Bleeding Cool Talks Concrete Park With Erika Alexander And Tony Puryear

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Bleeding Cool Talks Concrete Park With Erika Alexander And Tony Puryear

08/26/2014 9:31am

You’d Better Show Concrete Park Some R-E-S-P-E-C-T This September – Talking With Erika Alexander And Tony Puryear, Plus 9 Page Preview!

by Hannah Means Shannon

All right, Bleeding Coolers, you’d better get ready and get your asses in gear, quick and in a hurry, because next week, the first issue of the five-part limited series Concrete Park: R-E-S-P-E-C-T drops on September 3rd from Dark Horse Comics. It’s an action-packed sci-fi tale about exiles fighting for their lives and a sense of purpose on another planet—and that’s not even half of what the story’s about.

We caught up with series creators, the husband and wife team of Erika Alexander and Tony Puryear, two movie and TV pros who’ve made the jump to comics with this latest story, for an interview. Alexander’s famous for her sitcom work, portraying Cousin Pam on The Cosby Show and eccentric lawyer Maxine Shaw on Living Single, and Puryear wrote the screenplay for the Arnold Schwarzenegger action film Eraser. They’re writing Concrete Park together, and Puryear’s also illustrating the series.

We caught up with series creators, the husband and wife team of Erika Alexander and Tony Puryear, two movie and TV pros who’ve made the jump to comics with this latest story, for an interview. Alexander’s famous for her sitcom work, portraying Cousin Pam on The Cosby Show and eccentric lawyer Maxine Shaw on Living Single, and Puryear wrote the screenplay for the Arnold Schwarzenegger action film Eraser. They’re writing Concrete Park together, and Puryear’s also illustrating the series.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T’s debut next month will mark the first time Concrete Park’s been released as a full-length serial. Storylines have previously been offered as strips in Dark Horse Presents, to critical acclaim. They featured people of color struggling in a harsh urban environment, and even though that was future sci-fi, the situation mirrored many of the same struggles people of color face on Earth today, like isolation, segregation, and persecution. Houghton-Mifflin Harcourt selected Concrete Park as one of the Best American Comics of 2013, and Alexander and Puryear want to continue delivering the same thought-provoking, action-packed drama with R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

Alexander’s spoken to Bleeding Cool in the past about her and Puryear’s long journey to getting Concrete Park into print. More than a decade ago, they pitched a live-action sci-fi story with a Black cast to a Hollywood executive who rejected them specifically because the characters weren’t white, and that motivated the creators to adapt a storyline for comics, a medium with fewer barriers to entry. Learning and adjusting to this new field and connecting with Dark Horse was an arduous, years-long process.

They’re ready today. R-E-S-P-E-C-T’s release is just around the corner, and the couple has made the rounds at multiple conventions to promote it and discuss the entertainment industry in general. Alexander even sat on the famous Black Panel last month at San Diego Comic-Con, sporting a Thor-style headband, and she spoke at length about the Black experience in entertainment.

She and Puryear spoke to Bleeding Cool this summer about what we can expect from R-E-S-P-E-C-T. In the limited series’ first issue, hero Isaac crosses paths with gang leader Luca fresh after being exiled to the harsh planet Oasis from Earth. The name “Oasis” is a cruel joke, however, because it’s a scorching environment with two blazing suns and no natural vegetation, and Isaac’s expected to mine it for natural resources as a slave along with other exiles. His transportation ship unexpectedly crash lands and kills most of the passengers, and he’s suddenly caught between battling gangs who’d already been trying to kill each other before he showed up as a distraction amid the ship’s wreckage.

Hilton Collins: Your story takes place in the future, but you’re exploring things in the present that aren’t typically explored in mainstream media comfortably, like race relations, racial stereotypes, and same-sex relationships. Do you think your storytelling decisions could inspire others to be less afraid to explore these things in their own stories?

Erika Alexander: We didn’t get into comics, or showbiz for that matter, expecting to carry the flag as civil and social advocates. We created Concrete Park because we thought we had an interesting story to tell and we wanted to see it realized. [Co-Founder] Mike Richardson of Dark Horse comics gave us a platform to tell our story and we’re glad to be here. Nevertheless, the fact is that racism is a pernicious, invisible deterrent to change in showbiz and its underlying, psychological structure influences executives’ choices. There’s already a fear factor in show biz that makes studios recycle patterns from previous successes. They rarely produce projects that don’t fit specific molds. You ask if they will be less afraid to explore new ground if we are successful? Perhaps. We certainly hope that will be the outcome. There’s a wealth of talented people out there creating fantastic projects. All we can do is try to make a great comic. If our path helps smooth the way for other storytellers, right on.

HC: You said before that five issues, while great, is challenging to tell a Concrete Park story with because you’ve got so many characters and things going on. Are you already planning where you’ll go with your next five-issue miniseries, or do you and Tony have a wait-and-see attitude about things before you start writing again?

EA and Tony Puryear: This is a big sucker. We’re building an epic, a fictional world on the scale of Game of Thrones. Our story has wars, betrayals, love, ghosts and aliens, heroes who turn to villains, and deserts that bloom. Our larger road map is already laid out and right now we’re writing. We’re always writing.

Read the full interview at Bleeding Cool! Concrete Park #1 hits stores September 3rd!

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Bleeding Cool Talks Concrete Park With Erika Alexander And Tony Puryear

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