“There are so many layers of Jimi that we didn’t see portrayed before”: Jimi Hendrix as a cosmic traveler and rock-star? We go inside the making of Purple Haze – the graphic novel reimagining guitar’s greatest player

Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze graphic novel.

While the enduring cultural idea of Jimi Hendrix is that of a larger-than-life rock god, complete with burning guitars and legendary sexual and drug-fuelled escapades, that perception ignores a key part of the guitarist’s identity: he was a massive sci-fi nerd.

It’s that semi-forgotten part of Hendrix’s soul that is at the heart of a new comic book. In Titan Comics’ Jimi Hendrix: Purple Haze, the guitarist is reinvented as a space traveler and political figure who is now the biggest rock star in the galaxy, rather than just on Earth.