Help Us! Great Warrior is a webcomic from cartoonist, writer, animator, and Bee and Puppycat collaborator Madeleine Flores, that is getting its own monthly print series from Boom! Studios! We’re big fans of Great Warrior and it’s tiny, confident, lecherous, loyal, bean-like, sword-wielding, monster-slaying, lady protagonist. In fact, I may have described it as “like if Lumpy Space Princess had become the Hero of Ooo instead” to several people in order to get them to read it. And in honor of its debut on the shelves of your local comic shop, we’ve interviewed Ms. Flores herself about the webcomic and is transition to the page.
The first issue won’t be out until next month, but that means that the deadline to preorder the comic is quickly approaching!
The Mary Sue: Help us Great Warrior started out on Tumblr, but where did the idea for her come from in the first place?
Madeleine Flores: She started off as a way for me to do journal comics but in a fantasy setting! I think the first one was probably about me being happy in starting a new relationship—probably a boring origin story, haha—but after that I had a lot of fun trying to twist my own experiences into a fantasy-world setting.
TMS: Great Warrior seems to mix both Eastern and Western cartooning styles. What would you say are its stylistic influences?
Flores: There are so many!! But definitely Sailor Moon, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Shin Chan. (I like how the gags are set up in Shin Chan.) Also, Final Fantasy games!
TMS: A big part of Great Warrior’s charm is her design as an adorable, vaguely humanoid lump, giving her a certain universality of form and subverting some elements of the Sonja/Sheena/sexy barbarian woman stories that she plays off of. But her allies are pretty uniformly and specifically women of color. Was that a deliberate choice, or just the whim of the character designing pen?
Flores: I’m Puerto Rican and have a mocha complexion; my everyday normal is being a woman of color. So I felt most comfortable drawing what is normal to me.
TMS: Did you find the transition from quick gag strips to a larger narrative to be a difficult one?
Flores: It was a fun challenge! I ran my story by the editor and friends/family to see if it makes any sense and they gave me the confidence that I could do it!
TMS: With that larger narrative are we going to see a solidified antagonist for Great Warrior, or is the greatest enemy… herself?
Flores: There’s a very specific baddie out there~~~
TMS: Will we ever see the Great Warrior origin story?
Flores: ;)
Help Us! Great Warrior #1 should hit comics shops on February 11th, 2015, so if it sounds up your alley, tell your shop to order it for you! And in the meantime, catch up on the webcomic! Here’s one of my personal favorites to get you started.
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