Last week, Archaia unleashed an original graphic novel upon the world that is unlike any other book they’ve published. In my review of Archaia’s Syndrome, I said it was “a nice departure from the type of books we’re used to seeing from Archaia”, and explained that it was full of interesting ideas and themes.
I got the chance to take with RJ Ryan and Daniel Quantziel Quantz, writers of Syndrome (based off an idea by writer Blake Liebel) about the evolution of the book, it’s incarnations in other mediums, the mind of the serial killer, and their response to then common criticisms of their graphic novel.
Syndrome is available in stores now.
CraveOnline: Thanks for taking the time to talk with us today! Syndrome is based off of an idea by Blake Liebel, but how did you guys get involved?
RJ Ryan: Yeah, Syndrome started out as an idea by Blake, that Blake had, that Blake was not able to crack as a writer. Blake does write comics, he writes a comic that Devil’s Due publishes called United Free Worlds, and he has a company called Fantasy Prone which co-produced that book with Devil’s Due and co-produced Syndrome with Archaia. So in February of 2009, Dan and I met with Blake and Lawrence Longo of Fantasy Prone to discuss an idea Blake had that was really centered around an insane asylum and a doctor attempting to treat a psychotic murderer, and how would that work? How would you do that?
Dan and I entertained that as a television property, and we were sort of going down that road for a couple months with them of how would you actually develop this concept or question as a television series. I think at the end of that process, neither of us were interested in telling a story set in an insane asylum. That was not interesting to us at all.
Daniel Quantz: Yeah, the whole world of straight jackets and padded cells just doesn’t interest us. It just seemed like it’d been done and been done better by people who really wanted to tell that kind of story. What we were interested in, and I think it’s obvious when you read the book, is this problem that’s like really a significant medical problem of how do you treat a Jeffery Dahmer or Richard Ramirez? How do you approach that problem medically? That’s what really lead us to that part of Syndrome. The science of experimenting and the subject of that experiment is the cause -- the biological cause -- of evil.
RJ Ryan: We basically decided to take that head on, and doing the research sort of discovered that psychiatry and psychology have no answer for that kind of mental illness. So we kind of took that as a “what if” using current research that’s being done, which itself is really exciting. Right now, we’re in the middle of a really revolutionary time in terms of our understanding of the human brain. And that was really interesting to us. So when it came around that they could do this as a graphic novel through Archaia, we pitched them a sort of revised idea.
Daniel Quantz: You know, when you’re thinking of a television pitch or a television idea, you really have to think in terms of the scale of television. But once we had all the signs together that Archaia was the correct company to work with and that we could pursue an idea in this range as a graphic novel, we threw everything we had done out the window and came up with this idea that the experiment, the test itself, is this sprawling complex out in the desert that’s attempting to, you know, simulate reality essentially, so that you could perform exhaustive research on one of these subjects without playing into the patterns of deception that are part of the psychoses.
CraveOnline: Well that kind of leads me to another question: what do you guys think is so fascinating about the serial killer’s mind? There’s tons of TV shows, documentaries and books just all based on serial killer’s minds. What do you think it is that people find so interesting?
RJ Ryan: Oh, that’s a good question. You know, working in the film business for a long time I see that all these serial killer movies are just this evergreen genre. I mean, horror movies themselves always sell well, but I mean if you do a movie about a serial killer you’re guaranteed to do well. I think a lot of that has to do with the transgression of that. I mean, it’s the ultimate “living outside of the rules of society”. No one wants to go out and kill people, but I think people are always intrigued by other people who don’t subscribe to the same rules that bind them into the lives they feel constricted by. It’s just somewhat titillating, I guess.
Daniel Quantz: I think the point with Syndrome was to operate within the serial killer genre, but the last thing we wanted to do was the story of how this guy got captured.
CraveOnline: Right.
Daniel Quantz: Or, the story of the manhunt for him. We didn’t want to do a cat and mouse story along the lines of SIlence of the Lambs or a million other movies. That’s why I think the ad copy for Syndrome -- which we didn’t come up with -- which says Seven meets The Truman Show, I think that’s an okay surface description of some of the stuff that you see in the story. But we’re not trying to tell a whodunnit here. This is not a mystery, this is not a search for a killer. This is what happens next. That’s really what the story is.
RJ Ryan: And really, we weren’t interested in trying to cover any ground that’s already been covered. We sort of used the serial killer as the ultimate expression of a particular psychosis. We didn’t want it to be in any way ambiguous, as far as what type of a person he was. Without giving anything away with the book; if you do have a character that extreme, could we possibly turn it on its head in an interesting way that you haven’t seen before?
CraveOnline: Well I think you guys definitely accomplished that. At the surface, like you said, I think there’s some expectation of what you’re about to read, but then almost immediately you realize that it’s something different.
RJ Ryan: Yeah, instead of The Truman Show meets Seven, I think it’s more like Saw meets Capote, to be honest. [laughs] Only in the sense that when you watch Capote, the act of killing that happens in that story, the In Cold Blood behind-the-scenes story, those murders are just as important as Capote’s reaction to, interpretation of, and feeling for them. And that’s what we were trying to accomplish with this story is to really show you a diamond from a number of different facets. We think that we’ll reach the reader a little more strongly in the story because they will have a place to plug into.
CraveOnline: One of the things that surprised me about the book was that it had a pretty big cast of characters for what I had expected. I found myself, personally, really attracted to Alexei -- he’s just a great character -- but are there any characters that you as writers got attached to or would like to tell more stories with?
Daniel Quantz: Yeah, I think that it kind of flipped around for me and that was the real challenge. I think I speak for both of us here. One of the things we really wanted to do was have a cast that was sort of an ensemble but with really, really different personalities, psychologies, and all that. And to really challenge ourselves to like each of them. What is the point of view of each character and how is that something that’s interesting, and something that will be interesting to us? So I guess kind of depending on my mood reading it, it’ll flip around.
RJ Ryan: Hear hear! [laughs] You know, not really. I feel like some chapters tickle me in different ways than other chapters do, and that’s exactly what we intended to do. The feeling in the book, from chapter to chapter, it makes it clear for readers that it does change. The art at the beginning of the book looks nothing like the art at the end of the book, and the storytelling styles change too between chapters to accomodate where these characters are coming from.
Daniel Quantz: Yeah.
CraveOnline: You mentioned the art; the art in Syndrome is excellent. When did David Marquez come aboard?
RJ Ryan: I saw some of his sketches on the Internet and investigated further and saw someone who I felt had incredible potential. I was, years ago, a talent scout for Marvel on the writing side, but I do feel like I have a good eye for developing artists. He was the first name I proposed to Dan and to Fantasy Prone and eventually to Archaia. And we were able to do it with him. It’s great, he’s been a full partner creatively. What’s really appealing about the characters in this book is the designs that he came up with, that we developed with him, but are really pure creations of his. They’re incredible. They’re really fun to look at in the different combinations that you see them in. We’re talking about four lead characters that are completely different from each other and are fun to watch in different pairings.
Daniel Quantz: Yeah, one thing that we were really able to see -- and credit to Josh [RJ Ryan] for finding him -- we were able to see that he was a really good artist, but a big surprise to me, and I think this is where you thank your stars that you find a guy like him, David’s a really, really smart guy and he’s really a savvy storyteller in sequential art. I mean, he brought so much to the table in terms of ideas and connections he saw; I really see him as a third writer in this project. That was a surprise and one that I really enjoyed.
RJ Ryan: It was something neither of us had any experience with, an artist who could advance things so much. When we would develop new drafts, and a script for a graphic novel like this is a massive document, almost 150 pages. I mean it was a really intensive game plan for the entire product. David would have notes and thoughts about every iteration of our script. 99.9% of what he brought back from reading different drafts was incorporated into the book, and I’m sure has made the book better. He’s a really special talent, he’s awesome.
CraveOnline: Was the project with Archaia before you guys came on board, or was it just Fantasy Prone?
Daniel Quantz: We were with Blake first, and those guys had a relationship with Archaia so we didn’t have to shop this around to a bunch of companies. They were able to talk directly to Stephen Christy, who edited the book, and is now the Editor-in-Chief of Archaia. The role he played that was really important was production development, in the sense that he was the guy that would sit down with us and we would tell him what we were shooting for and he would help us achieve it. I’m talking about packaging, I’m talking about the cover, I’m talking about how the book feels in your hand. Stephen was the guy who made that oversized format happen and look good. I mean, you can get an oversized book that’s very ho-hum, but I really feel like ours is showcased beautifully in an oversized format because of the production work that Stephen fought so hard to achieve. The book looks different from other Archaia books.
CraveOnline: Oh yeah, this looks nothing like any other Archaia book I’ve ever seen. Even the cover just says that this is something different from them.
Daniel Quantz: Good! I’m glad you like it.
RJ Ryan: Yeah, we were trying to do something different and they supported us. Everyone from Fantasy Prone, everyone from Archaia; we had nothing but support for us along the way. I mean there’s a lot of choices that were made, from the cover all the way through, that were pretty risky. I can see why a lot of people might be very nervous about it. No one ever even hesitated, it was great.
CraveOnline: That’s awesome. That’s very rare these days, I would say.
Daniel Quantz: Oh yeah, and we appreciate that.
CraveOnline: One criticism that I had and I know some other people had, was the length. It seemed very short, and kind of abrupt. There’s been talk of a second volume judging by the sales of the first. Anything to add to that?
RJ Ryan: I kind of want to get into this because I think this is kind of like a teachable moment. This book, Dan and I consciously gave an abrupt ending to. It is a bit of a splash of ice cold water on your face at the end of this book. I’m fine with telling people that that’s how it ends, it does end with the door slamming. It’s a shock ending. It’s not a twist ending; I think we’re very honest with our storytelling right up until the end, but it does end with a bit of a shock. We wanted to do that, you know?
CraveOnlline: Yeah.
RJ Ryan: Now, yes, there’ve been prevailing impressions that people want more. I really feel, honestly, they might not want more. I think what happens there is that they’re really enjoying the story and then it’s over. And it is over, it ends very abruptly in the way that we consciously wanted. I’m proud of the way it ends, and I’m actually really happy that people feel like they want more, but we have no deal for the sequel. We’re not in negotiations for a sequel, and we’re not planning to write the sequel tomorrow or the next day. If there is one, it’s going to take years. You know, this book took a long time to produce and that [the sequel], presumably, would take a long time too. So I hope that there’s more of this team and more stories in this world, but I can’t make any guarantees or promises right now, and sort of don’t want to, you know?
CraveOnline: Fair enough.
RJ Ryan: We want the current book to be the focus.
Daniel Quantz: We made a calculated decision that it would bug people that it ended so abruptly. We felt that given what we knew was the limitations of the project, if you will, we knew that trying to stuff a longer story into a shorter page count, we felt a lot of this was the storytelling itself. We felt to do what we wanted to do and really let it breathe, it’s like the first season of a TV series where you’re not sure if it’s going to get canceled, so it’s got kind of an ending, but kind of not an ending. If this is it, we’re happy with it. We feel like it’s enough of an ending that we’ve given you the pieces to start a conversation about the morality of stuff like this.
RJ Ryan: You as a reader have been given enough evidence by the end of the book -- and that’s like clear, right in your face evidence -- to whether or not the experiment worked, or to what degree it worked, or if it’s a good thing that it worked, or if it’s a good thing that it didn’t work. You have all the pieces to arrive at your own decision. People arrive at different decisions about this when they read the book, but you have all the pieces there. In that sense, we sort of wanted to end right when you have all the pieces.
I love when people say that there are unanswered questions in this book; that’s great. I don’t want to be a book that answers every question like a connect the dots newspaper puzzle, you know?
Daniel Quantz: Honestly, I relate somewhat to that criticism. I feel like what he did, hopefully, for the people who liked it, is that we created characters that are a little bit more three dimensional than maybe you’re used to seeing in comic books. Josh and I know where the story goes from here, so we have an idea of where these characters evolve and how their stories progress. I, as a reader, would want to see that. I think that’s a a good thing. Would it be better if you didn’t want to see more of them? I don’t know.
CraveOnline: Well either way, people are talking about it. I think that’s the best thing you can ask for.
RJ Ryan: Yeah, definitely. We’re very grateful for that.
CraveOnline: My last question: anything else on the way after Syndrome? Be it comics or film or anything.
RJ Ryan: We aren’t in the position to announce anything yet, but there is stuff in the hopper. I think Dan and I both, in terms of comics, we love this format of the single serving, long form work. It’s really fun to work on something like Syndrome for a year and know that when you’re done with that year, you’ve got a pretty substantial piece that you can put out there. Dan and I have both been in periodical monthly comics; that’s a different product ultimately, the floppy comics, than what we’re trying to achieve with Syndrome, which is a real full experience.
I liken Syndrome to going to a new, exciting restaurant that’s kind of near your house, and you might not have a great experience, but you could also have an experience that blows you out of the water. So it still can be fun to take that chance with a new team, a new group of people who have something different to say. Dan, you have anything to add?
Daniel Quantz: No, I think that’s pretty well said. I think our interest in storytelling is better served in one [book]. I mean, if you try and take Syndrome and chop it up into monthlies, it wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t sell, and you wouldn’t read issue number three. It was designed that way. You sit down and you read an 80 page book. There’s something really satisfying about that.
But we’re writers, so we’re definitely going to have things coming out, but it’s a little early to announce anything.
CraveOnline: Well I wish you the best with the book, and hopefully we’ll be talking again soon about a new project.
