Personally, I find that there are very few occasions where several of the things a person

loves come together just right and manage to create one extremely super-awesome thing. It’s
easy to do that with just two things: beer & pizza, horror & comedy, Bendis & Maleev, etc. But
getting past more than two is the tricky part. That’s because sometimes three things that are
kickass on their own can be totally catastrophic when mixed together. Example: Corndog =
awesome. Corndog + Blue Raspberry ICEE = super-awesome. Corndog + Blue Raspberry ICEE
+ Giant Dipper roller coaster at The Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk = NOT super-awesome at all.
This is a big reason why SYNDROME held such instant appeal for me. I have a pretty
strange set of hobbies/interests that rarely all intersect in the same place at the same time with
satisfactory results. Yet here was a graphic novel with a story that discussed cutting-edge
discoveries in psychology and their potential uses, neuropathology, the mind of serial killers and
sociopaths, the ethics and social impact on treating/curing mental illnesses- all with surprisingly
accurate medical data and presented in such a way that made it all but impossible not to sit and
reflect on one’s own morals and ethics.
Yes, I consider serial killers and mental illness hobbies.
Don’t judge me.
SYNDROME is a graphic novel written by R.J. Ryan and Daniel Quantz, illustrated by
David Marquez, colored by Bill Farmer, created by Blake Leibel and published by Archaia under
their new Black Label.
Hmm…I’m wondering if Archaia is going to be like Johnnie Walker whisky with
different colored labels that mean different things. Like the books published under the Black
Label will all be complex and twisted with just a hint of social commentary, while those under
Archaia Red Label will be more vibrant and whimsical, and Archaia Blue Label will have only
the most distinguished award-winning books with covers made from 24k gold so that a single
one is exorbitantly expensive…
Just a thought.
So anyway, SYNDROME is about the obsessive neuropathologist Wolfe Brunswick and
his mission to find a cure for…well, evil. And not demons and Orcs fantasy evil, but the actual
evil that infected the minds of Dahmer, BTK, Bundy, and the like. He believes he has found a
way to treat the brain- a drug therapy that can help stop the development of sociopathic
tendencies. But how can you test a cure for becoming a serial killer? It’s an accepted fact that
they are expert liars and manipulators so letting them know they were part of an experiment
would undoubtedly cause them to taint the results. Clearly the only viable solution is the most
simplistic in theory while seemingly impossible in execution:
Find a way to make sure the rat doesn’t know it’s in the maze.
Enter young, beautiful (and broke) actress Karen Oats and megalomaniacal genius
production designer Alexei Conta. Both of them will be offered the challenge of a lifetime with
the allure of the oh-so-noble pretense that what they’re doing is for the greater good. Now all you
need is an isolated location in the middle of nowhere Nevada and the brain of sadistic
psychopath/serial murderer Thomas Kane and you have workable test conditions.
What I enjoyed about SYNDROME is the way that it’s haunted me ever since I read the
sample pages before the release date. While it is most definitely a book for mature readers only, I
think it manages to be appealing to several different types of readers. If you want a dark and gory
horror tale I would say that it fits the bill (one word: cat.) If you like your reading a little heavier
SYNDROME will most assuredly satisfy your hunger for something that will make you think.
Or if you read in order to gain a clearer understanding of yourself- where you stand or draw the
line morally, how far you would go for your passion in life, who or what you think is expendable
for a safer society and what all of this says about you- you wont have to look any farther than the
first page to be prompted to ask these things of yourself.
The writing is brilliant and layered, leaving enough room for conversations and events to
be open to the reader’s interpretation while also managing to take highly complex concepts of
psychology and sociology and explain them clearly and succinctly. The story is unique and
though it is fiction it’s also eerily relevant and very current in several different areas of
psychology and neuropathology today. It’s clearly very well researched with an attention to
detail and focus on accuracy that even extends into the background of the artwork.
I would say that the art of David Marquez is visually equal in detail and ingenuity to the
writing of Mr. Ryan and Mr. Quantz. All of the artwork in SYNDROME is digital and was done
entirely with Photoshop and a Cintiq drawing tablet, a fact that I was not aware of until I had
finished reading it. At the end of the book there is a brief description from the artist outlining his
creative process and describing step-by-step how the illustrations of SYNDROME came to be,
along with personal bits of insight about working with the writers, the pros and cons of going
digital, and some of the real-life places used in the book. I really appreciated that considering
that my artistic eye is about as discerning as Helen Keller’s and I seriously would never have
known that it was entirely digital.
I very much enjoyed the opulence of certain parts of the artwork. The wrinkles in a sheet,
a glass of gin, blood spatter covering a wall; all of them drew your eye and one couldn’t help but
appreciate the beauty of even the most grotesque scene. Paired with the undeniable skill of
colorist Bill Farmer, former assistant to renowned colorist David Stewart (Greendale, The
Umbrella Academy, Fray) and current freelance talent as of January 2010, Marquez created the
perfect visual counterpart to the world of SYNDROME.
It is my understanding that artist and authors worked very closely together and that the
latter had highly specific ideas about what they wanted so I’m not entirely sure who to credit
with the fantastic amount of care and planning that I can see went into all aspects of the artwork.
There is so much contributing detail to take in, like the lab equipment in the background with
corresponding depictions of results, that like me, most people will probably discover something
new each time they read through it. There’s also no shortage of well executed visual symbolism-
both subtle and overt.
Oh, and there’s a decent amount of T&A too.
Which brings me to my only major complaint: that some of the drawings of the women
are just a little on the unrealistic side. I know, I can hear the accusations that I’m a hairy,
sexually repressed, uber-feminist who’s probably a man-hating lesbian forming already. I assure
you that I usually I don’t have a problem with foregoing realism for the sake of aesthetics in my
comic book chicks. But seriously? Some drawings of Karen Oats strike me as teetering on the
line of the ridiculous. From some measurements I took off of one depiction, assuming she was
about 5 foot 9 Ms. Oats would have proportions somewhere around 22-15-24. That makes
Barbie’s mere 36-18-33 seem positively portly in comparison! But to be fair I’m not an artist. I
don’t understand things like angles and positioning and ratios that are the most visually
stimulating. I’m just saying that at times I can imagine her with eyes 10x larger and a mouth 10x
smaller and calling herself Sailor Moon.
And for the record I am NOT a hairy, sexually repressed, uber-feminist, man-hating, lesbian.
I both shave and wax regularly, thank you very much!
 Realistic or not the art in SYNDROME is still absolutely beautiful. In fact the entire book
is quite stylish, from the cover art to the title page & introduction to the blank page at the very
end. I find myself still caught up in and thinking about the story, which has already spawned
several excellent conversations and lengthy amicable debates. I’ve already recommended it to
many of my friends, my psych professor, & my psychiatrist- who coincidentally also has a
Jackson Pollock print in his waiting room. Weird.
After reading SYNDROME and loving it so much I became painfully curious about the
research involved, the inspiration behind it all, its hidden meanings and messages, and a plethora
of other things. In fact so great was my curiosity and so endless is my impudence and audacity
that I just had to email Mr. Ryan with a bunch of questions, to which he and Mr. Quantz were
gracious enough to actually respond to.
They gave wonderfully thorough answers and explanations to each of my queries
providing insight into their thoughts and methods as well as the intended message of
SYNDROME. This Q&A pseudo-interview will be going up shortly, along with some truly
badass exclusive artwork by Mr. Marquez that can’t be seen in the graphic novel.

So until then folks try to stay out of trouble.

But if you find that you just can’t help it please be sure to use protection.