Interview with The Gods Fear Me Writer Mike Murphy

    Indie Comics Underground spoke with Mike Murphy about his project with Kristian Rossi - The Gods Fear Me - Now In Demand on IndieGogo

Note: This Interview first appeared in I.C.U. issue # 

​The Gods Fear Me has been successfully funded, but is still in demand on IndieGogo. For those who don't know, what is The Gods fear me about?
   TGFM is set 200 years in the future, long after the fall of man. Androids roam the wastelands of Earth, hunting down ancient eldritch aliens. One android in particular- Kedzie- is on a quest for vengeance, hunting down the Puppet King... an alien who tore her arm off in combat. During her journey, she crosses paths with Brian, a young boy who may be the key to saving what little is left of mankind.

TGFM has a lot going on, aliens, Lovecraftian monsters, an apocalypse, and a hero out for revenge. How did the idea for the book come to you?
   From a lot of different sources, but the base concept popped into my mind while watching Prometheus. Didn't much care for it, but by the end I was asking myself why the movie wasn't 2 hours of androids beating the hell out of primordial facehuggers. Things kind of snowballed from there. I also wanted to touch on the female hero archetype, in the vein of Ripley, Sarah Conner, and The Bride, as well as try to push some of those Lovecraft concepts forward a little.

​Kristian Rossi is handling the art for the book. How did you get together with him?
  I read Trespasser about 3 years ago now, and I started following him on Twitter immediately. I love his work so much, and he became one of those "maybe someday" artists for me. Talking to Peter from Alterna about the book, I mentioned Kristian and he said the man was always looking for work. Peter put me in touch with him, and he liked my pitch. From there it just came down to scheduling.

​You have also written a Novella that will flesh out the world and backstory of TGFM. What should backers expect from the Novella?
   The novella starts right as things are falling apart. The Madness Engine has awoken and is driving humanity insane. The story will follow the head of Meryl Corp, a multi-trillion corporation that's racing against time to save as many people as possible while also designing and rolling out the android initiative. It's not going to be a very bright story, but it adds a lot of great stuff to the lore for people who are interested.

This is not your first crowd funding campaign. Have there been any surprises in this campaign when compared to the last one?
   Samurai And Dinosaurs was a big learning curve for us. Lots of moving parts that I should have been more aware of going in. Thankfully our audience has been understanding about us fulfilling a few months late. With TGFM, the biggest surprise was the outpouring of support from the community. Things were looking dicey for a while in terms of hitting funding, and there were so many of my peers that stepped in to help out. I can't put into words what it means to me.

Is there a plan for future stories in TGFM world?
   For sure! It's going to be 3 volumes in total. We have 3 projects launching in 2020- Deepwell, The Dark Moon Agency, and TGFM book 2. Volume 3 will drop in 2021, and we should be looking at a trade release of the entire thing sometime in 2022. Past that, I have very rough ideas for something that could be considered a prequel, but nothing set in stone yet. And as far as sequel material, without giving anything away, the series is going places I don't think many will see coming, and we'll have to wait and see if there's even any androids or humans left to write about by the end.

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Follow Mike Murphy on Twitter: @chibi_mike