Buggin' Out with Laurie Foster!
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Brand new Buggin’ Out! Read it or you’ll experience seventeen years of bad luck. You’ve been warned.
SCOTT WILKE: You need a hat rack for all the hats you wear, Laurie. You write, you edit, you ink, you cosplay…honestly, the list would be shorter if I said what you DON’T do. For anyone who might be unfamiliar, why don’t you give us the SparkNotes of your comic career?
LAURIE FOSTER: Hah. I started as an illustrator and graphic designer, but had always wanted to be an inker since I was a kid and obsessed with Maximum Carnage and McFarlane’s work in general. It kind of just snowballed from there; being hired as an inker ended up requiring me to also help the people I worked for run Kickstarters, and also put together company documents, and also edit the comics...and so forth. Cosplaying happened because I also love costuming and modeling, and then writing happened because I always wanted to write more and never had time. Some of it was born of necessity and I guess some of it was born because if I stop constantly doing stuff, I have to think about what a shitty state the world is in right now? Oops, that’s too dark. :D
SCOTT: Tell us something you’ve never mentioned on another interview/podcast. It can be a fun fact, hidden talent, embarrassing moment, etc.
LAURIE: Phew, hmmm. I know kung fu? No, really. I trained in Hung Gar kung fu for a few years. Hoping to get back to it, too. :) Wing Chun is on the docket currently.
SCOTT: Mental note, don’t f*ck with Laurie. Haha. Alright, why don’t you tell us about your youth? Were you a good kid? Troublemaker? What were you into? What did you want to be when you grew up?
LAURIE: I was an overachiever who was somehow also grounded all the time. I took out 10 books a week at the library, was a huge nerd, and played a bunch of video games and D&D…loved martial arts and had straight As and tutored other kids in math and chemistry. Won “Most Likely to Succeed” in high school, as well as Math, French, and English awards. I think most people from back then would be surprised I run an indie comic publisher and sometimes take photos half-naked instead of being a chemist or doctor. :P
SCOTT: You are way too smart to have been working with Mike and I. :P Let’s talk about your very FIRST script real quick. Which book was it? What was your hope for it at that moment? Did you want to take it to Marvel or DC? Pitch it to Hollywood?
LAURIE: My first script was for an absolutely insane horror/fantasy play in college and I’m pretty sure I thought I would be the next Stephen King. That’s not going exactly as planned, and I wish I still had a copy of it…
SCOTT: I like to highlight failures in these interviews. Not because I’m a sick, sadistic f*ck…but I love seeing how people have rebounded from them. Tell us about one of your failures and how did you recover?
LAURIE: One of our only and biggest Kickstarter failures in the early days was a huge, overblown campaign I let someone talk me into doing for an entire graphic novel and video game COMBINED with a ludicrously high goal. I recovered from that by not letting people coerce me with their insane ideas and also…learning to set boundaries and say no. That’s still a work in progress, but I’m getting better every day.
SCOTT: Going back to all the hats you wear, which one do you enjoy the most and why? Follow up, which do you enjoy the LEAST and why?
LAURIE: I enjoy inking the most, probably because it’s what I dreamed to do as a kid and have actually gotten to. It’s a frustrating hat because MANY artists don’t even want inkers anymore or cannot afford to hire them, but when I have the opportunity to ink anything, I still absolutely love it to my core.
My least favorite hat is probably editing. I love the editing part of it, as it comes very naturally to me, but I hate making people unhappy, and oft times seeing their stuff get nitpicked apart until it’s perfect will make people at least mildly annoyed with me. Hahaha
SCOTT: I LOVE pirate stories. I’ve always wanted to try my hand at one, but they seem challenging. You just had a crazy successful campaign for Hearteater #1. Tell us a bit about what went into creating that book. Any challenges? Lessons learned?
LAURIE: Honestly, it just started with a “Man, I love pirates and I don’t see a lot of comic books about them.” When I started, I also thought about being very historically accurate and referencing real pirates and that kind of thing. But that’s been done and maybe overdone with the same dirty white dude captaining the same dirty ship and getting into very similar capers.
So why not have a Black woman at the helm of her own ship? Is that so egregiously unrealistic based on all of the pirate activity near Jamaica and in the Caribbean? From there, I progressed to a “What if I combined pirates with empowering sex, and high fantasy, and magic, and also Lovecraftian horrors, and just took this amazing woman and what we love about pirates and expanded it across a multiverse of REALLY COOL SHIT?” And that’s where we are now.
The challenge for me was writing good dialogue, and I honestly think it still needs some work, which I hope to improve upon as I make more issues. Writing things so they sound natural and flow well, especially flirting in this kind of story presented a bit of a stepping stone, but I think I’m on the right track. There’s a really fine line between corny, romantic, cliche, and cringe, and finding that line is interesting.
SCOTT: You’ve created some amazing characters in your worlds! Is there another comic character you’d like to write for? It can be from the big guys or the indie scene.
LAURIE: Tulip O’Hare from Preacher is one I’d absolutely love to write. Complex female characters like her are what I aspire to.
SCOTT: Love ‘em or hate ‘em, cons are the lifeblood of indie comics. Tell us your favorite con experience and your least favorite con experience.
LAURIE: I actually haven’t done a lot of conventions due to previously living in the middle of nowhere. I have been to San Diego Comic Con, which was absolutely wonderful and I got to meet SO MANY amazing people. I felt a bit lost in the crowd there as an indie publisher and it was prohibitively expensive for small press, but at the same time, I got to enjoy myself with people who enjoy the same things. I am looking forward to doing more cons now that I’m in Texas. :)
SCOTT: We worked together on an issue of Roseblood Manor. Your story was a blast! An old west Final Destination! Tell us what was going through your mind with that story? Which was your favorite kill from it? I know I have a couple!
LAURIE: Hey, thanks! I had a lot of ideas for that story, but you guys really seemed to want to kill a shitload of people, so I went with it. Haha. Final Destination was one of my favorite first more “modern” horror franchises and I loved the idea of it happening within that universe. Plus, if you think about it, that shit was just fatal accidents waiting to happen! No one was safe in the old West! Average lifespan was 35 years! My personal favorite kill was probably the fence post impaling, just because it’s a callback to the ridiculous log truck impaling of FD2, which has honestly made me nervous around log trucks my entire life despite how unrealistic it is.
SCOTT: This question’s for my good buddy, John MacLeod, our editor extraordinaire. What is the Foster Writing Session Soundtrack?
LAURIE: I like a pretty eclectic mix of stuff. Unleash the Archers and Blind Guardian are up there. Lately, there’s been more Misfits and Bad Religion on the list along with the metal. But I also love video game music, and stuff like the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack is freaking great for writing fantasy. Everything except modern country music has made it onto the playlist at some point. :D
SCOTT: Appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule to chat! Why don’t you take this time to tell everyone what you got going on right now? What’s in the pipeline for Laurie Foster?
LAURIE: I have a few upcoming campaigns besides Hearteater #2, which is being written as we speak! Myself and Russell Nohelty have a top-secret thing we’re collaborating on and about to release to the public! Miss Medusa’s Monstrous Menagerie is also in progress, as is Unthinkables #4 and The Surgeon #6! And I’m hoping…a cosplay cover for Bad Bug Media, too! ;)
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Thanks!
Bugs and Kisses,
Bad Bug Crew
Gonna have to get into Hearteater it seems.
Really enjoyed this interview.