Broken Frontier

British publishers Com.x are back with a bang and their recent hardcover collection of political super-hero thriller Cla$$war  is garnering rave reviews across the internet. Broken Frontier spoke to series creator Rob Williams about reactions to the hardcover, American politics and the possibility of a sequel...

BROKEN FRONTIER: Despite the rave reviews the recent collected hardcover of Cla$$war has been garnering there may still be some readers who are unfamiliar with the title. For those soon-to-be-enlightened souls how would you quickly sum up the book's premise and what they've been missing?

ROB WILLIAMS: I was asked this at a convention on the weekend and, after stumbling around desperately, I eventually burbled out "It’s superheroes meets Rage Against The Machine." Then I wished I’d thought of that tagline when Cla$$war first came out eight years ago. It’s basically a mature readers meld of comics like The Authority and The Ultimates with some neck-achingly left wing politics concerning American domestic and foreign policy, the type you’ll find in any number of Noam Chomsky books. And it’s one of the best looking comic books of the past decade too.

BF: The origins of Cla$$war, and your perhaps atypical break into the industry with Com.x, make for an interesting anecdote in your intro to the hardcover. With another Bristol Comic Con having passed recently how does it feel thinking back to Bristol 2000 and that original pitch? And, given Cla$$war's sometimes fraught publishing history just how rewarding is it to see this collection on the shelves?

RW: It was strange seeing the Com.x stand at the Bristol Expo, as I think that’s the first time Com.x have had a strong presence at a UK convention since the year when Cla$$war came out. And we’ve all come a long way in the decade past when I first handed over the full script of Cla$$war #1 to them. As I say in the book’s introduction, that was my way into the comic industry, and since then I’ve written Wolverine, Indiana Jones, Judge Dredd, Star Wars, which is all down to the reaction Cla$$war enjoyed upon its release, and the Com.x guys deciding to take a chance on it.

One thing that struck me on that weekend was all the friendships I’ve made in the comics world since that day. When I went to my first Bristol con I think I knew two people. So much has changed since then. I was probably guilty of thinking that no one would care about a re-released Cla$$war as it’s been so long since its initial release, but that weekend I was genuinely taken aback by the reaction to the Cla$$war hardcover. A lot of people loved it, wanted it signed. It seemed more popular than ever.

BF: What were your original inspirations, both within and outside the comics field, for Cla$$war? I know you've said previously that The Authority wasn't an influence but to me as a reader Cla$$war is still in that tradition of peculiarly British takes on the super-hero genre as embodied in Watchmen, early Zenith, Crisis's New Statesmen and certain eras of Captain Britain.

RW: Yes, despite Cla$$war coming out after The Authority I’d genuinely never read the book when I wrote issue one, although I’ll admit that it’s storytelling approach did influence the rest of the series once I had actually read Ellis and Hitch’s run. I think you’re right that there’s a lot of Moore and Davis’ Captain Britain, Miracleman and Zenith in there. Not overtly or deliberately so, but those three were the superhero books that formed a lot of my comics language in terms of how to tell a story, both in terms of words and visuals.

The first thing you write is usually the sum of your influences. I’ve still never read The New Statesmen, funnily enough. Outside of comics, I was reading a lot of Chomsky at the time – that was the most direct influence of the book’s politics. Just prior to writing Cla$$war I’d read Martin Luther King Jr’s bio, a great book on the history of the CIA called Whiteout by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair. I was fanatical about Bill Hicks and Billy Bragg for many years. All that’s in there somewhere.

BF: From what I've read the Bush brothers were always in the frame as satirical targets to base Cla$$war's fictional President on. Could you ever have predicted, though, just how fortuitously your creative impulses regarding that depiction were going to synchronicise in the much longer term with burgeoning real world events?

RW: No. Not at all. I’d read a feature in The Guardian about the Bush brothers being Governers, detailing Dubya’s hellraising ways etc. and speculating that one of them might be in the frame to run for the GOP nomination and decided to loosely base the President in Cla$$war on him. There was nothing that concrete in the depiction of the book’s President. It was just an inspiration. In terms of the predicting of real world events? It was just ‘luck’ rather than any deep thought as to what was coming. Although, obviously there was an upsurge of discontentment towards US foreign policy which was building at that time. Books by people like Chomsky and Gore Vidal detailed that and I was reading them. But Cla$$war’s American invasion of a small helpless country in order to create an upsurge of patriotism back home that would deflect from real issues? That’s nothing new.

BF: What was the initial reaction to the book from the American audience? Was there any hostility? And at this point, with the hardcover having been out for a few weeks, has there been any noticeable change in the response from same demographic who are coming to Cla$$war now after two terms of George W. Bush?

 RW: I was quite worried about the US reaction to Cla$$war when it was initially released but we never really had any negative reaction to its politics. I think I recall one message board post saying ‘I’m sick of these Brit writers telling us we’re in the wrong’ but that was it. I guess we were preaching to the converted somewhat. There’s likely to be far more liberals in the comics community than conservatives, and Warren Ellis’ books have always sold when he’s embraced similar topics. Turns out there is a market for political comics, as long as you wrap a blockbuster-sized action movie dynamic around it.

 As for the hardcover reaction. Again, it’s been unfailingly positive. Hugely so. I wondered if Cla$$war was still relevant with Obama in office and a feeling of goodwill towards the US permeating (and long may that continue), but I’ve realised that a work of fiction stands and falls on its merits, regardless of who’s in the Oval Office.

BF: The question you must be tired of answering is the one question I can't avoid asking I'm afraid - is there any hope of seeing the second Cla$$war arc in the near future? I'm sure there are many readers out there anxious to know more about Isaac's past, Confusion's premonition and just what the back story of American's confrontation with the Russian in Alaska was.

RW: We’d love to do it, and the response to the hardcover has certainly convinced us that there’s something of a demand for it. There’s no concrete plans at the moment though, unfortunately. We’ve discussed it but the financial realities make it very difficult to do. I could probably find a way to write the final six issues with little cash up front but getting an artist of the calibre of Trev or Travel Foreman to draw six issues would be hugely expensive. And we’ve set a standard of art with issues 1-6. We couldn’t come back half hearted with a lesser artist. It would be a let down. It’s the realities of being an indie publisher, sadly. So, never say never, but… I’ve always know how it ends and, yes, Confusion’s premonition is part of that. There’s one of the final scenes with The President that I’ve been desperate to write for almost ten years now. It’d be a shame not to.

BF: Cla$$war is obviously a very angry, confrontational look at American politics and very representative of the time it was written. How do you feel about that several years on and, if you did come back to the book now, how would you retain its voice in this post-Obama era of overt optimism about U.S government?

RW: That’s a very good question and one I’ve thought about myself. I worried about the hardcover coming out at a time when Obama’s still enjoying this sense of optimism towards the White House. We were, through luck as much as intuition, very prescient with a lot of the themes we were tackling when Cla$$war came out originally. And also, I was probably a lot angrier back then, and I think it is a very angry comic. Very passionate, certainly. It’s also somewhat naïve in some of its politics, but that’s the 2009 me looking back on it. I’ve got two kids now, a mortgage. I’m a different person in many ways. So if I came back to write issues 7-12, would those issues have the same feel and aesthetic? On the other hand, the positive reaction to the hardcover has shown me that it’s a narrative that exists in its own right and people seem to enjoy it regardless of real world events.

BF: You had two very talented gents in Trevor Hairsine and Travel Foreman illustrating the book. Both bring some stunning, big screen visuals to the proceedings. What can you tell us about their contributions to the storytelling process?

RW: They both deserve so much of the Cla$$war praise, because it’s just a stunning looking comic. Also, Trev particularly, was dealing with my rookie scripts in the early days which, even though I think I’ve always been talented at writing strong visuals – that’s one of my strengths – I wasn’t 100% sure of what I was doing. I think, in my original draft of issue one, there was about nine busy panels on one page. So Trev would iron out a few storytelling bumps along the way. That was probably less true of Travel, as I think I had more of a handle on format by the time he took over.

But, I’ve since learnt, on various projects, that an artist can make a writer’s scripts seem better than they actually are or worse than they actually are, and both Trev and Travel made my scripts seem far better. And they both did the widescreen spectacle with such style, whether it’s a jaw being punched clean off or tens of jet fighters falling off the deck of an upturned aircraft carrier. Cla$$war had lots of visual ‘wow’ moments. They were all in the script, of course, but Trev and Travel realised them far better than I could’ve imagined.

BF: On a different tack, and not wanting to sound inappropriately gushing, but the hardcover really is a very handsome package with a plethora of extras (covers, your original script proposal, character sketches.). It must be incredibly satisfying to see your work presented in such a deluxe collection?

RW: It’s a beautiful product. You get used to reading a mountain of hyperbole in interviews, but, genuinely, I think it may be the nicest looking graphic novel collection I’ve seen. Ed at Com.x was committed to making it like a Criterion DVD release from the start. He wanted to give people a reason to buy this – so we went the extra mile. Trev drew a new cover and eight brand new pages, I dug out old scripts, Trev and Travel did the same with sketches. Then there’s the posters by people like Mick McMahon and Ben Oliver, the introductions by Andy Diggle, Craig Lemon and myself. You’re getting your money’s worth on this one. And Ed and Com.x really know design – it’s what the company primarily does. Regardless of content, the Cla$$war hardcover should win awards. It’s showing how you do this sort of thing.

BF: I have to ask what the story is behind that Mike McMahon pin-up page of the Enola Gay team? I grew up with British comics in the '70s and early '80s so I can only imagine what a special resonance there must be in having an artist of that stature interpret your characters, even if only for a page.

RW: Tell me about it. That remains one of the biggest thrills of my comic career, when Ed showed me that poster. And not just the fact that Mick had drawn such a lovely page, but that he’d got inside the spirit of those characters and nailed them. My characters. That blew my mind at the time, back around 2001. Mick was employed by Com.x at the time to do concept work for a computer game so Ed asked him to draw the illo. I’ve got a print of it on my wall. Mick’s one of the great artists of the past 30 years. There’d probably be no Hellboy without his influence.

BF: What else are you currently working on and what upcoming projects are in the pipeline from Rob Williams?

RW: I’ve just finished a book for Marvel that’s not been solicited yet so I can’t say anything on that, unfortunately, but it’s one of their darker characters, I think it’s safe to say. There’s a three-part ‘Meet Darren Dead’ story with art by John Higgins coming up in the Judge Dredd Megazine which is me indulging my comedy side. I’ve written an eight-page story for an upcoming Image anthology called Outlaw Territory which I’m extremely happy with, Ben Oliver’s drawing that, and I’m currently in the middle of writing a 12-part supernatural western for 2000AD called (breathe in) ‘The Grievous Journey Of Ichabod Azreal (And The Dead Left In His Wake)’ which is being drawn by Dom Reardon. There’s a couple of other things in the pipeline but nothing I can talk about yet. And I’m still a jobbing freelance journalist, working for publications like GQ. So, I’m busy.

The Cla$$war hardcover is available now published by Com.x priced $24.99.