A screenwriter-turned-car-thief, a rapper and an astronaut saving the world. Sounds like the set-up to a joke, right? Well, in an interview with CBR Ales Kot and Morgan Jeske shared some details on “Change”, a four-issue series coming this November from Image, and the weird and wonderful cast of the book.
“Change” follows Sonia, a screenwriter who’s also a car thief, as she’s tasked with writing the biopic of rapper W-2. There’s also a rather mysterious astronaut who has fallen to Earth and the three of them must join together to save L.A. from an equally mysterious force.
Introducing the trio, Kot had this to say:
Sonia is an up-and-coming screenwriter and a very successful car thief. She’s young, resourceful and her taste in clothing is near-impeccable, but she doesn’t always know how to put all the pieces together for maximum effect. Sonia’s tasked with writing a movie script for W-2, who’s this RZA-meets-Kanye West type, but she’s on the third rewrite and things aren’t going that well.
W-2 raps and makes a lot of money. He’s pretty disconnected from the world around him, a bit arrogant, acts dumber than he is because the people he spends his time with are mostly vacuous and self-obsessed. Except for his wife Rhubarb, and maybe some other people we’ll meet as we get deeper into the story.
The astronaut is a cipher. Something bad happened a long time ago, and he cherishes the isolation of space. But he’s coming back to Earth, and that will change everything dramatically.
While hesitant of divulging too much information about the mysterious force plaguing L.A. for fear of giving away too much of the plot, Kot did give details on how the trio will come together.
At the beginning of this story, time is circular. What happens will happen again, eventually. The thing that W-2 and Sonia are trying to prevent already happened many times. But maybe time doesn’t have to be circular. Maybe it can be a spiral instead. Or a trombone.
W-2 and Sonia are already working together, albeit on something else — the film script — but they discover some previously invisible threads that explode their respective worlds. As for the astronaut, he’s just going to fall to Earth and then you’ll see.
When asked about the design of the characters, both Kot and Jeske spoke at length about the design of rapper W-2.
Kot: …we spent a lot of time on W-2 before Morgan even began sketching him — we talked about our favorite rap/hip-hop/glitch-hop albums, what W-2 would rap about, his clothing, his overall attitude to life, we talked about El-P’s new fantastic record, “Cancer For Cure” — “Drones Over Brooklyn” in particular is a masterpiece of a track that says a lot about the world we live in, and it also connects to some of the themes we explore in “Change.” We talked about the visual beauty of Ridley Scott’s “Prometheus,” about our favorite costumes, Odd Future, Tupac’s hologram getting shot and such. And then Morgan sends in something like this and I know we’re doing great.
Jeske: Music is really important to my work process, as it is to Ales. So there were playlists exchanged that were built for the story. El-P’s “C4-C” is a big inspiration for me. Lots of dark, paranoid imagery on that record. Lots and lots of music that feels like the LA in my brain: “Heat” OST, “Thief” OST, that one Wang Chung song “To Live and Die in LA” — so on the nose, I know.
The full interview can be viewed at CBR.
“Change” hits stores this November.
