Broken Frontier

The names of Ian Culbard, Nick Plumber, Adam Adamowicz, Andrew Krahnke, Jacob Chabot and Rafael Silveira probably don't ring a bell with you. However, on January 4, 2006, you will become a little more familiar with these six gentlemen when they make their comic book debut in Dark Horse's New Recruits anthology.

In case you don't remember, the anthology is the result of the 'New Recruits Contest' Dark Horse held from late 2003 to early 2004 in the hopes of finding new talent. And the company did. The six finalists were asked to submit original stories, tales that will find their way to a store near you early next year.

Each Thursday, we take a closer look at one of these horsemen of the future so you can get more acquainted with them. On duty today is Adam Adamowicz.

Saluting the New Recruits - Part I: Andrew Krahnke
Saluting the New Recruits - Part II: Rafael Silveira
Saluting the New Recruits - Part III: Ian Culbard
Saluting the New Recruits - Part IV: Jacob Chabot
Saluting the New Recruits - Part V: Nick Plumber

BROKEN FRONTIER: What do you do in real life?

ADAM ADAMOWICZ: I’m a conceptual artist at Bethesda Softworks.

BF: At what point did you decide to enter Dark Horse’s “New Recruits” contest?

AA: I didn’t really. I rode on the coattails of Nick, the writer, who did all of the legwork. He said, “I got in with Dark Horse.” I said “That’s nice. Show me a contract.”

BF: Did you have any experience in visual storytelling before you sent your submission of to Dark Horse?

AA: I had done some brief stints as a cover illustrator for the original Men In Black comics, before the movie, and some interior inks for David Greenberger’s Duplex Planet, published by Fantagraphics.

BF: Many of today’s current writers and artists have been die-hard fans of comics ever since they were kids. Has becoming a professional comic book creator always been a dream of yours?

AA: Absolutely. My childhood dream has been really to draw a story for Heavy Metal Magazine, which I grew up reading. In the meantime, drawing for the publisher that puts out Hellboy is well nigh incredible.

BF: If you read comics during your childhood, which books appealed to you the most, and why?

AA: European comics are so unrestrained in their stories, and art. I am a huge Moebius fan. In the seventies, American comics were Superhero stories, something that never interested me. Blasphemer!

BF: What about the current comic book landscape? What are some of your favorite reads today?

AA: 100 Bullets, anything by Mike Allred, anything by Dave McKean. Grant Morrison’s The Filth. Uh, jeez, let’s see… Alan Moore knows the score. Do you have another half an hour? Hellboy, Hellboy, Hellboy. TANK GIRL instigated a personal life philosophy about beer and barbecues.

BF: Has your perception of comics changed, both in terms of comics as a medium and how the industry works, now that you’ve got a story being published at a major company?

AA: Not necessarily because of that. In general comics are exploring areas unheard of 20 years ago.  I see a lot of really far out, avant garde styles and subject matter that I personally would like to contribute to. But I refuse to call it sequential art. Fuckin’ comics, man.

BF: Nick already explained what Pied Piper is about and that you submitted this story because you had to beat the entry deadline. What’s your take on that?

AA: I drew the story in under a month. It’s really the intro, or prologue to a vast epic Nick’s written about cranky perverted gods cavorting around in an apocalypse. Oh, and there’s paranoia about rats.

BF: Where did you get your inspiration from when conceiving Pied Piper?

AA: I read a lot of the classics, from Kerouac to Cormac McCarthy, to Cervantes. Read Don Quixote when you get a chance. He really gets the crap kicked out of him in hilarious ways. Loud music. Buckets and buckets of coffee.