A comic book based on a movie being filmed in Cochrane will be released in the springtime.
The Oddsmakers, a 17-minute movie inspired by the Town of Cochrane, is going to be filmed over three days in May. The comic book will be eight to 10 pages and is expected to be completed by April.
Cochrane resident Timothy Girgis and his wife Ali Watson who created and are producing the film have partnered with Legacy Comix, a company based out of Staten Island, New York, to produce the comic.
SEE: Film being shot in Cochrane using as much local talent as possible
Patrick Hickey Jr., owner and editor-in-chief of the company, has been a journalist for roughly 20 years.
“I'm a former editor at NBC. I covered Whitney Houston's death, I interviewed Paul Walker like two weeks before he passed away, I’ve interviewed Philip Seymour Hoffman, professional wrestlers up the wazoo, professional athletes, singers, and songwriters,” he said.
“I
've also written for the New York Daily News, I've had photos published in the New York Times.”
Hickey is currently the head of the journalism program at Kingsborough Community College at the City University of New York.
“I've been there for 17 years. So, journalism is my love.”
Hickey has also always had a love for comic books.
“Before I got into journalism, I wrote a comic. I showed it to my first journalism professor and he's like, ‘Listen, this is pretty cool, but it's really hard to make money on fiction. I'm telling you this because I care about you. You're the best journalism student that I have right now and you can make money and support yourself being a journalist. This is a lot different. This is a lot harder,’” he said.
“So, it kind of shattered my dream a little bit, but I kept it on the back burner and I just kept writing, journalistically. What ended up changing everything was, I've written seven books on video game history, they're in over 2,000 libraries worldwide — Harvard, Yale, Stanford, the whole nine yards — and I really got an insight on how the publishing industry works.”
In 2020, Hickey was interviewing a book publisher who he ended up working for. He learned even more about the publishing industry and eventually developed his own business model.
He said he went to Kickstarter in November of 2021 and was 300 per cent funded by the time it was over.
“By the time the Kickstarter was done we had our first five books funded and we did a Dracula prequel book with the authorization of the Bram Stoker family, which was crazy for us. They gave us like 200-year-old unpublished notes by Bram Stoker, and we hired a leading Bram Stoker historian to write it, I post-scripted and edited it and that really kind of set us off in a really good direction,” he said.
“And then we did a wrestling comic for a film company that was doing a wrestling documentary last year. And then about a month ago, we did a book for an Off-Broadway play and we had a billboard in Times Square for a month. So, between our original books and then the licensing deals that we've been able to do in just a little over two years, we've been pretty successful.”
Hickey and Girgis connected last May through a mutual friend.
“Chris Booth, he's the guy that did the Off-Broadway play with me, he knows Tim because he's been involved in acting for a really long time. He's head of admissions at the Terry Knickerbocker school of acting, so they run the same circles and stuff. Tim ended up buying the Dracula book off of us and a copy of Young Condrey, which is one of the books in the Condrey series, and we just started talking,” he said.
Girgis really loved the artist from the Renfield book and asked Hickey if the artist could do a comic for their project. Hickey said absolutely.
From the get-go, Girgis had a clear visual of what he was looking for, Hickey said.
“Tim is by far the most knowledgeable, comic book aficionado that we've worked with so far. He’s sent us copies of Daredevil, Lobo, Punisher War Zone, of video games like Hitman and stuff, so, he definitely has a visual mind. Like, he did his research on this,” he said.
“And they're like, 'Oh, we want it to look like this film Haywire with Gina Carano,’ and I'm like, oh my god, I reviewed that. I saw that on the red carpet before anybody else like 15 years ago, I know exactly what you guys are looking for.
"If I sound geeky, it's because it's so much fun to work with somebody that's prepared. So, if he's like this just for the comic book, I can only imagine what he's like for the film.”
The film-based comic is going to be entrenched in the Cochrane region, Hickey said.
“We've gotten so much reference from him and from the group. We want to try and make this feel as authentic to the people around it as possible and also to the people that have never been to the area before so they get an idea of such a beautiful area. We totally want to bring that alive,” he said.
“From day one there's just been this really cool, creative synergy between all of us, so I'm super excited not only to finish the comic, but also I'm excited to see the movie.”
