The following is an interview with award-winning cartoonist, editor, and writer Matt Bors regarding the upcoming release of the Toxie Team-Up collected trade paperback with AHOY Comics. In this interview, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief Barbra Dillon chats with Bors about his enjoyment of digging into the Toxic Avenger world and characters throughout the series, what may be ahead for the Toxic Avenger universe, and more!
Barbra Dillon, Fanbase Press Editor-in-Chief: Congratulations on the upcoming release of the Toxie Team-Up collected trade paperback! Last year, you had a “Toxic Mess Summer” in being given the green light by Lloyd Kaufman and Troma to go nuts within the Toxic Avenger universe. Looking back at the series, what can you share with us about your creative process in working with so many incredible creators and characters that really made this series stand out?
Matt Bors: Being given a big key to the city of Tromaville by Mayor Lloyd Kaufman has been a dream. We’re running to the ends of the Earth (maybe literally) with our story. Troma and AHOY have really let me cook here, so this isn’t a situation where a licensor is overbearing and we’re sculpting the story to fit some new movie or carefully managed IP move, which you do see happen. Instead, it’s pure creative joy and mayhem and I have been adding hosts of new characters in the books, like the new Crusader Fungirl and probably a dozen villains, because I can’t stop myself.
Getting to collaborate with Fred Harper and Tristan Wright on these books is the highlight. I’m an artist, too, and have high standards for what I consider good comic art–working with guys like Fred and Tristan, who are leagues above me and a lot of the industry, frankly–constantly pushes me to make these books the best they can be.
Being able to get my own characters from Justice Warriors into a crossover with a character like Toxic Avenger has been a standout moment for me. Me and my co-creator Ben Clarkson launched our series with AHOY a few years ago and now we are doing IP-crossover events. It’s hard to believe Toxie and the Justice Warriors weren’t invited to the DC K.O event along with Homelander and the Mortal Kombat ninja, but I understand they didn’t want us wiping the floor with Batman and embarrassing him in front of his wards.
I had been sitting on the idea of Toxic Avenger having endless potential for a comic book series for years and it’s looking like by the end of all this we will have a real run of books–a run you could see collected on a bookshelf from across the room!
BD: What do you feel that the sequential art medium was uniquely able to offer you in terms of the stories that you could tell with these characters?
MB: The Toxic Avenger is primarily a film series, and specifically the scintillating Grade-Z cinema of Troma, so there’s major differences in the approach. I think you can make gross, fun comics on a low-budget (They naturally are.), but comics that look low-budget lack the charm of a schlocky grindhouse film.
So, our budget is limited only by what me, Fred Harper, and Tristan can dream up. We are doing the violence, the mutations, the aliens on a level that would be hard to capture on film without a huge budget and keep our approach comic-centric: big spreads, a focus on page design, and pacing for single issues.
The first five issues of Toxic Avenger Comics dipped into different genres, from Romance to Horror to Science Fiction, which I feel both Toxic Avenger and the comics medium are well-suited for. So, we can change our approach, and even guest artist, through issues while still making it feel part of a whole.
The monthly format has also allowed me to zero in on smaller stories. An issue of Toxic Crusaders takes us back to the origin of Junkyard, the half dog/half homeless woman mutant that wasn’t really done in the cartoon from 1991–and we give it some teeth.
BD: What made AHOY Comics the ideal publishing partner for this series?
MB: I think their unofficial tagline is something like “Vertigo but funny.” Now, I don’t know that the Toxic Avenger would ever have fit in the Vertigo line with those high-minded British writers, but I think I know what they are getting at. AHOY publishes some great comics and also my stuff. The common thread is a level of satire that is sometimes more subtle and sometimes more explicit.
Put another way: AHOY publishes comics that are about serious things while never taking themselves too seriously. I think that sums up our Toxic Avenger run.
BD: Are you able to share what lies ahead for you in the world of the Toxic Avenger?
MB: Right now, we are in the early issues of our “Toxie Goes to Washington” arc in the main title with Fred Harper on art. That takes our boy to the halls of Congress and the White House for environmental legislation, Senate hearing testimony, and fighting a Nazi scientist brain who has survived in an android body since World War 2 and may be taking over the United States in a coup. The usual beltway drama.
Toxic Crusaders with Tristan Wright is also finishing up soon with issues #4 and 5. Beyond that, I do have plans. If you are aware of that alien plot line running through these books, then you know it’s all building toward something big.
BD: Are there any other projects – past or current – that you would like to highlight for our readers?
MB: Make sure to check out my creator-owned series, Justice Warriors, which is a dystopian police satire. (Not relevant at all.) We have two volumes out and, if the discerning comic book reader gets their way, there will be plenty more.
BD: Lastly, what is the best way for our readers to find more information about Toxie Team-Up collected trade paperback?
MB: I would definitely ask Chat GPT for information about it, read reams of half-correct garbage sending yourself down a rabbit hole for weeks and then, emerging from your psychosis, I would simply order the sucker and read it for yourself. It has pictures that AI won’t be able to replicate for at least a few months.
