INTERVIEW: Jon Chang about Black Powder Red Earth Yemen

The graphic novel Black Powder Red Earth (BPRE) has moved on to the next round. This one plays out the war of PMCs, intelligence agencies, and insurgents in the region where the Islamic State has established itself, Yemen. The trilogy has already been completed. Now Jon Chang, the creative mind behind the project, talks about the plot, upcoming game, and much more:

SPARTANAT: Jon, Black Powder Red Earth has turned the page! When we left off, BPRE was still in Iraq. Now the story begins anew in Yemen. What can we expect over there?

Jon Chang: Black Powder Red Earth™ Yemen takes place in the same future as our previous series, but offers a new cast of characters in a story with the same authenticity, operational details, and ruthless intrigue that has become the hallmark of Black Powder Red Earth.

There were four issues in the first series of BPRE (Iraq), and four in the second series (BPRE: Syria) each with about 250 pages in total. The new series was supposed to also consist of four books, but we decided to combine them into three volumes BPRE: Yemen. The final volume has just been released.

SPARTANAT: The world of BPRE is made up of Contractors. Is Yemen also a war of private corporations? Has this business changed since the Iraq War? What's going on here?

Jon Chang: Black Powder Red Earth has always used detailed extrapolations of current events as the background for our stories. The core story that establishes our BPRE world is that Saudi Arabia and its allies will play a greater role in security operations in both the Middle East and North Africa over the next ten years. We also believe that these petro-monarchies would outsource the heavy lifting of this role to Western providers who have access to a vast pool of combat-experienced veterans who have served in the regions of the Middle East.

Privatized forces have been used primarily as protection or training elements so far. A mission like FID (Foreign Internal Defense) combines these two missions and places the advisors alongside their partner forces in the field, allowing the advisors to directly influence the outcomes during "kinetic events." Through FID, nations like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and the USA will be able to influence the building and actions of security forces in fragile or failing states without deploying a large national armed force to strategically important regions that may not represent a vital national interest.

SPARTANAT: You always switch between facts and fiction, but with a good sense of the future of war. What does this future look like?

Jon Chang: Russia, China, and the USA will continue to position themselves in those regions with important resources available. These resources are both mineral (raw materials needed for manufacturing goods) and human (labor, typically cheap labor). You can see the hands of all three superpowers intervening at some level, in almost all conflicts in today's world.

SPARTANAT: The artwork looks tougher this time. What has changed?

Jon Chang: Experience. Time. Many, many changes to strike the right tone. We went through the same process again as we did when we started working on the first series in 2010 and then with the second series in 2013. Whenever we put pen to paper, we try to do the best work of our lives, which means we often have to start over as many times as necessary.

SPARTANAT: To bring this baby into the world, you took an alternative route and started a Patreon campaign. How did that work out? What is the benefit?

Jon Chang: Patreon is the perfect mechanism for fans to support and accelerate the development of new projects by independent authors.

Having supported some artists myself after completing "Black Powder Red Earth: Yemen," and given the huge production costs of the previous books in the series, Patreon was/is a great way to get the project off the ground while retaining ownership and control of the intellectual property.

SPARTANAT: Everyone wants to be part of the game. There are already some BPRE Airsoft players. When will the BPRE computer game finally be released?

Jon Chang: Echelon originally offered the BPRE computer game in 2016 as a downloadable board game. Through feedback from game testers and design improvements, we eventually set the speed, action, and gameplay to feel just right for our team and the player base we tested with.

The production of the computer game was already underway at that time, but it took a long time to complete it, mostly due to the graphics. Stylistically, Black Powder Red Earth is a "retro" pixel art game, but there are light and layer effects that we tried to give the atmosphere of dirt and despair of the places where our stories take place.

To get it right took longer than expected ^_^ A board game for BPRE will probably be faster.

JON CHANG (1973-) was the frontman of the band Discordance Axis and now GridLink. He produces Echelon Software and formerly worked at Haley Strategic. He develops games, produces short films, writes books/graphic novels, develops training programs, deals with tactical nylon. He creates brands for defense companies and does a lot of things that people pay him for. His first book, the graphic novel "Black Powder \\ Red Earth," was described as a kind of "Syriana meets Black Hawk Down."

BLACK POWDER RED EARTH on the web: www.blackpowderredearth.com

BLACK POWDER RED EARTH on Facebook.

HERE is where you can find BPRE: Yemen Vol. 1

HERE is where you can find BPRE: Yemen Vol. 2

We will introduce BPRE: Yemen Vol. 3 to you next week.

BCM Commercial, BPRE Style.