Broken Frontier

Currently storming the Zuda charts, Lily of the Valley is a macabre love story with a twist. BF speaks to LOTV creator Adam Atherton about eerie webcomics, lovelorn serial killers and competitive stress levels.

BROKEN FRONTIER: You describe Lily of the Valley rather memorably on your blog as "a love story for the over and under medicated, the disenchanted, the excessively violent and the soft spoken". For those yet to check the comic out on Zuda can you fill us in on the basic premise of the series?

ADAM ATHERTON: Lily of the Valley is about a teenage girl named Lily with a lot of mental troubles. She suffers severe social anxiety disorder, sometimes depression, and has insane ups and downs. She may even be diagnosable as a delusional schizophrenic if she'd participate with the right health care professionals. She refuses medications and finds release from her pain and suffering in a very sinister place; murder.

As the death toll rises the town begins to peg blame on a mysterious elusive, near mythical, albino boy who roams in the forest on the outskirts of town. The basic premise of the story is that romance blossoms between these two characters. My idea was to create something beautiful in a very dark and unlikely place.

I'm aiming for this comic to appeal to a specific audience, an audience just like me, and that's why I described it as a love story for the over and under medicated, the disenchanted, the excessively violent, and the soft spoken. The only thing I'm not is violent but I needed the tagline to hint somehow at the violence and horror aspects of the story. When people say they don't understand the comic or don't relate to it then I can easily point out the disclaimer and most likely they don't fit into the category of people I described it as being for. When I say that's who the comic is for, that's what I mean. Haha

BF: Can you elaborate a little bit about the central characters and their motivations?

AA: The main character Lily Brooke is a girl who has been struggling with mental anguish and pain for a long time. She's never been at ease. Her mind is always racing with panicked thoughts and anxieties and fears. Medications only make her feel worse and create more problems. She only wants to live a normal life and be able to socialize and have fun and relate to others around her but she is brimming with these bad emotions and fears and needs a release somewhere in her life.

She bottles everything up and eventually begins to explode from time to time and then discovers what a release it is and it escalates to a point where she's been murdering neighbors and people in her town for several months. She doesn't feel good about it but it's something that has begun to take control of her and the urges have become too strong to resist.

Another main character Thomas Bridge, aka "The White Ghost of Elmwood", is believed by many to be the town's killer. He is an albino and was raised nocturnally by his over-protective parents in fear of him being ridiculed by the public and to protect his pale skin from the harmful sun.

Isolated and alienated his entire life he is now clueless about how to interact with others and now spends his days in the woods coming out only at night to monitor the town. The number of times he has been spotted by anyone in town can be counted on one's fingers. Another important character will be the town Sheriff, Jerry Bellows. You'll learn more about him soon.

BF: How did you first get involved in the world of comics creatively?

AA: I've been fascinated with the medium of comics my whole life. I've always read them, admired them, and studied them. I've been teaching myself to draw my whole life with the ultimate goal of making comics but it's only been in the past few years when I realized I needed to start applying the things I've been teaching myself and actually attempt to produce something if I ever wanted to get somewhere.

BF: This isn’t your first time on Zuda. Previously you competed with Bleed. How was that as a learning experience and how did it inform your approach to Lily of the Valley?

AA: In the beginning of 2008 I started working toward my goal of getting into comics. I started with short humor strips and then moved up to short 2-page stories, then a 5-page story and so on. You can find all of these by digging around on my blog.

Bleed was my first attempt to create something that could be ongoing as a series. I created it with no real goal of submitting it anywhere, it was mostly for experience and learning. I discovered Zuda and submitted it there and having it seen by thousands of people and getting feedback from all kinds of different people with different opinions was the best learning experience I could ask for.

I seriously absorbed every comment good and bad and then applied everything I learned to my new entry Lily of the Valley. I learned a lot of things but a few big ones were to reveal all the information in the 8-page Zuda submission that would be needed for someone to understand what the story will be about and to also end it on a cliff hanger.

BF: With Zuda being a competitive process how are your stress levels at the moment!! I would imagine there are some real highs and lows involve every time you log on to see how popular your work is.

AA: I am not good with dealing with stress. I have the blood pressure pills to vouch for that. Because of this I didn't think I would be able to cope with the stress of being neck and neck in the final days of the competition so I aimed to do all my serious promoting at the beginning of the month when there is less pressure because there is still the whole month ahead. There have been a few panic-inducing days in this competition but for the most part it hasn't been too bad. I think I was a lot more stressed last time.

BF: I got a definite Burton-esque vibe from the first few pages of Lily of the Valley. What were your influences for the strip from both within and outside the comics world?

AA: I have always been a very big fan of Tim Burton so his visual style has likely rubbed off on me over time. A few artists who I really admire and some people tell me they can see their influence in my work, would be Jeff Smith of the graphic novel saga Bone and Paul Pope of Batman: Year 100.

Other than comics I get a lot of inspiration and take a lot of influence from the music I listen to. This comic was inspired a great deal by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, particularly their album Murder Ballads. Music helps me establish mood in my mind when I'm illustrating the pages.

BF: You use a very muted color palette in Lily of the Valley and to great effect as a storytelling tool I think. Tell us a little about your decision to adopt this style to create mood and atmosphere in the strip.

AA: Well originally I was thinking of doing it in black and white because I always admire the graphic effect that comics using just black and white can achieve. I kind of decided as I was drawing them that color could really bring something to this story, where it was better left out of Bleed. So I wanted to include color but maintain the graphic effects available to using just black and white. If I was going to add color I figured it better add something to the actual art and story, and I think the pink does that perfectly. It isn't simply color, it is an element that enhances the story and enriches the art.

BF: Are you a big fan of horror comics as a genre? Any particular favourites?

AA: I'm actually not a huge fan of the horror genre at all. I'm a big fan of some slasher films like Scream and over the top horror in films like Sweeney Todd and the Evil Dead series. I like when it is unreal and humourous, not when it is realistic or fear inducing. The closest comics to horror that I like are probably Frank Miller's Sin City series.

BF: Are there any teases you can give us as to where the storyline of Lily of the Valley will be heading in the future?

AA: The town sheriff is going to play a major role in the story and also romance is going to blossom. I'll have to decide if there will be more pink flamingos. Haha.

BF: And finally Adam, here’s your chance to sell Lily of the Valley to the Broken Frontier readership. Why should they check it out and why does it deserve their vote?

AA: I think you should check out Lily of the Valley because it is unique and original and you should vote for it because I'm sure deep inside you all want to see a cute schizophrenic murderous teenage girl fall head over heels in love. I know I do.

Lily of the Valley is one of the current competitors on DC's webcomic site Zuda .