Another day, another trip to Brooklyn to chat DJ Ben Haminone of the new graphic novel writers Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze. Inspired by the legendary rock god Jimi Hendrix, Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze written in soft brown and DJ Ben Haminand illustrated by Tom Mandrake is a cosmic romp set in a future galaxy where capitalism and fascism must confront each other in a musical style that only Hendrix could deliver. Ben was at anyone comics Pre-order signings for the book, which is released in comic shops on the 14th, but its official release date will coincide with his signing time on Tuesday, August 27th at 7:00 pm until the limited edition book stamps or music are sold out. Man comics.
George Carmona 3rd place: I started reading this book and thinking about how to describe this book because it was bananas. How should elevator pitch be described? Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze?
Bin Xia noodles: Yeah, it’s funny because that’s the hardest thing for me, trying to come up with an elevator pitch for this. I say it’s a cosmic space adventure starring Jimi Hendrix as he battles the armies of an intergalactic fascist empire. And it still doesn’t describe what exactly is going on in the book.
Carmona: The artwork is amazing, so organic and crazy. I haven’t seen it Tom MandrakeAfter working for a while, I want to say ghost or martian manhunter That’s the last thing I can remember. How did you get involved in this project and working with him?
Bin Xia noodles: I got involved because soft brownco-author of this book. when we are involved titan Melo asked, as he was writing blade runner They had it ready for them and they asked him to get involved and then he hit me. Like, “I know you know music, and I thought this would be the perfect project for us to work on together.” So we pitched our idea to Titan jenny hendrickswho runs the Hendrix Estate, and Tom Mandrake was already involved when I came on. The interesting thing about Tom is, well, I guess I can say it now, I didn’t know him at all, like, I didn’t know anything about his art. when he suddenly appears ghost, I definitely hadn’t read it, I don’t like horror comics like that, and I was reading more Marvel comics than anything else at the time, so I didn’t know him that well. When they said Tom Mandrake, I thought, Oh, cool, I just don’t know. And then I started Googling and I was like, oh, this asshole, he’s a legend, you know. Then they started sending art, and we started bouncing ideas back and forth. We got along really well and had a real organic chemistry.
Carmona: You have to see the actual page he drew because I can’t see him doing the digital work?
Bin Xia noodles: Oh, I saw it all. I’ve seen everything from pencils to inks and it’s incredible.
Carmona: When I was working in Washington, he would send pages that were huge works of art.
Bin Xia noodles: It’s all done. His pencils are strictly old-fashioned broadsheet pencils. I’d like to buy at least one or two. I had asked from day one and he didn’t start selling the book until after it was published. So I told him which pages I wanted, but I would look at them. I don’t care, I’d probably borrow the money because his pencils are so detailed. What you see in the book is pretty much what his pencils look like, and he’ll add a little bit to the ink and then the color will bring out more, but he does so much fully realized work that it’s incredible. I’ve never had the experience of writing something and then having someone turn it into a pencil, but it was the most incredible first time.
Carmona: This is your first comic, but you’ve been writing for a while, and you say you’re a writer american godsSeason 2,
Bin Xia noodles: The second season is not out yet. I’ve been writing and making films and TV all my life, but my first professional gig was american godsand Michael Green and Bryan Fullerthey were dropped from the project about halfway through, so pretty much everyone in the writers room went with them. So our season was almost canceled, but it was my first experience. I worked, I got paid, everything went smoothly, and I was in the writers’ room with two legends and learned from it. That’s part of my history, the other part is I’m also a DJ and a podcaster, I host shows For all the nerds out there. I’ve been a DJ my whole life and studied a lot of music and a lot of ideas about black music and things of that nature Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze It’s an idea I’ve always wanted to express about music.
Carmona: Well, as a DJ who understands the music and understands the shadow that Hendrix casts, what were you worried about taking on this gig? What type of research did you do? Was it just listening to records, or reading about him? You said Jenny Hendrix was involved, have you talked to her?
Bin Xia noodles: Yes jenny hendricksHis sister was also involved. She reviewed pretty much everything we did, every chapter we wrote, that we sent her, she sent a lot of notes, a lot of images, that kind of thing. We had full access to anything we needed on the estate, which was a lot. And then I would read, I read a couple of autobiographies and that was one of the main avenues of my research was reading them all. The one that really stood out to me was written in a lot of his words, his notes, his letters, interviews with him and things of that nature, which helped me learn more about him. I’ve been a big fan of Jimmy’s for a long time and one of the first albums I got was the Gypsy Band album, which is part of the story we’re telling. It was during this period that he formed the Gypsy Band. That album has always had a huge influence on me and it’s so ingrained in me that I don’t need to do too much research there. And then it was more of a study of the period and the people he knew and things of that nature. Because even though it takes place in space, we have a lot of references to his real history. Like I said, it was inspired by when he was in the band Gypsy. So there’s a lot of that in this book.
Carmona: Okay, so we’ve talked about the book, let’s talk about the creative team and the collaboration that went into making it. We had some discussions about this. But how did the writing process go? Do you have a general idea of what you want to do?
Bin Xia noodles: No, we had an overall idea from the beginning. What’s interesting is that Melo and I are usually on the same wavelength, so we both came together and were like, we wanted to talk about this period of Gypsy Band and this album. A lot of this was done during the pandemic, so Melo lives in Los Angeles and I’m in New York and we were going back and forth on Zoom as we were writing this because Melo and I have this relationship and we would just Chat for hours. So it was a lot of spitting. Like on the back cover, we have the image of Dambakka, basically because I wanted an image of Jimmy riding a dragon. That was one of my main goals in writing the book, I wanted to take back a lot of the images associated with white rock, like the images you see on the sides of vans and things of that nature. I wanted to have that kind of imagery of black people in the book, so I wanted Jimmy to ride a dragon, so that evolved into Dambakka, and then that evolved into a major part of our storyline. That feeds into the whole overall story we tell about people fighting fascism.
Carmona: What do you hope readers take away from it? What message are they trying to find in this story?
Bin Xia noodles: Well, the Hendricks character’s main journey in the book is to find the source of his creativity. It’s about once you get to a certain point in your life that you need to redefine yourself, so I think one of the messages that I hope people take away from this book is that it’s never too late to redefine yourself. You should constantly, you know, like you should always be trying to figure out what makes you happy and do that and not focus on the outside world and what everyone expects you to do, but focus on what you want to Do things that you already know, just like you had a dream when you were a kid, don’t forget that dream. You know, try to get back to that dream. If you can, do whatever you can to make this dream come true. Because this is our only life. This is one of the main messages of this book.
Carmona: If people can’t attend the signing, where can readers find you?
Bin Xia noodles: I’m at DJBenHaMeen Instagram and twitter. with @DJBenHaMeen on For all the nerds out there If you want to check out the podcast. You know, please @ me and let me know what you think of this book.
Fans can call the police Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze Comes with special bookplate anyone comics 831 Nostrand Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11225, Tuesday, August 27th at 7:00 pm until limited edition bookplates or music are sold out.
