The fifth and final day of Virtual Comic Con is here! We close out the event by talking to Tony Trov and Johnny Zito, creators of comic and movie production studio
South Fellini. Tony and Johnny discuss their various comic series, their new movie, and baby mammas.
Brian: You've published five comic series with various
publishers such as
Red 5 and
Image, and also published directly via
Comixology. Do you approach publishers differently from one another, and
have you learned different things about publishing from dealing with
multiple companies?
Tony: Each project is unique so it kind of gets started in its
own way. But in the end we look to get the comics into as many
platforms as possible. We want to be on-line, in phones, floppy issues
and graphic novels.
Johnny: The only thing we know for certain about comic book
distribution is that everyone reads comics differently. We want to get
our stories into as many people's hands as possible.
Brian: With
Moon
Girl, you took an obscure public domain character created by Gardner
Fox/Sheldon Moldoff and managed to both keep her true to her roots in
the 50s, yet also modernized her well for today's audience. What were
the challenges in doing that?
Johnny: We wanted to work on something super hero based because of
Rahzzah, the illustrator of
Moon Girl. His very realistic, painterly
style lent itself to making incredible seem credible in a cinematic way.
So we started looking for something in the public domain, something
that had roots in the shared past of super hero comics.
Tony:
Moon Girl took a lot of inspiration from books like
Marvels and
New
Frontier. Super heroes seem to function best when they're
recontextualized to that 1950's setting. So when we stumbled onto Moon
Girl these ideas all came together at once.
Johnny: The comic is about social unrest in America in a time after a
great war. There are some parallels to the world we live in today.
Everyone is looking inside themselves, flush with possibility, trying
to decide the kind of future they're going to build together.
Tony: All five issues will be collected into a graphic novel this year.
Brian: Carnivale de Robotique is the only all ages comic South Fellini has
done. Did the story itself dictate that direction, or did you decide
first that you wanted to try an all ages series and go from there?
Tony: We self-published
Robotique for Indie Comic Day or Skip
Week, some special event where all the big publishers were not going to
have any new releases. So a lot of us independent folks put out books on
our own. We called comic shops and solicited the comic ourselves. And
we got lucky, the stores were very supportive of the event.
Johnny: It's a four-part comic about Wendy the nanny droid, who runs
away to join the robot circus. And she kind of finds her way in the
world by persuing her dreams. We tried to tell a fairy tale from the
future and Mark Fionda brought some gorgeous water colors to the mix. I
think the comic is still very adult but the images hide the subtext.
Brian:
DOGS of Mars has often been compared to
Alien for obvious
reasons, but takes a unique approach with its art, in suggesting rather
than explicitly showing the creatures and most of the violence they
cause, and also in the color scheme (only black, white, and shades of
red). Was that your idea or did the artist conceive of that approach?
Johnny: We met Paul Maybury, the artist on
DOGS of Mars, at San Diego
Comic Con in 2010. All three of us had shuffled through DC Comics
digital imprint and come out the other side looking to work together on
something genre. We talked a lot about Japanese gore core, war movies
and real world robots. Paul came up with the red color scheme based on
the submarine lighting and the traditional tones of Mars.
Tony: DOGS isn't really about the monster. It's about the people the
monster is trying to kill. There are obvious allusions to
Aliens but
the
Lord of the Flies-style breakdown in society is what's really
terrifying. Friends are turning on one another and rivals are the only
people you have left. Trapped at the edge, these people have to give up
their humanity if they want to survive.
Brian: Your latest project is the live action film Alpha Girls, about a
satanic sorority. Judging by the trailer, there is a definite 1970s
grindhouse influence. What is it about the horror films of that era that
resonate so strongly with audiences today?
Johnny: I think we were really inspired by
Suspiria,
Heathers,
and
Evil Dead. These movies served as the visual vocabulary between
people creatively involved in the project. These are the films that get
you excited to make something of your own. There’s an energy and
excitement on screen that translates so well because the people making
it love what they do.
Tony:
Alpha Girls was going to be a comic book originally. We got
really into the sorority/coven idea ourselves and after a few weeks it
was like, hey… I think we can make this. There's a universal appeal to
the horror genre because it's about revealing a hidden world that we all
secretly believe could be true. How did all those people get rich and
famous? The devil did it.
Brian: All of your work, up to and including Alpha Girls, features women
characters guiding almost all of the story, yet South Fellini consists
of two guys from South Philly. Why has featuring women characters in the
forefront of your projects been so crucial creatively?
Johnny: They told us to write what we know.
Tony: We love our bad-ass mothers very much.
Brian: If Alpha Girls is a success (and I hope it is for you), will movies be
the main creation of South Fellini going forward, or will comics still
be a creative outlet in the future?
Johnny: We wanna make all our comics into movies and all of our movies into comics.
Tony: For all of the Baby Mamas, Baby momma momma’s and Baby momma’s mommas of the world.
Thanks Tony and Johnny!
Alpha Girls will be screening at the Trocadero in Philadelphia next Wednesday, October 3rd, and in Washington, DC at the E Street Theater next Saturday, October 6th. For full details, click
here.
Here's a glimpse of what you can expect from
Alpha Girls (NSFW). And yes, that is who you think it is as the priest!
And with that, we wrap up my first-ever Virtual Comic Con! I want to thank all of my guests who have made this a great event: Jeff Parker, Shawn Aldridge, Joe Rybandt, and Tony Trov and Johnny Zito. I couldn't have done it without you!
Most of all, I want to thank you, the reader, for taking part. I hope you enjoyed my version of a comic con. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments sections or at
phillyradiogeek@gmail.com. I definitely want to do this again next year--perhaps more than once.
It's only fitting that I close out the con with news of a horror film, because it makes a perfect segue to my next blog event--the
Countdown to Halloween! It's a mere three days away. I have tons of great stuff to share with you, so please stay tuned. It all starts Monday, October 1st. See you there!