Molly Danger from Jamal ‘Supergirl’ Igle and Action Lab Comics is one of our favourite new titles in ComiXology’s Guided View section. Mixing the action-packed world of superheroes and giant robots with a coming of age story of a girl who is trying to deal with fame, celebrity and being a 10 year old superhero who has been saving the city of Coopersville for over 20 years! It’s a really refreshing and original read in a saturated market which does a great job of maximising the world of Guided View. It’s also a digital exclusive, funded by Kickstarter, which makes it right up our street, so we contacted creator Jamal Igle to discover more about Molly-world! 

Tell us a bit about the inspiration for Molly Danger? Did you have it planned for a long time or was it a moment of inspiration out of the blue?

JI: I originally came up with the base concept for Molly with a friend of mine, Rich Maurizio, back in 2002. We were going to pitch it as an animated series, but later reworked it as a comic. I wrote a script and started doing the artwork for it but had to put it aside when paying work became more frequent. I eventually put it to the side, never forgetting about it. A few years back I was approached by an editor at Abrams publishing about pitching a project and I decided that Molly fit the bill. I reworked the concept and pitched it to several companies, never getting anywhere. Eventually I found out about Kickstarter when I was approached by another writer about a project he wanted to do. The rest, as they say, is history.

After your work on Supergirl you’re quite synonymous with strong female characters was that part of the appeal of creating a character like Molly?

JI: Well Molly predates my involvement with Supergirl, but working on Supergirl certainly helped reshape my approach to tackling Molly as a character. I had the opportunity to communicate with a lot of female comics readers and got a glimpse at the things they felt were lacking from the superhero comics landscape.

By combining super heroes, spies and giant robots you’ve done a great job creating something different from the rest of the books out there, but what do you think sets Molly apart from the other superhero books out there?

JI: The big thing is that Molly isn’t a superhero book, as someone would consider them. To me, it’s a coming of age story, that happens to be about a 10 year old hero. Plus, between the scale of the book and the package itself is unique for mainstream comics in the United States.

You’ve funded it by Kickstarter and released it digitally, how do you think these new avenues have helped self publishers like yourself and what do you think the various pros and cons of them are? 

JI: Kickstarter is definitely a leveler, in terms of financing projects. it allowed me the freedom to make the book look the way I wanted it to, without compromise. The digital avenue just seems like a natural outgrowth.

You’re part of ComiXology’s new Guided View Native push, can you tell us a bit about the pros and cons of working with guided view and what do you think it bring to the book that you can’t do in standard print titles?

JI: I really can’t think of any cons, except we’ve had to re-edit the artwork in order to work in Guided View. It really hasn’t been a detriment, because John (Roberts) and his team have done a great job translating the book.

You can purchase the first two issues of Molly Danger from ComiXology for the bargain price of £0.69/$0.99.  or for more info visit mollydanger.com