Broken Frontier

Showing what makes a Superman a man in Secret Identity. Redesigning Dr. Doom for the 21st century in Ultimate Fantastic Four. Introducing Ultimate Longshot in Ultimate X-Men. What’s next for artist Stuart Immonen?

How about Nextwave (due in shops January 25th), a book that once again pairs him with Warren Ellis and has just about the best solicitation ever:

“RRRAAAAAGGGGGHHHHH!!! Action! Excitement! Explosions! The Highest Anti-Terrorism Effort, or H.A.T.E. (a subsidiary of the Beyond Corporation©) put NEXTWAVE together to fight Bizarre Weapons of Mass Destruction. When NEXTWAVE discovers that H.A.T.E. and Beyond© are terrorist cells themselves and that the BWMDs were intended to kill them, they are less than pleased. In fact, they are rather angry. So they make things explode. Lots of things.

Starring Monica Rambeau (formerly Captain Marvel, Photon and Pulsar), Aaron Stack (Machine Man), Tabitha Smith (X-Force’s Meltdown), monster-hunter Elsa Bloodstone and The Captain! Guest-starring Fin Fang Foom!!! If you like anything, you will LOVE NEXTWAVE!!! BOOM!!”

Broken Frontier - What is Nextwave?

Stuart Immonen - Whoa, blindsided me there, and right out of the gate, too. Nextwave, the comic? Nextwave, the team? All I know is that I get to draw explosions.

LOTS of explosions.

BF - Nextwave is obviously not the standard superhero team book – what audience is this book for?

SI - We're not exclusionary-- everyone's welcome. There are going to be people who will purposefully not want to like it, but we'll win them over. It's for anyone who likes Asian action cinema, 70’s cop flicks, bizarre anime, car chases, monsters, giant robots, broccoli and yes, superheroes.

As far as I know, however, there are no unicorns.

BF - How did you come to be involved with Nextwave?

SI - I was winding down my year-long obligation on Ultimate X-Men when Marvel editor Nick Lowe called me up. I ranted about how much I hated Warren Ellis and would never work with him again, and then he asked me if I'd consider re-considering. Warren had already written several issues as well as a series proposal, and, despite myself, I couldn't resist. It really is that good. Mmmm, crow. Tasty.

BF - How much interaction do you and Warren Ellis have on the book? 

SI - Interaction? With Warren? None whatsoever, actually. As I said, when I came on board, there were four or five scripts already written. Nevertheless, Warren seems to communicate only by GPRS phone, so you can't get more than a few words out of him.

At any rate, I prefer it this way. The stories are very complete-- the action is spelled out, and the humour is not always verbal, which is very generous for a writer. There are strictly visual things going on (in fact, there are any number of pages with no dialogue at all), which makes things a little more challenging for me sometimes, as the story has to continue with the same clarity as when there is dialogue or sound effects, but strictly speaking, there is no back-and forth between Warren and myself. I don't try to influence the story, but rather to support to the best of my ability what is already there.

BF - What was involved in re-designing characters such as Monica (Captain Marvel/Photon) Rambeau or Aaron (Machine Man) Stack?

SI - Ah, um, well, readers-- I mean fans-- won't like this, but I intentionally ignored any previous incarnations of characters' costumes. Warren, in his scripts, was specific about a few key elements: the jacket, Monica Rambeau's silver jumpsuit, the Captain's non-uniform and the overall Steranko-esque concept. I (literally) drew on these ideas, and combined them with my own sensibilities, and, with a few minor editorial revisions suggested by Joe Quesada and Nick, they were done.

BF - The print ads and covers for Nextwave have a very unique and distinctive style. How did you develop the look of Nextwave?

SI - This was a little more difficult to nail down. In a rare moment of creative fraternity, Warren and I balked at the idea of the covers looking like everything else. I had a notion that they could maybe look like the cold austere work of Peter Saville, and Warren mentioned the Designer's Republic. After a long period of trial and error, and seriously deep thought on my part, I came up with a kind of "non-concept"-- that the covers would have nothing in common at all, except the layout; something in the upper three fifths and something else in the lower three fifths. I emailed "sketches" (essentially digital collages), which everyone loved, to my utter surprise. They areeach, basically,a mess.But carefullyconstructed messes.

BF – Keeping with the theme of being different, what do you think the comic industry as a whole needs to do in order to expand beyond the usually core group of readers?

SI - This is a huge question. I preferred the "What is Nextwave" one.

Lots of things. Things that are happening now, and things that have been tried already. While I like seeing hardcover editions of collected series, and personally benefit financially from them, I find "comics" in any format are still ghettoized in conventional bookstores. Tom Spurgeon claims that the success of manga has nothing to do with the variety of genres available, and he's probably right, but the "mainstream" market still needs to be open to expansion of material. Comics need to lose their "collectible" status, and be perceived as reading material. They need to be in front of people-- at the supermarket, in DVDs and CDs, as podcasts and downloads, with -- get this-- other magazines and not on a spinner rack, with other fiction and not (just) in the "graphic novel" section. Basically, I'm calling for a wholesale cultural shift in perception-- the same thing everyone in the business wants.

But who's going to take us up on it?

BF - What other projects do have planned in the near future?  Are you planning on returning to writing comics?

SI - Planning, no, but I will anyway. Not likely to be anything mainstream, at any rate. I'm re-packaging the "50 Reasons To Stop Sketching" strips into an actual book, and I have another series of vaguely autobiographical humour strips that I've been working on called "Misery Loves", which will likely show up on WebComicsNation.com this year.

BF - You recently launched a new webcomic, Never as Bad as You Think. Could you tell us a little about it?

SI - Last year, some friends and I began participating in IllustrationFriday.com's weekly drawing exercises. After a short while, I felt my interest in doing themed single illustrations flagging, but wanted to keep doing it in some form. I proposed to Kathryn [Immonen] that she write me a four-panel strip which would take plot cues from the random word provided on IF each week, with the idea that we might collect them after a year or  so.

However, after sharing "Never As Bad As You Think" with a close group of peers for a while, I began investigating the possibility of it reaching a wider audience before a print version might be feasible, and Joey Manley's WebComicsNation seemed like the perfect fit. After a few technical hiccups which he helped me solve in short order, it's slowly finding its way. Scott McCloud mentioned it on his blog, and Heidi MacDonald mentioned it on the Beat, so I'm confident that we'll be able to keep growing our subscriber base.

We'll provide the first four strips as "free samples", but at the end of this month, the series will only be available to subscribers. This isn't a money grab-- we're a long, long way from this being any kind of profitable venture. Instead, we feel strongly that this is a way to reward those who choose to support creators, even for pennies a strip.

BF – One last burning question for you, Stuart… Fin Fang Foom - rampaging monster or misunderstood dragon in purple underpants?

SI - I'd rampage too, if I was in his position.