Guest Article: The Film Influences of "Epic Kill" (Preview)

If there is one thing that has certainly seen a resurgence in lately, it’s the femme fatale action lead. Wether you’re looking at movies like Haywire or Columbiana, or even comics like “X-23” and Image’s new “No Place Like Home”, comic fans everywhere are ready for females with guns, swords and a penchant for leaving destruction in their wake. (Then again, they probably always have been.)

Today, we present to you a guest article written by “Epic Kill’s” writer and artist Raffaele Ienco. In it, Raffaele breaks down the various films that have influenced the book, as well as offers an interesting preview for the first issue, which hits stands May 2nd from Image Comics.

The solicitation for the first issue is as follows:

Hitmen and mercenaries from around the globe are ordered by the President to bring down an eighteen-year-old super assassin named Song – but she’s going to turn the tables on them – and every kill is going to be epic!

Song has trained for years into adulthood to take revenge on the man responsible for her parents’ deaths – the man who has just been elected President!

Take a look below the cut for a taste of the mayhem.

“Epic Kill” by Raffaele Ienco

The first comic that I drew and colored was “Stygmata” #0 from Entity Comics in 1994. It was co-written with a friend who worked in the comic shop I visited. I created Stygmata (a character similar to Spawn) mainly because I wanted to draw big capes and have my character hang out on the tops of cathedrals. Not kidding. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking, but back then I was an artist that wanted to draw “cool things”. I wanted to write too but had no training in story structure. It’s something I look back on as a learning experience and well… I like to concentrate on my most current work nowadays.

There are two screenwriting books (of the 2 dozen or so total I’ve read) which I would highly recommend to anyone looking to construct a story – “Story” by Robert McKee (recommended by Brian Michael Bendis) and “Save the Cat” by Blake Snyder (“Save the Cat” is easier to digest in my opinion). Why screenwriting books and not other books on writing? I find that movies are more similar to comics than novels. Both are visual-centric and sometimes communicate the story to its audience without any dialogue at all. Anyway, they worked for me.

Nowadays, I consider myself more of a writer than an artist. The screenplay method of writing did have an influence on “Epic Kill” but mainly I threw it out the window and just started to draw and write at the same time with a semi-vague plot to aim for – and if I wrote myself into a corner I would simply write myself out of it, I thought. I wanted to have fun with the story. Thus I think I can say, I learned the rules of story and structure and then was able to bend them as much as I could without breaking them.

Some of my favorite movies are Jaws, Carrie and The Matrix. So when I was creating “Epic Kill” naturally some of these movies and others slipped into my thinking. Some I only realized after the fact. Like page two of issue one has an imaginary flying shark since I always wanted to do something with sharks. It’s not Jaws but I got to draw a shark and include it in the story.

But for this article I wanted to focus on five movies that I love that had an influence on the story and visual look of “Epic Kill.”

The first movie is…

The Fugitive

What can you remember about The Fugitive with Harrison Ford? I remember that it was never boring and that the main character was always moving, always being hunted. He was an ordinary guy but was doing spectacular things to stay a step ahead of the authorities. He was stealing vehicles and was chased by cops on the highway.

He was hiding in the wilderness. Constant movement and paranoia. He was leaping off tall structures.

Wow! The Matrix. My all-time favorite movie. Knocking off Terminator 2 for the top spot. What do I remember most about The Matrix? I remember “bullet-time” fighting. Being able to dodge bullets, slowing them down so much as to almost be able to pluck them out of the air.

Uma Thurman is hot. When I was 17 I sat through a less-than-exciting movie called Johnny Be Good just to be able to see her act in her first movie role. In Kill Bill she wants revenge for the death of a loved one. She’s been trained by a mentor in mastering wild, killer martial arts moves.

She always looks good. She has a tough bad-guy opponent that wants her dead.

I even did a Bruce Lee tribute cover with Song wearing a yellow jumpsuit — but she doesn’t actually wear it in the story. I just did it for kicks. Looks very Kill Bill-ish.

She’s a deadly hand-to-hand killer.

Die Hard

I guess the biggest similarities “Epic Kill” and Die Hard have are the over-the-top set pieces. Crashing helicopters.

Missiles and explosions.

And mainly, a lead character that continues to take beating after beating, punishment after punishment but keeps coming back for more. You can’t keep her down.

No walking barefoot on glass though for Song. She keeps her boots on.