Broken Frontier

For his first real bande dessinée, Sean Phillips sat down with Broken Frontier and talked a bit about working with a French publisher and how the project came about.

BROKEN FRONTIER: How did this project come about? Is it related to the French hardcover of Criminal, also published by Delcourt?

SEAN PHILLIPS: I met an editor from Delcourt at the Barcelona Convention a couple of years ago. He asked me if I'd like to draw a book for him, I said yes. Delcourt is publishing Criminal after I asked them if they'd like to while I was drawing Seven Psychos. They've done a great job with the French edition (click here for an example of the French hardcover of Criminal).

BF: With Ed Brubaker on Criminal you have a very tight work relationship. Was it the same with Fabien Vehlmann, the writer of Seven Psychos?

SP: Ed and I have known each other for a few years and worked together a while. Apart from emails, I didn't meet Fabien until after I finished the book, at the launch party in Paris. We plan on working together again in the future.

BF: Did you accommodate the way you draw to the larger printing size of the European format?

SP: I drew the pages at 125% up from the printed size, so they were only slightly bigger than US format pages. There were more panels and more backgrounds though. The pages took me twice as long as American ones do.

BF: Due to the large format, your brush and dip pen work really comes out. You can spot the difference between the materials better and it delivers an almost abstract feel to the artwork. What are your feelings about this effect when you see it in print?

SP: As I said, the book prints close to the size of the original artwork. The printing is superb, much better than in America. The paper stock is higher quality and I love having a hardcover.

BF: As mentioned on your blog, you lettered the comic yourself. How does that work to in relation to the translations? Did you create your own typeface and set everything in French?

I used the Ladronn font from Comicraft to letter the book. I use a font of my own handwriting that Comicraft made for me on other books such as Criminal, but it doesn't have the foreign accents I needed for Seven Psychos.

BF: Was there a lot of research involved due to the period setting?

SP: Loads! It took a while to get together. I bought a lot of books and DVD's and spent a lot of time online looking for reference.

BF: The comic has a real Dirty dozen -type of feel to it. Do you have any cinematic influences that you wanted to emulate in Seven Psychos?

SP: Cinema in general isn't a direct influence on me. The only film I watched for Seven Psychos was Carry On Sergeant .

BF: How did you work out the visualisations of the characters?

SP: Just followed my instincts and Fabien's suggestions. Colonel Thompson was based on Captain Mainwaring from the TV show Dad's Army [a popular BBC comedy series].

BF: The colouring done on Seven Psychos by Hubert is very similar to the work of Val Staples on Criminal.  Were you paired by the publisher? Is this the type of colouring you prefer on your artwork?

SP: My editor suggested him, and Hubert did a great job. He made it look like a real French album! I couldn't be more pleased with what he added to my pages. Val also does a superb job on Criminal every month.

BF: As a designer yourself, were involved in the design of the final packaging of the comic? What are your feelings about the result?

SP: I had no input as Seven Psychos is the first of a series so Delcourt wanted a strong branding for all the books. I did one rough of an idea I had but it was never used...[ see picture to the right] I did do a lot of versions of the illustration though. It took a while to get that right. I think the books look great. Delcourt used a strong unifying design.

BF: In Europe they reprint American comics in a large format hardcover while in the United States they reproduce the bande dessinée in the smaller comics sized format. Why do you think there's this dissonance in style and general cultural dismissiveness of the format?

SP: The French edition of Criminal was printed US size as are a lot of US reprints. I would have liked to have seen Criminal larger in France, but it was drawn with the smaller printed size in mind and might not have looked so good enlarged. As an artist I always prefer a bigger format, but it depends on the project.

BF: What is the norm for comic formats in the UK? Do they take the best of both worlds? The small press seems to be very alive over there.

SP: Original UK comics are similar in size to European albums but the stories are usually serialized and collected into hardcover albums afterwards.

BF: Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us and good luck with your future projects.

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For more information and a review of Seven Pyschos click here.