Vin Diesel may have been the last witch hunter, but Lila is certainly the cutest.







A 17th Century hunter wakes up in the present after her soul in placed into a life-size ball-jointed doll in Dan Mendoza and Bryan Seaton's “Dollface.” The new series is currently running a campaign on Kickstarter, and Lila debuts in October's “Zombie Tramp VS The Doll-Faced Witch Hunter” Halloween Comic Fest offering from Action Lab.







The Swerve spoke with Mendoza to learn more about “Dollface” and the continuing success of “Zombie Tramp”







The Swerve Magazine: How did “Dollface” come about?







Dan Mendoza: About a year ago, we were finishing New York Comic-Con, and Bryan Seaton, the CEO of Action Lab, asked me, “Hey have you heard my idea for a book?” I said, “No, what's your idea?” “I'm looking someone that can put it together, but I have this idea to do like 'Weird Science,' where these kids get together and build this sex doll, and the sex doll becomes this witch hunter, and all this stuff.” I was like, “Umm, okay let me about it, and I'll get back to you”









We want to keep expanding on the Zombie Tramp universe. We did it with “Vampblade,” and we wanted to throw something else out there. Bryan knew that I didn't want to do a zombie hunter character. Even though it's a zombie book, I don't have that genre of the mass infestation or anything like that. It's more of just a single character like Jason Vorhees.





I've been into the ball-jointed doll community for a couple of years, where I'm just hardcore into it now, and considering buying these dolls. They're like 18-inches or bigger, and they're fully-intricated Japanese and Korean-made dolls. They just look creepy with all the detail they paint into them. I thought, “What if we do a ball-jointed doll and make it all gothic lolita, with the huge frilly dresses like you see in anime?” I've always been into that stuff, I was the only guy growing up watching “Sailor Moon” and that cutesy shit that girls liked.







I sent Bryan this whole outline of these MIT students, who are looking to make an entrepreneurial venture. The guy's like, “Sex sells, so let's make this sex doll, and oh, by the way, I found this program.” Because it was part of the Zombie Tramp universe, I incorporated this plot point. In the Zombie Tramp story line, there's an issue where a kid gets ahold of the Necronomicon. He decodes almost the whole book, and he uploads it onto the internet, and people found it and turned it into an app for spellcasting. So this character is telling his female best friend, “I found this program called the Necronomicon Project, and I'm pretty sure it can make artificial intelligence.” So she says, “Well, that will be our gimmick. We'll have a sex doll that has AI.”







So that's what they do, but because they are programmers they think this is just a program, they build it and try to bring this thing to life, but what it really does is pull out the soul of a 17th Century witch hunter just as she's about to be sacrificed. Right before she dies, she is pulled into present time and into the doll. She wakes up in the present and freaks out. When she gets her her head together, she realizes that the seven witches that killed her family are still alive, and she starts hunting them all down.







SM: That's really cool. I didn't realize from the plot description that the Necronomicon App was how Lila's soul got in that doll body.







DM: What's cool about it is the Necronomicon App is something that Jason Martin and I thought of together. I had talked to him about Zombie Tramp banging this kid who looked like a crush that she had in high school. Jason ended up writing that story, and it didn't end up the way I had wanted it, but it was good enough to where we were talking about him getting ahold of the book, and he said, “What if he downloads it onto the internet and it becomes like a spelling app?” I thought that was awesome, and that's how that came about.







SM: You have said that Lila is a witch hunter, but what is her personality?







DM: Since she is from the 17th Century and new to this world, Lila is very trusting of people. She's like young at heart, she's only in her early 20s. She's not like Zombie Tramp, who's just jaded and she hates the world and everything that's in it. Lila's the opposite where she has a heart and is caring and trusting, but when it comes to the witches, she's all business and she goes into her full killing mode and she's just about as violent and sadistic then.







When I decided that I wanted to do comics, I had a website called Toxic Candy, and I was calling everything Toxic Candy because the way I draw is kind of cute, but I love violent stuff. So what I draw is cute, but bad for you. When I started with “Zombie Tramp,” people were drawn to it because it was cute but really violent. With “Dollface,” it'll be even cuter, but still really violent.







SM: Speaking of cute, what can you tell us about Ivan?







DM: Ivan is her ghost sidekick. I can't talk about his origin now, but what he does is that he's basically her utility belt. He's part ghost, but also infused with a lot of technical things, so he's kind of like Flynn from “TRON,” where he can build stuff with his mind, so if she loses an arm, he can build a new one on the spot. If she needs a weapon, he can build one on the spot.







SM: You had mentioned that Bryan Seaton pitched part of the idea to you, and you're working with him, and for a good run of “Zombie Tramp,” you had written alongside Jason Martin. How do those collaborations work for you?







DM: With Jason Martin, we've had a long relationship. When “Zombie Tamp” started, he was the one who told me that the book was good and he could get it bar-coded. This was before Action Lab. Jason's always been easy to work with, we just go back and forth, and back and forth. Being that “Zombie Tramp” is my property, I always have the final say, but Jason's had lots of good ideas, and I always listen to what he has to say with storylines.







With “Dollface,” I didn't know how it'd be with Bryan Seaton, because as CEO, you look at him as a businessman and probably not too imaginative, so I just went full-on writing the script, like the whole first story and it was already being drawn. Then all of a sudden he was like, “How's it going?,” so I showed him what I had, and he said, “Oh, this is awesome.” Then recently at San Diego, he's like, “Hey, I came up with some ideas, and I want to read them to you.” He started reading me these ideas of more storylines for other issues, and they were amazing. This guy does have imagination, he's awesome. What's great with Bryan is that trust thing where he knows that I know what I'm doing and I'm going to make it a good book, so he's just basically tossing me plotlines and ideas that I can turn into a script and make a book.







SM: Moving to “Zombie Tramp,” what led you to create that series?







DM: “Zombie Tramp” was basically a resume. I was here and there with what I wanted to do with my art career. I had gone to animation school, and kind of found out that animation might not be for me. It was just lot of work and having to deal with a lot of people's bullshit. So I decided to make this book and send it out to companies as a sample of my art skills and my writing skills.







I combined a lot of things that I like. I like drawing cute girls, and I like horror movies and slasher films like Jason, Freddy, and Chucky. I always like those “root for the bad guy” books. So I decided to do a “Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!” 70's exploitation kind of book, but with a horror edge to it. I was thinking of a harsh name to give it, and I came up with “Zombie Tramp.”







I started drawing pictures of her, and I only did one issue, and around that time Jason Martin was talking with me on the internet, and he invited me to hang out with him at San Diego. So I printed up 80 of that first issue, and I sold them out in two-and-a-half days. After that, I did two more issues, and Jason's like, “Let's turn it into a trade, and we'll both put our money in, and see if we can get it into stores.” That first trade was manga-sized, and we make 2,000 of those, and got it into stores, and it took off from there.







SM: Has the popularity of “Zombie Tramp” surprised you?









DM: Yeah, I never expected it. The first origin story was hitting all the spots of what a grindhouse book should be, this is what should happen, this is how they should talk. For me, it was formulaic of how a grindhouse story should be. When that went well, and I started on the second mini-series, I started diving more into Zombie Tramp's personality.





What I started doing was almost a sort of a journal of how I internalized my thoughts of life, but with no positiveness at all, only the negative things that I think. So every time Zombie Tramp internalizes, it's my reflections on life, or it's based off a Morrissey song lyric or Depeche Mode. People started getting drawn to that. I didn't realize that people are so much the same, as far as that audience who like horror movies and stuff like that, they have that same kind of reflections on life. So to like Zombie Tramp is to like my personality, I guess.







SM: As somebody who got into this for the art side, what is it like for you to collaborate and see Zombie Tramp executed by THChu and now Marcelo Trom?







DM: It was hard at first. When Action Lab sat me down and asked me if I wanted to do a monthly series, and I said that would be cool, they said we would have to put together a team because it's really hard to keep a book going monthly, so there's going to have to be other artists and that's when they suggested Jason Martin help me juice up the stories.







I found TMChu on Deviantart, and I asked him if he was looking for a job, and he actually was looking for something at the time, so that was awesome. But once I got all these artists, and they started working on stuff, I just couldn't let it go. I was freaking out about everything. “That's not the model sheet. The eyes should be different. This should be different.” That's when Jason's like, “You have to calm down. Everybody has their own style, you have to let it go.” It's hard when you've just been doing everything by yourself for so long. After I could let it go, it's been pretty great seeing all these artists have their interpretations of what Zombie Tramp looks like.







SM: With Action Lab tossing so many variants on the issues, so what is it when you see artists with really disparate styles come into the mix?







DM: When it started, the first issue had 10 covers or some insane amount. I've always been a fan of Josh Howard, so when they said Josh Howard was doing a cover, and I saw how he drew Zombie Tramp, I thought, “This is awesome,” and was kind of more accepting of other people's styles after that, so it didn't take too long. I like when a new cover comes in from an artist I know, but who I would never imagine how they would draw Zombie Tramp. We had Ryan Kinnaird do one, and I've always been a fan of his stuff, so that's one of my favorite covers.







SM: With your own creative process, what is a typical day like for you?







DM: My days are pretty long and drawn out, probably almost 15 hour days. The first two hours are usually dealing with emails and organizing stuff. I either have scripts weeks or drawing weeks, when I'm drawing books or covers. This week is scripts week, where I'm trying to get all these scripts done. When I'm working on scripts, it's very quiet every day. I don't have any sound in the house. I've gotten to the point where if I had to, I could put on headphones and listen to music, but it used to not be that way like any sound would mess me up when I have to write dialogue or think about what's happening in the story.







SM: So is it different when you're drawing?







DM: Yeah, I'm watching movies or listening to music. It's usually movies, but it's always movies that I've seen a bunch of times with good dialogue so that I can just hear it and know what's happening. Drawing is way louder. I enjoy the drawing part better than the writing part.











The “Dollface” Kickstarter runs through August 19, and can be found here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2099396146/dollface-0





