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Interview: Aykroyd & Belushi Kids on Blues Brothers Graphic Novel

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Published

3 weeks ago

October 15, 2025

Nir Regev

Interview: Stella Aykroyd (daughter of Dan Aykroyd), Luke Pisano (son of Judy Belushi), and Z2 Comics writer James Werner discussed their new graphics novel, ‘The Blues Brothers: The Escape of Joliet Jake’ with The Natural Aristocrat® at NYCC 2025.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT (NIR REGEV): How did this latest chapter of The Blues Brothers come together? When did you guys first start talking?

LUKE PISANO: This started like seven years ago. My mother, Judy Belushi, who was very much a steward of The Blues Brothers and instilled a lot of love for these characters and this story in me, wanted to bring the characters back in an authentic, organic way.

We approached Z2 Comics and it just felt like the right kind of fit. And just getting to spend time with Jake and Elwood as comic book characters, you feel they’re so elastic. So it just felt like such an organic opportunity. And that’s kind of where it started. We talked to Stella (Aykroyd) and hoped she would join and she did! And she brought James (Werner) in. The rest is history!

STELLA AYKROYD: Yeah, I was working as a writer’s assistant and sort of focusing on TV & Film, Luke called me and I immediately was very interested. You know, I am definitely intimidated by these characters in this movie. But there was something about them being comic book characters and having a comic book that just felt like we needed to be it.

JAMES WERNER: Yeah, I’m just blessed that these guys let me stick on board with them. Me and Stella used to perform and write together in high school for a conservatory theater. She brought me in because we love working together and I happen to be a comic book nerd of sorts. (laughs) Although I wouldn’t try to go toe to toe with some of the real deal out there!

But I think I have some stake in it, and it’s just been a pleasure, man. It’s been a blessing. And same thing when they brought this to me, it made so much sense. Knowing the film, that these characters would be able to live on in these comic books and we’d be able to destroy many more police cars! (laughs)

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Can you tell us about the orphan character that’s gonna be featured in ‘The Escape of Joliet Jake’?

STELLA AYKROYD: Of course, one of the new adventurers is a young man who grew up in an orphanage and grew up around Jake and Elwood and seeing them pass by and do their mischief.

And he is now in the ’90s where our story takes place, a grown man and a blues musician. He’s working hard and working the city and trying to make it out. And this story is also about the music industry and maybe bad contracts & shifty producers and how it can damage the musician. It can hurt the heart of a musician.

Wolfie, that character, never loses that. And then he meets up with The Blues Brothers at some point.

JAMES WERNER: I think important to mention with Wolfie is that he was sort of brought up by Curtis, who’s Cab Calloway’s character, who we know, imparted what Jake and Elwood know about the Blues onto them.

So he feels a strong connection to those folks. And he’s always had an eye out for the briefcase full of blues. Which we go into the history of in this story in a lot of flashbacks, where we see Jake and Elwood as young men now in the ’90s, they’re in their forties. So, we flash back and forth.

LUKE PISANO: Wolfie is one of my- Probably, my favorite character from the new story. And I think it’s a character that I really think people will be able to latch onto. ‘Cause he’s kind of the most human character that we wrote. And his last name is James, which was inspired by the man to my right.

STELLA AYKROYD: And he’s a fan of The Blues Brothers, you know, just like us, and most of the readers. He loves them!

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: What kind of Editorial Oversight did your father, Dan Aykroyd, have?

STELLA AYKROYD: He had- I said as much as you have interest in, we will bleed you dry! (laughs)

You know, he’s in his seventies now and he was in the Virgin Islands at one point, and I was faxing him these scripts and he was getting them and giving us notes. But he was instrumental and a total editor!

He was very encouraging of us and also gave us structured notes and cool insight into things that he had thought would happen to these characters or where they would go or what happened. But yeah, he was a part of Act One, Act Two, Act Three, to completion.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: My father has watched The Blues Brothers movie hundreds of times on cable over the years. I’m curious how you guys feel about bringing this franchise to people who’ve never seen it before, that maybe didn’t grow up with it? What you feel it takes to bring it to a whole new generation?

STELLA AYKROYD: Yeah, I’ve said this before but the first movie just did so many things right. It shot into the world because of all of these things that were working. You know, it’s a musical comedy, it’s an action movie. It has real grit in it.

It also was an introduction for a lot of people to these blues artists or the blues genre in general. We definitely in our book prioritized, having it be for all ages. So that it is something that you can get excited about and give your kids and get them to be interested in too.

LUKE PISANO: I think what the legacy of John and Dan as Jake and Elwood was I think continuing the legacy of the blues in the eighties and the Blues at a time that had maybe, become out of the main spotlight.

Like it was in the fifties, sixties. You think about Aretha Franklin, James Brown, Ray Charles, these artists that were obviously huge but had maybe kind of fallen out of the limelight a little bit. And then through this film we’re really thrust back into the limelight.

So the mission from God, of course being to bring back this American tradition. And I think that’s at the heart of what we were doing is roughly about. Trying to bring back, not only Jake and Elwood now but also again with blues music.

Blues music is such an important American art form, a black art form. It’s important to give space to those voices. And just honor the legacy of John (Belushi) and Dan (Aykroyd) and the work that they put into this and my mother Judy (Belushi) and continuing the legacy from there.

So I think hopefully this book will introduce a new audience in the same way that John Dan were able to introduce a new audience to the blues music all those years ago.

JAMES WERNER: Yeah, I think it’s similar to the eighties. I think the world right now could use blues music, soul music.

I believe that music is one of the great connectors in the universe. And I think that just reminding people of that, of that music and just to sing and dance is really important right now.

My grandma, Shirley Jones, she sung me the blues when I was a kid and she came over from New Orleans during the Great Migration. So she instilled a lot of that in me and just reminding people of some of these incredible voices that have existed in music over time and hopefully bringing some of that soul and spirit back to the world.

I mean, it’s the mission for Jake and Elwood, but it’s also just the mission for us and fans of The Blues Brothers. I think they would say the same.

STELLA AYKROYD: I hope in the same vein as when people finish watching that movie, The Blues Brothers, hopefully probably thought, I’m gonna go to a blue show, I’m gonna find a blues bar.

And I think in the world that we’re living in now, it would be a major win for people to close this book and say like, ‘I’m gonna look up some old performances on YouTube,’ and watch John Lee Hooker do his thing on stage, watch B.B. King, and then of course go out to a blues bar and see that this is still around and it’s still so rich.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Do you guys have additional plans for stuff like video games? There obviously were ones back in the day. How do you feel about further merchandise, so to speak?

LUKE PISANO: I would say it’s a great question! I think our goal was to make something worth reading and something that was rich in the world and expand on the world.

We really leaned on James to help us expand the world of the Blues Brothers. To make this something people want to, as Stella says, ‘hang out with these guys again.’ Right?

And I think that where it goes from here is based on the reader, on the fans. Hopefully, they’ll buy this, they’ll love it as much as we loved writing it, and they’ll want more.

From that point, maybe something will come down the road. But right now we’re really focused on just trying to get this book into people’s hands and how hopefully they’ll, latch onto the complexity and the richness of this story.

And yes, of course, ideally more, more to come. But for now, please, please go by this book! And tell us what you think.

JAMES WERNER: When you say video games, I could totally see like a GTA style Blues Brothers, so maybe there’s like a mod to come. But I just have to say anything that gets us more drawings from Felipe Sobreiro!

Anything that gets us more images from him, even if it’s just like prints. He’s the artist on the comic book and he did a fantastic job. That’s all I’ll say.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: How did you connect with Felipe?

JAMES WERNER: We connected with Z2 Comics, who brought us an array of really talented artists and we landed on Felipe. He’s just perfect man! I mean he has his own definitive style that’s brilliant and was sort of perfect for what we wanted.

We wanted this comic to be stylized, but we also wanted it to be digestible by everyone. Like our great story editor mentions, every comic is someone’s first comic.

So he had a style that we thought people would be able to look at that still felt really cool. But he’s also versatile and is able to- he’s really well educated in a bunch of different styles, which we needed because there’s a lot of flashbacks in the book. So we have different styles for those than the contemporary moments.

STELLA AYKROYD: And it’s just so amazing for someone of his level of talent. You know, he was just so willing to collaborate with us three, none of us have written a comic book before. And so I think we would send him, if you can imagine a script format, the comic book format, you have first line two panels.

In these two panels, we had a million things going on (laughs). And Felipe would write back and say, ‘So I think what you actually needed was this!’ And then we go, ‘Ah, yes.’ So he was not only an amazing illustrator and made this book what it is, but just a great collaborator!

LUKE PISANO: In his second language, by the way. Which is so impressive. He’s a Brazilian artist, lives in Brazil, obviously, speaking Portuguese. And to be able to do that in English… I mean, that really blew me away. He’s just so talented!

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Did you have a formal approval process where they gave you concept art and you basically chose the artist yourselves?

LUKE PISANO: Well, we worked with Z2 Comics, they are an amazing collaborative. Perfect for this project! And we had shopped a couple that we had hoped to do, and they were like, ‘Hey, check out this guy, Felipe.’

They really found him and brought him in and we just saw the work and we were like, ‘Yeah, this will be great! And Danny, loved it. Do you wanna speak to how much Danny just loved the the initial drawings?

STELLA AYKROYD: Yeah. My dad was very encouraging of this, but definitely was kind of like, ‘Well yoooouuuu go do it, and you let me know how it goes.’

And one of the points was me coming back to him and saying, ‘What do you think of these illustrations?’ Here are the character designs. And he got really excited and then wanted to be more a part of it, which is cool.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Is the Ray-Ban sponsorship in the works here?

STELLA AYKROYD: Of course! Yeah. Meta. Hello? I need a pair.

LUKE PISANO: I think they’re Italian. Does anybody speak Italian here? Please Ray-Ban hit us up!

JAMES WERNER: Grazie, Ciao!

STELLA AYKROYD: Listen. Meta. Video game. Driving. VR. You heard it hear first!

LUKE PISANO: Yeah, sitting next to Elwood. Something like that.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: If you have one message you’d like to tell Blues Brothers fans, both new and old, what would you like to say?

STELLA AYKROYD: I would say welcome back to the party! It’s happening again. And I guess the other thing I would like to say is, I think the three of us, we are really a team. But what we each brought to the table was, I know my dad so well and I put as much as I could of him in here.

You know, things that the world doesn’t know, things that the world does know. And there’s a ton of Easter eggs in here that we all worked really hard for.

With Luke. Judy was John’s best friend and partner and everything. I think truly, she knew him better than anybody. And so we just really infused this book with everything that we know about the Blues Brothers and also everything that we know about John and Dan and what they wanted for these characters.

LUKE PISANO: Yeah, if I could say one thing to Blues Brothers fans, this is real! Like, this was thought out. This took us years to really get this thing right and we tried as hard as we could to figure out what made the Blues Brothers work and really bring that into this.

Cutting the fat, trying to make it funny, the mission from God to continue the music, continue the legacy of these great artists. You know, just the pulling from the tapestry from the comedy, from the brilliance of Dan & John to just like the little minutiae things of a building exploding, and they kind of just brush off their shoulders and get up.

How they seem to always just sneak out of a barrage of cops in the last second. It really is a love letter to the fans. ‘Cause we’re just fans of The Blues Brothers.

And so I think my one thing that I say to you, is that we hope that we made something that you are as proud of to read it, as we are to put it out there.

JAMES WERNER: I will keep it brief. I will say that there’s a vinyl that’s coming out with this book that is a completely unheard rehearsal of The Blues Brothers Band with John and Dan.

If you want to get that record and listen to that record while you read this book, I feel like that’s gonna be a pretty authentic way to experience it. Regardless, go listen to the blues. I mean, if you’re a Blues Brothers fan, then you’re probably doing that already.

We did this for Dan, we did it for John, and we did it for the sort of third spiritual Blues sibling, which is Luke’s mom, Judy Belushi. And if you don’t know who she is, go look her up. Listen to her music, read her other books. She’s a brilliant creative.

THE NATURAL ARISTOCRAT: Thanks everyone!

STELLA, LUKE, JAMES: Thank you!

– You can also watch this Blues Brothers Interview on YouTube! Be sure to like, comment, and subscribe to our channel!

– Check our full NYCC 2025 Photo Gallery of Stella Aykroyd, Luke Pisano, and James Werner!

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Nir Regev

Nir Regev is the founder of The Natural Aristocrat. You can directly contact him at [email protected] for coverage consideration, interview opportunities, or general comments.