Brian Wood's Revolution May Be Televised As He Brings Briggs Land to Dark Horse and AMC

07/18/2016 05:58 pm EDT

Writer Brian Wood, who has shown readers dark, politicized visions of the world in DMZ and The Massive and chronicled the American revolution in Rebels, is turning his eye on America's right-wing militia movement in a new series Briggs Land, with artist Mack Chater.

Wood is also writing a TV pilot for AMC based on Briggs Land, offering hope that Dark Horse could be the next to benefit from having one of their relatively small, creator-owned titles blow up when a TV series drives new traffic to the comic shop.

The series centers on the nation's largest and most secretive antigovernment movement. A hundred square miles of rural terrain, Briggs Land was founded and managed by the Briggs Family, whose political ideologies have been slowly corrupted over the years and who now fully embrace gun-running, drug smuggling, money laundering, and a half-dozen other RICO predicates. When the family's patriarch is sent to prison, control of Briggs Land falls into his wife's hands -- and a lot of people are going to be unhappy with how Grace Briggs does things.

So how did we get from the militiamen who founded our country in Rebels to criminals and bullies of Briggs Land? Wood joined ComicBook.com to discuss talk about the series, which debuts from Dark Horse Comics next month.

How long have you had this percolating? The obvious thing to look at here is the Malheur standoff, but obviously secession groups have been active way longer than that in the US.

It goes back to the research I did for DMZ, and later on for Rebels, so probably at least a half dozen years. I included it, a little bit in DMZ, but I mostly just filed it away for some later date, thinking there was a story in there somewhere.

Malheur was, in the end, sort of a joke, a poorly-thought-out protest that seemed to inspire internet jokes more than anything else. But the previous Bundy action in 2014 really opened my eyes: those images of militia snipers on the highway overpass. It was then that I started to open that old reference and put together what eventually became Briggs Land.

What is it about Grace that you think readers are going to find compelling?

At its core Briggs Land is a family drama, and that's always compelling and relatable if done right. Grace herself is a mother, the classic sort of put-everyone-else-first type, but now her kids are grown and she's well into middle age, and is no doubt thinking about her mortality and legacy, and ruminating on the sins and regrets of her past.

Did you develop this on your own and then pitch it to both AMC and Dark Horse at the same time, or did one or both have a hand in the development process?

I have had contacts and friends at AMC for years now, and I'd been feeding them all my comic pitches on the sly, on the off chance that there was something in there they would like and I could get a jump start on things.

Briggs Land was the first thing of mine since DMZ that they really reacted to, and then went for it, offering me a deal based solely off the comic book pitch. At that point I hadn't even shown it to Dark Horse or talked to an artist. It totally took me by surprise.

But now, now that I'm writing the comic and the pilot episode of the show at the same time, there is more back and forth with the material. I started off with a pretty liberal adaptation of the comic, but over a few drafts its really morphed into its own thing.

But in doing all that thinking and tinkering, I was able to bring some of that back into the comic to make it better. It's a fun process, a real creative challenge, and I'm enjoying myself.

My agent is always reminding me that I'm not a comic book writer, I'm a writer, period, and I shouldn't be limiting myself. In addition to the Briggs Land pilot, I've created and written another pilot that's out there now getting its funding, I wrote the screenplay for the 1979 Revolution video game, and will be starting a prose novel later this year.

The characters as they've been introduced in the posters and one-sheets do not seem particularly likable. How do you make the threat of the government swooping in to clean house something that the audience isn't cheering for?

This is a good question, and it makes me think of The Sopranos, a show full of bad people and negative racial stereotypes. But we love them, that was a terrific show, because they were so real and relatable, and, again, the family drama was front and center. There are some members of the Briggs family that are openly bad, like the incarcerated father and the eldest son, but by and large we have a bunch of people striving to make do with the cards they're dealt and live their lives on their own terms.

I'm not downplaying it - this is the big challenge of the series for me. Anyone who's read my comics know I rarely write a straight up "likable" character - my people are shot through with flaws and contradictions, from Matty Roth in DMZ to the crew of The Massive to Gavin Cruikshank in Starve. Briggs Land should be no different, but the fact I'm writing this big family drama is a new thing for me.

Obviously this feels a bit like another Brian Wood book that will do better in the bookstore marker than in the traditional comic shops. Would you say that's generally your wheelhouse these days?

It's always been my wheelhouse going all the way back twenty years. Not all my publishers get it - Dark Horse absolutely does, though. Whatever it is I do right, it works best in trade and both in and out of the direct market. I'm ok with that, it serves me well.

Do you have a beginning, middle, and end for this project, or are you leaving it open ended in case the TV show gets made and becomes a big hit?

I know what the end is - not precisely, but the general event, what the final arc is about. But much like with DMZ, there is a lot of potential story space between that point and right now, and I can see Briggs Land, easily, running a good 50+ issues, if not as long as DMZ ran. Briggs Land is one of those seemingly bottomless well of story ideas. When you get one of those, you thank god for your luck.

As far as the TV show being a hit or not, obviously I hope it does. Some people say they view things like TV shows or other adaptations as a sort of free bonus and that comics are the primary thing. I understand that point of view, but I also recognize that I have a family to support and college and retirement funds to pay into and health insurance and all that, so diversifying what I do and where I can earn a living is crucial, and as long as I'm enjoying myself in the process, I'm open to any writing opportunity. So if Briggs Land TV is a hit, that's fantastic and I'll celebrate it. The comic, too.

This feels -- just becuase of the way the community is isolated from the "outside world" -- a little bit like Big Love or Greg Rucka's Lazarus. Are there any kind of touchstones that you can pick and and look at when you're doing a project like this for inspiration?

I'm way behind in Lazarus, but I did draw on certain aspects of Big Love, specifically the polygamist compound. Early on, Briggs Land was set in the American West, a general sort of Idaho-Montana area. I've since changed that to Upstate New York, which is no less rural and isolated, but does have more diverse population centers much closer by that will make this book not so homogenous - prepper and Sovereign culture is pretty white, but New York and the larger rust belt area is far more varied, a little older and grimier, and more of a fit for a crime book.

Beyond things like Big Love and The Sopranos, most of my reference and inspiration comes from history, from the Weather Underground to the Symbionese Liberation Army, to Ruby Ridge, to Tim McVeigh. There's lots to look at, and I always try and avoid using other people's fiction as reference.

You seem to take a lot of interest in American insurgents (for lack of a better term), looking at everything from DMZ to now. What interests you about them?

DMZ was more about civilian life than it was the militants, but I know what you mean. I like the idea of looking at what's going under just under the surface of society. I like thinking about what drives conflicted people to do what they do.

When researching Rebels and The Green Mountain Boys - America's first militia - I was struck by the idea that militiamen back then are the very symbol of freedom, honor, and community, and we revere them. Now, not so much. How did we get from there to here? Who's changed more, the idea of a militia or other people's willingness to accept them? Is it society or the individual? Fascinating.

Speaking of which, I have to ask, is one of the projects that you kicked around with AMC at one point DMZ? I still hold out hope...!

Seven years ago AMC got in touch with me because they wanted DMZ. By my count they've made three separate attempts at different times to get the rights to make a DMZ TV show, but since AMC isn't part of the larger WB "family," they are rebuffed each time. Which is, to put it mildly, frustrating, and doubly so since its not like much is being done with DMZ anyway. We had that Syfy option which ran its course over a year ago.

So, yeah, I hold out hope too.

On a personal note: Where exactly does this take place? Because I recognize the EXACT spot where Grace is on the highway and it's five minutes from my old apartment.

That's bizarre. So yeah, a general sort of Upstate New York, but that one scene aside, the specific location of Briggs Land is deliberately vague. Partly to preserve the fiction - even in a place as rural as the Adirondacks, "hiding" a massive chunk of private land would be pretty hard - but also because its not super important that this is specifically New York. The region is important, like I said, but I'm taking great pains to make sure Briggs Land is unlinked to any of my other specific books like DMZ, or that this story is about New York.

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