notified that it was going to happen. That’s the way it happens, with the contracts we have with the publisher over here in France.

BF: As a French author, are you familiar with anything that is going on in the US comic book industry?

MATZ: American comics are pretty popular in France. Sin City is a big favorite here, and I also love 100 Bullets, and Point Blank. I was very proud to do a three book series with Colin Wilson after he had done Point Blank. I have to confess I am not a big superheroes fan, and I don’t read too much of those. My son loves Superman, so I am more interested now and I’m looking into it a little bit, but that’s not what I usually go to. 

BF: From your point of view, what are some of the most important differences between US and European comics storytelling?

MATZ: American comics seem to be going much faster than European ones. They are probably a little bit more efficient, but at the same time, Europeans go into all sorts of directions, there is more variety. It seems the size also has an impact on the storytelling. The size of the pages, as well as the number of them—we have more frames per page over here in Europe, you probably have more pages in the US overall, and you put out bigger chunks at a time than we can ever dream of doing. American artists draw much faster than Europeans, turning in pages almost every day…

Also, the way it’s done seems pretty different: when you look at American comics, you have a whole list of credits. The books I have worked on, I do the story, the artist draws every step of the way, pencil, ink, color (sometimes we hire someone for color but not for The Killer , for instance). So it’s slower, less specialized.

The bottom line is: there are very good things on both sides of the Ocean, and very bad ones too. And I’d like to give a try on an American published series one day.

BF: As you said, comics and bandes dessinées (BD) are different if only for their format. Archaia has opted to reduce the format of The Killer to the US ‘pamphlet’ size. How happy are you about that? And do you feel it takes anything away from the reading experience overall?

MATZ: I am curious to see how it works. Overall, I think it should work. Basically, if I understood correctly, each release will be the equivalent to half a book in its French version. Of course, if I had known that from the start, I would probably have done things slightly differently, maybe working in some transitions or cliff-hangers at the junctions, but overall, it should be okay.

The concept has always been that if you read The Killer all at once, you will be provided with an intense experience that should feel about the same as reading a novel, or maybe seeing a movie. I hope it translates well and people get that.

BF: So do I! Let’s zoom in on the story itself. The first instalment immediately gives away that, for a story about a hired assassin, there is very little violence to be seen. What we get instead is an examination of the killer’s psyche. What made this approach an interesting one for you?

MATZ: What goes on in the mind of a man who is a contract killer? This is what these books are trying to look at. To me, that’s more interesting than the violence itself. In the books, there are outbursts of violence, and then long quiet moments. These are both very important, because to me, the violence lies elsewhere. It’s in what the Killer says, in how he sees the world. And what is scary about it is that there is a lot of truth to what he says and thinks.

A killer is a perfect character to articulate such a vision of the world. He can talk about society, justice, history, economy, and propose a fresh angle on things. And he can be making a lot of sense. Some say my Killer is a cynic, a pessimist, politically incorrect; I’d say he is all that, but the overall purpose of the series is humanist. And I always remember Ambrose Bierce’s line: a cynic is someone who sees the world as it is and not how it should be. This is what is going on here: trying to see the world as it is. Get rid of all the political correctness, clichés, empty ideas, and deal with it.

BF: The nameless killer is a fairly educated fellow: he attended law school as an adolescent and slowly rolled into the life he leads now. While he may be merciless, he ‘justifies’ his actions by referring to the hypocrisy on which our Western society is founded. Does the layer of social commentary reflect your own point of view?

MATZ: Of course, I fed some of my own ideas or reflections or ideas I may have played with to my Killer. But it’s not all mine. At some point, the whole idea was to create a character and give him as much consistency as possible. So, I would try and put myself in his place and see what he could be thinking—which would not be what I am thinking necessarily.

I don’t know any killers in real life. To me, most of the time, he has a biased way of thinking. Some of the things he says are true, some are twisted. Some ideas make sense, others are crazy. That’s the whole fun of it. He is an educated fellow, he is well read. He is somewhat sophisticated, which allows him to make sophisticated references and grow original ideas.

BF: Your protagonist is also an einzelgänger. At some point, he even expresses that he feels that the only people he truly knows are the ones he’s killed. Was making him a loner a key to make him a realistic assassin as well?

MATZ: Absolutely. Besides, his loneliness is a core element of the whole series. He suffers from it. Part of his journey is going to be to get away from that loneliness, as it may very well kill him. But when you do what he does, having people close could be dangerous too. He is aware of it, but he is going to take the risk.

BF: The series has garnered a lot of acclaim in Europe. What are some of the most notable prizes artist Luc Jacamon and yourself were awarded?

MATZ: Actually, we never won anything major. I was told we had once won a major one, but then were dismissed from it for political incorrectness. I was okay with not getting the award, but I wish they’d still given us the prize money. The Killer’s popularity started with word of mouth, and it is now considered “cult” over here in France… Maybe someday we will get an award, but as our publisher put it, it’s better have the sales we have and not win awards than the other way around. I agree.

BF: That’s one way to look at it. Jacamon’s style is very clean, not too cartoony, but not wholly realistic either, and he seems to prefer drawing big panels. Since you know it better, how would you describe his style?

MATZ: Jacamon’s style was exactly what I was looking for when I first wrote The Killer and was looking for an artist. I didn’t want something too classic, what we call in French “Ligne Claire” (roughly, like Tintin, very crisp, very clean), but I didn’t want something too “artsy” either. I like it when you actually recognize your character from one page to the next. And Jacamon’s style was exactly that: in-between the two, consistently. I think it helped the series a whole lot. It’s original, but it doesn’t go out of its way to look purposely original. It’s just its own style, and it matches the script pretty well.

BF: Together with Jacamon, you’re currently working on a series entitled Cyclopes, a totally different concept than The Killer, since it’s a sci-fi story set in the year 2055. What is the story about?

MATZ: Cyclopes is rather different from The Killer , even though I believe some of the themes, even though disguised, are a lot similar. Cyclopes takes place in a near future, 50 years from now. The UN is overwhelmed with wars and crises, and it doesn’t have the means to sustain enough forces to deal with all the situations in the world.

Therefore, the UN decides to privatize its military interventions and to have private contractors handle them. Our hero, Douglas, who is Italian by his mother and American by his dad, lives in Italy where he is unemployed, has a young wife. He is getting desperate. A security company, that happens to be the first one to get a contract from the UN, hires him. Douglas becomes a mercenary, for the good guys. But are they really the good guys?

The company he works for has its soldiers film the operations they are involved in and sells the images to TV networks, for live broadcasting.  That’s why they are called Cyclopes: because of the tiny camera they have in the middle of their headgear. Douglas does well, he becomes a good soldier and a big TV star, thanks to some heroic actions that make him popular overnight. But Douglas is manipulated, and even though he has decided to go along with whatever happens, it’s getting out of hand. From unknown to soldier to star to rebel.

The Killer #1 is on sale now from Archaia Studios Press. For a preview of the issue, click here.