By Byron Brewer

Unyielding wildlife photographer Brynne Brautigan, isolated in the remote cold of Baffin Island, sees something she can't unsee: an argument, followed by an outburst of intense violence between two nearby climbers. Did she just witness a murder?

In a frantic search for the truth, Brynne discovers just what she's looking for, but little does she know that more than the silent white of winter is keeping her company…

Writer Zac Thompson (Hunt for the Skinwalker, Cemetery Kids Don't Die) and artist Nicola Izzo (Buffy: The Last Vampire Slayer) team up for Blow Away, a neo-noir crime thriller rife with murder and paranoia, in the tradition of Fargo and Rear Window. I caught up with my friend, scribe Zac Thompson, and this is what he told me about the mini-series.

Byron Brewer: Zac, I hear that this book, Blow Away, is somewhat of a bucket list item for you… or thereabouts. Tell readers about the reason for its import to you as a writer personally and what that has to do with Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation.

Zac Thompson: I absolutely love paranoid thrillers and feel like they’re due for a resurgence. They were such a dominant genre during the 1970s and now it’s rare to see one. Even though we probably live in the most paranoid point in human history. So in seeing The Conversation for the first time, I fell in love with the central conceit. Which is about a surveillance expert that records a conversation but doesn’t have the context for what the people are talking about. When he gets wrapped up in a conspiracy around the recording, his mind starts going in tons of different directions about what it could all mean. That got me thinking about how you could replicate that same feeling in comics. Essentially giving readers a sequence of panels that once repeated could take on a new meaning or many meanings as the series goes on. So that’s the general idea behind Blow Away. You see Brynne’s footage of a “murder” several times over and each time you have more context and information about what it could all mean.

Byron: Wow! … What can you relate about your world-building here, the canvas artist Nicola Izzo and yourself will be dropping us onto come April? I know it is essential to get that atmosphere, that locale to almost become a character of its own in noir pieces.

Zac Thompson: Noir is all about the setting. So in setting the book on Baffin Island, Nicola and I made every effort to create a harsh and unforgiving wilderness that’s basically indifferent to the people who are forced to live on the snow and ice. It’s a cold and cruel place that really evokes the sense of isolation that the series thrives off of.

Byron: Introduce readers please to Brynne Brautigan. (We obviously know she is highly intelligent just by her initials, LOL!) Who was she, who is she when we meet her, what challenge(s) will overwhelm her during this neo-noir mystery?

Zac Thompson: Brynne is an expert wildlife videographer whose tenacity knows no bounds. She’s someone who puts herself in the middle of her shoots and knows she has to fail upwards of a hundred times to get the footage she’s looking for. When we meet her, she’s been stationed on Baffin Island, alone, for over a month. She’s determined to capture footage of an endangered species coming back from the brink. When she accidentally records what looks like a murder, she has to decide what she’s going to do about it. And how far she’s willing to go in order to uncover the truth.

Byron: What other characters might be important to Blow Away? Can you spotlight a few here please?

Zac Thompson: The two other main characters are the climbers RED and BLUE. Who are named after the color of their jackets. Everything we learn about them is through Brynne’s eyes. So that’s part of the reading experience.

The other supporting character is Sheriff Iga Ayek. She’s the only police officer in the small hamlet of Pangnirtung, Baffin Island. She’s an easy-going cop that doesn’t believe Brynne’s claims despite taking them seriously. She comes to be a thorn in Brynne’s side.

Byron: Discuss, if you will a bit, about your very interesting juxtaposition of obsession and the subjective nature of the truth – qualities, unfortunately, of our modern times – and having Brynne involved / coping with these to the extreme in a remote locale like Baffin Island.

Zac Thompson: Yeah, the big thing that drives the book is that we’ve grown more paranoid as a society. True Crime has caused us to scrutinize “regular” people who may actually be in trouble. We have all the time in the world to dissect the thoughts and actions of killers and try to find a motive for why people commit heinous acts. Sometimes that theory building holds merit and other times it’s just capitalizing on tragedy. I wanted to explore some of those things but completely removed from the culture that perpetuates these ideas. Is Brynne on the right track? Or is her quest for the truth informed by the culture she’s part of?

Byron: Talk about the awesome art of  Nicola Izzo.

Zac Thompson: Nicola is an absolute superstar artist. His storytelling is meticulous. His use of white space, snow and wind in his pages are elevating the mood of the book into something really unique on the stands. His character work is brilliant and he continually goes above and beyond in terms of layouts. I really can’t wait for people to see his work!

Byron: Zac, what other projects in which you are involved can you tell readers about?

Zac Thompson: I’m launching a new eco-horror series at Dark Horse called Into the Unbeing. It follows four scientists who descend into a harsh alien wilderness. Issue #1 hits in June. My new series Cemetery Kids Don’t Die just came out. It’s about a group of friends who play a horror video game in their sleep and the demons that follow them back into the waking world.

Dynamic Forces would like to thank Zac Thompson for taking time out of his busy schedule to answer our questions. Blow Away #1 from BOOM! Studios is slated to be on sale April 17!

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