Top Cow's "Pilot Season" promotion in its second year

Tag : Frozen Squid Tube

With any luck, you've already heard of Top Cow's "Pilot Season"promotion, now in its second year. Basically, Top Cow picks a fewof its creators, lets 'em create a new series, lets readers vote ontheir favorites, and the two that get the most votes get awarded anew ongoing series next year.

One of the entries in this summer's "Pilot Season" is a storycalled "Genius," about a girl named Destiny Ajaye who organizes LosAngeles' gangs and takes on the LAPD. It's written by Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman , the creators of "The Highway Men" and "Monster Attack Network,"with art by Afua Richardson . When they're not creating comics, all three have other jobs, too-- Marc is a senior editor at "Entertainment Weekly," Adam is a TVproducer who's worked on everything from "Gene Simmons: FamilyJewels" to "Total Request Live," and Afua is a professional singer,songwriter, voice actress, musician, and graphic artist.

Destiny is a 17 year old girl from South Central L.A. She hasbeen surrounded by violence, drugs, street crime etc. her wholelife. She decides she is the one that will do something about it.Every generation has its military genius - Hannibal, Napolean,Patton...who is to say Destiny is not ours? I guess hero or villaindoesn't really apply to her. She is doing what she feels she needsto do to ensure survival. And she's hot.

It's always worth remembering that every villain is the heroof his or her own story, and that good and evil are subjectivelabels. It's like, the only thing that separates a cult from areligion is numbers. From her perspective, I think she sees meritin what she's doing, even if she becomes the necessary evil.

The descriptions Ive heard of the story make it sound likesomething with a fairly strong political focus. A story about LAsgangs, lead by a teen girl, taking on the LAPD sounds likesomething thatd have something to say about racial politics, copculture, feminism, and more. Can you talk a little about thecomics politics.

What I find interesting about "Genius" is that everyone whoreads it will imprint their politics or racial feelings onto it. Iactually don't think it is political. It is pretty neutral, as faras the storytelling goes, in that it is "documenting" an event. Itdoesn't take sides. How you interpret it will say more about yourpolitics than ours.

Yeah, neither of us have any axes to grind. We're not lookingto further any sort of agenda; we just went where the story tookus. We both first came into comics in the late '70s/early '80s, andone of my favorite books ever was Marvel's "What If?" series. Thisis, essentially, our version of a What If book, but instead offlights and tights, we've got 'bangers and Barettas.