VODKA O’CLOCK 1508
VITO DELSANTE

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“Our mythology is superheroes and we’ve lost the idea of using superheroes as metaphor.” ~VD

VITO DELSANTE returns to Vodka O’Clock to talk about making comics and his new series, STRAY by Action Lab.

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Vito gave the history to how he met his STRAY creative partner, Sean Izaakse, through DeviantArt. They have similar interests in characters like Nightwing and Daredevil. The first volume will be four issues. They also have special issues like a one-shot with Jamal Igle’s MOLLY DANGER. They have another miniseries planned for 2016, following as Vito calls it, the Mike Mignola format of story arcs.

The absence of Vito’s own father fed his imagination early on in his life where he believed that his father had to be some kind of secret hero or super spy to explain why he wasn’t there. His father died when Vito was 15. All of this goes into the character Rottweiler literally or metaphorically. He envisioned that his father was actually missing because he was Batman which that meant Vito must be Robin. You might think that would mean Vito would want to work on a Dick Grayson book at DC Comics since he’s done some DC work in the past; however, it’s the song we often hear in comics, that with the current continuity, finding a place for the stories he’d want to tell don’t belong there right now.

Vito’s Staten Island childhood during the times when political assassinations seemed routine, certainly influenced his youthful fantasies of wanting to fight crime and save the world. Plus, his mother genuinely feared a local serial killer which the urban legend Cropsey could have fueled. http://cropseylegend.com/urban-legends His mother is quite convinced that she was once followed by David Berkowitz, the serial known as the Son of Sam who wasn’t arrested until August 1977 but by then he had already murdered six people.

We dove into the corruption and brokenness of the real police forces. These are things that come through in Vito’s writing for STRAY. Unrelated to his comic, we did also discuss misogyny found in pop culture industries and social media. In these cases, is vigilantism justified?

“I don’t know that I could ever really get behind vigilantism as being a suitable form of law enforcement because there are ya know, there people like this that will let it get to their heads and stuff. We’ve already seen cops that are appointed by the law to protect us that let the power get to their head.” ~VD

There will be a MOLLY DANGER/STRAY/MIDNIGHT TIGER one shot coming from Action Lab in 2015.

“I don’t think that there’s ever this idea of failure as long as you’re still working at it.” ~VD

Michelle Delsante, Vito’s wife, is always getting credit by him for her help on the comic, at conventions, and the Kickstarter.

LINKS

Incogvito on everything
https://twitter.com/seanizaakse
@Iamthestray
@ActionLab
Facebook.com/StrayComic

Founder and Editor-in-Chief of AmberUnmasked.com and Vodka O'Clock Podcast. Author of The Farrah Wethers Mysteries, comic book short stories, prose, and non-fiction. Cosplayer and figure model.