DF Interview: Simon Birks blends action and sci-fi to create an emotionally-driven new series, ‘Antarctica’

By Byron Brewer

Hannah's life imploded the day her father failed to return from the secretive Smith-Petersen Research Station in Antarctica. Alone and on the street, she's at her lowest ebb when a friend offers help. Retrained as an engineer, Hannah secures a job at the same Antarctic station to search for her father and stumbles headfirst into a conspiracy that threatens everything she's ever believed.

Stargate meets His Dark Materials in Antarctica, a new non-stop sci-fi action blockbuster from writer Simon Birks and artist Willi Roberts. I had the pleasure of discussing the series and more with scribe Simon Birks.

Byron Brewer: Simon, before we tackle Antarctica (you know how savage penguins can be, lol), let’s hit the Wayback Machine. Tell readers a little about how you first got interested in writing at age 11 and later spread out to cover almost all media (including comics and your own publishing house, Blue Fox). By the way, good idea moving to Scotland. My maternal family is from Aberdeen.

Simon Birks: Writing is my passion, ignited back in middle school, when I was 11. I’m genuinely not sure I’d thought about it up until then. The headmaster ran a poetry competition, though competition is probably too strong a word, and all the pupils in my year had to enter. I wrote the poem (all but the first verse is lost to time) and handed it in. Well, as fate would have it, I was the pupil who went to pick up the folder of poetry for the class from the headmaster, and naturally on the way back I looked inside. I was stunned to find my poem was in the top tier (though I can’t remember how this was labeled). It was a genuine life-changing moment. Naturally, having done well at poetry, that’s what I focused on into my teens. Then, gradually, I began writing short stories and short plays (creating dialogue is a favorite of mine), some of which were performed. Like many people, I had a lot of stories started but not finished. I began writing screenplays, and after joining an independent filming networking website, joined up with Dan Thorens to write a series of short films called Sinners, about a young woman who drives around the US following a GPS which guides her to the next ‘sinner’ who disappears into the boot [trunk] in a blinding flash of light.

When I hit my 40s, my writing started improving a lot. I published my first novel The Ostrich Race, co-wrote the film The Search for Simon (I didn’t name it), and wrote, produced and co-directed a sitcom called Last Contact. After this experience, I realized how difficult it would be to create Sinners as short films and began reworking the scripts into comic books. A couple of years later (around 2014), we found a great artist, R.H. Stewart, who created the first issue. Lyndon White (who letters Antarctica and created the cover B for issue 1) lettered the Sinners #1 comic. We’d heard about Kickstarter and, after some investigation, launched our first campaign for the issue in January 2015. It was a nervous time, since the comic funded with only a day to go!

In the next couple of years, we founded Blue Fox Comics, and continued to create comics I’d written, funded through Kickstarter. We tabled at cons and met other fantastic creators. We published our first book not written by me, Lyndon’s Sparks and the Fallen Star, as well as creating several new titles of our own.

My day job was IT, and we relocated up to Scotland for a contract I had in Glasgow. Pretty much as soon as we arrived, Blue Fox grew by contacts it made and great publishing community which exists here. During the pandemic, I took a decision to try and do Blue Fox full time, and with the help of my wife, that’s what I’m still doing day in, day out. I’m incredibly fortunate. We now run a Kickstarter once a month and have recently passed our 50^th campaign mark.

Byron: If memory serves, Antarctica has roots all the way back to your short story in Top Cow’s Stairway Anthology. What inspired this coming sci-fi book (Stargate meets His Dark Materials?) from you and artist Willi Roberts?

Simon Birks: That’s a great question, and the truth is, I can’t remember the exact inspiration. I enjoy writing female protagonists. Antarctica is the closest we can get to an alien landscape on Earth, adding to the other-worldliness. I’m also quite a fan of single-location stories, and having the characters essentially trapped in Antarctica plays into that scenario.

Byron: Talk about the mysterious new “world(s)” Willi and you are creating with Antarctica. Often, the canvas readers are placed upon takes on the life of a character itself (Gotham in Batman, The Forest in Bambi, etc.). What world will readers discover when picking up this mag in July?

Simon Birks: These are essentially other versions of our Earth. Hannah’s Earth is very similar to our own but has this strange anomaly close to the South Pole, which, while initially concerning, became less and less important as time went on. To the point where it’s all but forgotten about, and there’s only a skeleton crew looking after the Smith-Petersen station built to observe it. Dr. Curtis’ Earth is different, closer to climate catastrophe, which has prompted them to invest more and try and use their own anomaly to save themselves.

Byron: Introduce us to young Hannah. Who was she, who is she, and what challenges does she meet as we begin this adventure? What is her relationship with her father and how does that play into, if it does, the direction Hannah takes in the book?

Simon Birks: Hannah doted on her father, who was often away on secret military missions. Home life for her is difficult when he’s away, so when he fails to return one day, her life is thrown into chaos. She becomes unruly, uncaring, and soon spirals into homelessness. Jim, who runs a café nearby, looks out for her as best he can, and manages to convince her to go to college to get a qualification. She uses this to pursue her father’s disappearance and gets a job at the Smith-Petersen station.

Byron: What other protagonists do readers need to know about as this Top Cow adventure begins? Can you introduce some here?

Simon Birks: As mentioned earlier, Jim Lee, a café owner, takes Hannah under his wing and tries to help her. When she gets to the Antarctic station, she meets its skeleton crew: Campbell, Hirsch and Matteo. Each has their own secrets, which begin to surface as the story continues.

Byron: Tell us what you can about the secretive Smith-Petersen Research Station in Antarctica. Can you offer any clues as to the menace that festers there?

Simon Birks: Back in the 1950s, an anomaly was discovered near the South Pole and the Smith-Petersen station was built to observe and protect against it. Back then, it was a highly-funded, high-tech building which did its job well. Too well, perhaps, as over the next few decades, with the threat level reduced to near zero, the project was steadily de-funded until it was hardly funded at all. Now, the anomaly has been exploited, and unless something is done, it could be the end of us all.

Byron: Discuss your collaboration with Willi Roberts. How did his art inspire your scripts and vice versa?

Simon Birks: I’ve been working with Willi at Blue Fox Comics for a while. He’s the artist on my dark fantasy title, Clodagh, as well as the artist on our adaptation of The Thing on the Doorstep. He also illustrates our gamebooks (choose your own adventure books). He’s a fantastic artist who’s committed to producing the best story from the scripts I send him. Before he began working on Antarctica, he sent me through his designs which I loved. The uniforms, buildings and vehicles are amazing.

He sends me the inks and colors of the pages as he creates them, building on my scripts and enhancing them when needed. Antarctica wouldn’t be half as cool if it wasn’t for Willi Roberts.

Byron: Simon, what other projects, inside or outside comics, are on the horizon for you? Any that you can tell readers about?

Simon Birks: The Kickstarter campaigns for Blue Fox Comics continue at one-a-month for the foreseeable future! I’ve got my next gamebook, A Branching Narrative Volume One lined up, created from my newsletter of the same name and comprising three solo adventures. I’m committed to creating four adventures a year which I thoroughly enjoy writing (Fighting Fantasy gamebooks came out when I was 12, and I’ve loved them ever since – plus Sir Ian Livingstone was in The Search for Simon which 12-year-old Simon would not have believed!). I’ve also designed a game which we took to Essen last year to playtest and am in the process of fleshing out my Arcane Rites world into an RPG.

Dynamic Forces would like to thank Simon Birks for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions. Antarctica #1 from Top Cow and Image Comics is slated to be on sale July 12^th!

For more news and up-to-date announcements, join us here at Dynamic Forces, www.dynamicforces.com/htmlfiles/, “LIKE” us on Facebook, www.facebook.com/dynamicforcesinc, and follow us on Twitter, www.twitter.com/dynamicforces.

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