Broken Frontier

Earlier this week The Daily Read looked at webcomic creator Bobby Crosby's MARRY ME. You can read the review here. Broken Frontier caught up with Bobby to find out first hand about the project.

Broken Frontier: I know I've asked you this question before about Last Blood, but  MARRY ME is deeply rooted in pop culture, so again, why did you pick the medium of webcomics for this project?

Bobby Crosby: The goal for both was to sell the ideas as films, with the plan of also having finished screenplays by the time the graphic novels were done, and simply being a comic book goes a long way towards making those sales. Comics are selling to Hollywood all the time, almost daily as of late. There are various reasons for that, one of which is that it obviously makes it easier to visualize the film, especially if the cover of the comic would make for a good film poster, which we tried to do for MARRY ME. All we wanted out of the comic was to simply have the finished, printed graphic novel, so we could shop that around to potential buyers. Putting the comics online was an afterthought that there was simply no reason not to do, and that's been a very profitable decision, since MARRY ME has been pretty popular online.

BF: What real life characters did you use as the foundation of fictional pop star Stasia, and what elements of their life did you choose to emphasize?

BC: The only conscious influence I can think of is the similarity between Stasia's manager/father and Jessica Simpson's, both of whom appear to be a bit creepy and money hungry. I don't know a whole lot about pop stars in general, so any other similarities are coincidental.

BF: It seems most writers can't seem to resist commenting on the self-destructive nature of pop stars. So with everything happening in regards to Britneymania, why does Ana Stasia come out against this trend? Why do we see her as intelligent, warm and compassionate as opposed to everything else?

BC: Because she's the star of the movie and it's extremely important for the audience to like the star of the movie.

BF: What are your thoughts about the media's role in popular stardom? In the beginning of MARRY ME, we see a lot of the characters plotting their actions as reactions to what the press will say. What do you think this says about our culture?

BC: Well, bad press can not only ruin reputations, but it can hurt sales, and Stasia's father wanted her to keep her record clean when it comes to stuff like that. Stasia was concerned about the media because they were lying about her and because she feared her father would use that as an excuse to tighten his leash on her even more.

BF: Finally, how does it feel to be juggling both Last Blood and MARRY ME? How does it work with your schedule and your writing habits in general?

I haven't written nearly as much of both comics as I should (and even less lately of +EV, my other comic), but that has a lot more to do with general laziness than any struggle to juggle multiple comics. I planned to have about eight comics all going at the same time by now, but I had trouble finding good artists and trouble motivating myself to do the work. There's a ton more movie ideas that I'm going to turn into comics by the end of the year. My schedule mostly consists of watching TV and going to Dodger games, but I'm gonna have to throw in some more writing soon.