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The End-All Be-All of Money & Murder on Monday

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by Vince Brusio

Money. We spurn those with too much of it. We long for more of it ourselves. We all need money, and hate its power to corrupt at the same time. But none of this seems to be the backdrop for “the power of dirty, filthy money” in The Black Monday Murders Volume 1: All Hail God Mammon TP (NOV160656). This looks like something completely different. So we went straight to the source — which is to say we interviewed writer Jonathan Hickman — and asked about this new series that he’s putting out for Image Comics this August. It’s a book about who’s at the top of the food chain, and what they’ll do to prevent themselves from ever being on the menu. 

The Black Monday Murders Volume 1: All Hail God Mammon TP (NOV160656) is now available to pre-order from the November PREVIEWS catalog.

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PREVIEWSworld: What inspired you to use fantastical characters like vampire Russian oligarchs to tell your story? Or are these folks just blatantly obvious metaphors?

Jonathan Hickman: Sure. Sure. The metaphor is useful. But the soul of the thing is my wanting to write about money as an actual force of nature. Narratively, that’s tough to do unless you tweak the whole concept of what money actually is, so I did. 

People understand gaming systems and the ‘rules of magic’ that come with them, so I just overlaid all of that onto modern financial systems and you end up with an aristocratic class of well-monied eternals. 

Add in a couple of high profile murders that need solving, some world class art, and you got yourself a comic book. 

PREVIEWSworld: Could you give us a little insight as to the history behind this tale? Have you been working on it here and there in between books like East of West? Or is this something that’s been in your Pandora’s Box that just needed to finally see the light of day?

Jonathan Hickman: I actually wrote the first issue of this last May when I was on vacation with the family. I got the idea on the way down to the beach, and I’d stay up and work on it after everyone went to sleep. I get most of my ideas for books full-stop, and this was no different. I just had to get it down. 

So I guess I’ve been sitting on it a while. 

PREVIEWSworld: What can you tell us about the core characters we’ll meet in issue #1? What are the origins for their individual voices? What gave them their personalities?

Jonathan Hickman: Like most of my books, it’s a pretty big world, but we’re primarily focused on two characters. A wealthy heiress who returns from being exiled from the family business because of her brother’s murder, and the detective that’s tasked with solving the case. 

She’s a true-believer. He’s a skeptic. 

Both are pawns in a greater game that they’re not aware of at the onset. 

PREVIEWSworld: How did you and Tomm Coker work together on this project? Was there any give and take? Or did you pretty much give Tomm free reign to level buildings as he saw fit?

Jonathan Hickman: Well, I’ve wanted to work with Tomm for quite a while because I’m a big fan, and the cool thing about Image is that if we want to do a book, we kind of can just do a book. 

So I asked Tomm if he was interested and he was, so off we went. 

As for give-and-take, sure, there’s plenty of that, but honestly, I’m really more interested in what he’s going to do than what I think should be on the page. And not for nothing, but Tomm’s a hell of a designer as well, so we’re having a good time going back-and-forth on that stuff as well. 

PREVIEWSworld: If you had to speak at a convention panel and talk for a minute about this book to motivate people to put it on their comic shop pull list, what would you say to them?

Jonathan Hickman: I’ve done a lot of pretty successful books over the past couple of years, and I can honestly say this is the best comic I’ve produced. Since I entered the industry, I’ve been trying to marry comics and design, and I think this is the closest I’ve gotten. 

I can say with a good bit of confidence that The Black Monday Murders will be the best new book on the stands, and I’d love for people to check it out.  

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