Writer Brennan Lee Mulligan and artist Molly Ostertag just blasted past their Kickstarter goal for printing their popular webcomic’s most recent two chapters as a graphic novel. The book will include 320 pages of sequential art, in full color, plus bonus features.
Strong Female Protagonist is the story of Alison Green, a middle-class American with super-strength, invincibility and a crippling sense of social injustice. In Book 2, Alison investigates a string of murders, encounters a mysterious figure from her past, and tries to make a difference in a world where punching villains won’t solve complex problems.
Writer Brennan Lee Mulligan (@BrennanLM) is a screenwriter, actor, and improviser at the Upright Citizen’s Brigade theatre in Los Angeles. His writing has been optioned, purchased and produced by companies in LA and NYC. Voicing lead character Tyler Locke, he starred alongside Tatiana Maslany, Haley Joel Osment and Kate Mulgrew in in Audible’s 14 ½ hour audio drama Locke and Key, based on the graphic novels by Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez.
Artist Molly Ostertag (@MollyOstertag) is a cartoonist, illustrator, and SVA graduate. Besides SFP, she has two graphic novels coming out this year, Shattered Warrior (with writer Sharon Shinn) from First Second and The Witch Boy from Scholastic. Molly also works at Disney Television Animation.
Speaking of their creative partnership, Ostertag says, “Brennan and I met each other at a LARPing Camp when we were teenagers and we’ve been working together creatively ever since, in one way or another.”
Besides needing an excuse to spend hours discussing the mechanics of how an invulnerable person might cut her hair, the longtime friends came up with Strong Female Protagonist because they wanted to make a story that portrayed a female protagonist in a way they felt was missing in mainstream media.
“We wanted to use the idea of a ‘strong female protagonist’ to make a comic character that was strong in every sense of the word,” says Mulligan. “So, Alison Green is strong in terms of heroism and moral conviction, she’s super strong and invulnerable, and she’s a strong character with enough flaws to keep her story interesting.”
The co-creators partnered with Top Shelf/IDW Publishing to distribute Volume 1, and will be doing the same for Volume 2. By 2018, SFP II will find its way into bookstores everywhere, though Kickstarter backers will get theirs first.
