If ever I’ve read a title worth a second glance this is it! Needless to say I reached out to Sam immediately when I saw this and he was nice enough to give me his time and allow me to pick his brain.
- Thank you for your time Sam, first and foremost I have to address the bit that really excited me, where the heck did you get the idea for Cabra Cini?
“My biggest influence is Grant Morrison’s out-there run on Doom Patrol, – wherein they introduced such creations as the sentient Danny the Street, the Rebis hermaphrodite incarnation of Larry Trainor, and weirdass villains The Brotherhood of Dada. That influence has inspired me to be able to think in ‘weird mode’ when I want to when coming up with comics ideas.
I created/first wrote Cabra Cini – the former downtrodden hooker-turned supernatural gun-for-hire – stream-of-consciousness in a scene in which she heads through a supermarket, smoking a cigarette and terrorizing the staff, as she goes about her shopping. That scene actually appears in Cabra Cini: Voodoo Junkie Hitwoman #0 Deluxe.”
- The samples I’ve seen on the Facebook page look outstanding, who is your interior artist and how did you find them?
“Cabra Cini: Voodoo Junkie Hitwoman #0 Deluxe is the lead-in to the upcoming Cabra Cini/Geek-Girl Crossover, and collects all of Cabra’s appearances and related sub-plots from Geek-Girl #5-#9; that part of the book is illustrated by Geek-Girl regular artist & colorist C Granda and Chunlin Zhao. It also features Cabra’s origin story, illustrated by Bruno Letizia, and for the first time with colors by Chunlin.
I’ve been working on Geek-Girl with Granda (as he likes to be called) and Chunlin on Geek-Girl – the former ‘It Girl’ turned Super-Heroine – for years and I found them by advertising for creators for the book on Comic Forums such as Digital Webbing and Penciljack, back in the day. I think that’s how I got Bruno as well.”
- I can tell just by a quick glance that you’re no rookie in the industry. How long have you been working in comics and what got you into it in the first place?
“My first published work was in the long-running anthology Negative Burn in 2009; after working on scripts for some time before then. When I was deciding what I wanted to do for a career, I knew it would be writing, and getting back into comics at that time, it clicked that writing comics was what I wanted to do; and I started by entering some Talent Search contests run by Image and Malibu Comics, among others – submitting story outlines; and I had success in two of these contests – that’s what got me going.
I actually also came up with a prototype of Geek-Girl for a ‘Who Wants to Create a Super-Heroine’ contest, and decided this was a character I wanted to develop further and run with. And here we are, a 4-issue Mini-Series in, and currently working on issue #14 of the Geek-Girl ongoing – along with the forthcoming Geek-Girl/Cabra Crossover!”
- The last Geek Girl kickstarter surpassed its funding goal by more than double, it seems like you’re really on the right track. Do you have any advice for newbies to meet their goals and get their projects out?
“Well, if you can assemble a creative team that are reliable and really into the book… On Geek-Girl that certainly is applicable in the case of Granda and Chunlin, and Geek-Girl’s letterer Paul McLaren – all of whom have worked on all/almost all issues of the book and share the passion for it that I have.
Cabra Cini has various artists, but the main artist, Fernando Melek, has been involved for a long-time and is currently working on the first issue of the upcoming Cabra/GG Crossover – which Cabra Cini: Voodoo Junkie Hitwoman #0 Deluxe leads into; and again, he’s reliable and passionate about the comic.”
- You guys publish out of the UK, has the indy comicbook industry been scaling up since Covid in the UK in a similar fashion to the US or have you noticed much of a difference?
“I think things have gone much the same way in the UK as the US, in terms of comic cons coming back and the changes to comics distribution. Something that’s also become the case – in both the UK & US and elsewhere – is Kickstarter has gone from strength to strength and cemented itself as a form, and a vital one, of distribution for creators; one that didn’t exist in any shape or form when I started out in comics.”
So there we have it, bold, sexy, weird, all of the staples that hold up the indy comicbook industry packed in an awesome looking book with a title that more or less forces you to read it twice. Cabra Cini is live on Kickstarter right now and you can back the project here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/geekgirlcomics/cabra-cini-voodoo-junkie-hitwoman-0-deluxe