INTERVIEW WITH JIMMY PALMIOTTI ON PAINKILLER JANE: BEAUTIFUL KILLERS

We pushed and we herded to get our very own JIMMY PALMIOTTI to take a moment out of his busy schedule of projects to give us a little, behind the scenes glimpse into his newest Kickstarter project, PAINKILLER JANE: BEAUTIFUL KILLERS.  The campaign is live now so head on over and back this project!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/creatorownedheroes/painkiller-jane-beautiful-killers?ref=45z2at 

We’ve also got some exclusive images just for our Zestworld backers from the project!

PAINKILLER JANE: Beautiful Killers looks to be your 21st Kickstarter since you started using them back in 2011. How is it different than when you first started? 

When I first started using the platform it was new to comic book fans and they just weren’t sure about taking the leap with a creator and being part of their journey because they were risking their hard-earned money on a product that might or might not ever arrive. The entire process was new then and things changed. People now make Kickstarters part of their buying comics process. With my campaign, I am asking them to have faith and support my work… and it’s a big ask for any creator. With Kickstarter and my campaigns, I’ve been building up an audience of readers and collectors that keep coming back for more based on the fact that they know how much work I put into each campaign and pride myself on not only delivering books on time, but also producing the finest quality books possible with top talent, new and established.

We sweat over everything.  Paper stock, cover stock, special inks, spot varnish, packing materials, and so on. Over the years, I had to gain a lot of peoples trust mainly because certain other people were not delivering what was promised or even delivering at all, and each one of those campaigns hurt the base for people like me that try to get everything right every single time. I’ve found over the years creators are becoming more responsible with their campaigns and that’s a good thing.

The biggest difference is now my Kickstarters are my main creative focus, and I am working harder than ever.

What is this book about?  Is it a stand-alone or a continuation from the last Kickstarter you did for Painkiller Jane?

The two issues we are Kickstarting are a standalone story that takes place after the last Jane Kickstarter and moves Jane and her current girlfriend Ajira forward through Italy on the run from a hit they finished while in Sicily and a freelance gig they take in Naples and all the madness in-between. It’s an adult only story where we see the couple bond while dealing with some events that take them to places, they have never been.  For fans of Jane, they kind of know what to expect at this point and I try not to disappoint as we also are joined at the halfway point by Janes partner in crime Maureen, and Seth, her doctor that both head to Italy to talk Jane into coming back home. There is a lot covered in these issues for sure and all of it fun. So, people can keep up, we offer past add on books to the campaign when someone checks out and in this case some special editions for hardcore collectors.

Juan Santa Cruz is a regular of yours in your books, but how did you get Peach Momoko to do a cover and a sequence in issue 2?

Amanda and I met Peach and her husband years ago and they are the sweetest and kindest people you would ever meet, and any chance we get we try to work together. This was just the right place at the right time kind of thing a few years back and I am so excited for everyone to see what she has done. It’s a dream sequence where I just told her to do whatever she likes based on a loose outline and she really stepped up. She is just fantastic.

This will be the first time you got Joe Quesada to do a cover for the character he co-created with you back in the 90’s. Why now?

Well, that’s an easy one. Before now, Joe was running one of the biggest and most popular comic companies on the planet and had little to no time to do anything outside his work at Marvel which covered comics, TV shows, and films. Since Joe is now doing his own thing and making his own award winning films and working on a lot of exciting projects you will hear about soon. When we were talking about the next chapter in the life of Painkiller Jane, Joe simply asked if I would be interested in him doing a cover for the book for Kickstarter and I jumped at it. And what a cover he did… it’s just A beautiful and lush piece of work, and we have the amazing Richard Isanove actually coloring it. It is just super cool that 28 years later Jane is still around and to have Joe back in the saddle for this special piece.  

I have noticed that other than your Kickstarters, for the past few years, you have really pulled back from working for the big two and have only done crowd funding books. Was this your choice or theirs?

That is a little bit of both and a total blessing in disguise. Amanda and I were working on a lot of books at one time for DC, mostly Harley related and then we had what most creators have after working non-stop for many years, a true burnout and we took a break. After the break, we eased back into DC and took on a bit more work but the offers thinned out over Covid and Dan Didio leaving and we both decided that we needed to focus our time on our own creations, for the most part at Paperfilms. We love working for both Marvel and DC and Amanda and we still do cover work and an occasional story for them both, but as editorial changed, we realized we were no longer the flavor of the month and started to really make some big decisions what to do moving forward. We did ours with Zest world, as you guys know, and still produce BOOM POW! For them, we wrote a Red Sonja series, Did a Blondie book and so on.   Our main focus is now mostly creating our own characters and books and worrying less about other people’s properties. I will still be doing some work for hire but will be super picky. The Kickstarter format is giving us some great publishing opportunities that no longer depend on other comic companies’ needs.