Fall Out Boy’s Pete Wentz Talks Toys and Comics

Streetlevel has an interview with Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz about the recent release of the "Fall Out Toy Works" comic book miniseries from Image Comics that's based on one of the band's songs, and also part of a larger multimedia package for the concept.

Refreshingly, they were very up front about the fact that they're not comic book writers:

"I mean, we could've put out a comic book that was like "Fall Out Boy As Crimefighters" or something if we just wanted to make money. I think it made more sense this way. And we know we can't write in panels; we don't know how to do that. So we brought in a writer to envision the idea and to write the actual dialogue. Because I think it would probably be the most terrible comic ever if it had been done by us. [laughs] And maybe people would've bought just because we're a band, but it wouldn't have been a good arc."

I was also particularly interested by this exchange:

So why go with the comic book medium, since you guys aren't comic writers?

"I think people will get this more as it goes, but the thing that we and Dr. Romanelli agreed on, where we're kindred spirits, is that there's not enough people that understand that you can make pop art be cohesive across different media. Like a song, a video, a movie, a comic book, a toy and a micro-site can all make sense next to each other in some [Andy] Warhol-ian kind of way.

That's what we're trying to do, and the comic is just the first part of it. We actually have a teaser for the animation up right now on the "Fall Out Toyworks" website. But eventually, there will be toys and we have like grander ideas. But honestly, if I say them and they don't happen, that would suck. [laughs]"

Honestly, Wentz seems more interested in the toys than the comics -- he's an avid toy collector -- but I actually liked the motion comic intro on their website, and the multimedia approach on first glance seems more appealing than most. Read the rest of the interview here.