Broken Frontier

This fall, the search for the root of evil unfolds deep within the hidden recesses of the human brain, in Archaia Comics’ original graphic novel Syndrome. The brainchild of director/ writer Blake Leibel, Syndrome examines the possibility that “evil” is hardwired into the brain and as such is a treatable condition like any other disease or illness.

Broken Frontier spoke with Syndrome’s writing team of Daniel Quantz and R.J. Ryan about some of the challenges of researching and producing an OGN in which the lines between good and evil are so transparent. There are no clear-cut heroes or villains in this story – but there is evil and plenty of it…

BROKEN FRONTIER: Syndrome has at its core a fairly lofty story premise: a theory that the root of evil lies deep within the human brain. Are we speaking physiologically or psychologically? Or both?
 
DANIEL QUANTZ:  We are taking the notion of “evil” as a description of behavior, and aren’t trying to suggest that we know what motivates it. Instead, we take it on from the point of view of a neurobiologist working at the absolute vanguard of scientific research and then going a few steps further. He is arrogant enough to think that “evil” is something he can treat. So for him, it is physiological and not psychological, and it may be, but we don’t pretend to know the answer.
 
R. J. RYAN: It’s really important that the reader bring their own take to the material, particularly when it comes to this question, given the evidence we lay down in the book. And just because our main character has a specific idea about where quote-unquote “evil” is coming from does not mean we as writers are on board with that idea. Every character’s perspective in this story needs to be taken with a grain of salt. There’s an inherent unreliability at play with these characters and we want the reader to have these kinds of questions coming out of the book.
 
BF: What are some of the challenges approaching a metaphysical concept such as “evil” from a scientific perspective?
 
DQ: This is a concept that has an enormous amount of baggage associated with it. There isn’t a reader out there who hasn’t thought a lot about it and probably has some personal notion, or even a deeply held conviction, of what it is. So, we put ourselves in a position of having to contend with this, to challenge these notions in a way that seems plausible. I think our answer to this was to allow room for everyone to bring their own beliefs and experiences to bear and not try to tell them what to believe.
 
RJR: This is one of those questions we probably should have asked ourselves at the outset of the project, but instead we dove in without really knowing the challenges and faced them as they came up in the writing and even the production of the book. In so many comics—even alternative and indie books—“evil” is treated as a constant and the “nature” of it per se is not really looked into. Right when Daniel and I began writing, we had to challenge that assumption and make it work in the dramatic machinery of the book.

BF: Could you please tell us about some of the research performed in preparation for creating Syndrome?
 
DQ: I know Josh and I have been students of this stuff for a long time and have been reading about it on our own just because we’re interested in it. When Fantasy Prone asked if we’d be interested in writing a story about a doctor in an insane asylum who attempts to cure psychopaths, we both saw an opportunity to use that general notion as an excuse to really explore some of these ideas we’d been thinking about. As we learned more about the condition of psychopathy—and how it’s considered to be incurable—we felt that the whole notion of an “insane asylum” had to be rethought. So, in this way, the research helped shape the story itself.
 
RJR: To get into the exact specifics of the research we did might spoil the story slightly because one of the big reveals of the piece is what actual mechanism in the brain could possibly be the root of human evil. Beyond researching the brain science itself, we looked at stories of medical and scientific pioneers and what types of personalities these people were. The most influential historical figures on this story, and the characterization of Wolfe, were Alois Alzheimer, Edwin Hubble and, in a distant third place, Edward Teller. We were obliged to build a characterization of a scientist that felt as authentic as the life stories of these three men.

BF: What other socio-cultural influences contributed to the story?
 
RJR: We were encouraged by Fantasy Prone and Archaia to personalize this book, and we did. With the Hollywood-set material in the book, those characters and the circumstances of their lives are drawn from a lot of our friends who work in various levels of show business. My next-door neighbor was the production designer on The Bourne Supremacy and Bad Boys 2 (and many other big movies), and we have talked a lot over the last year about what a PD brings to the table on a movie, what the actual work looks like, etc.
 
In terms of the simulated town shown in the story, Daniel and I came up with that based on an experience we had many years ago when we were right out of college and working for Mark Gordon, the producer of Speed. At the time, he was making a very big-budget movie called Hard Rain with Morgan Freeman and Christian Slater where they built an entire phony town in a giant aircraft hangar in Palmdale, in the desert outside of LA. This set was an exact replica of a town the filmmakers found in Indiana, and the set was perfect right down to the lampposts and mailboxes. It was important going into Syndrome to know that what we were showing in the story was plausible.
 
DQ: The experience of seeing this set in real life not only put the notion of the Facility into our heads but also made us realize that if someone had the resources, this could actually be possible.

BF: What are some of the challenges involved in presenting scientific theory to a broad audience? That is, how does one package or dramatize science so that it’s easy to digest?
 
DQ: That’s kind of a trick. We knew if we opened with the heavily research-oriented part of the book we would lose the reader, so we held it off until we felt people would be sufficiently drawn in. By that point, if we’ve done our job, the reader will be curious enough to follow along. Then, the dramatization of it was another challenge, but a fun one to take on. If you’re curious about the answer to a question, then the scientific process of trying to answer it is actually very dramatic and contains its own suspense. The key is making sure the reader can follow. Hopefully, we’ve done that.
 
RJR: I’m trying to think of other comics that have done this without resorting to full-on pseudoscience. Certainly a movie that did it really well was the 2004 film Primer, written and directed by Shane Carruth. Marvel's Iron Man movies pay lip service to a whole lot of real science in a very entertaining and inventive way but you certainly don’t leave the theatre thinking someone could actually build an Iron Man suit. With Primer, you walk out thinking building a time machine in a garage is completely possible because of the way the hard science is dramatized.

BF: Syndrome features an intriguing, eclectic cast. Who is the “hero” or “heroine” of the story? Who are some of the other cast members you think fans will be drawn to?
 
DQ: This might sound like a copout, but we really didn’t think of this in terms of “hero” and “villain.” Writing each chapter, we chose one character’s point of view and then tried to be as true to that as possible. Inevitably, this makes that character the “protagonist” as we all are in the story of our own lives. When you take a step back after reading the whole thing, I think there’s a real question about who the hero is.
 
RJR: My stock answer is that the hero or protagonist in the story is the experiment itself. It’s the one thread you are following through the entire thing, even as points of view change and even when the experiment is not explicitly the subject of a given scene or passage in the book. But really, this is one of those questions where the reader’s answer is a lot more important than anything Daniel or I can offer as writers.

BF: What did you learn during the creation of Syndrome?
 
DQ:  Well, it certainly gave me an excuse to research in depth something I’d been interested in for a long time. I also learned more about writing comics (and that I really truly love it).
 
RJR: Daniel and I really only have one other type of mainstream comics experience and that is the respective stuff we did for Marvel—Dan writing and me acting as a writers' recruiter for the company, both about six years ago—and Syndrome was very much about us exploring what you can and can’t do with the medium when you’re not working with these beloved, world-famous, company-owned icons. One problem that crops up in working on a book like Spider-Man is that a lot of the fun stuff, like figuring out who Peter Parker is and where he comes from and why he sees the world the way he does, has already been done by other creators, decades ago. With Syndrome, Blake Leibel, who created the concept, just sort of posed a couple of provocative questions to us—especially about how one would actually treat, as opposed to simply punish, an actual, bona fide psychopath—and then gave us the freedom to find the answers through our storytelling, this group of characters, and our work with our artist David Marquez. It was the ideal set-up with which to make a graphic novel. Archaia’s Stephen Christy, our editor, and Mark Smylie, the chief creative officer there, were nothing but supportive of this approach, and I think it shows in the book.

BF: Not only does Syndrome encourage the audience to explore the nature of evil from a scientific perspective, it forces us to question what constitutes an evil act. In Dr. Chitel for example, we have a character who straddles the line between good and evil, just as much as his subjects. How important was it for you to create characters whose motivations and actions could be interpreted in so many different ways?
 
DQ: This was a very big deal for us. So much of what we would characterize as “evil” is a matter of perspective. I don’t think that a story that tries to take this on, as a subject would have any integrity if it didn’t acknowledge the problem of point of view.
 
RJR: You might have pinpointed the single biggest narrative priority of the book. Wolfe’s moral ambiguity has to be sustained for the entire piece and it was definitely a balancing act to pull off. It’s so important to Daniel and myself that the reader comes away with more questions than concrete answers about the morality of the experiment. It puts you in these characters’ shoes if, after reading the book, you have to ask yourself, “Was the experiment worth it? Was Wolfe right? Did it work?” We can’t answer those questions one way or another but the book ends at the exact moment when we think readers have enough information to decide for themselves.

BF: I’ve always believed setting is one of the most important characters in any story. This takes on a whole new meaning in Syndrome, in which even the setting is ambiguous, similar but not quite the same as a “world within a world”. What were some of the challenges of layering the setting in this way?
 
DQ: There were a few problems, I suppose. One was to make sure the reader understood where the characters were, since the world inside the facility was to be a near-perfect simulation of the world outside. The other making it believable that this could, a) exist, and b) trick someone who didn’t know they were in a simulation. We decided that this would be the fun of it as well.
 
RJR: So much of this comes out of David’s art and the incredible work he did in pre-production to build the world of Syndrome from the ground up. Visually, the “worlds within worlds” that you’re talking about and that create this unsettling, maybe even upsetting, mood, were pulled off entirely by David and the only real method behind it is his hard work. The three of us talked though the script endlessly and especially got into the importance of scale and geography and the ideas of authenticity vs. artificiality—and how to get that down on a comics page. David Marquez made it look easy but I assure you it was a lot of hard work and he is getting a lot of attention—and jobs—because of this book for a very good reason: He worked his balls off!
 
DQ: I think a lot of what David did in this book doesn’t jump up and down and draw attention to itself, and yet, works beautifully. We wanted the reader to transition from one chapter to the next without a jolt, but to still feel that the POV had changed.
 
BF: Syndrome seems like a story that could be open to numerous artistic interpretations. How did David Marquez become involved in this project and how was the visual tone of the book decided?
 
DQ: Josh discovered David and showed me some sketches he’d posted on his website. It was clear that he had talent, but with a new artist there’s always the question of whether they understand how to tell a story in sequential art. I have been absolutely blown away by Dave. He’s a skilled artist but also has a very innate sense of storytelling.
 
The visual tone of the book was something that came out of a lot of conversation between the three of us and then, later, with Bill Farmer, our colorist. I’m trying to think, but I can’t remember a single argument. We all were sort of on the same page the whole way through which is very unusual. We couldn’t have asked for better collaborators.
 
BF: Without giving anything away, the ending of Syndrome seems to have been left wide open for a possible return to Dr. Chitel’s experiment in the Nevada desert. Are there any plans for a sequel?
 
DQ: I have no idea if there will be a sequel or not. Josh and I have talked in general terms about what that would be but I haven’t had a single conversation with Fantasy Prone about it, so who knows? I do know how I would go with the story and these characters, and I know that Josh does as well, but they might have other ideas. At this point, I think we’re both very excited about our next projects.
 
RJR: Creatively, we said what we wanted to say in the story in this volume. Everything you as a reader need to experience this premise and the questions we’re asking is in those 100 pages. Of course, we can tell more stories or continue to explore this world, but we’re probably a year away from being able to do that schedule-wise and like all sequels, the hard economics of book publishing are going to be a factor. If people keep buying and talking about this book, a sequel is a strong possibility, but we have zero interest in writing it if Dave isn’t drawing it. And it’s just as easy to collaborate with him on something completely different, as it is to make another Syndrome. The short answer is that we won’t be announcing anything about this right now because we want as many people as possible to pick up and appreciate this story.

Syndrome is available now from Archaia priced $19.95.