Comic Related - Hot Shot of the Week Companion Feature

Hot Shot of the Week Companion Feature

Ten Questions About Blood Bowl: Killer Contract #1 With Matt Forbeck

Russell Burlingame reporting for Comic Related

Alright! Time to have a little fun. Most of the time, the Hot Shot of the Week feature has been given over to something that's a sterling example of using the medium to communicate something special.

This time, it was all about monsters, half-naked hotties who could kick your ass in a fight, and senseless, mind-numbing brutality.

No, no, I'm not talking about "Shadowpact Meets Godzilla." I'm talking about Blood Bowl: Killer Contract #1, from Boom! Studios. And we caught up with writer Matt Forbeck for a quick word on the title.

ComicRelated: Matt, first of all, what's the process for writing something like this? Anything that's a licensed property has to be pretty tough to begin with, in terms of the number of people who have approval, yes?

Matt Forbeck: Actually, I only had to make two people happy: my editor(s) and Nelson—yes, he goes by one name—the approvals man at Games Workshop. In this case, Joe Abraham started out as the editor but had to move on to other projects. Michael Nelson (an entirely different, two-named Nelson) filled in as a temporary editor for a bit, and Ian Brill came in then and swept up the mess the rest of us (okay, mostly me, I'm sure) had made.

I wrote the script and submitted them to my editor at Boom. The editor turned around and gave them to Nelson for approval. Since I've been working on Games Workshop properties for so many years, Nelson and I usually shot back and forth on various issues directly while the editor reffed the match and kept things clean. Well, relatively clean. It's Blood Bowl after all.

Then the script went on to Lads Helloven, whose job it was to turn my words into art. Lads outdid himself here. His style is different than what you find in most comics, but for Blood Bowl it made a perfect fit. He drew, inked, and colored each issue himself, and you can really see the skill and the love in each panel.

CR: ...And with something like a game, how much leeway do you have in establishing characters? How do you combat the notion that they're kind of interchangeable since each player has a different perception anyway?

MF: Blood Bowl: Killer Contract features the same cast of characters from the four Blood Bowl novels I've written. At least, the parts of the cast who've managed to survive. I established most of the crew back in the first book—the prosaically titled Blood Bowl—and I've culled and added many characters since then.

In my head, each character has a distinct personality, so I have no trouble keeping them apart. That shows up in the dialog, I think, and the way they act on the field. Lads did a great job establishing a different look for each of them, although it's sometimes hard to distinguish between some of the players in the middle of a game. In that way, it's much like real football.

I did add a couple of new main characters for the comic book: Kalter Mörder (the "retired" assassin) and his agent, a goblin named Gimmy the Geek. Plus lots of the victims—I mean, players—on the other teams. Both GW and Boom gave me plenty of latitude with this.

CR: Until I got the very enthusiastic press release for this thing, I frankly didn't realize that there was already an established Blood Bowl comics property! When I saw it solicited I thought this might be the first one. How long have you been writing these suckers?!

MF: Blood Bowl: Killer Contract is the first Blood Bowl comic ever. I've written four Blood Bowl novels over the past few years, and these are based on a board game designed by my pal Jervis Johnson. The game's been through several editions, but it first hit shelves back in 1987. That makes it 21 years old, finally old enough to drink!

Cyanide is developing a new Blood Bowl computer game too. The first came out in 1995, and this latest one is due soon, hopefully before the end of the year.

I first played Blood Bowl back in college. Later on, I worked on the Blood Bowl Player's Companion, which came out back in 1991. So Blood Bowl has been a part of my life for a long time.

CR: How did you come about the gig?

MF: I interned at Games Workshop when I was fresh out of college, so I'd known the people there for a long time. When I started writing novels a few years back, my friend Marc Gascoigne (then the manager of Games Workshop's fiction division, the Black Library) asked me to pitch him some ideas for books. I worked up about a dozen of them, mostly for Warhammer or Warhammer 40,000. To my stupefied surprise, he picked the one for Blood Bowl.

Boom has had some great successes with the Warhammer and Warhammer 40,000 comics. When they decided to do a Blood Bowl comic too, I'd already written the only four novels ever crafted for the setting. I must have seemed like a natural choice for the job.

CR: And on that note (kind of related to that second question): Do you continue the characters from story to story, or are these new guys getting smacked around each time?

MF: Being Blood Bowl, there's a high mortality rate. However, there's a core group of characters that usually makes it from season to season. Mörder, who appears in the comics, is brand new. One reason I concocted him was to give the reader someone new to follow through the game, fresh eyes for the sport.

CR: For all your gaming and fantasy experience, you don't appear to have any superheroes under your belt. That's pretty unusual for a guy who's built himself a reasonably robust mainstream comics portfolio! Any interest in doing, I dunno, an issue of Planetary Brigade or something? Just to say you did it?

MF: I'd do them all! I love superhero comics. I learned how to read on those Spidey comics Marvel published with the Electric Company.

I know some of this is buried deep in my list of credits, but I've done a lot with superheroes in the past. I wrote a chapter of The Authority Roleplaying Game, I worked on the JLA Sourcebook for the DC Universe RPG, and I designed the Marvel Heroes Battle Dice Game (and an unpublished DC version) for Playmates Toys. I also co-designed the WildStorms Collectible Card Game with Drew Bittner and Jim Lee.

One of my favorite creations to this day is Brave New World, an alternate history RPG I designed that's chock full of superheroes who have changed the world and are now struggling to survive it. I'm even working on a Brave New World film with the crew at Reactor 88 Studios.

So, yeah, I'd love to write superhero comics. Any editors at Marvel or DC reading this? Give me call!

CR: How much fun is it to really cut loose with a book like this--come up with some good, old-fashioned sex and violence and not worry particularly much about what's going to be acceptable? Or is that a misperception?

MF: Not at all. It's great fun. In addition to the computer game and tabletop game work I do, I also write young adult novels, and I have to show a lot of constraint with those. I have a fairly twisted sense of humor, and most of the time that's something I have to keep in check. Not with Blood Bowl.

CR: For the uninitiated (which includes me, this one issue notwithstanding), why not give us a capsule pitch for the series? What's the premise, and how does it correlate or not with the property you're licensing?

MF: Blood Bowl: KIller Contract follows the world champion Bad Bay Hackers in their quest to repeat as champions of the annual Blood Bowl Tournament. Unknown to them, one of their rookies is a hired assassin who's been paid to pull off the perfect murder: killing a Blood Bowl player during a game.

In general, Blood Bowl is the game of fantasy football. In this case, though, "fantasy" means elves, dwarves, ogres, and such kicking the snot out of each other while they struggle over a spiked football. While the game has rules, the players regularly chop them to bits with knives, swords, and spike-toothed chainsaws.

CR: So would it be fair to call it "A cross between Super-Pro and Lobo?

MF: Sure! It falls closer to Lobo than Super-Pro though. The violence goes way over the top, and it's all severed-tongue-in-someone-else's-cheek too. The players drink Bloodweiser, for instance, and the opposing team in the first issue is the Orcland Raiders.

CR: Can you tease what's up next in the mini, or will Mark Waid send someone to your house?

MF: He might, but he'll have to get past all my kids. In issue #2, the Hackers take on the dreaded Dwarf Giants. In the course of the game, Mörder finally gets a shot at his target—and finds he's bitten off a bit more than he can chew.

To say much more than that would spoil the fun. I hope you enjoy the rest of the series as much as issue #1!

Click here for Hot Shot of the Week Review of
Blood Bowl: Killer Contract #1