Experience the New Broken Frontier

Hello and welcome to Broken Frontier!

Thanks for (once again) stopping by our modest digital endeavor. This page will fill you in on who we are, where we come from and what you can expect from us on a frequent basis. If you like what you see, you also might consider joining our team or contacting us to share news about your publications.

Our history

We’ve been around since 2002 and over the years have been referred to as a comic book news site, as a webzine, and in the very, very early days as a fan site. Our tagline back then read “Where Fans Come First!”, since we very frequently ran guest articles by fans from across the globe looking to voice their opinion on comics-related topics close to their heart. Since it was the pre-blogging era, many people grabbed that opportunity with both hands.

As our site grew, so did our brand, which led us to create the world’s first digital comics magazine for tablets, The Frontiersman, which ran for 28 issues between 2010 and 2012.

No matter how you experienced BF’s content, the core of our approach to comics journalism has never changed: we’ve always strived to be a website that paid as much attention to the independent and small press scene as to the mainstream. We’ve never ceased to underscore that there’s much more to comics than spandex.

One other constant in our decade-plus existence is the multitude of nationalities we’ve had on staff. American, obviously, but also Canadian, British, Belgian, Dutch, Philippine and Australian. There’s no doubt that we’re one of the most international comic book news websites around.

Breaking the norm

Our insistence on heavily spotlighting publications that don’t belong to the mainstream stems from the firm belief in the power of comics as an art form and in the continued progressive evolution of the medium. As with anything in society, evolution comes through revolution, by breaking the boundaries of the normal… until the experiment becomes the status quo itself. And so it is in comics.

Your stop for quality comics coverage

At Broken Frontier, we’re adamant about serving you quality comic book journalism covering comic books and graphic novels that are fully in line with our DNA. Don’t expect us to cover anything and everything there is to see in the comics industry, to hop on the bandwagon of a certain trend or to dive into the pool of rumor mongering – there are great websites out there if that’s your thing.

Instead, as Frontiersmen and women, we want you to come away with good impressions of the comics and the talent that you need to pick up today because they will define tomorrow. Our international staff will repeatedly go beyond US borders on that quest, because we’d be unable to live up to our goals if we limit ourselves to the US only.

We’ll say “Yes!” to Scott Snyder’s groundbreaking work on Batman and American Vampire, but we’ll pass on Deadpool Corps. We’ll rave about Blank Slate’s Nelson and its plethora of up-and-coming British talent, but we won’t cover the umpteenth G.I. Joe mini-series. We’ll spotlight a great pulp revival like The Rocketeer and sing the praises of Umbrella Academy and Saga, but you better look elsewhere for more on the latest Wonderland release.

Nothing against any of those books and the hard work their creators have no doubt put in, but the true next step in the evolution of our beloved medium is likely to come from elsewhere. But wherever it comes from, we’ll be there to report on it.

Let’s continue to explore all corners of the comics universe together. Onwards, upwards and sideways!

Frederik Hautain
Editor in Chief
frederik@brokenfrontier.com

This post is a copy of the Broken Frontier mission statement published here.