Another day, another trip into Brooklyn to chat with DJ Ben Ha Meen, one of the writers of the new graphic novel Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze. Inspired by the Legendary Rock God Jimi Hendrix, Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze written by Mellow Brown and DJ Ben Ha Meen, and Illustrated by Tom Mandrake is a cosmic romp in a futuristic galaxy where capitalism and fascism must be fought with a style of music only Hendrix can deliver. Ben was at Anyone Comics signing pre-ordered copies of the book, the book was released in comic stores on the 14th, but its official laydown date will coincide with his signing on Tuesday, August 27 at 7:00 pm until the limited edition bookplates or music runs out at Anyone Comics.
George Carmona 3rd: I started reading it and was thinking about how I would describe the book because it is bananas. What would be the elevator pitch to describe Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze?
Ben Ha Meen: Yeah, that’s funny, because that’s been my hardest thing, trying to come up with the elevator pitch for it. I say it’s a cosmic space adventure starring Jimi Hendrix as he battles against the forces of an intergalactic fascist empire. And it still doesn’t describe half of what the hell is going on in this book.
Carmona: The artwork is stunning, just so organic and crazy. I haven’t seen Tom Mandrake’s work in a while, I want to say Specter or Martian Manhunter were the last things I can remember. How did you become involved in this project and working with him?
Ben Ha Meen: I became involved with it because of Mellow Brown, my co-writer on the book. We became involved with it when Titan asked Mello because he was writing Blade Runner already for them, they asked him to pitch on it, and he hit me up. It was like, “I know you know music, and I think this will be the perfect project for us to work on together.” And so we pitched our ideas to Titan and to Janie Hendrix, who was running the Hendrix Estate, and Tom Mandrake was already involved when I came on. And the funny thing about Tom is, um, I guess I can say this now, I didn’t know him at all, like, I didn’t know his art for anything. When he was popping on Specte, I definitely wasn’t reading it, I don’t like horror comics like that and I was reading more Marvel than anything at the time, so I didn’t know him like that. When they said Tom Mandrake, I was like, oh, cool, I just didn’t know. Then I started Googling, and I’m like, oh this motherfucker he’s a legend, you know. And then they started sending me art, and we started going back and forth about ideas. And we just got along great and had a real organic chemistry.
Carmona: You got to see actual pages that he drew because I can’t see him doing digital work?
Ben Ha Meen: Oh, I’ve seen it all. I’ve seen from pencils to inks, to everything It’s fucking incredible.
Carmona: When I worked at DC he would send pages in and they were these huge works of art.
Ben Ha Meen: They’re fully done. His pencils are fully done old-school huge pages. I’m trying to buy at least one or two. I’ve already asked from day one, he doesn’t start selling until after the book comes out. So I told him what pages I want, but I’m gonna see. I don’t care I’ll probably take out a loan, because his pencils are so fully detailed. The stuff you see in the book is pretty much how his pencils are, he’ll add a little bit during inks, and then the colors bring out so much more, but he does so much fully realized work that it’s incredible. I’ve never had this experience of writing something and somebody turning it into pencils, but this is the most incredible first experience.
Carmona: This is your first comic, but you’ve been writing for a while, you said you were a writer for American Gods, the second season,
Ben Ha Meen: The second season that never came out. I’ve been writing and doing film and TV all my life, but my first professional gig was American Gods, with Michael Green and Brian Fuller, and they were removed from the project about halfway through that time, so everyone in the writers’ room, pretty much gone along with them. So our season that we worked on was pretty much scrapped, but that was my first experience. I worked and I got paid, everything went great and I was in the writers’ room, with two legends, and learned from that. That’s part of my history, the other part is I’m also a DJ and a podcaster, I run the show For All Nerds. I’ve been a DJ all my life, and pretty much studied music, and a lot of the ideas about Black music and things of that nature that are in Jimmy Hendrix: Purple Haze were ideas that I’ve just always wanted to express about music.
Carmona: All right, so being a DJ and knowing music, what were your concerns in taking this gig on, knowing the shadow that Hendrix cast? What kind of research did you do? Was it just listening to records, or were you reading up on him? You said Janie Hendricks was involved, did you talk to her?
Ben Ha Meen: Yeah Janie Hendricks, his sister, was heavily involved. She reviewed pretty much everything we did, every chapter that we wrote, we sent by her, and she sent a lot of notes, a lot of imagery, and stuff like that. We had full access to anything we needed from the estate, which is a lot. And then I would read, I read a couple of autobiographies and that was one of my main avenues of research was reading all that. One that really stuck with me was written with a lot of his words, notes from him, letters from him, interviews with him, and things of that nature, that helped me get into him a little bit more. And I’ve been a big Jimmy fan for a long time, one of the first albums I got was the Band of Gypsies album, which is part of the story we’re telling. It’s here in this time period when he was forming the Band of Gypsies. And that album’s always been a huge influence on me, that was already like ingrained in me where I didn’t have to do too much research there. And then it was more just research on the time period, who he knew, things of that nature. Because even though it takes place in space, we have a lot of references to his actual history. Like I said, this takes inspiration from when he was forming the Band of Gypsies. 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 in making this book. We talked a little bit about that. But how was the writing process going? Did you guys have a general idea of what you wanted to do?
Ben Ha Meen: No, we had a general idea from the start. The funny thing is me and Mello are usually on the same wavelength in general, so we both came to each other like we’re going to talk about, we wanted to talk about this time period around the Band of Gypsies and this album. And a lot of this was done during the pandemic, so Mello lives in LA and I’m in New York, and when we were writing this we were going back and forth on Zoom, and because me and Mello have this relationship we’ll just talk for hours. And so it was a lot of spitballing. Like, on the back cover, we have the imagery of the Dambakka, and that basically came up because I wanted the image of Jimmy riding on top of a dragon. That was one of my main goals in writing this book, I wanted to take back a lot of the imagery that’s associated with white rock and roll, like the imagery that you see on the side of vans and things of that nature. I wanted to have that type of imagery in this book with a Black man, so because of that, I wanted Jimmy to ride a dragon, and so that evolved into the Dambakka, which then evolved into a major part of our storyline. And that worked into the whole overarching story we were telling about people fighting fascism.
Carmona: What do you want readers to take out of this? What’s that message for them to find in this story?
Ben Ha Meen: Well, the main journey that Hendricks the character has in the book is to find the source of his creativity. It’s about once you reach a point in life and you need to redefine yourself, so I think one of the messages that I want people to take from this book is that it’s never too late to redefine yourself. And you constantly should be, you know, like you should always be, trying to find out what makes you happy, and do that and not focus on the outside world and what everyone expects you to do, but to focus on what you want to do and what you originally you know, like if you had a dream when you were a kid, don’t forget that dream. You know, try and get back to that dream. If you can, do whatever you can to live that dream. Because this is the only life we get. And that’s like one of the main messages in this book.
Carmona: If folks can’t make it to the signing where can readers find you?
Ben Ha Meen: I’m at DJBenHaMeen on Instagram and Twitter. And @DJBenHaMeen at For All Nerds if you want to check out the podcast. And you know, please @ me and let me know what you think of this book.
Fans can cop Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze with a special bookplate at Anyone Comics 831 Nostrand Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11225, on Tuesday, August 27 at 7:00 pm until the limited edition bookplates or music runs out.
