Roadkill du Jour: Kevin LaPorte Talks Voodoo, Roadkill, Merle and Daryl Dixon

It's just over a week before the Kickstarter campaign in support of Roadkill du Jour #1 draws to a close, and series writer Kevin LaPorte--also known for his work on Clown Town and The Blind Eye--joined us to talk about the series, why he loves doing it and why fans should buy a copy (unlike most Kickstarters, the first issue is already done and will be available for download as soon as the Kickstarter is completed). ComicBook.com: Between this project and Clown Town, it seems as though your work is a healthy mix of horror tropes with other genres mixed in. Is that just how your brain works, or is more a calculated decision? Kevin LaPorte: For good or ill, that's how my brain works. The essence of a story might spring from any moment or experience or thought, but as I knead it and shape it and structure it, those horror elements inevitably seep from the crevices of my gray matter and right into the plot. For me, the horror lives, not so much in the violence and gore – those come with the territory in many straightforward action tales, too – but the real horror unfolds in the dark and twisted decisions of the characters and the unthinkable, yet perhaps relatable, motivations behind them. In Clown Town, we follow the story of one little girl on a quest to recover her best friend from a cadre of rampaging killer clowns, monsters who actually saved her friend from abusers by administering some particularly theatrical executions. The horror stems not from the child-saving vigilante angle but from how they save the kids and what they do to them to protect them from being abused again.

In Roadkill du Jour, we have a lonesome biker cursed to eat roadkill, as nothing else will sustain him. That simple, universal motivation to feed becomes something altogether horrid when it is compulsively restricted to something so taboo and grotesque…and yet so commonplace. But, that's just the tip of the proverbial horror iceberg in this book, as we explore the loss and theft of souls and skirt the eaves of pregnancy horror, the likes of which haven't been seen since Rosemary's Baby. My professional background is in psychology and mental health, so I've encountered many unsavory and, frankly, bizarre individuals and situations over an extended career. Wrap those experiences in my predilection for the weird end of psychology in pop culture – the films of David Lynch, Rob Zombie, Charlie Kaufman; the music of Morrissey, Marilyn Manson, Peter Murphy (to name a few in each medium) – and you get some insight into the influences that ground the horror I write firmly in the motivations and resultant actions of the people populating my comics, many of whom tend to be far more awful than any monsters they might encounter. ComicBook.com: You've probably heard this one before, but if you've already created the content (it's a Kickstarter reward for a $5 contribution), what is the Kickstarter actually funding? LaPorte: The Kickstarter campaign is primarily funding the actual printing of the physical comics. At the low print runs native to this "up-and-coming" indie side of comics, the per-copy cost of printing is relatively high, so even a comparatively miniscule order quickly gets into four-figure territory. Also, while the book is finished, the artists – Shawn Harbin and Laura Guzzo – put many, MANY hours of work into this project (and it shows in the remarkable art they created). I paid them each a page rate up-front and out-of-pocket, which, I can assure you, is uncharacteristic of most indie collaborations at our level of the game. However, as a social servant and wage-earner myself, I was not able to pay them a professional-level wage for their work. Thus, some of the monies gained from the Kickstarter campaign will go toward supplementing their compensation to a reasonable level, given that the art is the most work-intensive aspect of comic production. Naturally, running a Kickstarter campaign also entails its own set of expenses, fees and taxes, so a good portion of the funds will be expended there, as well.

Our purpose in creating the content ahead of the Kickstarter campaign is to have a product ready to go when funding is accomplished, in order to provide it to our backers as soon as printing and delivery are complete. When someone invests in our work, we will make good on their faith in us, and we will take out of the equation all doubt about provision of the product. There are too many stories of Kickstarter campaigns gone awry, in which the creators don't deliver what was promised or stop communicating and just disappear. I'm an avid consumer of Kickstarter-funded comics, not just a creator, and only about two-thirds of the campaigns I've backed have actually delivered a product to me, most taking many months, and some still unfulfilled after well more than a year. No one who backs one of our books will ever have to worry about those issues, because we don't even launch a fundraising campaign until the book is at the point it will be print-ready by the date funding is complete. ComicBook.com: With less than two weeks ago to, your'e basically on a pace to make your money...except that's not how Kickstarter really works, is it? Can you tell people why they should get in on this sooner than later? LaPorte: No, unfortunately, Kickstarter definitely does NOT work that way, heh. In my experience, and I've run six successful Kickstarter campaigns to date, there is no pace to these things. Unless you have a built-in audience migrating from your RPG-skewering webcomic or mainstream comics work, funding comes in fits and spurts over the course of the anxiety-packed few weeks of the campaign. Success is absolutely handcuffed to exposure, and exposure arises directly from early popularity of the project, both in terms of funding levels and market awareness, the latter in the forms of social media and the general comics community. A project that nears its goal quickly is more likely to draw attention, not just from other prospective backers, but also from potential media outlets and influential industry figures, support from whom will inevitably lead to more backers. Increased numbers of pledges and backers and social media interactions with the project actually improve its visibility on Kickstarter's searches of comics projects in general, making it more likely to be seen by the growing segment of comic buyers who actively browse the site for new concepts.

So, yes, it is critical to the success of a Kickstarter campaign that backers get involved early. We are "on pace" to meet our (relatively meager) funding goal for Roadkill du Jour, and I am confident that we will, but it's going to take a lot of work and even more support. ComicBook.com: Have you thought about getting a celebrity endorsement? I feel like Michael Rooker's insistence that squirrel really is good could put you in his good graces here! LaPorte: "Rooker & Reedus for Roadkill…" I LIKE IT! Time to dig into the marketing budget…or just plain beg… As someone from the Deep South and raised in the country, I will confess to having consumed squirrel stew at least one time in my life, even though I was deceived into doing so. Maybe I can bond with ole' Merle on that point. ["Tastes like chicken" joke redacted.] ComicBook.com: It's interesting to me that you started from that point of "Okay, so this is what gives him his powers," and worked out from there. What came first--the curse story or the actual powers? LaPorte: The curse aspect absolutely came first. There was a "what if some dude was ONLY able to eat roadkill" moment, and this entire world was built outward from that little concept. The more that rather bizarre notion rolled around the tunnels of my mind, the more it flourished, quickly taking me to the idea that this poor sap should be integrally tied to the road in some other way, thus leading to the biker identity. The power of assuming the physical attributes of the animal eaten actually came much later in the development of the story, basically due to fact that our hero, duJour, needed some way to defend himself against the witchery of the voodoo priestess who placed the curse on him. This ability was a natural progression of the narrative and fit perfectly with the soul-as-separate-from-body concepts that permeate the overall story. The way the story is constructed in each issue, there is a building anticipation to see what duJour eats and, then, what he becomes after he eats it.