Broken Frontier

Archaia's Berona's War features two super-cute fantasy races engaging in a bloody war over the contested island of Berona. With cartoony violence galore, giant bestial monsters, and even furry zombies, what more could you possibly want? From the minds of creators Anthony Coffey and Jesse Labbé comes the tale of the hundred year war between the Cropones and the Ele-Alta. Inspired by animation classics, Berona's War has a unique cartoon look and a premise that sets it apart. Broken Frontier sat down with both Anthony and Jessie to see what it takes to bring a century long war between cure animation-style creatures to life.

BROKEN FRONTIER: How did you two first meet, and how did you start your collaboration?

JESSIE LABBE: We met at the art institute we were both attending, and we started going to comic conventions as convention-goers. After awhile, we started thinking “we could do something like this” and then is was just a matter of one simple phone call, calling up Anthony and saying “lets do a comic”. We didn't have any material then, but we pretty much just decided to go for it and we started creating the wold of Berona's War. We each drew our own versions of the characters and that's how it started. From that point on we went to various local and national conventions and built up a fan base that way.

BF: Do you find it easy to work together?

JL: Yeah, our styles are fairly similar, they've become more similar since we've been doing Berona's War. The hardest part for me is keeping up with Anthony, because I'm learning a lot from drawing with him. But I think the biggest obstacle is being so far apart.

BF: Since you guys are so far apart how does your process of collaboration work? Do you call each other on the phone and send email a lot?

ANTHONY COFFEY: It's all basically handled through extensive Skype and email and a lot of road trips. It's based of a lot of constant communication.

JL: I'd say our web cam on Skype is our number one tool, because we'll do email but it's always followed up by Skype. It brings our offices together and makes the distance between us smaller.

BF: What led you to come up with the idea of Berona's War. It's an interesting concept to tell the tale of a war, being fought by furry cartoon creatures?

JL: We always sat next to each other at conventions, and in Chicago people always kept coming up to us and asking us “when are you two going to do something together”. We got that question over and over and over, and finally Anthony leaned over to me and said “man, we need to put something out together” and that kinda started it. On the plane ride back we started talking about what we could do, and our first idea was a calender called the one year war. I would draw a monster for one month , and then Anthony would draw a monster for the next month that could defeat that one, and I would draw one for the next month and so forth.

So by the end of the year it made a complete circle with the last monster killing off the first. The idea behind Berona's War started off that way. Once we got to the characters that are in the book now, the moment we drew them there was that spark where you realize that there was something special happening. The joke through it all was that the one year war became the hundred year war. The war between all these monsters became a war between these two races.

BF: There were a few inspirations listed for Berona's War like Spy vs Spy and Looney Tunes. Can you elaborate on both of you influences a bit?

AC: Those types of animation are a influence, not just with Berona's War but in all my artwork, period. I've been inspired bay all the old-school Disney cartoons, any kind of Pixar movie. I've always been influenced by cartoons. I'd always get comic books when I was little, and I'd draw the pictures out just to practice, but I never literally read them. I've always been a big fan of comic book artwork, so there's a lot of inspiration that comes from there. But for the most part it's the '80s cartoons like Duck Tales, Darkwing Duck and all that stuff that's an inspiration. When I'm drawing it I'm seeing a cartoon playing out in my head, that's where my pure inspiration comes from.

JL: I'd have to agree, I also liked Duck Tales, it was the best of the '80s cartoons. The style and look of Berona's War was inspired by game manuals from video games, not necessarily the illustrations but the layout of the book. In the back of the instruction book there would be five or six pages that would give detailed descriptions about the characters and weapons you would find in the game, kinda like a field guide. That was the number one influence for the layout of the field guide. We wanted to take the best parts from the sketches to the “Art of” books and fit it all into one book, so the whole book would have the same feeling as those five pages in the game manual.

BF: There are two upcoming volumes: BW: Field Guide, and BW: Fight for Amity how do they relate? Do you take different approaches for each?

JL: The Field Guide is the foundation to the world. It talks about the rivalry between the snipers and the mobile recon, it talks about this big beast that was released and no one knows why, it presents all these events that this character witnessed throughout the war. In book two we actually tell the story about these events. So, in the first book it talks about this brute that was released and killed all these soldiers and no one knows what happened, in book two it's the actual story of what happened and what that beast was released and who was there.

The first book talks about the patience of the snipers, the second book has the story of a sniper waiting for the perfect shot, so the whole story is nothing but his patience. The second book touches on some of ours and the fan base's favorite moments of the first book and goes into their stories. It's gonna be kinda different but yet the same as the first book, we'll have some stories that are comic panels, we'll have some that are one page jokes kind of like The Far Side, we'll have some that have a Calvin and Hobbes feel to them, some of them will have a Reader's Digest feel to them where it's mainly words with one or two pictures, and some of them will be in poem form where there will be a poem that tell the story overlaying the pictures. The average I think is about ten pages per story, we're planing on book two running about 160 pages as well.

BF: War is a heavy subject. How did you decide to use cute cartoon characters and cartoon violence to tell a story about war?

JL: The best way to answer that is to go back when we first started out with Berona's hundred year war it was our chance to break away. Anthony worked for a production company and so did I, so we were constantly doing that kinda stuff anyway. The problem was that were were always being told “make it bluer, bigger, smaller, it can't be that sharp, it has to be this...etc.” We would have a good idea but by the time the project was turned in it was somebody else's idea. This was our first chance to do something that wasn't for the money and it wasn't to make someone else happy, we were literally making this book for us, and for a handful of our friends. I'm an extremely strong believer in if you do it for yourself and if you love it, somebody out there will love it too. We never had a target audience in mind, I was just trying to make Anthony laugh and he was trying to make me laugh.

When we designed the first book, the war was supposed to end on the last page. By the time you finished reading the book, you realized that the book you were holding in you hand was all that remained of Berona's world, that these characters had basically fought themselves to death. Everything in the pages of the book was all that was left, these characters were so greedy that they would kill themselves before they would let the other side get this land. That overall idea has since changed, when we realized that we had more stories to tell with these characters.

BF: You each draw one particular race in the war. Did you ever find yourselves taking sides as you brought the war between the Cropones and the Ele-Alta to life?

AC: That's our whole playground right there, since I draw all of the Ele-Alta race and Jessie draws all of the Cropone race its a constant back and forth between the two of us. The war in a sense represents the conflict between us pretty much. We're both for each side so hardcore, that it's a big joke and it's really fun. That's what keeps it going between us, just seeing how much better we can be than the other person.

JL: The conflict has never really been between Anthony and I, not literally. We'll ruffle each others feathers a bit, but it's all through the characters. We'll just have a good old laugh about it. Anthony draws all of the Ele-Alta, no matter what they're doing, if the characters are intermingling, or if they're fighting he draws all of them, and I will always draw all of the Cropones right down to the silhouettes. That's why there's a lot of emails back and forth, because he'll draw his frame and he'll have all his characters drawn in and he'll have either X's or circles or something where my characters need to go. When he sends me that formant I'll fill in my characters and send it back to him.

BF: What can the reader expect after all is said and done in Berona's War? Will you ever explore the world again?

JL: After the first two books are released, what we had originally planned was a third volume. It would be one solid graphic novel, just like the first two, about a third entity that comes up and our two races would have to band together, but that's still on the back burner. The moment we're done with Fight for Amity we're gonna try to do some spin off comics with fan favorites like the slayers and the zombies. In an ideal world we'd like to do some spin off comics before the third book, where you can really get a hold of some of the characters and get to know them a lot better in their own stories.

AC: There's definitely ideas for more avenues we're trying to explore, including a possible video game project.

Berona's War Field Guide is released this week from Archaia priced $19.95. For more on Berona's War check out the official website.