Posted in: Comics, Denver Comic Con | Tagged: Comics, denver, entertainment, jimmi palmiotti, justin gray, kickstarter

Things To Do In Denver With Jimmy Palmiotti If You're Topless And Packing Heat

Published Mon, 10 Feb 2014 10:10:49 -0600

Last updated Thu, 21 May 2015 14:14:14 -0500

Jimmy Palmiotti has a new Kickstarter project out with Justin Gray and Pier Brito. Just launched. I asked him a few questions.

Rich Johnston: Things to do in Denver when you're topless and packing heat?

Jimmy Palmiotti: It is a mature audiences book. When we do these kind of Kickstarters, we write the story and push the envelope wherever we want…which makes a lot of the material not for the kids. This particular story has excessive violence, some nudity and some pretty foul language. It also has some beautiful storytelling and artwork from Pier Brito, an artist I met at NYCC a couple of years ago showing his work around. Jim Streranko called me over to his booth and said I have to see his work. After a few page flips on his I-pad, I was sold. We had been looking for someone that can do some serious world building illustration and we couldn't be happier with what he has turned in. We plan on working together on another project right after this.

Can we call this the Jimmy Palmiotti trope?

JP: Topless and packing heat? Ha, well, there is some of that in some of my books, but I blame a steady diet of Heavy Metal as a child for that. I grew up worshiping the art of guys like Moebius, Manara, Enki Bilal, Crepax, Bernet and so on. The European comics were a huge influence on me and probably why I like experimenting in so many different genres outside of superheroes.

How are you finding the Kickstarter experience?

JP: I am finding it a lot of work, but satisfying as hell. We're connecting with people that believe in our work directly and with this being the 6^th Kickstarter, we are seeing a large percentage of the pledges are return customers, so we must be doing something right. At this point I have learned all the things everyone that does this had to learn and now the process on the shipping and delivery side is a well-oiled machine. With Denver we are experimenting and adding a soundtrack for the book as a digital download. We connected with composer Hans Karl and he read the script and saw the art and put together a good number of tracks. The final touch was getting singer songwriter Carrie Johnson to do the final track. Yeah, we are having some fun with this one.

Painkiller Jane going to the screen for a third time? What will make this time the charm?

JP: The first major difference is that this time we are not just selling the property to someone to do his or her own version. We had done that done twice and I couldn't let that happen again, so I sat down with screenwriter Craig Weedon and we worked for about 5 months on a screenplay for a Painkiller Jane feature. This screenplay is exactly the character Joe and I created and if it goes to the screen, will be the most loyal version.

We sent the screen play to only 4 places and got two offers but we chose to work with Stephen L'Heureux and Solipsist films. Stephen understood all my past frustrations and said all the right things. The deal we put together has me producing as well, so I am hoping this time we get the character on screen the way she was meant to be.