A New Prospect In Sons of Anarchy

by Vince Brusio

Rough riders on hogs that don’t stop to apologize for failing to give a turn signal are those people you’ll read about in the upcoming Sons Of Anarchy: Redwood Volume 1 TP (MAR171421) from BOOM! Studios. It is the starting point for a legacy that many TV viewers watched faithfully on FX. Now the crime, drama, and thrills of America’s favorite biker gang is coming back to comics in a new ongoing series, and BOOM!’s Editor of Talent Development Dafna Pleban and writer Ollie Masters talk to us about the new book that keeps the cigarettes lit, and the motors idling.

Sons Of Anarchy: Redwood Volume 1 TP (MAR171421) is in comic shops July 5.

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PREVIEWSworld: For those who may be new to the SOA universe, how would you preface this series? What makes SSons Of Anarchy: Redwood Volume 1 TP (MAR171421) a kick to the gut?

Ollie Masters: Biker gangs. Guns. Drugs. Violent people trying to make their place in the world. That’s the world of Sons Of Anarchy: Redwood Original.

PREVIEWSworld: How did things get worked out with Kurt Sutter to approve this series? What details were involved in moving the deal forward? Is Kurt in the approval process for all issues moving forward?

Dafna Pleban: Kurt has been awesome to work with. He let us pick his brain about all sorts of questions and when we ran the barest bones of the idea of the story we wanted to tell, he not only gave the go-ahead, he helped fill in the details that really took the story to the next level. He approves every issue and couldn’t be better to work with!

PREVIEWSworld: Why an ongoing series instead of a limited series? And what’s the direction for this series? Will there be any secrets exposed which could shed some light on plot threads that were a part of the TV show? Like the life of Jax’s father?

Ollie Masters: It just makes sense to do it as an ongoing. A group like Samcro has a lot of back history so there are plenty stories to explore from their past — a lot of years of hard living and gun running to explore. As the story progresses we do want to seed in storylines that directly link to the show, but at the same time we don’t want this comic to just be a series of Easter eggs. It needs to stand on its own.

I’m not sure how much we can touch on Jax’s father, but if we do I’m not sure how deeply we’d dive in. It feels like that story deserves its own series. But saying that, I’d definitely like to explore it a little.

PREVIEWSworld: What can you tell us about the characters in this book? We’re told to expect younger versions of the characters from the TV show, but what does that mean? How many years before the TV show continuity will this series take place? And what impact will that time lapse have on the personalities of the characters?

Ollie Masters: This series takes place in the ‘90s and Jax is around 18, 19 years old, so this is a younger, more raw Jax trying to prove himself as a club member. His dad’s death is still recent history so while in the show, his father’s memory is like a scar that he wears with pride, in the comic it’s very much still an open wound that he’s trying to cope with.

With all the characters, I’ve looked at who they were in the pilot, and then worked backwards from there. For the older characters, they’re not too different, but the younger ones have the most changes. When you’re 18, 19, you’re changing as a person, becoming the person you’ll be for the rest of your life. So it’s about imagining that character when they’re younger, then thinking about what they’d go through to get them to who they are in the pilot episode.

PREVIEWSworld: How/why were Ollie Masters and Luca Pizzari made a team for this book? What does each creator bring to the table as they undertake writing this new chapter in SOA history?

Dafna Pleban: We were already big fans of Ollie’s work on Vertigo’s The Kitchen and our title Snow Blind. He has such a great handle on the SOA world, and brings so much richness both to existing characters and new characters you'll meet through the course of the story. There's one guy in issue #1 that feels like he's been there always; Ollie is that good.

Luca was someone we were talking to for a while. We loved his work on Red Skull for Marvel so when we found out we were going to be able to tell new stories in the SOA world, we had to reach out. Good thing we did! His enthusiasm for the property and the world-building shows on every page.