Comic: RON WIMBERLY // Prince of Cats {Vertigo}

Artist: Ron Wimberly
Release: Prince Of Cats
Label: Vertigo
Release date: September 2012

You may or may not know that as well as Fried Coke and cats (just normal ones), some of us here at Groovement also have a thing for comics.

Meet Ronald Wimberly.

Ronald writes comics. He’s writing this new one, Prince of Cats, the way a producer makes a beat… coming at something from a different angle and reworking it to his/her own ends. It a remix. It’s Romeo and Juliet, but don’t tell anyone. It has a hip hop angle.

I’m working on the other side of time. Hip Hop — man, that’s a whole other conversation. I feel like I couldn’t even go into it because first we’d have to define what that is.

But yeah, my influences are varied. I literally feel like I could write a book about them. I think if there’s anything unique about me and my approach to influences is that I’m digging and abstracting. I’m creating connections between abstractions. That’s something we can agree is “Hip Hop,” like Grand Master Flash, although I see it as something a bit older.

“Hip Hop” is a convenient word in the language of selling artifacts of a living culture to consumers. “What I do” is to “Hip Hop” what “life” is to “meat,” if you follow. But if you speak the language my influences are all over the work. It’d be unfair, an insult to the audience, to rob them of that discovery. [Laughs] – CBR interview

Prince of Cats will be released by DC Comics’ imprint VERTIGO

Here’s a ‘sketch blog’ of some influences… hello, samurai.

Find out more in chats with Ron over at Comic Book Resources and Newsarama.