I caught up with LeSean Thomas at a top secret building in Culver City, California adjacent to the Sony Pictures studio lot. He was there doing his day gig as character designer for the top secret upcoming Boondocks animated show debuting soon on Comedy Central. When I arrived, LeSean was bumping hip hop on a box in his studio and taking down color drawings featuring animated renditions of Huey, Riley and the whole gang. He apologized explaining Boondocks creator Aaron McGruder wanted to make sure nothing about the show gets out. I calmed his nerves, promising his secret was safe with me, don't worry. Besides, I was there to talk to LeSean about his work in the comics field. Specifically on the long-awaited Cannon Busters. Here's how it went down...

Joe Doughrity: Okay, I know we're here to talk comics but I can't ignore those beautiful drawings. Is there anything you can tell me about the Boondocks show?

LeSean Thomas: We all know how important it is… if the show pops. He [McGruder] hollered at me. The big problem was that they didn't have a lot of heads out here in Cali that knew anime and knew hip-hop. Like understood it both and could actually produce it at a high level of quality. You know what I'm saying? Out here, everything is kinda like a house style…people move from production to production. So everything is Warner Brothers style. Very Teen Titans, Batman, Justice League. Even the stortytelling and storyboard process is from Saturday morning. The approach to narrative in Saturday morning cartoons is for five year olds! You can't be doing like Matrix-style storytelling with five year olds.

That's why everything is centered and on some puppetry type shit, yo. One character talking another character talking, they're all in the same shot and they're all doing all types of crazy stuff. So Aaron brought me on board. I came out for a week.

Joe: How did he find you?

LeSean: My boy Carl Jones. Me and Carl had met in Greensboro. There wasn't a lot of cats doing shit out there so when I moved out there we kind of just clicked. I got a call to work on a cartoon for Roc-a-fella called The Playpin that was being produced by State Property with Beenie Siegel so I was brought on board to art direct for the series bible, promote the design and stuff like that. And at that time I put Carl on, and so that's how we kind of stayed in touch.

So when he moved to LA and I moved to Phily he was like, Yo, I met McGruder and I was like, Aww, that shit is hot... Don't f*ck it up. Because it was like his first time actually getting on so one thing led to another and he was like yo, the cartoon is happening. I flew out, Aaron saw my stuff, we hit it off for a week and he was like yo, how soon can you move out? And I was like I can move out in 3 weeks top, cuz I had just moved to Phily. Now I'm out here and I'm just working on the show, y'know? My girl moved out here and that's the end of that.

Joe: Catching a little Cali sunshine's in the winter's alright though?

LeSean: Yeah it's nice man. It's what's up. The weather's good. I got my nose to the floor. I just stay grinding. That's how that went down. The Cannon Busters thing was happening at the same time.

Joe: Let's build on CB for a little bit. Tell me what the story is about.

LeSean: It's a fantasy story about a robot girl who's trying to find her way home. That's the spine of the story, it's a very simple story. It's like more of an approach on the Wizard of Oz. A girl trying to get home and on her way she meets other individuals who also wanna get there but for their own selfish reasons. You know like she wants to get back to her owner, the Prince, they're like best friends, she's like a royal droid and the kingdom is under attack and she's separated. She's trying to get back to her best friend who's the heir to the throne. There's kind've like a romantic thing going on there and along her way she meets another robot droid, a wanted outlaw gun kid, and a wandering samurai. And they all want to get to the Prince. She wants to get back to be reunited, the other droid wants to help her because she wants to find out where she came from, y'know who built her because she's an outcast droid. The gunslinger wants to kill the Prince because his father's kingdom, he's the son of a farmer, he has his own agenda. The wandering samurai wants to have a master because he doesn't have a point, he's just been wandering the desert. So you have this kind of like motley crew of characters, it's a classic structure, very simple, but of course it's the journey which makes it unique.

You got a lot of hip hop flavor to it but without being blatant. I'm so tired of everybody trying to claim hip hop because it's hot right now. You got a lot of cats, they put a doo-rag on him and he's got a boom box and it's hip hop. I don't wanna do that... I want you to look at my shit and say, "Ah that's fantasy but it's kinda like got a hip hop twist to it" without me saying it's hip hop. All the main characters are African-American and the weird thing is, when I created the characters, it wasn't like a conscious decision to make them African-American that's just kinda how it turned out. Whenever I promote Cannon Busters I try to refrain from coining it a black fantasy.

Joe: What do you think about some of these so-called hip hop comics on the market?

LeSean: Hip hop has been around for a long time and I think people doing it now, my personal opinion, if you're 30 like you should be ashamed. If you're over 21 you should be ashamed because the best years of hip hop were between '85-'95, and if you ain't try and push it then, anybody trying to do it now to me is kinda like... c'mon man. I don't wanna hear that, man. And no disrespect to them, everybody's gotta eat, everybody's got their own hustle, but I'm saying, it's trendy to be into hip hop right now. I'd go so far as to say it's trendy to be black right now. I think it's great for the culture, I just think there's been a lot of whitewashing lately y'know in terms of how to approach it.

People put too much emphasis on the fact that it is hip hop and the fact that it's black as opposed to telling good stories. Hip hop is about the community, you look at a lot of these shows and okay it's hot but what are they representing? It's always somebody with a microphone but that's not hip hop. That's just like one of the four elements, 'knamean? Their version of hip hop is just what's been commercialized. It's not the community's. I'm biased. I'm an East Coast head, I mean I respect a lot of stuff, but I'm always gonna have an East coast perspective on it. I think it's cool that they're doing it, but a lot of that shit is just fake to me. It's just an opportunity to jump on that bandwagon because they don't know how to tackle the black market. The black market is a huge cash cow that people haven't really figured out how to get in on. Cannon Busters isn't hip hop because of what the characters are wearing, it's part of the aesthetic.

You can say okay this is not a fantasy story in the traditional sense. It's got a funky, hip hop attitude to it. Whenever I do interviews I never say it's black fantasy. How you gonna overcome if you keep putting a label on it? [pullquote!] You gotta say it's a fantasy story that just happens to star characters of color. A lot of young cats they like to say that oh, hip-hop is dead. And I'm like, Naw it's not dead ya'll niggas is lazy nobody wants to look for stuff anymore. We're at a time period right now where you have to find good music. If you're relying on radio and TV to tell you what the current state of hip hop is, yeah it is dead. It's dead and rotting.

Joe: You have people using samples of samples. And the kids today don't know it's not original.

LeSean: A good example is the TI. I was just talking to my girlfriend about that. We were driving and she was like, yo I like that little TI joint "Bring 'Em Out". She was like I like that part... she said Jay Z said that on the black album and I'm like yeah but Jay Z bit from Big. That whole verse is from Big. And she was like really? Why didn't they use Big's original verse? That would've been such a much hotter song.

Joe: Yeah, but then they would've needed clearances.

LeSean: They would've had to pay Eminem. I heard he bought all the rights to that [Biggie's] stuff. But it's hard to argue with somebody who doesn't dig. It's really hard to argue the state of hip hop with a person who's only access to hip hop music in general is what he's hearing on the radio or what he's been told on MTV and cable. I don't watch TV and part of that's my flaw because the type of show I'm working on I need to be involved in that stuff so I can get the jokes and make fun of that stuff. Until I started working on The Boondocks, I never watched TV. I don't really listen to radio, I just go to the stores and I just dig. I go online and just sample and listen to stuff. I look at specific magazines like URB, Spin, and Scratch to find out different stuff because like The Source and XXL, that shit is just hard to know the real. You gotta dig to find good music and true heads who really want it is gonna find it. It's sad, but that's where it is right now.

Joe: Who are some of your influences? When I look at your work I see some Humberto Ramos, Miyazaki, Maduiera, but it's your own style.

LeSean: I think Joe Mad changed the game. He made it okay to do manga. I mean respectfully, Fred Perry did Gold Diggers and Ben Dunn's been doing Ninja High School since I was in high school! When Fred came from Desert Storm he started Gold Diggers and I been reading that shit since I was in the 11th grade. He was a brother, and he wasn't getting' no love and he's now over 100 issues strong, y'know? Animating his own DVDs... He's like the Invisible Man of comics to me. Fred Perry's definitely an influence.

Joe: What other comics or creators influence your work?

LeSean: My background is animation. I just started doing comics in 2002 so I've always been up on anime. I think the anime that did it for me was Furi Kuri. FLCL. I saw that in '99. It's just now coming out in the last couple of years but I did a Flash animated show for Othervision.com called Battleseed . I think FLCL was really the show that changed the game for me in terms of my approach. Mainly Japanese and European artists are my biggest influences. Claire Wendling is a big influence on my stuff, she's a real great French illustrator. Yasume Umetsu (KITE, Mezzo Forte), Kazuro Nekizawa (character designer for Final Fantasy, assistant animation director for the Fatal Fury movies, he also did the animated sequence in Kill Bill, the character designs for Samurai Champloo that dude, he's with Studio 4C, I've been following his stuff for years. And Takeshi Koike is like my big influence. He did the opening for Samurai Champloo, the world record on the Animatrix, with the brother running, and he did Afro Samurai. Those guys along with Luc Besson, who's like my favorite director, mainly like a nice mesh between American comics, anime, European illustration and videogames and hip hop are a big part.

All of those things I try to throw into the storyline and make it fun. I wanna do a Kill Bill with fantasy. I wanna try and mix diff. genres. I got kingdoms and queens, then I got Steampunk stuff, and then I have the Western element, then I have the Samurai element. All of the stuff I like, I wanna throw together. I think it's a good time. There's a lot of fantasy stuff out there, but no one's really breaking the rules and having fun. It's always a risk, nobody wants to try a lot of new stuff. I'm taking a risk. This shit might not even do well, but it's me, you know what I'm saying, and I'm having fun with it.

Joe: How did you get started in animation?

LeSean: My first job was a cartoon called Worldgirl for Showtime that came out in '98 when I was 21 at the time. I was the main illustrator and I did all the key frames and stuff like that. It was a Flash cartoon and we were using Flash 3 back then. It was one of the first popular Flash properties to go offline. Shortly after the whole wave of Flash cartoons. Right after that I did my own company called Urban Box Office during the big dotcom boom in 2000. I wrote, produced, directed, storyboarded, character designed, and keyframed Battleseed... I did everything on the show outside of the Flash stuff. Which was basically The Fifth Element meets Moesha. The story of this girl in the future, a coming of age story. The thing I've always tried to do with a lot of my work, particularly with Cannonbusters is I try to make it accessible. Without saying, "Well this is black shit and you wouldn't understand it." If it's got a black label you wouldn't get it. I always try to let people see it and decide what it is for themselves. I think Battleseed was the first time I ever experimented with that. She was a young girl, she was a misfit, y'know those Goth kids you always see in high school people are always making fun of. The odd person out, always looking weird, but she's into hip hop but according to the story hip hop fell off like 100 years ago. So she looks like an idiot. Everything we're into today was played out in that storyline. That was her big issue of trying to fit in and be herself at the same time and there was this war with this alien race in another galaxy that decided she was the chosen one to free these enslaved people.

So it was real simple, conventional storytelling, but the way it looked, the way it was approached was really different. After eight episodes, the website went under and I just started freelancing. I worked for MTV in the commercial division, assistant animator of Lizzie McGwire (sp) for two seasons, then doing individual animation projects. Then I started freelance storyboarding for Teen Titans and Kim Possible and stuff like that. In that span between 2002 up until now I did comics. My first comic was Arkanium with Dreamwave Productions.

In 2002 I got me a little FTP server and started uploading images, that's when I started working on CB on the side. Pat Lee of the late Dreamwave saw my work and was like, y'know, This stuff is hot. What are you doing? Do you wanna publish this book or not? I said I'm not done developing it and he asked if I would be willing to freelance for us until you're ready to push it? And I was like, yeah, and that was Arkanium. It was Pat Lee's idea. He gave me full creative control. I did four issues of that but it didn't sell well so the book got cancelled. But before that they offered me Ninja Turtles and I did that for about eight issues in between doing animation projects and freelancing. I wanted to get CB out there, even if it meant that I didn't have to draw it, so I started looking for talent on-line and I saw this kid named Corey Lewis... "Rey". He's got a real funky style, so I decided to bring him onboard. He was an Internet kid, you know how these Internet kids are? They get like 600 hits and they're like, the shit, but they're not really ready so when I offered him the gig he wanted me to do the breakdowns and thumbnails because he's not really strong in storytelling. We started developing the project but while we were trying to pitch it, that's where we started running into publishing problems.

We wanted to go to Image but [then head] Jim Valentino turned it down so ComX picked it up, but they day before we were supposed to publish issue zero, ComX says they don't have any money. This is at the same time that I was gonna revamp Bazooka Jules for them. So they were like if you wanna take it somewhere else you can. Eric Ko, who was trying to put me on at Image, was like Eric wanted to publish it when I was trying to pitch it to Pat Lee. He said if Pat didn't take it he'd publish it, so two years later Eric says I'll publish it... we can go through Devil's Due cuz they were doing Street Fighter.

Joe: Didn't you do an issue of Street Fighter?

LeSean: I did a couple of back issue. Street Fighter #9 and Darkstalkers #2, I did like the cover and back-up story in each while developing Cannon Busters. At the last minute, Corey pulled out of the deal because he got an opportunity from Oni Press to do his own comic book. He bounced, I took over the chores of penciling, but then my main colorist dropped out. So I had to find a colorist while I'm penciling the book, it was a whole mess, but now the book is coming out March 23rd, that's where we are now.

Joe: Are there plans for a regular series?

LeSean: The plan right now is a mini-series because you know the market. I mean I already got like three strikes against me, first of all the book is late. It's coming out but I think the lateness may have hurt the book a little, I'm not really sure. I was told that people want it, they're still waiting for it to come out. I think the biggest problem is that it's fantasy and it's anime because they don't really do well with retailers. I'm optimistic but I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't respond to it well because it is something new, it's different. It's a risk. It's schedule for eight issues, four issues we go to tradepaperback with volume one, then another volume two. It's bi-monthly. I'm starting on issue three. Issue two is almost done coloring. We'll see how it goes.

I'm currently talking to Tokyopop about doing my own book. We're negotiating... 160 page graphic novel. Something completely different.

Joe: What about Marvel or DC?

Lesean: I don't wanna go work for Marvel or DC. I don't wanna do Spider-man like all my boys like Skottie Young and those guys. In thirty years they'll still have Spider-man comics with somebody new drawing them. I want to create my own world.

Joe: Is Cannon Busters part of extended world? Do you have any spin offs or sequels perculating?

LeSean: Oh yeah! The story starts out telling the legend of the last five hundred years that people have missed out on. That could be turned into tons of story opportunites. It's kind of like Star Wars, the story starts off already later on. The reader's already missed out on this whole event. There's definitely spin-off opportunites depending on how well it does.

Joe: Is J. Torrres co-writing? How's that collaboration work?

LeSean: He saved my ass, man. I've been a big fan of J. Torres since Sidekicks. Even when I started doing CB I realized I wanted him to write the story because he has a good understanding of writing young female characters and being able to create that magic and make the dialogue real. I knew I wanted him on the book. He's a scriptwriter, when I approached him with the project we were at an anime convention in Chicago and we had a long conversation. He wanted to interview me, this is when he was doing the Open Your Mouth panel on CBR. We started talking and wanted his opinion. I already had all the issues outlined, I mean like page for page. With dialogue and everything, so when he agreed to come on board the book was already written. It was the first time he'd ever worked like that. I told him I respect the writing process, I'm not stupid, I can't write worth a lick but I got plot ideas, how I want things to go, but I need a good writer to help me.. I gave him a hundred page thing, read 'em. He was like this is off the hook. It's really fun. And I was like, Would you be down to script it? He was like, Sure, and that's how it jumped off.

Joe: Is JT a brother?

LeSean: Naw, he's Filipino. He's based in Toronto. Cool cat.

Joe: Is Cannon Busters your creation. If it were to get optioned for an animation or movie deal?

LeSean: It would be mine. I just have a publishing deal with Devil's Due. It's pretty much like Image and that's it. There's no ancillary rights. It's just a deal with me and that's it. DD has the right to publish the book and, depending on the sales, trade paperbacks and stuff. They don't have rights to anything outside the eight issues. They've been real good to me. Real patient too.

Joe: What about the Internet buzz? It seems great about your art but people are frustrated they can't get the book.

LeSean: The thing I've learned about the internet is it lets you know what people really think versus how they respond to you in person. If you've always wanted to call somebody an asshole, if you've always wanted to hate and not feel responsible for it. Cats is like fuck Jay, he ain't shit. What's he got that I don't have or whatever the case may be.

You got a lot of cats who've never put out a book who are just consumers. They're just mad because they don't have the product. They're gonna poke and prod to get you to respond to them because they want a response. They have no clue. I've always felt like the Internet consisted of about 600 elitists who make up the entire community, and they don't dictate how well a book sells. You can only hope to try to get the word out. If CB only sold thirty issues, then I would actually be concerned with what those thirty people online had to say.