LUDO LULLABI spices things up with GHOST PEPPER
- Luis Godoy II
- 2 days ago
- 6 min read
Ludo Lullabi stops by the Yeti Cave to chat with Luis Godoy II over Ghost Pepper, his latest comic, published through Skybound, with issue #1 dropping July 16!
COMIC BOOK YETI: Hello Ludo, and welcome to the Yeti Cave! I am personally very excited to start getting into Ghost Pepper, along with many of my Comic Book Yeti peers. Let me tell you, your art is very striking. As soon as I could pre-order Ghost Pepper, I did, and when the opportunity came up to do this interview I jumped at it. I didn’t realize at the time why the art felt so familiar but when I was researching you, it made sense; it was Battle Chasers. I was not collecting when it first released, but I did pick up your issues when they came out a couple years ago. You’ve got a great style, and it seems with Ghost Pepper you’re really getting a chance to flex your creative muscles for this series. You’re doing the writing, the art, the lettering, and sharing some of the art duties with your colorist Adriano Lucas.Â
LUDO LULLABI: Thanks a lot for the warm welcome! I’m really excited (and a bit nervous) to finally share Ghost Pepper with everyone. And yeah, Battle Chasers was a wild chapter—super happy it led some of you to this new one!
CBY: So, what it is like being on the verge of releasing, from what I gather, your first solo comic in quite a few years, with one of your earliest being Niutsuendo?
LL: Wow, Niutsuendo… that takes me way back! That was over 25 years ago—a self-published project I started when I was 19 with my brother and still in high school. It didn’t do much for my academic record, but it did allow me to dive into comics very early. A few years later, I published my first book with a major French publisher, and that kicked off my professional career.
That said, Ghost Pepper isn’t my first solo series. I’ve already worked on several titles in France, including Lanfeust Quest, a manga-style adaptation of the popular French comic Lanfeust of Troy, where I handled both the script and the art. Later on, I also created Retour au Centre de la Terre (Return to the Center of the Earth) for Glénat, where I also did the coloring.
In recent years, I’ve mostly been focused on video games, but I really missed storytelling. Ghost Pepper came from that longing—it’s a very personal project, and it’s been such a relief to return to building my own worlds and characters again.
CBY: Noting that you took a small detour away from comics to work on video games like Hearthstone, and Battle Chasers, what was it like doing art for video games?Â
LL: I’m a big gamer, so getting the chance to work in the video game industry was super exciting. I first got involved through the World of Warcraft comics, and one thing led to another—I ended up working with Blizzard on several of their franchises, like Overwatch and Hearthstone, doing both card art and cinematics.
I also collaborated with other studios, especially Airship Syndicate alongside Joe Madureira, where I illustrated the cinematics for their various games. Over the years, I’ve had the chance to be involved in a wide range of game projects, and it’s been incredibly rewarding to contribute to worlds that reach such a large audience.
That said, I really missed making comics. There’s something unique about building a story page by page, visually, and I’m happy to be fully back in that world again.
CBY: Coming back to Ghost Pepper, without spoiling what you don’t want to spoil, what can you tell readers about the comic and the world you have created?
LL: It’s always hard for me to explain where I’m going with this story without giving too much away…but at its core, Ghost Pepper is a mix of action, humor, and above all, the unlikely encounter between two characters: Loloï, a fearless cook traveling across a ruined world in her food truck, and Ash, a mysterious figure who clearly doesn’t belong there. He’s the extra ingredient—the one that could throw everything off balance.
It’s like tossing a ghost pepper into a delicate recipe: maybe it elevates the dish… or maybe it blows everything up. I’ll let you find out for yourself!
CBY: There’s a really good variety of color that is appropriate for each scene. What sort of direction did you give Adriano regarding the colors of the series?Â
LL: When I started working on the series, I was going through a phase where I was watching a lot of Indian films, and their unique approach to color grading really inspired me. Before diving into the actual pages of the first issue, I laid everything out as colored roughs to establish a clear visual direction for each scene. Adriano used those as a reference to understand the mood and palette I had in mind.
We kept using that same process for the following issues, but with a goal in mind: gradually giving him more and more freedom. The idea was for him to fully embrace the visual direction and bring in his own sensibility. And honestly, the result ended up being even more beautiful than I imagined.
CBY: The theme of religion is evident in Ghost Pepper and there’s a sense that all may not be as it seems. Was that a conscious choice or did it come through naturally when writing the story?
LL: It’s not really a story about religion in the strict sense, but more about adoration—blind devotion, even. People following a figure without ever questioning what they’re actually worshiping. That dynamic gave me a way to explore another theme that’s really important to me: the pursuit of glory, and how it can become toxic.
But I’d rather not say too much just yet. One of the central questions I’m trying to explore in Ghost Pepper—especially through the characters’ relationships—is; what truly makes us happy, and what gets in the way of that? It’s about reflecting on simple values in a very complicated world. That’s what I find most compelling.
CBY: The designs of the kaiju are really cool. I like that they have an organic feel but also appear very mechanical. What can you say about the process of designing the characters of Ghost Pepper?
LL: I think the years I spent working on major video game franchises really shaped the way I approach character design. Between World of Warcraft, Darksiders, and League of Legends, I was constantly surrounded by bold, iconic characters with strong visual identities. I absorbed a lot from that, and I think it naturally shows in my own designs today.
I also had the chance to work with some incredible character designers and to bring a lot of legendary video game heroes to life on the page. But adapting them to comics was definitely a challenge—game characters are often super detailed because they’re meant to be modeled and animated once, not redrawn hundreds of times. I had to make comics with designs that weren’t made for comics, and it could be a real nightmare! 😅
So now, when I design my own characters, I always keep that in mind. I want them to feel as charismatic and iconic as those I’ve worked with in games, but also to be fun and practical to draw over and over. Finding that balance between style and readability has become a bit of an obsession.
CBY: Ghost Pepper is an ongoing series, do you have the end already planned out or are you seeing where the world takes it?
LL: I’ve already written the broad outline up through the end of the second arc, so I know where things are headed in the short and medium term. But honestly, I still have so much more to tell beyond that—more characters to explore, more conflicts to uncover, and more conclusions to reach.
I really hope Ghost Pepper connects with readers, because there’s a lot more of this world I’d love to share. There are still plenty of surprises ahead!
CBY: Thank you for the committed insight in all your responses. Where can people find you on social media these days?Â
LL: Thanks so much for the interview! You can find me on a few platforms:
Instagram: @ludo_lullabi
X / Twitter: @LudoLullabi
Facebook: facebook.com/ludo.lullabi
I regularly post artwork, sketches, updates about Ghost Pepper… and the occasional nonsense for good measure. 😄
CBY: This was Luis from Comic Book Yeti, signing off with another interview from the Yeti Cave. Find me on BlueSky @luisgodoyii.bsky.social‬ - be good, do good, and read comics!
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