Comic Vine: You have been working as an artist for Aspen for years, and now you are finally releasing your very own creator title. Has this been a long time coming, something you always wanted to do, or was there any hesitation on your part?
Joe Benitez: Been working with Aspen going on two years now, started late 2008 early 2009 . This is actually my second venture into creator-owned territory . I did a title called Wraithborn in 2005 through Wildstorm . I have the rights back for Wraithborn and I intend on telling more of the story in the future. Lady Mechanika will be my first attempt as a writer. As far as any hesitation that might be the only one. I feel I can tell a story and feel I can have interesting back and forth with characters but again I’ve always had people that were buffers when it came to that. They would tell me if something sucked or didn’t work. With Lady I have the last say on what goes so I better make it good . Aside from the writing I’ve never had any hesitation as far as doing a creator owned book, matter of fact I prefer it. I love working on titles of my own creation. Been doing it since I started my career, I co-created Weapon Zero and Magdalena For Top Cow. I really love the process of creating new characters and new worlds. I love getting bits and pieces of other things and piecing them together in a new way . I would love to spend the rest of my career doing my own comics.
JB: The Steampunk genre intrigued me for sometime now. Going to cons and watching all these very cool cosplayers decked out in costumes of their own making was fascinating. The more I delved into the culture and did research the more into it I got. Being an artist and creator there is an ocean of possibilities you can do with it. The more I thought about it the more stories would formulate in my head. All I needed was a strong character to be the focal point in my stories in came Lady M. I always had a female in mind as the main protagonist .
CV: What is the title about?
JB: Its about a private investigator in turn of the century Victorian England . She gets hired to investigate cases on the fringe of normal society. Cases others don’t want or don’t understand. Paranormal, supernatural, anomalies. We also find out that she has no memory of her past and that’s part of the reason she is in the kind of work she
CV: What was the experience of going from being an artist to working as both artist and writer on the title?
JB: Stressful, but enjoyable. It’s a different process . I’m used to sitting and talking to someone brainstorming then walking away and having that person type up and make sense out of all we talked about . Now I have to go and do that myself. Its very satisfying when the pieces start to take shape. My only hope is that I can deliver a compelling story with characters you can sympathize with and care for.
CV: How long is the series? Are you looking to make this into an ongoing?
JB: We are aiming for a 6 issue run but if we find an audience expect it to be an on going.
