Curb Stomp

In Ryan Ferrier and Devaki Neogi's Curb Stomp, a gang of five women called the Fever protect their home turf from outside crews, stemming the flow of guns and drugs into Old Beach. When two rival gangs make a deal to push them out of their home, leader Machete Betty makes a decision that she regrets, pushing the Fever into a war they wanted nothing to do with. Comparisons with The Warriors are inevitable, but Curb Stomp stands on its own as a story that transcends the exploitation genre.

Boom Studios has a reputation in the comics industry for publishing an increasingly diverse group of books and creators. This commitment to diversity in genre and people is reflected in an all-new initiative the publisher announced today in Previews with a letter from founder Ross Richie. While 2015 is the 10th anniversary of Boom, the publisher wants to talk about what's next rather than what's come before. They call this discussion of the future Push Comics Forward and they don't want it to be only about Boom. Push Comics Forward is Boom's way of focusing on the ongoing conversation about diversity and the future of the industry. To learn more about this initiative and what to expect from Boom for the next ten years and beyond, we spoke with Editor-in-Chief Matt Gagnon.

This week, Boom! Studios announced Curb Stomp, a new four-issue miniseries from the team of Ryan Ferrier, Devaki Neogi and Neil Lalonde. Taking place in a city divided up by four gangs, Curb Stomp shows what happens when the five women who make up one of those gangs, the Fever, are pushed into a war by an act of violence meant to defend their turf. On sale in February, issue one comes with cover art by Tula Lotay, Trevor Hairsine and Marie Bergeron. Curb Stomp arrives in the midst of comics readers' increasingly vocal desire for more diverse stories featuring women protagonists. Boom! has been attempting to service this audience with books like Lumberjanes, Bee and Puppycat and Butterfly, and Curb Stomp would seem to speak to the call for more strong, action-based heroines in particular. With that in mind we spoke to Ferrier and Neogi about the feeling that they're trying to get from the series, the challenge of designing characters for a life of brutal violence, and just why it is that the gang is called "The Fever."