Pop pop, fizz fizz – the cola wars are getting serious.
Dave Johnson, Jimmy Palmiotti, and Juan Santacruz are spinning the cola industry battle of Pepsi vs. Coca-Cola into an adult, espionage-centered story with a side of romance. Pop Kill is a four-issue series currently taking pre-orders on Kickstarter for a planned June 2020 debut.
For Johnson, this will be his first time stepping out from his drawing table and into writing – something his co-writer Jimmy Palmiotti did himself decades ago when he was an inker. Newsarama talked with the duo about their partnership, and their love (and hate) of soda.
Newsarama: Dave, Jimmy, when I think of soda, I think about drinking it. For you two, it’s the backdrop to romance, espionage, and adult situations. How’s this happen with Pop Kill?
Dave Johnson: Basically, I had the story in my head for quite a few years now. The idea of two wholesome companies like Coke and Pepsi really hating each other to point of violence just made me laugh. So then coming up with story revolving around a scientist on the verge of creating a formula to make soda fizzier 50% longer as the main story was just the right amount of absurdity. Add in the hitman hired to kill her and the story started to take shape.
Jimmy Palmiotti: Dave pitched me the idea and off we went, getting just the right team together and getting to work. I have been working with Juan Santacruz on Painkiller Jane and didn’t want him to slip back to doing other work, so we acted fast tying him up for a while on this big project. What works best for me is the romance mixed with crazy identical brothers.
Nrama: Back up – how’d you two come together exactly for this?
Johnson: This being the first big story I’ve tried to write, I wasn’t confident that I had the chops. So, I called my best bud Jimmy and pitched him what I had come up with. Most of it was there, but it needed a more experienced writer. Someone I knew who could help really make it sing. And Jimmy brought it in spades.
Palmiotti: Dave hit me with the idea and I was sold, mainly because it was a solid idea with an unusual take on corporate greed. I love picking on big corporations and I have a thing about greedy people as well. This story and idea wrote itself. It became a bit wilder than we had planned along the way, but that’s the beauty of comics…go too far.
Dave Johnson
Credit: DC
Nrama: Dave, it’s great to see you writing. Why have you held back for so long, and can you talk more about your desire to write?
Johnson: I’m more of an idea guy than a script guy. And I am working now on some other things. But writing still feels foreign to me. I’m more visual. It’s a muscle I haven’t quite developed yet so finding a partner to help bring my initial idea alive is how I currently prefer working. Plus I really enjoy the creative back and forth you get working with a partner. The experience writing with Jimmy was great.
Nrama: So with Pop Kill, you have a scientist and a mercenary, who end up falling in love – it’s like Romeo & Juliet, caffeinated. Was this a love story from day 1, or did that come later?
Johnson: The basic structure was there from the beginning, but as we got into it, Jimmy really brought those characters to life.
Palmiotti: The main thing for me is you have to relate to the characters otherwise the book becomes a bunch of noise. It is everything to the story that you care for these people, otherwise the things at stake are a bit meaningless.
Nrama: Can you tell us about Dina and Jon?
Palmiotti: Dina is a relocated scienctist working on a formula to extend the carbonation of soda and Jon is a corporate mercenary/spy that picks up the gig to get whatever he can from Dina, no matter what the cost. They are both hard-headed, driven people that have more in common than they think and that’s the sexy fun of this adult graphic novel.
Nrama: The Kickstarter says this is the first issue of a limited series – do you have mapped out how many issues it’ll be?
Jimmy Palmiotti
Palmiotti: Pop Kill is a 4-issue series, each book having 32 pages of story. It is completely written and is being drawn as we speak. Issue 1 is all done, so for anyone backing the Kickstarter, they will be getting their digital copies ASAP, and the print books a few weeks later. We will not pull a fast one here folks – 12 Kickstarters in and we deliver each and every time. Bank on it!
Nrama: You’ve already reached your $30,000 goal just a few days into the Kickstarter. What kind of stretch goals do you have in mind for this?
Palmiotti: We have a list posted where we are offering stretch goal digital books, sketch book art pages added to the book, and the actual second, third, and fourth issue if it goes high enough. Check them out on the page, its pretty exciting stuff and we can get there if enough people support the project.
Nrama: So, let’s end this on a light note – what’s each of your favorite sodas… and do you call it pop, soda, or something else?
Johnson: There’s a brand called ‘Dang! That’s Good’ that sells a butterscotch root beer that is mind-blowing. And I’m from the south so I always say “soda.”
Palmiotti: I am a coke guy. I worked in advertising years ago and one of my clients was Pepsi… well, as you can imagine, we could never have a coke in the studio, so I Bad-Boyed it and snuck the stuff around all the time and got hooked. I stopped drinking soda many years ago because it puts a ton of weight on me…but writing about soda helps me burn the calories in my fingers now.