What happens when two college kids go chasing after a dream to become professional hitmen? The Unprofessionals: A Sociopathic Bromance, a six issue graphic novel, written by Colin Rankine, art by Chris Moreno, and developed and produced by Stargate actor Alexis Cruz and The Mythmaker Group, follows the story of Jake and Leo who decide to pursue the career path of awesome ninja assassins.
We caught up with Alexis Cruz at the Sci-Fi Expo for the rundown on his newest project and discovered how the project came about, how crowdfunding was successful for it, surprising parallels between the story and real life, and kismet. Check out our conversation below:
SciFi Mafia: First I want to congratulate you on the full funding of your new project, The Unprofessionals: A Sociopathic Bromance, which is a six-issue graphic novel that you’ve secured funding through crowdfunding via Kickstarter.com. This also the premiere project from your Mythmaker Group, right?
Alexis Cruz: Yes, our intellectual property development group. We’ve got about a dozen projects but we’re starting off small like any DIY indie group. It’s a group of friends and collaborators that have been working together for a long time and we’re ready to step forward as The Mythmaker Group.
SFM: Let’s talk a little bit about The Unprofessionals. How did you get your team together? I know that the writer, Colin Rankine, is your good friend from high school.
Alexis Cruz: Yeah, from high school. We grew up together. He’s my best friend. He’s one of the best writers that I know and have had a chance to work with so I really believe in his work. I decided that I want to be his editor and help bring his work to the public.
SFM: How did the story come about?
Alexis Cruz: Completely accidentally, like most things. In addition to the rest of The Mythmaker Group, I wanted to go to Colin to get some stories done and Colin was skeptical at first. It was all a question of “Can we do this?” We have this vision, but is it really possible to do? At the very least, let’s try. That pretty much parallels the story of The Unprofessionals because at first Leo has to convince Jake on this adventure to kill people.
SFM: [laughs] You always need that little bit of peer pressure…
Alexis Cruz: Yeah, exactly. So Colin had a whole vault of amazing ideas, incredible ideas. Actually The Unprofessionals wasn’t even his favorite or his most developed but it struck a chord for me. We have a few other projects that are really epic in scope, some sci-fi stuff and some fantasy stuff but for your first project, it’s really overly ambitious for anybody to bite off more than they can chew. And we didn’t want it to affect our friendship either so we needed to start small.
SFM: What did you do to prepare for a project like this? I assume that the two of you haven’t done a graphic novel before?
Alexis Cruz: I make movies…
SFM: The process has similarities?
Alexis Cruz: So I figure, how hard can it be? [He jokes.] Well, let me tell you that I’m sorta regretting that. I was telling Collin the other day, “What was I thinking?”
SFM: But it is a challenge to self-publish and do the marketing all yourself.
Alexis Cruz: Yeah, we are doing everything ourselves. Particularly when you’re coming from outside the comics industry as I am as an actor, there is a very reasonable skepticism and a very reasonable territorialism in the comics field because we often see all of these celebrities trying to attach their names to comics and it’s pretty transparent when they’re looking for this geek credit. They’re not comics enthusiasts. It’s an ancillary thing for them to get more Twitter followers.
So on the inside of comics and as comics enthusiasts ourselves, we see that and it turns us off. It turns off the audience and Hollywood wonders why their projects are failing. You can’t pull the wool over the people’s eyes.
SFM: We’re smarter than that!
Alexis Cruz: Absolutely! It has to come from the grassroots, from the love of comics. Colin and I grew up on comics. We were gamers before anything else. Our interests are as storytellers and that means crossing all mediums. So before we go stretching into digital media and video games and all this other stuff we don’t really know about yet, we figured let’s go back to the basics of storytelling. We started with D&D, sort of that campfire storytelling and our basic love was sequential art.
We’re not trying to make a book that reads like a movie. We’re not trying to write a script that we translated into a book. Now if it goes from here, and it turns into a movie fantastic! And I’m not going to say that it’s not on my agenda, but it’s not going to be the same book. So once we get this book done and we have a following…
SFM: So you’re working on building a franchise?
Alexis Cruz: Absolutely. And let the story tell itself according to its medium. The movie is going to be completely different than the book. You can’t use the same storytelling devices. For us it’s a lot of experimenting with these storytelling tools. And that’s where we’re having a lot of the fun.
SFM: And what you said earlier about the grass roots approach. That’s how you also funded this project was through Kickstarter.com, right?
Alexis Cruz: That’s right. We are now the seventh most successful comics project on Kickstarter.
SFM: Woo-hoo!
Alexis Cruz: Which blew us away too. I knew that we would make it. We were really ambitious. We were trying to raise $30,000 which for a comic book by people who are complete unknowns and my following from movies aside, … my following is mostly from science fiction movies so here I’ve put up this campaign to do a comic book that is not science fiction.
SFM: But people believed in you…
Alexis Cruz: People believed in me, but it was still a risk. I had to have a lot of faith in the following that I have. We just put all of our cards on the table that our audience wasn’t just fickle, fair-weather followers if you will. They came through. The faith that we had in them was absolutely worth it. They rallied and they promoted it and they pledged. It was this amazing out-pouring of love and it think it resonated with this following of a dream that you know you can do even though you’re not sure how it’s going to get done but having the passion and the will power and the drive to get it done at all costs.
SFM: And you keep them involved, too. Isn’t it at different giving levels, people who have pledged are entitled to certain privileges?
Alexis Cruz: Absolutely. You are free to donate but generally you’re get rewards for it. Beyond pre-ordering the books, they’ll get PDFs, they’ll get the book when it’s finished, they’ll get credit in the book. I was also putting out some of my memorabilia and props and scripts and things that were mine from my various movies from Stargate and things like that. Which actually caused a little bit of a ruckus as first because some of my fans were like, “How could you be giving it away like this? Don’t you want to hold onto this?” God bless them! They were sorta looking out for me and I had to explain that not only do I not mind doing this but I want to do this ultimately, this is what’s it’s all about. You have each other’s backs. So for me to take pieces of my history and put them towards our future just makes sense.
SFM: And everyone that’s involved through pledging, they feel involved as well…
Alexis Cruz: Exactly.
SFM: …every step of the way. So it’s not just a project they just threw some money at and just walked away.
Alexis Cruz: Right. It’s very personal for everyone. I think for us, as The Mythmaker Group, starting with something like that… This is something where we can do this for ourselves…
SFM: A passion project?
Alexis Cruz: Right. But the “we” becomes capitalized – we not only becomes me and Colin but we becomes *you* and the person next door. Everybody who pledged who can follow along with the story of Alexis and Colin can follow along with the story of Jake and Leo and feel like they too are taking a chance on a dream and making it happen.
SFM: Exactly. Now regarding the art, how did you find Chris Moreno?
Alexis Cruz: Completely accidentally! The universe responded to us. I had a short list of artists that we were looking at. I am very, very, very picky about our artists.
SFM: You made a great selection in Chris!
Alexis Cruz: Thank God, yes. We sure did. I had been looking at artists for a long time. So in looking around for the artists, I had to find someone who matched, who fit the tones and the complexity and the richness of Colin’s script. Because my first priority is to protect this project, to do it justice.
Ultimately, I discovered Chris totally accidentally online while I was web crawling. And it’s because of the elements in his style- Chris has a very bouncy style to his art. I sorta laughed and called it Colorforms. You remember Colorforms? When you put them in the oven and they sorta rise up. But to do that on a page is brilliant. But it’s also very intricate and it’s very serious, too. It’s not cartoony.
Our book starts off as this happy-go-lucky adventure but there are some really tough lessons to be learned about the risks that you take when you follow a dream. So we needed an artist who understood how to elevate all that gravity and bring that humor up without overpowering it. Chris became the natural choice.
I didn’t know Chris personally… but I went to a buddy of mine to get his advice and he had asked me, “Well, who are you looking for?” And I said, “I really want this guy Chris Moreno.” He goes, “Really? Well, Chris works here.” I said, “Are you serious?” True story! I had no idea! They were partners in the same studio! He goes “Yeah, Chris’ station is right over there.”
SFM: [gasps]
Alexis Cruz: And I turn around and sure enough there’s his artwork and within the minute Chris Moreno walks through the door and my face turned white. The clouds parted. Heaven shone down a light. It just blew me away! How does that happen? I looked at him and said “YOU. I want you. We’re going to do this.” Chris was reasonably skeptical for all those reasons of “Here’s another actor…” but I said “Please read the script. Here’s what we’re looking at,” and I think he recognized not only the strength of the script and the potential of my plan with it because I had really laid out like the whole year’s worth of plan. He understood too this idea of kismet. That that’s just how things come around. And the timing is really perfect because he had just finished his own book, Zombie Dickheads Are NOT Coming After You.
SFM:[laughs]
Alexis Cruz: It’s like ok, this guy fits us! Since then, the book has been passed around to a lot of industry professionals. There’s a lot of people looking at us right now especially since the success of the Kickstarter. Since we’ve got a few covers from a few heavy hitters, (they’ve decided to come on with us), and everyone agrees that Chris is starting to take this to a whole new level not only for our book but for his own growth. Ultimately, that is what I wanted out of this project. I wanted all of us as artists to grow to a whole new level. We have a vehicle that inspires us to tap that inner true voice of what we’re doing.
SFM: I think so, too. And you had unique way of bonding your team together, didn’t you?
Alexis Cruz: A Tough Mudder race, it’s one of these weekend endurance races. It’s about 12 miles of steep mountainous terrain and 24 military style obstacles. The entire point of a Tough Mudder is not just to challenge yourself physically but your mental endurance and team camaraderie. Because you cannot make it the entire way on your own. You just can’t. It’s too brutal. And I had already done one last May and it was very difficult but I did it and the sense of accomplishment was amazing.
I was looking at two things: 1. I wanted to do this race. 2. I knew this book was coming up and I knew that we didn’t know what was going to be around the corner for this book so what I needed to do with this team was to give us an experience that would prepare us to be in the trenches of something difficult and just when we’re going to pull our hair out and ready to give up, we find the strength to carry on.
[Above: Colin Rankine takes the lead on tackling this obstacle.]
That’s easy to talk about but well, when you put a bunch of guys on a trail for 12 miles and 24 miles, you’re not talking about it anymore. And that’s when you find out who you are. And who your friends are. And what they’re made of. That makes all the difference. I figure that if I’m going to go through the next year or two, putting everything I have on the line, my reputation, my money, my contacts for this project, we need to know that we can rely on each other through thick and thin.
[Above: Alexis Cruz on the wicked warped wall.]
SFM: They have to be all in.
Alexis Cruz: Absolutely. I really pride myself on my leadership skills. It’s probably one of my best gifts.
SFM: I would think so, too.
Alexis Cruz: And it worked just like I imagined. We recorded the entire thing. We had GoPros with us and our team bonded along the way better than I had expected. Colin and I were already best friends but after this, we just knew. We can do this. And since then, we have had so many obstacles. We have dodged so many bullets on this thing between raising funds, losing funds, trying to convince people and not convincing people, hiring people and having to fire people, all these incredible challenges that we would have given up on but somehow we managed to turn disadvantages to advantages. Along the way, Colin and I would just look at each other and say, “We physically did this incredible thing and… We’re not physical guys and if we could overcome our greatest weaknesses, making this book, no matter how difficult it becomes is do-able.” There’s no way that we are NOT going to finish this project. And there’s no way that it’s not going to be awesome!
[Above: Sneak Peek at Page 1 in progress]
SFM: It’s going to be totally awesome! So when can we expect Issue 1?
Alexis Cruz: That will be in April for certain. Like anything else, production has taken delays. The holidays killed us as everybody was doing their holiday things and traveling, myself included. Chris’ artwork is so intricate. And I think it surprised him as well… quality takes time. There was a point, too, where I was biting my nails going “Oh my God, where are these pages?” But the pages would come in and we would be like “Oh my God! Wow!”
SFM: Chris’ work provides so rich context to every frame that you really do feel the journey that these two kids are taking. Other artists may not do as much background as he does…
Alexis Cruz: Right, right.
SFM: But I appreciate that and that he takes it from different perspectives and the art really leads you along.
Alexis Cruz: There’s a lot of textures in it. And that’s really what the story is. There’s a lot of subtext and nuance and that come back. There are digressions and there are red herrings and there’s a lot of things to keep track of. And what we were asking Chris to do was really really difficult. It’s one thing for Colin and I to understand the story. We don’t have a 25 year relationship with Chris. To communicate this to another person is really difficult but he is smart!
The Unprofessionals is such an ambitious project and let me tell you, I am really excited to see this story unfold. This is a perfect case study of fans believing in the potential of talent to make a dream come to fruition. Plus, how could a story described as “violently heartwarming” not be a fun ride? A huge thank you goes out to Alexis Cruz for his time to speak with us about The Mythmaker Group and its first project, The Unprofessionals. Keep it here on SciFi Mafia for more with Alexis Cruz and The Mythmaker Group!
How would YOU like to get your hands on a limited edition poster-sized print of The Unprofessionals? Look for our contest to win!
Synopsis for The Unprofessionals
New York is the city where dreams come true, and there’s no better place for a couple of starry-eyed kids to teach themselves the ropes of the murder-for-hire game. Armed with a mail-order covert ops pamphlet, a second-hand Zune, and a dream, Leo and Jake set out to show the pros how to specialize in the absurd and kill for a living…
Leo is a murder-nerd, with an encyclopedic knowledge of criminal lore, techniques and procedures. C’mon, you knew at least one guy like that in college. He lives with his grandfather, Vasili, a former Spetsnatz, who taught Leo everything he knows but is now decrepit and senile.
Jake mostly needs the money. He’s putting himself through college in New York City, one of the most expensive cities in the world. But beneath that, Leo’s vision speaks to a deep wellspring of rage in Jake, the youngest of four brothers who were constantly pitted against each other by an abusive father.
Now Leo and Jake are looking for their big break as world class assassins. In their world, nothing is impossible, nothing is out of reach and everything conspires to snuff out their potential. Jake & Leo will have to out-wit homicide detectives, out-maneuver shady counter-terrorism operatives, and out-gun a gang of cut-throats who don’t appreciate losing jobs to a couple of punk kids. Yeah… it’ll probably work out.
