Review Fix chats with Matt Moylan, UDON’s Street Fighter Editor, who discusses the brand’s one-shot comic book offering for Free Comic Book Day 2015. Breaking down the creative process and vision for the book, Moylan gives us an awesome look at the story, months before its released.
For more information on the one-shot and Free Comic Book Day 2015, Click Here.
Review Fix: What was the creative process like for this one shot?
Matt Moylan: This comic actually has an interesting origin in that it was originally created for Japanese audiences. Japanese publisher Enterbrain was putting together an anthology of color manga stories a few years ago, and asked UDON if we would contribute something since we did the American comics. So I came up with this one-off story. It’s great that it’ll finally be available in English for the first time.
Review Fix: How much pressure is there to work on/with a series like Street Fighter?
Moylan: The key thing is to respect and stay true to the game characters. That really UDON’s mantra for Street Fighter in general. We want to tell our own stories, fights, deaths etc, but the characters can’t veer too far from their original game counterparts. We don’t want these to be the “UDON version†of Street Fighter, these are the real characters in fun new situations.
That said it can be restrictive once in a while, and there is always the temptation to “shake things up†with a major character shift. But so far we’ve done pretty well to resist going down that path.
Review Fix: Who are your favorite Street Fighter characters to write? Why?
Moylan: I haven’t written as many Street Figher stories as some of our other writers like Ken Siu-Chong or Jim Zub, but when I get the chance I like to bring in characters that UDON hasn’t used before. I wrote a short story recently for another project using Won-won from Final Fight 2 as the villain. How many people even remember who that is?
In this particular story, Ibuki was probably the most fun. You have a lot of options with a ninja school girl and her pet raccoon-dog.
Review Fix: Without giving anything away, who do you think will enjoy the comic the most?
Moylan: This story was written with new readers in mind – people who maybe have only played the games, but not necessarily read the UDON comics. You might catch a few references to other UDON stories, but for the most part this is a self-contained.
Review Fix: What was it like to work with Jeffrey Chamba Cruz?
Moylan: Jeff’s great and his animation-influenced style always brings a ton of energy to a project. Though he is not the only artist on this book. The story was designed to accommodate 5 different artists each drawing a segment of the story. So this comic also includes segments from other UDON artists Omar Dogan (Street Fighter Legends), Long Vo (Super Street Fighter II HD Remix), Joe Vriens (Darkstalkers), and Joe Ng (Street Fighter Origins: Akuma). Each of them brings their own unique style.
Oh, and also a few bonus comedy strips drawn by Dax Gordine (Bravoman).
Review Fix: Sometimes one-shots branch out into full-fledged series. Is there that possibility here?
Moylan: This specific story, I don’t’ think so. It really is just something written to be a fun –one-off story without much in the way of mysteries or lead-ins to bigger stories. But that doesn’t’ mean there aren’t plenty more comic stories coming from UDON. Capcom has just started teasing Street Fighter V, and UDON is gearing up for one of our biggest years yet in terms of comic production.
Review Fix: How do you want this one-shot to be remembered?
Moylan: I used the multiple eras of Street Fighter to come up with what I think is a unique story structure, so I think people will find that interesting. Hopefully people find this one-shot to be a fun aside from our main Street Fighter storylines.
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