Comic Buzz Chats with Brain Poison’s PA Lopez

We got a chance to sit down and chat with the writer and the founder of Brain Poison Studios, P.A. Lopez.

Could you please introduce yourself to our readers?

PA Lopez: Hi Shabbir. My name is Pablo Star, aka P.A. Lopez. I grew up in New Orleans, then I moved to Los Angeles to play music. When I started working in fashion, I moved to New York City to be closer to that, and now I live in Paris.

Can you tell us about the origins of Brain Poison?

Lopez: I’ve been writing stories since I was about 12. I went to a special arts high school in New Orleans for writing, then later got an MA in creative writing. For many years, I was sidetracked playing music, composing songs, and recording and producing them. It was only around 2018 that I decided to get back into writing. I wrote the novel RNWY (pronounced “runway”), which had some nice press.

Around then, I saw a “Making of Star Wars” documentary, and it talked about how George Lucas hired incredible artists like Ralph McQuarrie to bring his ideas to life so he could pitch them to producers.

I found an artist, Samuel Bermudez, to start creating concept art for some of my characters and gadgets. That collaboration continued until I realized what I really needed to do was turn my TV scripts into graphic novels. A graphic novel is essentially a little movie on a page.

Once I had Sam working on several stories, it occurred to me that I needed a place to bundle all of these together. That’s when I came up with the idea for Brain Poison.

My family hates the name, haha. It’s supposed to sound like a punk rock record label: a little edgy, a little ridiculous, and a little self-deprecating. And if you don’t like it, well, we warned you. 😆

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How did you meet Samuel Bermudez?

Lopez: Online! Eight years later, I’ve still never met him, had a Zoom, or even spoken to him on the phone. Everything is by email, or occasionally chat.

What is the goal for Brain Poison?

Lopez: I want to tell every kind of story because I write many kinds of stories.

I have scary stories. I have funny stories. I have science fiction stories. I even have stories inspired by old French cinema. I am a story addict. I’ve studied so many different story methods, from the Hero’s Journey to the Save the Cat beat sheet to the Snowflake Method.

I’ve tried very structured writing with story tables and charts, and winging it to see how it goes. (Jury is still out.)

Different writers use different methods. J.K. Rowling plots everything out in advance, and Stephen King makes it up as he goes.

To me, a story is a puzzle, and it’s an incredibly difficult thing to crack. I’m still not sure I’m very good at it, and I’m still working on it every day. It was a similar experience when I was trying to write songs. How do you write a really great song? It’s a puzzle that might always elude me.

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As an artist, what are Samuel Bermudez’s strengths?

Lopez: Sam is really brilliant at capturing small, nuanced moments between characters and humor. He understands things right away and what’s actually happening in the scene. Often, he teases out things I hadn’t thought of in terms of the characters’ expressions while delivering my lines.

He’s also willing to recreate things as many times as it takes to get close to what I’m seeing in my mind.

He’s just very professional.

What can you tell us about the inaugural title, Cyberpink? Are these series within the Brain Poison universe interconnected?

Lopez: Only Cyberpink and Vox Wormhall are connected.

Cyberpink is about a girl band in the future trying to save the world from extinction. But the real story is how they’re trying to overcome their individual childhood wounds. We all have them. Theirs might be a little more colorful than most.

The rest are just things spilling out of my head, or that have spilled out of my head in the past. I have a list to get to and not enough time or money, unfortunately, to make them happen quickly.

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Brain Poison recently announced four new original comic series. Could you tell us all about these series?

Lopez: Vox Wormhall is a robot detective living in a city in a quantum entanglement. His partner has just died, and he’s trying to find the killer.

BoredSpace is more grimdark. It’s a world with no rules and no heroes, where everyone is trying to survive until Tuesday.

10 Million AD is currently one of the most popular ones. It’s about a grieving girl who uses a time machine and ends up 10 million years in the future. It started as a screenplay, and then, as I realized how much fun you can have when you have 10 million years to work with, it’s become a series.

RNWY Galaxies is a spinoff of my print book RNWY. One of the characters arrives in a series of five galaxies with a price on her head, with no idea why or who she is. It takes place in the RNWY universe, which really has a ridiculous amount of lore that has never seen the light of day.

She pairs up with a bounty hunter who doesn’t yet know about the price on her head, and is just trying to make enough money to become a rock star.

Brain Poison books have many females as the lead protagonist. As a writer, is it important to you to have a female as the lead protagonist?

Lopez: Everyone asks me this, and I don’t really have an answer, haha. It’s not an intentional decision. There’s no meaning behind it. It just always works out that way.

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The Brain Poison series seems to all live in a sci-fi world. What is it about sci-fi that you enjoy as a writer?

Lopez: Science fiction is fantastic because it’s just reality that hasn’t happened yet. And the things that happen in science fiction actually change what we, as humans, end up building.

For any readers who want to read Brain Poison’s comics, where can they find them?

Lopez: GlobalComix (Globalcomix.com/a/brainpoison) or brainpoison.net. 🙂

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