Interview: Curt Pires talks Creature Corps and accompanying cardgame

Creature Corps, the new Image book by Curt Pires, Jok, and the TECC team, has a little bit of everything. It’s the story of a kid becoming the top trainer of pocket creatures, but it’s very aware of what it’s referencing, even asking the logical question: how messed up would someone be after becoming the “very best”? How would they be as an adult?

 

The Beat caught up with Pires about his brand-new title, Creature Corps, out December 2. We also talked about the brand-new card game that is planned to be released alongside the comic book, as well as his freshly launched Kickstarter for The Objectivist, a story that’s Sin City meets The Question, meets Taxi Driver.     

 

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Pires: Yeah, it’s one of my favorite first issues I’ve ever done. The book really feels like a globetrotting adventure. I love that element; it reminds me of being a kid. I watched Indiana Jones or even Uncharted, which is a more contemporary reference for the kids who are reading the books. And I really like the comedy. I had fun with it, and I think that’s what differentiates it from some of its inspiration: we’re really pushing things.

 

 

Pires: I actually really like the backup in it, that’s co-written by Timmy Heague, and it’s based on an idea I had: basically, who’s this guy’s rival? And his rival is the son of the founder of Creature Corps. You see how this guy is at his wit’s end and the psychological damage he has from being the ultimate Nepo baby of this world. It’s inspired by what happens to child actors. In this book, we really see these characters circle the drain as they battle monsters.

 

There’s action and fights, but there’s also interesting character work and depth. It isn’t just monsters beating each other up. It’s something I’d read if I were going into the shop.

 

Pires: It’s so interesting because I don’t know if I’ve read another comic that’s critical of eBay or collecting culture in the story.

 

What’s funny to me, and what I wanted to include, is that Dusty complains about signing all this stuff, and then the guy puts it online. The other character says, “Well, those guys pay the bills of the old, washed-up trainers, right?”

 

I was thinking the comic cons where there’s this element of you could sign this thing, and then someone can flip it, but also there’s old comic pros and actors who are basically supported by fans of this sort of stuff. It was important to include that. After all, I don’t want it to read as being critical of consumer culture or anything without being self-aware at all, because even my whole thing is that a lot of my fans are big collectors and I think it’s cool as long as everyone gets it.

What I really like about Dusty in the story is that he’s very aware of that when he goes to rescue the last of his crew, the most famous one. He’s commenting on “they make billions of dollars a year on merchandising him, and we got none of it” and that’s what happens to these comic creators. Companies are selling theme park plushies of characters these guys created, but the creators are on GoFundMe asking for money for old-age care.

 

 

 

Pires: I wanted to do a creature-battling story, and I wanted to do what Dan Harmon and Justin Roiland did with Rick and Morty, right? Where you take the sort of existing story idea that’s very popular and put it through this postmodern blender, deconstructing it and rebuilding it in your own twisted image.

 

I also had this trading card game component in mind because I wanted to build a comic story with a collectability aspect. You can engage with it just as a comic, but I think it’s fun that there’s more to it as well. The trading card aspect is very cool because we’re getting really great art for it, really putting a lot of effort into it. And for me, that’s always the most important thing when we do anything that’s more collector-facing or trying something new: approaching it from a standpoint of quality, because that’s what would get me to buy it as a consumer.

 

It’s gonna be playable, and it’s got card art by Martin Simmonds, Bjorn Barends, all these really cool guys, and so it becomes much more interesting. I pitched it to Image around the same time I pitched some Fireborn, and I’ve been working on it and building it ever since.

 

I always wanted a time-travel element because I find it narratively interesting. It’s a great device for bringing the monsters into our world, because Creature Corps feels grounded in reality, like a story about what happens when these monsters suddenly show up.
Perez: The story really has its own world and infrastructure underneath it. What can you tell me about the big Calamity Cup tournament? 

 

Pires: The tournament plays out in the story, and there’s a larger story at play as well, because the last-page event sets up a bigger threat from the Creature Corps company. So there’s the tournament, the big part of the story, and issue two is centered on the kickoff of the tournament, but there’s a lot of story that takes place around it. We’re gonna see a lot of characters from Dusty’s past, so we jump back in time and see a lot of the context behind those relationships.

 

 

Pires: We’re doing backups in every issue, and it’s an anthology called World of Creature Cops, and it’s done by new comics stars, the best and brightest. Timmy Heague has a story there; Franklin Jonas also has a story in issue #2.

 

Franklin’s got his backup with this great artist named Andrew Rende, but we actually decided to do more of this Gerald character in the backups because he’s kind of like Dusty’s foil. I love the first backup so much that issue #2 is gonna have two backups, where it’s gonna have Franklin’s backup and then the second part of what’s going on with Gerald, which shows what happens to him immediately after the events of issue two, because he’s on this parallel journey to Dusty. He is almost more fucked up than even Dusty is, so I like that character a lot and it’s a lot of fun to work on those with Timmy.

 

I’ve got Fred Kennedy, who did the Florida Hippopotamus Cocaine Massacre, to do a story. I’m recruiting more writers as we speak, so there’s gonna be a backup in the back of each issue by a different creative team.

 

 

Pires: So the one per store to got mailed out, and then there’s a small allocation that I have as a creator that I’ve been partnering with retailers or Image Comics to drop.

So Image Comics has them, Scott’s Collectibles has them, and we’re really just trying to make it fair for everyone to get. Which is obviously hard with these things because everyone wants the Ashcans, but the easiest way is to follow my newsletter at tecc.substack.com, because they’re always the first to know.

 

 

Pires: Yeah, I mean, it was kind of like what made me want to work with him on this is cause I saw he was so smooth and easy to work with on 51.

 

And this is one of the more tumultuous development cycles of anything I’ve developed because it’s gone through an artist change, a name change, creature design changes, all this stuff; it’s a lot of chaos going on around the book’s production, as well as making sure the book’s different enough from some of the things it’s parodying.

 

Jok is a great storyteller, and I was also really blown away by how collaborative and easy to work with he is, so when I needed to bring someone in, he was the first name that popped into my mind, and he’s really been great on this. I think it’s his best work yet.

 

Pires: We have lots of different covers. Each issue has several covers by the series co-creator, Jok, plus a Japanese magazine variant inspired by manga or video game magazines like Shonen Jump, and we’re also doing homage covers.

 

We have Tyler Kirkham, Jae Lee, an Absolute Batman homage because that’s a great way to get people to look at the book, and then on issue #2 we have Amilcar Pinna, we have Martin Simmons, Jarret Hartnell have done a cover, and then we’re getting more and more covers for the second arc, so like we’re trying to, you know, have some of the coolest covers in the game on this book.

 

Perez: Is the art different for the cards?

Pires: Yeah, so there’s different card art for the game. Basically, on issue #1 cover B, you can pull one of five cards; it’s called the booster bundle, so it comes with the polybag comic and a cover exclusive to that bundle. You can pull one of 5 cards, including a chance to get one of the holo foil rares; and with cover B on each issue going forward, you can pull one of the rare cards.

 

This gives the book an ongoing trading-card element, and as we release more issues, you’ll have a bigger deck of cards. Eventually, we’re going to release the game book and how to play so people will be able to play it, and at the end of the 1st 12 issues, we’ll release a crowdfunding campaign that has more robust product offerings and, like, starter decks.

Perez: Well, speaking of Kickstarters, do you want to talk about The Objectivist?

Pires: Yeah, so The Objectivist, it’s my first ever Kickstarter; it’ll be an oversized hardcover graphic novel, which tells a story that’s Sin City meets The Question, meets Taxi Driver. It’s about a man who becomes a vigilante after being inspired by a Steve Ditko-esque cartoon strip called The Objectivist, who has anRandian worldview and goes out into his city, which is plagued by corruption and crime. He decides he’s gonna try and fix everything by killing people with a big hammer, so it’s a bit of a psychological thriller, and another part of it is a vigilante pulp story.

 

It’s a lot of fun, and we’re doing that with Alex Diodo. We’ve got a cover by Jae Lee. We’re really trying to make something via Kickstarter that is the best story we can tell, and that lets us push the limits of our storytelling in a way we couldn’t at many publishers. Let’s go all out and launch the coolest possible one we can on our first time at bat. The Objectivist goes live everywhere on October 27th.

 

Perez: Anything else you’d like to add?

Pires: I’m excited for people to get to read this one. It’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever made. We’ve really bet on ourselves with the giant-sized 64-page first issue for 499. We’ve done as many open-order covers as we could, as well as covers by Jae Lee and Tyler Kirkham. I love to give people a chance to check out the book, because I think it’s gonna be one of the coolest, biggest books of December, and we hope people will give us a chance and come on this ride.