Broken Frontier

If SF mixes with horror and combines that with gorgeous girls, then throws in talking teddy bears, then BF wants to know more. So BF-er Richard Boom stepped up to the plate and starting asking questions he figured would be perfect to let readers know what Chris Noeth (writer/creator/artist/letterer and colorist) and his creation Maya is all about!

BROKEN FRONTIER: As a writer/artist for hire and Art Director of a game company, how do you prefer to channel your own creativity?

CHRIS NOETH: Since I have started to work as the Art Director at Rough Sea Games I’m channelling all my creativity into our game which will be released in a few weeks.

Because I fell in love with superhero comics ever since I was four years old and I grew up with comics and movies, my mind works completely in sequential images. That’s why I have to work on Maya; to stay sane. Maya is my first creator-owned comic and I’m working on it in my spare time. The work on Maya clears my head and gives me new energy and motivation for my game related work. I’m working on game related stuff during the day and after a break, in which I spend time with my family, I’m working on Maya or training my art skills at night.

BF: As you mentioned you recently started a webcomic called Maya, about a young girl with special powers who talks to her teddy bear. How did you come up with the concept?

CN: That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Maya is a story I built in my head after dreaming very vivid science-fiction scenes one night. I wrote down the scenes and later processed them into a science-fiction superhero story which eventually evolved into Maya.

BF: The story seems to contain a lot of supernatural and sci-fi elements. Why did you want to give the story this particular flair?

CN: Because I love it! I grew up consuming sci-fi in movies, books and comics and because I only write what I want to read myself Maya is the essence of all the things I love in sci-fi and superhero stories. I think you can tell great stories without this flair but by using sci-fi and superhero elements you can bring a story to a complete new mythological level. This is what I love and what makes me tick.

Maybe it’s because after I’ve seen Superman - The Movie on the big screen in 1978 my mind switched from real to fantastic… and fortunately it never switched back.

BF: Can you tell us some more about the world Maya lives in and the adventures she will have?

CN: Without giving away too much of the story and plot, I can tell you when we first see Maya in the book she lives in a desert-like area with her grandmother and her friend Ringo, a walking and talking teddybear. Maya is going hunting with Ringo, but what she is hunting isn’t exactly an animal. The hunt is her first little adventure and things are starting to get much more interesting after the hunt is finished. She soon will be confronted with something strange and her world will turn upside down.

Sorry I can’t get into details yet, but Maya can be compared to TV’s LOST. There are a lot of different plotlines which will be linked to each other and finally form the whole story. This and the fact that the story of Maya has a final ending makes it difficult to talk about the story without taking away too much.

But regarding locations I can tell you that an important part of the story takes place in the Rocky Mountains and in Manhattan.

BF: Fair enough. Can you tell us something about the supporting cast?

CN: Beside Maya and her teddyfriend Ringo, there are a lot of different characters. When you are looking at the cover for issue #1 you can see a lot of the main characters.

The story starts with a guy in an oxygen mask. He turns out to be a doctor named Krueger, a scientist who is found by a science team on an ice breaker as he is walking wounded on the ice on Spitzbergen.

And we have Nana, Maya’s grandmother. Think about Peter Parker’s Aunt May crawling out of her grave and you get a good idea how Nana is looking.

Another important character is Nathan, an old man who’s living in the Rocky Mountains with his dog Dandy. He has a friend named Orson, who also can be seen on the cover next to Nathan. Orson is a mysterious stranger and we will find out his secrets later on in the story.

We will meet Jack – The Albino in the story. He is an assassin who is send after Maya to get something stolen back. And the final character on the cover is a German Nazi-Offizier from a secret Nazi special force.

BF: Are you doing the complete art (pencils, inks and colors) ánd writing ánd lettering ánd graphic design yourself?

CN: Yes, I do all these things by myself for the full 100%. But I really want to use this opportunity to thank Bill Nichols for proofreading my pages. He loves comics and I really appreciate his help with Maya.

BF: Very impressive! Do you have any plans to put Maya in print at some point?

CN: I love printed comics. I don’t believe in the future of digital comics when it’s about replacing traditional printed comics. I may be a computer scientist but comics should be printed. So the answer is “Yes, I want to see Maya in print after enough issues are finished”. I’m in talks with some publishers already but I’m always interested to hear from new ones because in the end I want Maya to be published in print next to the right kind of books.

BF: I read on the comic’s website that you are planning to start Maya with a 3-parter, but that you also have a clear beginning/middle/end structure mapped out. Can you elaborate on that a bit?

CN: That’s right. Maya will start with a three-issue story arc. The whole story has a clear ending but until we get to the end there is enough room to tell a lot of fantastic stuff. This will fill a lot of different story arcs before we reach the end. The first three issues are mainly to introduce the characters and the idea behind Maya. It’s like the first part of an original movie trilogy where the characters have to be introduced. I hope when I finally reach the end of Maya someday I can look back and say Maya’s story is epic.

BF: Will you be active in the convention circuit to further spread the word on Maya?

CN: I will be a guest at a German event in May but I have no plans for attending oversea conventions in 2010. But when the first issues of Maya are finished or when Maya sees print I definitely will think about it. It depends on the feedback I get through the website. Right now it seems like a lot of people are reading the comic and I already have more unique readers than some big name comic books have.

BF: Of course, Germany! Your living in Germany makes it very hard indeed to do the conventions in the USA, just like that. But there are some great conventions in the Netherlands, Belgium and France as well. Any chance of fans maybe seeing you there?

CN: Visiting these conventions without a publisher for Maya means I have to take some days off from my game job and pay the trip to another country myself. I would do this as a fan but right now I don’t see the need to do this for Maya. I think about visiting some conventions when the first issues of Maya are finished, but because the whole series is made like a standard US-comic book (and I love American comics!) chances are good I will visit some US Comic Conventions before going to some European conventions.

You can follow the online adventures of Maya and her talking teddy Ringo at http://www.mayacomic.com, a page each week.