I can’t help but love Blazin’ Brandy. She’s a 16th century girl with a split personality – one of which is a trigger happy big game hunter – stuck on a monster inhabited island. We first discovered Blazin’ Brandy and her creator, Stephanie Lesniak, at last year’s Phoenix Comicon. We caught up with Lesniak at the 2008 convention and from the sound of it, Blazin’ Brandy is on her way to becoming an indy success story.
Pink Raygun: How has Blazin’ Brandy been going for you since the first time we met here last year?
Stephanie Lesniak: It’s been really good. We’ve gotten a lot of support and we’ve gotten a wider audience since we got picked up by Diamond. That’s helped build a bigger audience and bigger fan base throughout the United States as opposed to before when we were only hitting the southwestern United States.
PRG: Have you been doing the con circuit exclusively in the southwest and western states or are you looking at doing other convention in other parts of the country?
SL: We’re going to be going a little bit national. We’re hopefully going to be at Chicago Comicon in June and we’re going to try to catch a couple more back East this year as well.
[nms:blazin brandy,1,1]
PRG: A couple months ago, I saw issue three of Blazin’ Brandy at one of the local shops in my town and I got a little buzz – I was so happy to see it. When are you expecting to release issue four?
SL: Issue four will be in March. When we released issues one, two and three into the stores, a lot of them wanted to see a sample. We did issue zero so they could purchase a 99 cent sampler to see what the prelude of the story is and we wound up getting more sales that way. So, we did issue one, two, three, then zero and now we’re getting issue four out.
PRG: You have a background as an animator. Are you still working in that field?
SL: I still work full time for Cartoon Network. I finished off working on a show called Squirrel Boy and I’m finishing off the first season of a new show that will be premiering in June called The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack.
PRG: When we talked in 2007, you mentioned the possibility of developing Blazin’ Brandy for animation. Do you still have plans for that?
SL: Right now we’re putting together a five minute pilot to start soliciting to some of the studios. Hopefully by the end of next year we’ll be finished with it and we’ll start playing it at conventions, but at the same time we’re going to solicit it to the different studios to see if they might be interested in it as an animated series.
PRG: Do you think there is going to be a lot more animated stuff going on in the next year since WGA had been on strike and animated doesn’t fall under WGA?
SL: I think there will be another renaissance with it since there’s not much new programming, but there’s new programming in animation. So people will start to revisit that and hopefully there will be another rejuvenation.
PRG: When was that last rejuvenation?
SL: I want to say around 1995, like between 95 and 2000 when you had everything from Duck Tales to Gargoyles to Batman: The Animated Series. You had all these different styles that were around. Right now it seems like it’s all either really little kid or really hardcore adult. There’s no middle ground.
[nms:batman animated,1,0]
PRG: Anything else coming up for 2008?
SL: Starting with issue five we’re going to do a big marketing campaign that involves getting into a lot more stores by producing a new cover design. We’re going to do the same style on the interiors, but a more animated painted style on the cover. That way we can compete with the larger prints on the shelves. Right now what we’re wanting to do is work toward a lot of stores who are still leaning toward people who have been around for a long time, like Marvel or DC, and wanting to break into that and get a couple more stores on board.
Blazin’ Brandy is distributed by Diamond. For more on Blazin’ Brandy and Stephanie Lesniak, visit her website at Scrap Pictures.
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