Sweetie Candy Vigilante Comic Includes Osaka Popstar MP3 & Vice Versa

Sweetie Candy Vigilante #1 is another one of Dynamite Entertainment’s big launches hitting FOC this weekend, written by Suzanne Cafiero and drawn by Jeff Zornow. The character Sweetie Candy Vigilante has debuted on the cover of the album Ear Candy, which also includes the single Sugar, Sugar by Osaka Popstar, with an MP3 download included in the first comic book issue too. The comic is also returnable to retailers who order 15 copies or more.

In return, there is Josh Howard’s original version of issue #1 which he drew, coloured and lettered which is seen as the pilot for the comic book series and will be included as an exclusive digital download in Osaka Popstar’s Ear Candy album.

Suzanne Cafiero says that Sweetie Candy Vigilante “is a story about a well-meaning, yet unquestionably unhinged supernatural character living in NYC, who is a blood relative of the mythological “Candy Man.” I’m a fantasy, sci-fi and horror fan, and my favourite style of storytelling is when the genre is infused with humor, specifically in the spirit of irony, like EC Comics. A great horror or fantasy story is not what’s unknown, it’s what’s unexpected. There are so many traditional attributes of a character that are immediately recognized as scary and dangerous. The stuff that gets under my skin is the unassuming character that has all the hallmark identifiers society has lulled us into believing are safe, trusted, and approachable, but then there’s the twist you never saw coming. For me, that is the most compelling character and story. SWEETIE is so much fun to write because she inhabits characteristics of the unexpected. An alluring, unassuming, charming and of course SWEET character that just happens to be, possibly the most lethal life form on earth. You’ll have to keep reading to find out how and why SWEETIE and her crew of supernatural beings fight for their right to exist and enact their brand of justice to defend the “good” way of life.”… After I gave the first issue to John (Cafiero), he immediately said, “This is a Dynamite book”.

“Some trivia, there’s a character in the book, which is a homage to my dear friend and former colleague, Patty Donahue (a.k.a. Patty Darling). Patty was the singer in the Waitresses. We worked together at Universal Music Group and were friends. She was a brilliant, funny, talented badass icon too, and gave the world great songs like “I Know What Boys Like” and “Christmas Wrapping.” Something she once said to me was the first spark I had to create SWEETIE. Patty had a wicked sense of humor. One day we were both staring out the window of her office on Broadway in NYC and Patty took a long draw off her cigarette, stared at me deep, and said in her trademark husky, sexy voice, “Sweetie, there’s nothing a man fears more than a scary woman”. I laughed for days and that moment in time sparked the idea of creating SWEETIE. Isn’t that nice?”

Editor John Cafiero said “Suzanne had been telling me about the idea for the character Sweetie, and the premise, over dinner one night while we were watching reruns of The Big Bang Theory. Kaley Cuoco’s character often called others in the show “sweetie,” and it was a spark that ignited a lot of other inspirations Suzanne had for this series. I thought it was excellent, with incredible potential to be a fun and unique character, a great comic book, with the ability to transcend even further. I encouraged her to write it, and I produced the comic independently. I had commissioned Josh Howard to illustrate the cover for a prior Osaka Popstar record release (“Super Hero”), loved the result, and have always dug his visual style. I felt he would be an excellent fit to illustrate the initial character designs for Sweetie, based on Suzanne’s concepts and wardrobe specs. I brought Josh on board, and Sweetie was visualized to a tee. I was readying to record new material with Osaka Popstar and Suzanne asked if I would record a punk cover of “Sugar, Sugar” to connect with Sweetie. I thought it would be fun and cool to include it as a free MP3 in the first issue and decided to take it a step further by having Sweetie appear on the cover of the record, which I titled Ear Candy. I genuinely felt it perfectly described the sound of the tracks as a collective. It was very organic the way everything just gelled together perfectly. I love to create a full multimedia experience, and thought, let’s introduce Sweetie to the world not only on the cover, but set the stage for the upcoming series by including a variant version of issue #1, digitally, on the download card of the physical vinyl and CD. For the cover art I wanted Josh to render Sweetie holding a record literally made of candy, and to have taken a bite out of it. Bringing it full circle in Ear Candy, I went to great lengths to create a real-life vinyl record you could hold in your hands, and even spin on your turntable, that looks exactly as you see it in Sweetie’s hands in the cover art! The vinyl realized in physical form is in fact a candy swirled record with Sweetie’s bite taken out of it.”