Going Rogue In Ocean City: An Interview With Colm Griffin

Posted by On March 05, 2018


I really liked the cover. I was wondering what your thinking was behind that?

Thank you. I wanted to show that Ocean City was once a great place to visit. The kind of place that you could bring a snow globe home to show that you had been there. The destruction of the snow globe symbolizes what the city had been through and the blood symbolizes what it is going through now.

What influenced you to come up with this kind of story?

Coming from animation and vfx for film and tv, I have been looking to get back into drawing comics for a while now. Doing Pin Ups, commissions and posters are fun but nothing beats telling stories through sequential art. So as the story goes, I wanted to do something that a younger me would read. I had some ideas bouncing around and over the past couple of years I worked on getting them in order. I would finish the day job and in the evenings I was working on this.

How would you describe the story to someone who hasn’t read it yet?

To me it feels like a coming of age story with mystery, murder and superpowers. At least that’s what I intended it to be while I wrote it. All the fun things I like to read about.

How many issues will the story be?

There will be 6 issues in the mini series. I do have more I would love to tell with the story but it all depends on how people embrace the story and it’s characters.

I saw an advert for Zeke in the first issue. Is that what you are working on next?

Everyone always asks about the lollipop ladies of Zeke. Maybe I should have come out with this one first?! I am working on a story for it at the moment. I would love to release this one as a graphic novel rather than single issues.

How did you get involved with the Rogue Comics crew?

As you can imagine Carlow is a small enough place and comics aren’t that big on most peoples lists. I only know a couple of guys in comics from here so I was all set to publish the book by myself. I showed
some stuff to a mate of mine, Ben Hennessy (of Carrie and Rufus) and he suggested that I send it to publishers and see if any of them are interested. It just so happens that I met Wayne Talbot and Ciaran Marcantonio at small press last year. I had been in contact with them about purchasing their own books and figured why not see if they would be interested in publishing mine. So I reached out to Rogue one Saturday morning and after sending through the first couple of issues, Ciaran said they would be happy to put Ocean City out for Rogue. To which I am very grateful for. (Jaysus that is a mouth full)

You’ll be launching the book soon

Yeah the book is being launched this Wednesday 7th of March at 6pm in Forbidden Planet Dublin. It’s sure to be a great event and I hope to see plenty of people there.