From Mat Groom, the co-writer of Marvel Comics’ hit ULTRAMAN comics, and rising star artist Erica D’Urso (CAPTAIN MARVEL and XENA: WARRIOR PRINCESS) comes Inferno Girl Red, an all-new original graphic novel that combines the high school super-heroic drama of INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE with the dynamic storytelling and world-building of Japanese tokusatsu superheroes, and the intrigue and relationship drama of British boarding school fiction. A Kickstarter campaign to crowdfund this all new 100-page, hardcover superhero graphic novel by Groom, D’Urso, colorist Igor Monti, letterer Becca Carey, editor Kyle Higgins, and design group For The People, will launch later this month and run through May 5th, 2021.
With the launch of the kickstarter, I was offered the chance to have a chat with writer, Matt Groom.
Where’d the idea for Inferno Girl Red come from?
If I’m honest, it was so long ago now that I barely remember exactly where it started. But I think, at its core… it started with me wanting to explore something I think about a lot– belief. Specifically, how a level of unfounded, almost irrational belief is truly necessary to achieve great, unlikely things. You need to have that ability to take a leap of faith.
And I think, at this moment in history, when it feels like the world is falling apart in a dozen different way simultaneously, we need people who with that belief– in themselves, and in our collective future– if we’re to have any chance at turning things around.
But, the flipside of that coin– and something we’re also being forced to reckon with now– is the danger of belief. How quickly people can veer onto a dark, dangerous path if they get swept up in unfounded beliefs.
So how do we manage that? How do we walk that incredibly thin tightrope–individually, and collectively? I wanted to explore that, and somehow from there I ended up at a magical girl with dragon powers living in a near-utopian city that gets ripped out of reality by an ancient cult. The creative process. You know how it goes.
Why the high school age hero?
Well the ideas I was talking about just then obviously fascinate, but they’re also broad and amorphous and unspecific. It needed to be anchored in a human story. And I think it being a teenage story, something of a coming-of-age story, really works because that’s a time in your life when your belief is so important. As the guard rails of a structured life fall away and you get your own agency, you’re forced to ask yourself– what do you believe the world can be? What do you believe your world can be? What do you believe you can be? And your answers to those questions can play a really defining role in your life.
So really it was about taking this broader conceptual idea and grounding it, giving it real stakes– for our hero Cássia, these aren’t philosophical questions. They’re real life questions, from the very start– and then, as the story progresses, they become life-and-death questions.
Will this be a one off GN? Or will the story continue after this?
We’d love to do more with these characters, and this world. But, also, we don’t want to ask people to invest money to receive part of a story, you know? So we’ve gone to great lengths to ensure this is a story that stands on its own. It’s a novel, with a beginning, middle and end to the story. But could there be more stories? Absolutely!
How was working with Erica D’Urso?
After I had conceptualised the character of Cássia, editor Kyle Higgins and I knew right away that we’d need a female artist on the book, because the lived experience element is vital and obviously I don’t have it. So we were so stoked that Erica was available, and that the story resonated with her.
So Erica brought the female perspective, which I expected– and she brought a sense of fashion and style that I didn’t necessarily expect but wasn’t totally surprised by either, being familiar with Erica’s previous work.
But what I didn’t expect is the profound amount of passion and world-building Erica brought. Obviously I care about this book, I’ve been working on it for years, but I wasn’t prepared for Erica being just as passionate as me, or have a such a specific, inventive take so many different elements of the world.
I love making comics for many reasons, and the collaborative aspect of it as the top of the list. And Erica is as enthusiastic, generous and energising a collaborator as a person could hope for.
So how is it, working with Erica? Quite good, yeah.
Tell me something about your process that your fans might like?
Ooh, okay. Well, not many people know this– when I’m scripting, and I feel like I have the written page in a pretty good place, I draw a version of it for myself. Now, I’m like at about stick-figure-level of drawing ability (even that might be a bit generous), so nobody who looked at said page would have any idea what’s supposed to be going on in it. But it helps me make sure that what I’ve written could actually become a comics page– I haven’t suggested too many panels, or too much dialogue, or haven’t scripted action that doesn’t make sense or can’t be represented in a panel.
To be clear, I never show this to the artist (Erica, in this instance), and the pages never come back laid out or ‘blocked’ in the way that I had them– because the artists always have a much, much better way of approaching it. But this approach ensures that I’ve done that minimum due diligence of checking that what I’m suggesting is achievable on the page.
Obviously all of these pages that I ‘draw’ get immediately destroyed because they’re hideous and it would be cruel to inflict them on any other human eyeballs.
