By Zack Quaintance — We’re back today with a new Kickstarter Interview, wherein writer Rylend Grant talks about his recently-launched campaign, The Peacekeepers 1 and 2. Rylend describes this new project as a quirky crime drama (not unlike Fargo, No Country For Old Men, True Detective, etc.), and today he’s taken the time to elaborate on it with us. Read our interview below and then head to The Peacekeepers campaign page to back it.

Rylend Grant Interview

ZACK QUAINTANCE: First of all, tell me about the creative team and how you were able to pull it all together…

RYLEND GRANT: The Peacekeepers was brought to life by artist Davi Leon Dias, colorist Iwan Joko Triyono, and letterer HdE... the very same team that brought you 10 kickass issues of my critically lauded political action thriller Aberrant (released by Action Lab: Danger Zone in 2018).

That book made about a dozen ten-best lists. It won a Mike Wieringo Comic Book Award ("Ringo Award") for BEST VILLAIN and was nominated for two others... BEST SINGLE ISSUE and BEST WRITER (alongside Jeff Lemire, Scott Snyder, Brian K. Vaughn, and Brian Michael Bendis).

HdE is brilliant and he letters everything I do. He was actually nominated for a Ringo this year for his work on my last book, the dark superhero noir BANJAX. He also helped us secure a BEST SERIES nom on that one.

Long-winded way of saying that we’ve all worked together before. When you have thoroughbreds like these in the stable, you ride them as often as you can.

The Peacekeepers is a story I’ve wanted to tell for 15+ years, but haven’t been able to. I’m a screenwriter by trade. My day job is writing movies – mostly big poppy action flicks – for folks like Ridley Scott, JJ Abrams, Justin Lin, John Woo, and Luc Besson… but there is this other, more cerebral side of me that does always get nourished. Hollywood is a frustrating place. What you’re allowed to do as a writer there you can essentially fit on a postage stamp. They’re only making about five different movies these days. They want you to tell those stories a very specific way. I’m pretty damn good at writing those movies – they paid for my house – but I needed to find another outlet to stay creatively sane.

The beauty of comics is you can tell any kind of story, in any kind of way, as long as it’s GOOD… and this is pretty damn good. The Peacekeepers is a dark, quirky crime drama in the vein of Fargo or No Country for Old Men. It’s a love letter to case-a-season police dramas like True Detective and The Wire, to Elmore Leonard novels, and to comic masterpieces like Criminal and 100 Bullets.

ZACK: The setting (“a quaint town in Northern Michigan”) stood out to me right away, especially in an election year where the state is in play and there’s a lot of discussion around places like that. What made you pick that setting for your book?

RYLEND: Well… I grew up in Detroit, Michigan, but from time to time, I wandered “up north” with my family and we encountered places like Morgan County (the fictional setting of The Peacekeepers). I was always very interested in that dichotomy of place. The big nasty city vs. the “quaint little town.” How where we come from shapes us so completely. How it puts us at odds with folks who live across imaginary lines we draw on a map.

After I graduated college, my parents moved from Detroit to the mountains of Tennessee, to what is literally the least diverse county in the United States. It’s a place that’s a bit rough and tumble, a place that is a more than a little country… but it is a community with a capital C. And I mean that in the best sense of the word. Everyone knows everyone. Everyone looks out for everyone. If someone gets out of sorts, the proverbial herd brings them back in line. My visits there, really informed this story.

At its heart, The Peacekeepers is about that collision of culture. When a crew of in-over-their-heads bank robbers kills a beloved Sherriff’s deputy, a national spotlight is shone upon Morgan County. As the story progresses, our “quaint little town” is invaded by CNN, by Nancy Grace, by an army of Federal Agents looking to get in front of cameras and make a name for themselves. Needless to say, all hell breaks loose.

ZACK: One thing I found interesting about your preview was the incorporation of a small-town wrestling circuit. How did you decide to include that and how does it fit into the rest of the story?

RYLEND: HA! It’s hard to go too deep into that aspect of the story without giving away some big twists and turns, but I’ll take a whack here…

I’ve visited a lot of these small towns – in life in general, and while specifically researching this book – and for whatever reason, they all seem to have the Busch league pro wrestling club that puts on shows once a month in a high school gymnasium. When I research a project, I go all in. For my film work, I’ve spent time with Russian Gangsters, with Armenian bookies, with cops, Federal Agents, Bounty Hunters… So, while prepping for this, I spent some time going to these shows, hanging out with the guys and gals that put themselves on the line, the folks to set up the lights and the ring, the doctors who patch the combatants up when things inevitably go wrong. It’s such a wildly interesting world. I’ve always wanted to set a story there.

This is a crime book. These federations are essentially run by carnies who aren’t strangers to playing things a little left of center. While hanging out with these folks I got the sense that some of them were into some pretty questionable (but wildly interesting) shit. Again, without giving too much away here, I kind of just let my imagination run with that.

ZACK: What inspired you to go to Kickstarter with this project over pitching to a publisher?

RYLEND: That is a complex question. The short answer is I didn’t choose one over the other. I instead chose to do both. Here’s the longer answer…

You’re essentially talking about two different audiences. There are the people who pretty much exclusively buy their books in comic shops… and then there are the people who pretty much exclusively buy their books on Kickstarter. There is some overlap, but not nearly as much as one might think. If you are a creator and you’re only serving one of those audiences these days, you are doing yourself and your book a disservice.

It’s such a wonderful time to take a book to Kickstarter. There is a rabid and wildly enthusiastic fanbase there. If your book is good, it will be embraced wholeheartedly… and you can actually make a few dollars! Seriously. Very few of us make money putting books in comic shops and when you’re dealing with creator-owned titles like these, you’re often sinking tens of thousands of dollars – your own money – into art and printing… the idea that you can go to a website and make some of that money back is earth shattering/a game changer for a lot of creators.

Things have gotten really bad for everybody in the comics business amid this fit of COVID… creators, publishers, retailers. You had pencils down. You had comic shops closing. You had waves of layoffs and firings. That meant that shops had to be a lot more careful what they ordered/put on the shelf, publishers had to be a ton more careful what they greenlit, and it all resulted in fewer opportunities for guys like me.

But other things are changing… I actually think we’ve entered this age of “creator empowerment” in comics. We saw something similar happen in basketball over the last decade. We saw this era of “player empowerment,” guys like Lebron James, Kawhi Leonard, and Kevin Durant ripping control away from the owners, deciding where they play and who they play with… Again, the same thing is happening in comics. Creators like me, we used to have to wait for permission from a publisher to make the book we wanted to make… well, we no longer need that. Today, we can just make our books and take them directly to the consumer via sites like Kickstarter.

And to bring this back around to your question,,, It used to be that publishers were wary of Kickstarted books. That’s not the case anymore. Smart publishers like Scout realized that Kickstarter can be a valuable proving ground for would-be titles. The simple fact is, if something does well on Kickstarter, it’s probably going to do well in a shop. Well, everyone is hopping on board now. Image is publishing Kickstarter books. Darkhorse is too. It’s a new game.

So, the plan is to kickstart the first “season”/story arc of The Peacekeepers and then take it to a traditional publisher. Then, I’m serving both audiences, getting the best of both worlds. You’re going to see a lot of creators doing this in the coming years. Bigger and badder creators too… if only because they can get a better deal. Shit, the Scott Snyders and Kevin Eastmans of the world are already doing it, running six-figure campaigns. More to come.

ZACK: Finally, for those who know your other work (Banjax, Aberrant), how does The Peacekeepers compare to or fit with those books?

RYLEND: Banjax and Aberrant were my way of processing 30+ years of consuming traditional comic books. Those were superhero stories. If you look deeply, Aberrant is kind of my take on Captain America. Banjax is my Batman story. I’ve kind of been there and done that now. I don’t know that I’ll do supes again until/unless Marvel or DC come calling.

The Peacekeepers is me branching out, spreading my wings. I don’t think there are enough stories like this in comics. These are the stories I truly love and so I am enthusiastically filling that void while pissing in the wind and howling at the moon.

This is a damn good book. Hit the Kickstarter up and check it out.

The Peacekeepers #1 and #2

The Peacekeepers
Writer: Rylend Grant
Artist: Davi Leon Dias
Colorist: Iwan Joko Triyono
Letterer: HdE
All hell breaks loose in a quaint northern Michigan community when a team of in-over-their-heads bank robbers kills a beloved Sheriff’s Deputy. In a small town with BIG secrets, local detective Richard Holton races to peel back the layers of a depraved down home conspiracy before the bungling Federal Agents assigned to the case send everyone involved to ground.
Back It Now: The Peacekeepers #1 & #2

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Zack Quaintance is a tech reporter by day and freelance writer by night/weekend. He Tweets compulsively about storytelling and comics as Comics Bookcase.