Broken Frontier

Skies are turning red at the other side of the world when Platinum Studios launches Blood Nation this week, a four-issue mini series by Rob Moran, Jim Devlin and John Keane in which a vampire plague breaks out in Eastern Europe. The last line of defence? A special ops unit called the Red Death Commandos…

Rob Moran stopped by to comment on the series.

BROKEN FRONTIER: Last year saw the publication of more than a handful of vampire titles, including Blade, Impaler, Dracula vs. King Arthur and Bite Club. What differentiates Blood Nation from that pack?

ROB MORAN: Blood Nation differentiates from these other titles on many levels. I tried to steer away from traditional vampire legend and lore as much as possible.  There’s little similarity to classic movie vamps and no Dracula connection at all. In fact, I’ve come up with a whole new dark lord to lead my legion of bloodsuckers—The Khan!  After eight hundred years of frozen slumber in a tomb of ice Genghis Khan is thawed out and we discover just why the Mongol warlord was able to conquer half the known world in the 12th century. 

Due to my love of old war movies and my interest in all things Nosferatu I thought it would be uber cool to do a vampire war story and that’s what Blood Nation is. It’s like The Guns of Naverone or The Dirty Dozen with the Nazis replaced by vamps.    

BF: The premise says that the Red Death Commandos are sent to a nation in Eastern Europe filled with nothing but vampires. How come this (fictional?) country was hit the hardest by vampirism?

RM: The Eastern European country in question is not fictional at all; the land that becomes the titular Blood Nation is, in fact, Russia.  I feel strongly that when the premise of a story is based on fantasy creatures (like vampires), then I need to ground that story in the real world as much as possible - or at least, MY version of the real world – to help create a veneer of acceptable plausibility within the story.  

When the Khan awakes so does the virus in his blood; a parasitic plague sweeps across Russia - forget SARS, forget Bird Flu - this pestilence burns across the country and devours the population, turning them into vampires.  The world is faced with the Soviet Empire turned red again… red in tooth and claw.

BF: In what manner does the world at large react to this outbreak of vampirism? Seeing that the Red Death Commandos consists of white, black and Asian operatives, is the unit an international response to the threat?

RM: Blood Nation is set twenty some years from now; we enter the story after several years of war between the Red Army and the armed forces of the free world – essentially World War 3.  Stalemate now exists due largely to a piece of technology employed by the allied nations; I won’t elaborate on that here because it’s one of the great mad ideas in the book and I don’t want to spoil it. 

As for the world… China has withdrawn inside its heavily fortified borders, completely insular and tries to cope with its own outbreaks of the vampire plague; as does most of Asia.  Western Europe is a decimated wasteland due to a limited nuclear attack gone wrong.  The UK, invaded by the vampire forces, has broken off all contact with the rest of the world.  The United States, the last bastion in the battle against the Blood Nation, is supported by the remnants of a shattered U.N. and what’s left of the free world.  They maintain a brittle impasse in this coldest of cold wars… one that could be easily shattered.

Team Red Death is a multi-ethnic U.S. Military Special Forces unit and most of them are American; African-American, Asian-American and so on.  The two exceptions are Brit and an Australian both of whom have been co-opted onto the team because of their battle experience against the vamps. 

BF: Does Ethan Cutter lead the Red Death Commando based solely on tough-as-nails leadership skills?

RM: Cutter was in many ways the last choice to lead Team Red Death and in more ways the ONLY choice… not just because he’s a tough guy, battle-hardened warrior and all that but because of his experience behind the Red Curtain. 

Cutter is a bleak, moody, sarcastic character who carries a crushing weight of guilt upon his shoulders…and a few deep, dark secrets, too.  If you had to send someone to face a vampire army and save the world, though, he’s definitely the guy you would pick.

   

BF: While I can’t imagine anyone wanting to go out for beers with these vampires, are they all uber-baddies?

RM: Sorry to disillusion you Frederik, mate, but these vamps have no redeeming features; the infestation in their blood has mutated them into savage predators; and there’s none of that panty-waist, two neat little bite marks on your neck stuff, either.  These mothersuckers have mouths like sharks; filled with row upon row of large razor-sharp fangs…they don’t so much bite you as rip your throat to shreds. 

And if you did go for a beer with them they would not get a round of drinks in either…being half Scottish and half Irish that makes them real monsters in my opinion.

BF: The vampires have strange tattoos all over their faces. Did they watch a few episodes of Prison Break and feel they could do better?

RM: Nah, dude…but they are real big fans of the Miami Ink TV show! 

Seriously though, the tattoos came from my interest in body art; right through from my own piercings and ink to my fascination with the foul 19th century habit of collecting the severed tattooed heads of Maori warriors as curios and household ornaments… many of which still reside in British museums.

The facial tattoos and body piercing of the vamp soldiers were also intended to give them a tribal aspect; make them a melange of twelfth and twenty-first century warriors, which is why they carry not only AK-47s and Kalashnikovs but scimitars, daggers and the like.

   

BF: Since some of the character designs date back to 2003, I assume that this is a project that has been in your drawer for a few years now?

RM: Not so much in the drawer as in development; there was an extended period developing this book, partly by me because the script went through several rewrites until it reached a stage that satisfied both Platinum and myself. There were also phases where I could not work on Blood Nation due to demands from Platinum for me to turn my attention to other projects of mine they had.  That, plus I had to constantly take time off the book to go earn a crust.

There was a teething period, too where my editor, Lee Nordling, the artist and I sorted out the best system for producing the books; this ultimately led to me doing layouts for each issue.  These layouts varied from pretty basic thumbnails to many, many pages that could almost have been finished artwork. 

My involvement in the book has been a good deal more than just writing; I created it, wrote the full script, drew character designs, laid out each issue, designed logos and produced the cover art for the second issue.

BF: The artists on Blood Nation are Jim Devlin and John Keane. How did you hook up with them?

RM: I discovered Jim and brought him on board; I spent a long, tortuous time looking all over the world (wide web), for the right artist for Blood Nation only to uncover Jim working away in my home town of Glasgow (not that I actually live there any more).  After having young Mr. Devlin abducted and mesmerised by a crack team of Platinum brainwashing specialists he agreed to draw the book; Jim still has no memory of those two weeks and can no longer taste salt. 

Jim did some wonderful work on Blood Nation and was kind enough to give me the original art of my two favourite pages from book 1 as a wedding present when I got married in 2006. 

I have to say though that Jim was the artist on the first two books only of our four issue mini-series; due to scheduling conflicts he was not able to complete issues #3 and 4.  

Those issues have been drawn by the humongously talented Mr. John Keane and a bloody superb job he did of it, too. Lee found John at the San Diego Comic-Con dressed, I think, as Sally Field in her outfit from the Flying Nun TV show…or was that Lee?  

Well, one of them was dressed as a nun I’m sure…as I often do myself.  Who can resist the allure of the wimple?

       

I feel blessed by the dark Lovecraftian gods to have been able to work with two such gifted artists as Jim and John, and their abilities combined with my barely controlled lunacy has given birth to some very good looking comic books that are, I hope, a bloody good read. 

I need to also say that Blood Nation was shepherded through its long and tortuous path to publication by my former editor Lee Nordling and I’d like to thank him for his guidance, perseverance and patience with my hissy fits, foibles and obvious lack of sanity.

BF: Speaking of Platinum, how did the project end up at the company?

RM: I’ve been working with Platinum for about a hundred and fifty years now…no, seriously, Platinum had acquired about a dozen proposals I’d pitched to them; they seemed to like my deranged ramblings and kept asking for more. 

Blood Nation sprung from me sending them a short story idea of mine called The Last Drop of Red, which featured most of the major elements that later became Blood Nation … they loved the vamp war concept and asked me to develop it further, which I did.

       

BF: You were an artist early on in your comics career, working with notable creators such as Steve Dillon and Neil Gaiman. Why did you decide to focus on writing instead?

RM: Back in the days when dinosaurs wore diapers I did, in fact, draw comics, including a strip Neal co-created with Nigel Kitching called The Light Brigade for UK publisher Trident Comics.  I also worked for Deadline magazine, edited by Steve Dillon and Brett Ewins in which I wrote and drew a strip called Atomic Baby ; much to the bafflement of all who read it.  Steve is not only a one of the best artists in comics, but a super nice guy and Brett is a true gem of a human being, not to mention a unique and wonderful comic creator… I miss his work greatly and wish he’d come back into the biz.

My reasons for shifting from drawing to writing were twofold.

Firstly, I’ve always written, even when I was primarily an artist I also wrote, often outside the comic book arena.  I’ve written TV and film review columns for magazines, radio plays and stories, a one-hour teleplay for a UK cable TV company; I even wrote a nationally syndicated US newspaper comic strip for a short time.

I am, so I’m told, a bit of an idea-machine and come up with several new concepts for comic books/graphic novels/mini-series in a good month; usually there are at least a couple in there that are worth developing.  This being the case, and considering I was never the fastest artist in the world, I realized it made much more sense to write up this stuff and find other poor sods to draw it.

Secondly: a few years back when I moved to the deep dark countryside I had an accident that involved a quad-bike, a barbed wire fence and a large quantity of alcohol; this left me with some tendon damage to my right hand that even to this day causes me pain when I spend too many hours at the drawing board.

I still intend to draw some of my own books and have a secret project or two that I work on sporadically in what little spare time I have…which the world at large will get to see at some point. 

       

In the meantime, writing is my primary function and boy-howdy do I have some twisted, strange and beautiful stories ready to inflict on you people…several of which are being drawn by the aforementioned John Keane.  Poor John; he should never have signed that contract giving me possession of his soul.

More info on Blood Nation, Rob Moran, and some of his art and paintings can be found at the following places:

http://www.myspace.com/voodoovision
http://www.comicspace.com/robmoran
http://www.bloodnation.com
http://www.myspace.com/bloodnationhome