The Green Thumb and Purple Haze: Intv. With Oteil Burbridge & LeVar Carter

Tell us more about the character of Mama Ganja and how she was conceived. In the story she is more or less a sentient, cannabis alien from space, yes?

OB: Mama Ganja was truly LeVar’s creation. A stroke of genius. I’ll let him tell you about that one.

LC: Mama Ganja definitely developed over time. Oteil had imagined some sort of super-ganja plants at the Hemphill estate initially, but the conscious Mama Ganja came a little later. I think it was like, well, if Sativa is a plant telepath, what would plants think? Most plants are probably pretty chill, so a special plant, a particularly sentient plant like Mama Ganja developed. She would be the driving force for the parents’ research and tied into the twins and how they get their powers.

[The] dream sequence in the very beginning [of the comic] is an allusion to Mama Ganja’s origins. She is a trans-dimensional being who came to earth on a specific mission to help save mankind. With the events of issue #1, she will continue to act out her mission through the twins. We will learn more about where she came from, and what her mission is all about, beginning in issue #3 and throughout the series.

Do you prefer flowers, oils, edibles or other?

LC: Personally, I prefer smoking the flowers, though I also love to eat seeds and use hemp oil body products. My favorite edible is actually called bhang lassi, a sacred drink for Shiva from India. It’s like a weed chai latte, it’s delicious! It has spoiled me on edibles though, since the liquid medium takes hold in the stomach faster, and the traditional recipe calls for a ½ oz of flowers per serving, so it is very potent!

OB: If Cannabis were allowed to be truly exploited to its fullest potential I wouldn’t even be able to pick. It could be my clothes, house, car, gasoline, pharmacy, food, drink, etc.

Can you tell us anymore about The Green Thumb and Purple Haze’s superpowers and what we can expect to see from their super missions?

OB: This part is my favorite. They can turn into smoke or vapor which has a variety of benefits. For one, they can enter or escape from any environment that is not hermetically sealed. They can also enter a person’s body through the nose, mouth or ears and render them too high to function, or simply expand their consciousness, making them unwilling to take life or do evil (the ultimate in “Just say no”!).

They can change the outer shell of their bodies into impenetrable crystal armor. They can communicate with plants and animals telepathically. They can fly, breath underwater inside their crystal armor, talk to their ancestors and other non-corporeal beings in trance states. They have super strength, speed, sight, hearing, olfactory and they’re psychic in many ways. Some of their superpowers are still being invented actually.

LC: Yes, The Green Thumb and Purple Haze are hemp-humanoid metamorphs fighting to free cannabis (and the people) from the military-industrial system which has oppressed it/them, and usher in a new age. They can transform their bodies from human form to cannabis form.

From there, they can further morph into any form cannabis could take, so they can be like nugget-people, or crystal-people, or vapor-people, for example. They can be more plant-like and take on roots and stems and leaves and concentrate resins and so on. Their powers will evolve considerably over their adventures, and they will learn much from their teachers, who we will meet in issues #2 and #3. Their mission takes on many different facets after their origin story “Kill Them Before They Grow”, but revolutionary is an appropriate description of their mission statement. Before their story is over, they will have completely changed the world.

In addition to addressing topics such as legalization, prohibition, corporate greed and the incredible benefits of cannabis/hemp, the comic also touches on interracial relationships and represents both women and men as capable and intelligent. Thus, racial and gender equality seem to be two great aspects to this comic. When conceiving the script, was it important for equality to be a theme of the story, or was it something that happened more organically?

OB: It’s totally intentional. LeVar is the product of an interracial relationship, as my children will be. My wife is also a twin [like the superheros]. We want to deal with every issue that we have to deal with in real life. Race, politics, religion, sexual orientation, ethics, mysticism, science, nature, extra-terrestrials, you name it.

LC: Oteil and I are both of mixed ancestry and popular media is definitely lacking in positive portrayals of interracial couples and mixed children, so that was one of the things that resonated strongly with me from the beginning. In actually writing the characters, it was organic to just use them as the intelligent, interesting and passionate characters they are!

Claremont’s X-Men was my introduction to comics, so to me, female characters should always be just as powerful (if not more so) than the males! If you think we have done some interesting things with race and gender so far, wait until you see issue #2, and all the other twists and turns we have plotted for further down the road!

Our superhero’s parents in issue #1 discover a breakthrough that would allow non-renewable energy sources such as petroleum to become obsolete. They also talk a bit about taking on the medical industry and combating world hunger. What other cannabis related reform issues can we expect to see the comic address?

OB: It’s so wide ranging, because all of the issues come back to greed and lust for power to dominate. So when we get into just the issue of limitless energy sources, you have pissed off the oil, coal and natural gas industries which tie into every military on earth, every arms dealer, every government, every greedy bankster, every gangster out there. It’s all on the table.

Of course we have to have great faith, courage and perseverance to fight against people with so much money and power. We have to build up great physical, emotional, spiritual and mental powers to have any chance at all. That’s why stories are so cool to me, because in real life we have to find our own special superpowers and develop them, or else we will be just like cows lead to slaughter.

LC:  There are so many things Mama Ganja has to offer the world, and we will try to address as many as possible! Like you said, issue #1 discusses petroleum replacements, medicines and food. We will be seeing other industrial uses such as plastic and fabrics and get further in depth with specific medical applications like chronic pain and cancer treatment in later arcs.

Even before our superhero twins, Mary Jane and Herb Hemphill, are bestowed with their superpowers, we see that they and their parents possess telekinetic powers with the plants around them. Can you tell us a little more about that?

OB: They both come from family lines that go way back with Cannabis. Bud comes from a long line of Hemp farmers going back to the birth of the current country. Cannabis culture is literally in his DNA. Sativa has a lineage that goes back to Accompong in Jamaica which is a fascinating story that LeVar can expand on. He went there recently and had an amazing experience.

LC: Yes, Sativa, Mary Jane and Herb’s mother, was born with plant telepathy, which the twins also have. Their father, Bud Hemphill, does not, but that doesn’t stop him from talking to plants anyway! [The] Hemphill line stretches back to the old days of Kentucky hemp, while Sativa Baker’s line is from herbalists in Accompong Town, Jamaica.

I personally went [to Accompong Town] in 2012, after finding a few references online, to verify what I had read and learn more. I look forward to sharing some of that in issue #7. Sativa’s brother, Kush Baker, also has telepathic powers (of a different slant), and he will show up in issue #2 to help the twins on their path.

I find mental powers to be absolutely fascinating, and to tune in specifically to plants is a great storytelling opportunity. Can you imagine talking to a tree? The stories it could tell you, witnessed over decades, or hundreds, sometimes thousands of years.

In what ways would you say cannabis and/or hemp has helped you in your life? Do you personally gain any medical benefits from it?

OB: Whenever I used cannabis, I would immediately hear music running in my head. I’d grab an instrument and be off the races again. It also helped me focus on one thing, which was a problem for me as a kid. I was definitely ADD. I still am. It helps me focus when I’m practicing. It helps me visualize things sonically, if that makes any sense.

LC: Cannabis really opened my eyes to the state of the world when I first discovered her as a 16 year old. It’s so common to just walk the line as you are told and not ask questions, but she helped me see there was more to life and really opened my mind to a deeper spiritual level of awareness and communion with nature. That shift in consciousness fueled my investigation into yoga, natural medicine and vegetarianism, so in that way I have benefited medically, significantly! And for those aches and pains that life throws at you, nothing helps like Mama Ganja!

If there is one message you really want people to take away from reading your comic, what is it?

OB: Live and let live. Love and let love. Seeing is believing. And believing is seeing. Oops, I think that’s four messages!

LC: Cannabis is here to help unlock the radiant power that lies within you already! We are all superheroes inside, and when we work together as a community, as family, no military-industrial complex in the galaxy can stop us from living a life of peaceful co-existence and self-realization, with all life on earth!

Issue #1 of The Green Thumb and Purple Haze is  now available to be read online, and for the real fans out there, check out the cannabis comic merch.