Broken Frontier

Brian Reed, writer of New Avengers: Illuminati and Red Sonja, launches his first creator-owned book out of Image this month and stops by to hype the project.

Broken Frontier: What's the concept of The Circle?

Brian Reed: As the opening of every issue says "Forged in the fires of war, the underground mercenary group known as The Circle is the last hope for those who need to accomplish the impossible."  

BF: What kind of tone can we expect from the series?

BR: It’s some pretty serious action/adventure. We’re inspired by things like the original Mission: Impossible TV series or Ian Fleming’s James Bond  novels that were more about the espionage and not the silly gadgets of the films.   

BF: Can you talk a little bit about the team dynamic?

BR : The Circle is a group that formed to fight in the Resnigovian civil wars  of the late 1990s. They ended up on the losing side of that fight, with the dictator General Abron Radkovic gaining control of the country. Since then, The Circle have been on the run, working mercenary jobs around the globe with a staff of international team members.

As the series opens, the CIA has tried to assassinate The Circle’s leaders (and failed), causing The Circle to go to ground. They’re pulled back into action when the same CIA agent that tried killing them off the first time comes back for another round. 

BF: Who do you think the target audience is for this book?

BR : Anyone who would go see a character-driven action/adventur e film should find a lot to enjoy in this book. We're constantly going back through scripts and art and dialogue and pumping it up, making the page turns a little more exciting, giving the characters a bit more depth, and generally trying to get as much entertainment on the page as possible.  

BF: The Circle is your first created owned book. How has that been different from writing Marvel characters or Red Sonja?

BR : With an established property there's a squad of people there to make sure you're not coloring too far outside of the lines, but with a creator-owned book you're completely on your own and free to do whatever strikes your fancy. That is equal parts as liberating and as scary as it sounds.

BF: This is also your first book for Image. What's your relationship with the company been like so far?

BR: It has been great. When we were first discussing taking The Circle to publishers, I talked to Jonathan Luna about his experiences with Image and he had nothing but positive things to say. They've been great with picking up the book and just letting us do our thing. 

BF: You collaborated with Ian Hosfeld, the series' artist, before while working on the Ultimate Spider-Man video game. What's it been like teaming up with him again?

BR: Ian and I really got in a groove on the USM game, and that working relationship carried over into comics pretty much seamlessly. The Circle is just as much his baby as it is mine, and we both do a great job of keeping the other one honest. Neither one of us lets the other one get away with anything half-assed, and we're constantly calling one another out, and making things better as a result. I'm incredibly proud of what we've accomplished, and I'm having a blast working with Ian.

BF: Has your experience writing video games helped you work with such an action-packed concept?

BR: Everything you write teaches you something, and the game work has certainly helped the comics work and vice versa. But you don't get to write a lot of action in games since you want the Player to control the action.

BF: You've said previously that The Circle started out as a web comic. At what point did you decide to make it a monthly and for what reason? What untapped niche do you think The Circle will fill?

BR: When we first started talking about The Circle, I hadn't yet written Spider-Woman: Origin. We had this idea, and in our off hours we'd kind of poke at it, but it was really more of a hobby than a serious goal. 

We were discussing our day job schedules at the time and realizing that putting out a full comic on top of that was not going to fly, so the idea sprouted that maybe we'd do a page a week as a web comic. This was inspired somewhat by Modesty Blaise, which was a long-running action/adventure newspaper strip, and we thought we might bring that idea into the web comic era. But the story we wanted to tell, and the pacing we wanted to keep throughout, wasn't lending itself to the format. Once we were both full time freelance, and I had a comics writing career, we revived the idea and decided the full comic pitch was the way to go. 

As for what niche we're looking to fill, I think we're covering the espionage action/adventure genre that gets strangely ignored in comics. Queen and Country is very serious and has a very real bent, Casanova is goofy insane fun in a pop culture mosh pit, but we're shooting to be that big action adventure story right in the middle of the spectrum defined by those two books.  

The Circle #1 is on sale this week from Image Comics priced $2.99.