Joey Esposito’s a busy man. Not only did he write all four issues of the detective thriller series Footprints, but he also wrote a back-up story in Grim Leaper #1, and he holds down a full-time job as IGN’s Comics editor.
And he’s STILL not done.
He just launched a Kickstarter campaign for a brand new, creator-owned graphic novel called Pawn Shop, and tomorrow, the first issue of Esposito’s new five-issue limited series from Zenescope, Grimm Fairy Tales: Bad Girls, comes out. Under his pen, heroine Sela Mathers fights a group of villainesses from the Zenescope universe who are up to no good.
We caught up with Esposito himself earlier this month at San Diego Comic-Con, who informed us that Zenescope contacted him about their series just a few months ago. He had a lot more to say about his upcoming projects.
HC: How’d you get the gig?
JE: I’ve known [Executive Editor] Raven Gregory over at Zenescope for a while, and when Footprints came out, I sent him the first issue and he really liked it, so I just kept sending him, as the new ones would come out, and he enjoyed it. Eventually I got an email from him asking if I would be interested in doing something with Zenescope, writing the miniseries which ended up being Bad Girls.
It was basically about all the villainesses of the Grimm Fairy Tales universe getting together to take over the four realms and how Sela has to stop the attack. It all takes place after the big events that happened in Grimm Fairy Tales #75 through #80, so it’s pretty cool. It’s like a little mini-event, for me, anyway.
HC: What can we expect?
JE: It’s big action, first and foremost. There’s these things called the Flesh Reavers just coming in. The first issue, you see New York City pretty much laid to waste. Sela, after the events of Grimm Fairy Tales #75, she’s imprisoned, and she just lost her daughter [Ilys]. She’s accepted the fact that she belongs in a prison, and then these creatures come in because they’re coming after her full-force. She ends up getting busted out of the prison only to find that New York has been completely decimated by these creatures. The first issue, all of a sudden, she’s just in the midst of this giant battle and she has no idea what’s really going on. As the series go on, she’ll meet up with some other Grimm characters.
Issue #2 will have Red Riding Hood in it, which I’m really excited about. She’s the character from the very first issue of Grimm Fairy Tales who started out as a young woman. In the first arc of Grimm Fairy Tales: Myths and Legends, she was a psychiatrist working in this like, rehab facility, only to slowly discover that she has these powers to control the wolves. We’re going to see the next stage of her starting in issue #2, and what her powers hold and what she can bring to this whole story. I love Sela, but writing Britney, the Red Riding Hood character, starting in issue #2 has been so much fun. She’s just such a bad ass.
HC: Are the stars of your book the good guys or the bad guys?
JE: It’s a balance. It’s branded “Bad Girls,” which is about the bad girls of the Grimm Fairy Tales universe, but really it’s about the heroes as well, so we’re looking at the story through Sela’s perspective.
HC: Who are the bad folks in the book?
JE: You have the Goblin Queen, Alicia the Mistress of Limbo, Baba Yaga, the Queen of Spades, and Venus. They’re sort of sitting in the castle in Limbo just watching these events unfold, and they have this device that can control these creatures. Their plan is pretty simple: they want to rule all the realms.
HC: After the last issue of Bad Girls, what’s next for you?
JE: Nothing at the moment. I just finished writing issue #3 pretty much before I got to [Comic-Con], so I have two issues left to write.
HC: What’s the tone of the book?
JE: The first issue’s got a fair amount of blood. It’s fantasy mixed with horror, so there’s the horror elements, but Sela’s got a lot of sarcasm. Other characters [are] a little bit more playful too, so I try to keep it in a similar tone to Footprints, where it’s serious, but there’s plenty of humor in the dialogue. The character interactions… I hope they have some humor to them, despite people’s heads getting ripped off.
HC: What’s going on with Footprints?
JE: The trade is done. There’s nothing more planned in terms of those characters at the moment. I am working on a new project with Jonathan Moore, who’s the artist of that book. He stopped doing comics for a while, but now we’re sort of getting back into the swing of things.
HC: What else do you have coming up?
JE: I have a Kickstarter for another original graphic novel called Pawn Shop with an artist named Sean von Gorman. It’s all watercolor and digital elements mixed together. It’s a four-chapter graphic novel [and] it all takes place surrounding a New York City pawn shop and the characters that interact unknowingly through that one store.
HC: If you could write any Marvel or DC character or team, who would it be?
JE: I would love to write Night Nurse at Marvel and Ragman or Catwoman at DC.
About Hilton Collins
Loves all things science fiction and fantasy, and if he had to choose between video games, comic books, movies, TV shows and novels, he’d have a brain aneurysm. Check out his blog at www.superheroesareawesome.com. Twitter: @HiltonCollins
