Via Entertainment Weekly, Image Comics have announced “M.O.M: Mother of Madness,” a three-issue comic book series written by actress Emilia Clarke with Marguerite Bennett, and art by Leila Leiz. The comedic superhero series will follow a single mom named Maya, who discovers she has freakish superpowers, and decides to use them against a secret cabal of human traffickers.
Clarke told EW, “We’re always calling mothers superheroes, and I’m like, what if they were? What if they legitimately were superheroes?” She added Maya came about after attending San Diego Comic-Con, which led her to wonder, “‘are there any women out there that are superpowered, but aren’t in a skintight costume? Not that I can see.’ That’s what led me to the ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if…’ conversation.”
She described the comic as a blend of Deadpool-esque silliness with a feminist sensibility “explored in an extreme genre-bending atmosphere,” although she pointed out that Maya’s vigilante costume (pictured on the cover) was actually inspired by the balaclavas worn by Russian punk protest group Pussy Riot. She remained cryptic on the exact nature of Maya’s powers, but did reveal “she can do a lot of stuff at certain moments in her month: she can do all of these wicked things, but they all come from the fact that she is a woman who has a menstrual cycle. I thought it would be cool to have all the things that women don’t like about themselves, flip that, and make those the things that make her superhuman.”
Clarke is, of course, best known for playing Daenerys Targaryen — aka the Mother of Dragons, and eventually the Mad Queen — on HBO’s Game of Thrones, which just marked its tenth anniversary. She also portrayed Qi’ra in Solo: A Star Wars Story, and, as reported yesterday, is in talks for a role on the Marvel Disney+ series Secret Invasion. Bennett (whom Clarke termed her “guru”) and Leiz previously collaborated on the horror graphic novel “Horde;” this is also Leiz’s second announced project in as many days, following “The Last Book You’ll Ever Read.” The comic will also feature the contributions of Isobel Richardson, and cover art by London-based illustrator Jo Ratcliffe.
“M.O.M: Mother of Madness” #1 will be released in physical and digital comic book stores on July 21: hit the link for the full interview and a preview now.
