An Interview With Ash Maczko & Ashley M. Witter of Squarriors (Phoenix Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Ash Maczko and Ashley M. Witter of Squarriors comics about their take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/06/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Ash Maczko and Ashley M. Witter at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (1).

Ash Maczko and Ashley M. Witter have been taking the comic world by storm with their smash hit Squarriors. This weekend at Phoenix Comic Con, I had the chance to talk with them about their process, Kickstarters, and why there are no guest artists on their book.

Neil Greenaway: We are sitting here in Phoenix Comic Con talking to Team Ash. How are you guys finding the con so far today?

Ash Maczko: Today is just getting started but yesterday was banging. A lot of people, a lot of fun.

Squarriors #1 by Ashley Witter & Ash Maczko.

NG: Have you guys done Phoenix before?

AM: Never done this show, first time in Phoenix, I’ve never been to Phoenix until yesterday.

NG: Well we’re rolling out the 117 degree heat for you.

AM: No, we were looking forward to it. We were hoping it was going to hit maybe 120 or something,

NG: You just wait, you just wait.

AM: I’m hearing it might be like that tomorrow.

NG: So I understand that you guys just finished your second Kickstarter for Squarriors (for the hardcover). What was it like to see that this had the following that it has gained for the Kickstarter to have been as successful as it was?

AM: It was kind of a funny thing. I wasn’t sure how well this Kickstarter would do because we already came up with the book, we came out with the trade paperback, now we were just coming out with the same thing the people already had, just in a hardcover version and a bigger format. So I was kind of a little concerned that people had already gotten the book. I didn’t know how well the Kickstarter would do. So to see it be successful and be that successful, again, was pretty exciting. There were enough people out there, enough interest was there for a squirrel book that they wanted a hardcover, they wanted big print, they wanted more Squarriors stuff so it was exciting, it was fun. I was a little nervous at first but it went off pretty good.

NG: Just speaking of the Kickstarter, there have been publishers in the past who tried to use that platform to get a new book out, only to hear backlash from the fans about established companies using crowdfunding. Do you feel that tension? Is it anything that you hear at all?

AM: You know I haven’t heard anything as far as like Squarriors just because Devils Due is still a pretty small publisher. They’ve done, I mean almost all of their books have started through Kickstarter. So while I definitely understand in a way, you know the debacle that happened with Archie wanting to do a Kickstarter and things like that, I could see that. It just doesn’t seem to be the right venue for a really big established publisher to crowdfund, but we didn’t have any problems. We didn’t get any emails with any kind of contention. I think it was pretty understandable, we’re small, we’re on small label. It’s kind of natural for us for something big to take it to a crowdfunding source.

NG: On the way that you guys work (because I have been curious), do you use a collaborative style? Do you use the Marvel style, or do you write a full script and then Ashley gets all the drawing after that?

Ash Maczko and Ashley M. Witter at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (2).

Ashley Witter: I think it’s more collaborative than anything. Because when Ash is coming up with the story I kind of talk to him about it and kind of bounce stuff off of each other. Mostly he does the scriptwriting and he comes to me and I do the thumbnails so that I have like my interpretation of it. And we kind of work on that together.

AM: Yeah that’s about right. Like we’ll kind of come up with some kind of direction together and then I’ll put together a script bring it over to her and we’ll kind of go panel by panel and decide angles and how everything will work. Obviously, her vision as the artist usually ends up being something cooler than I originally thought of anyway. So I just give kind of general notes, something like this, something like that. Then you know by the time I see it, it’s amazing. So yeah, there’s some collaboration but we’re still kind of I’m over here and she’s over there working and then we kind of come together when we need to come together.

NG: How did you guys get together as a team?

AM: We’ve always been a team. Ashley was already doing comics and things and I had to come up with the Squarriors concept and she was just the right person for the job. So we got together and started working on it, it’s been about a year and a half now I think, Squarriors has been going. But we’ve actually been working on the book closer to three years as far as like the first concept started coming together. Again Ashley has been doing comics for some time; she was already doing that before we even met.

NG: Is Squarriors your first comic?

AM: Yeah, my first and only book is Squarriors. I just kind of dove right in I guess and that was the first thing I came up with.

NG: It’s always awesome when the first one is a success.

AM: You know it feels successful. I wasn’t sure how well a book about warrior squirrels was going to be taken.

NG: Ashley, what was the first comic you worked on?

AW: The graphic novel adaptation of Interview with the Vampire. It was based on Claudia the little girl vampire, so that was like my big introduction into doing like graphic novels. Since then I have worked on the Twilight Graphic Novel series and Anne Rice’s Wolf Gift and then we did Squarriors. After Squarriors came out I had my web comic that I started back in 2007, Scorch, so we have that in print. I also worked on a comic written by Mark Landry called Bloodthirsty, which takes place in New Orleans and it’s about vampires. So I had a lot of vampire work in my repertoire.

Squarriors Tin Kin Convention Special by Ashley Witter & Ash Maczko.

NG: Was it an odd change switching over to drawing nature, squirrels and trees and such?

AW: It was a little strange when Ash came at me like, we’re going to draw a comic about squirrels. I’m like, I’ve been drawing people, anime and stuff. When I was little I drew a lot of animals, so it was kind of like returning to that. But yeah, it was definitely a change, it was a little strange.

NG: Personally I think you have been blowing it out of the water. It looks like, and this is an odd statement, but it looks like you’ve been drawing squirrels your whole life.

AM: That’s because she has a terabyte worth of reference material on the computer (laughs)

AW: Well it’s like art wise really strong fundamentals. And it did take me a while to learn how to draw squirrels. But it’s the same way I would approach drawing anything else, just have to learn how to do it and get better at it.

NG: Recently I’ve been hearing the book referred to as Game of Thrones meets Wind in the Willows, is that something that you would agree with?

AM: I can definitely see Game of Thornes is almost like a buzz word at this point. It’s like lots of things are compared to that because it’s the biggest of that genre.

NG: He has a sword!

AM: Yeah exactly. It’s like oh it’s medieval fantasy it must be Game of Thrones. I think how it relates to Squarriors is more like Squarriors is obviously not like a superhero comic in that it’s not like just a character piece. This isn’t just about a squirrel doing things, it’s about lots of animals and lot of themes of intrigue and clans, I think that’s how people relate it to Game of Thrones because you know there is, there are so many stories going on, there’s so much to it so many dynamic things happening between characters and all different places and I do think with Game of Thrones being the big thing that’s going on right now as far as that feel. I think that’s the connection. I think that’s what everybody is seeing. They pick up a comic book, they look at Spider-Man; oh it’s about Spider-Man. Squarriors is about lots of things going on, I think that’s where that’s connected.

Ash Maczko and Ashley M. Witter at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (3).

NG: In that vein- do you guys have a grander universe planned? I know you’ve only told really the one story, you’re working on the second series, how big is this world?

AW: It’s big (laughs)

AM: It’s big. Squarriors, my vision right now, the first 16 issues that we’re kind of writing and working on is almost a prequel in my mind. You know it just takes place in a very small little rural area where the whole world, all these other things going on. So I’m planning on taking this little squirrel story and going further and further till you can see this grand scheme, how all these other animals are living and all these other things going on across hundreds of miles, not just a couple of yards. So that’s the plan.

NG: Now, obviously in the real world, forests and just spots of nature like that are fairly secluded. Is there a chance that you would run into like different kingdoms, like other squirrel worlds even?

AM: That is exactly the plan. What you’re look at right now is again, this kind of a secluded little bubble and you have to imagine that something completely different is happening in the suburb, or in these houses. Or in this skyscraper or in this diner or in this shopping mall. Lots of different things will be going on at once and I want to start hitting all kinds of little things. What’s going on at the Brookfield Zoo in Chicago? You know, what are the lions doing now? What are the bears doing now? What about the giraffes? And all these animals think now or can speak rational ideas or thoughts. I would like to get to all that stuff.

Squarriors #2 by Ashley Witter & Ash Maczko.

NG: That sounds pretty epic.

AM: That’s the plan.

NG: When it comes to the publisher itself, did DDP approach you guys? Were you guys shopping the book? How did you get picked up by?

AW: I’ll let you tell that story. I kind of felt like Josh had been following us.

NG: Josh Blaylock, the stalker.

AM: Kind of, sort of. It was funny, we came up with the idea for Squarriors and we just had the one image, you know, we made this poster of the book. And that was before there were names of characters, before there was anything. And we made a Facebook page for it. It was just that image, we had maybe a dozen likes from random people and somehow, we had three publishers message us. They didn’t know anything about the book, they didn’t care what the book was – they wanted to publish us. So after kind of messaging back and forth with a couple different people, we started talking to Josh. Then, Josh (really coincidentally) runs into us at about three or four shows in a row asking about Squarriors

AW: He would make like a random guest appearance at a smaller con we were doing (laughs)

AM: Yeah he would just sort of show up and after talking to him a few times it seemed like he kind of had the same idea that we had about where we wanted to go with the book, how we wanted to get it out to the public, so here we are.

NG: Going back to the grander universe scope, I assume that if the universe is ever as fully fleshed out as you like, at some point you would have to hand off to a different writer or a different artist, is that something that you have planned?

AM: Definitely not planned, but I guess in the grandeur of seeing Squarriors five, ten years in the future… You know if it was some larger license, I could definitely see how there could be like almost spin-offs or other tales. And sure other writers and other artists doing the story that’s going on over here while this story’s going on here. There certainly is room to have something like that, but we’re here right now.

Squarriors #2, pages 12 & 13 featuring art from Ashley Witter.

NG: It seems like a really cool universe and I’ve seen it happen before, just right off the top of my head, with Mouse Guard. David Petersen created that universe and then he eventually went on to do the Tales of the Mouse Guard so that other artists and authors could dip their toe in his universe, not necessarily effect the grand scheme of things, but able to contribute at the very least. But talking to other people, it seems that you guys created a property here that other people are excited about.

AM: I hope so. Again, that’s a very positive optimistic thing that I hope happens one day, but right now we are still just trying to get the issues out that we’ve got.

NG: What are the big plans for the 2nd series? Are there any secrets that can be revealed? I would understand if it all had to be a little hush-hush.

AM: I don’t even tell Ashley about things to be honest, until it’s already written.

NG: That smile says she’s just bursting with something.

AM: Oh I’m sure she knows a couple secrets.

Ash Maczko and Ashley M. Witter at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (1).

AW: I started working on the next issue and we’re just getting started. It starts off so good in my humble opinion.

AM: So some of number two, which we’re working on, comes out in August. I think I’m personally excited about it. I think just like taking another step, writing wise. The writing got a little sharper, a little tighter and I’m excited for that issue to come out and just get some response, you know, some feedback on that. Feedback’s great up until now. I’m hoping that people kind of see it develop and mature a little bit. I think issue 2 of summer shows that more than the other books so I’m excited about that.

NG: Do either of you have any other books in the works, or is it all Squarriors all the time these days?

AM: Ashley works on lots of things. Covers, guest covers, things like that.

AW: I mean I look forward to doing other side projects with Ash that really shows the variations of our talents.

AM: I do have a couple of pitches out, I can tell you that. There are some things that I’m working on. Some scripts that are already written. Some things that got accepted that we really haven’t been able to announce yet. And again some pitches that are just out in the ether right now that we are waiting for responses on. So hopefully you will see my name on a few other ideas and other projects besides Squarriors.

NG: Well that would be very cool. I wanted to ask about the covers, have you done all of the cover art or have you guys had any variant guest artists at all?

AW: Ash had a policy on Squarriors that I was like, huh? Do you want to talk about that?

AM: Ashley’s the artist for Squarriors honestly, unless something happens license wise or again we do like a splinter thing with another team, some side stories. We honestly get lots of offers for people wanting to do guest covers and stuff, but I just want Ashley to do them. I just want the covers to be Ashley, that’s what Squarriors is and I’d like to keep it that way. It’s our little thing and I want to keep it to us. If you get a Squarriors cover variant or otherwise I want it to be something that we did together, that we approved. That’s the best it can be for our book, so I think we will probably always just be doing Squarriors ourselves.

NG: It lends the collection, when you see all the single issues together, a real sense of consistency.

AM: You should see our hallway wall with all the covers.

NG: I believe I have on Facebook. That was fairly impressive. Was that all the covers to all of the issues?

AM: No, we still need several frames. And there are actually a couple of variant covers that we don’t have.

NG: Really, even you guys?

AM: Yeah, no, there’s like a Cincinnati-

AW: They’re hard to get a hold of.

AM: Yeah, some of them are tough to get a hold of. You know like we’ll get a couple of them and we’ll sell them at a show thinking we are going to get more only to find out that Diamond sold out, the publisher sold out and now we’re buying our own books off eBay.

Squarriors #3 by Ashley Witter & Ash Maczko.

NG: Ok, that’s fairly odd, but all right. Another question, this time specifically for Ashley. There has been a lot of talk recently about piracy and image theft. Is that anything that you have dealt with personally?

AW: We actually just recently had a friend that I gave a Squarriors image to, and we kind of gave him permission to go get it printed as a product. And he wrote me back and asked me permission to prove that he had copyright rights because Google images identified it as copyrighted material. Which you know, we live in this day and age when computers can just out right say, yeah that’s copyright, so it was just really cool and interesting. You know, back a few years ago, it was something you had to worry about. Now, with advances in technology, it just does it for you. So that is one recent thing that has happened, but we were saved by Google because it’s registered so that was pretty cool. I did have one piece of art that was obviously based on something of mine and they didn’t credit me. But that was years ago and I let it slide because they weren’t trying to make money off of it or anything. It was just kind of, if you’re going to do that definitely give someone credit. But other than that I haven’t really faced any kind of art theft.

NG: Do you feel that there is room there for forgiveness?

AW: I mean it’s tough, it really is. If someone were selling prints of my artwork at the same show I’m at, it would suck. But then there’s people who are buying it which is really interesting. Because now this is totally legal. Other people can buy my art from other people on eBay, but like they won’t buy it from me. It’s that weird thing where I’ll be selling commissions but people will pay more to buy it from a dealer, not the original artist. And that’s not theft, but it kind of is. So it gets kind of weird.

NG: Do you see a lot of your sketches or show commissions being flipped online?

AW: Early on I would like personalize everything, so it kind of broke my heart when I saw it go up on eBay like right after. I was like, oh. Ash would say “Well, you kind of got to do the sketches for people because they are paying for it”. And I know, it’s just when you do something so heartfelt for someone and they just go and flip it, it’s like oh. But whoever buys it probably loves it so there you go.

NG: I guess that’s fair enough.

AM: It’s weird selling a commission for like $75 and somebody sells it for like $400 on eBay and it sells (snaps his fingers).

NG: That’s crazy. There is a current trend I have been hearing about and I’d like to get a writers perspective on it. Because artists have the ability to draw a picture or commission or to make a print to sell at con, I’ve been hearing a lot of authors talk about writing short form stories and printing them out on a 11” by 17” stock and selling them as prints, never to be published elsewhere. Just a story that you can only buy at a convention. Does that idea hold merit as an author?

AW: I already know his answer.

Ash Maczko and Ashley M. Witter at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (1).

AM: It’s funny because I have thought about things like that almost as a joke. I have actually had people come with sketch covers not wanting me to sketch on it but saying “Write me something on there”. And you know I think the verdict is still out on something like that. If it’s working for authors, they’re making money, if that’s a way for them to monetize their work; I think it’s great, I think it’s wonderful. Me doing it? I don’t really feel that would be the medium I would want to sell anything on, I would rather focus on just pushing my book or you know helping Ashley push her other work. I think it’s just two totally different things and I’m not sure that I would want to crisscross those and sell prints of a story. I think I would just rather focus on what I’m already working on.

NG: All right, one final question.

AM: The final question

NG: The finalist final question- are there any big plans moving forward for Squarriors that fans should know about?

AW: There’s stuff going on, there’s always stuff going on.

AM: Every issue is important. Everything is big. I guess one thing I would like to remind fans is that Squarriors comes out in 4 issue blocks. The first one was spring, what’s coming out now is summer, and then fall and winter. I think if you just think about that a little bit and the aspect of how that relates to animals and the seasons and stuff you can get an idea of how dire important things are going to get as the series progresses. What I’d really like to put out there – because we haven’t had too much feedback on this – is that every panel, every word of every issue of the book, there’s a reason it’s there. There’s something important to go back to and look at in issue 1 page 3 that’s going to be extremely relevant in issue 12 page 15. And that’s something that I’ve had a lot of fun with, putting these little hints and little treasures and things in there. And lots of them have not been found yet. I’ve had a couple people who are really into the book come up to me and piece together little things but there are a lot of mysteries to be solved just in the first 4 issues people haven’t caught on to. I definitely encourage people who are really into the story to go back to issue 1 and issue 2 and piece some things together. I think there are some really satisfying things they are going to see in the future with the book.

You can see more work from Team Ash at  squarriors.com; squarriorstcg.com; coldwar.us; or ashleywitter.com.

An Interview With Adam Yeater of One Last Day Comics (Phoenix Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Adam Yeater of One Last Day Comics about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/06/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Adam Yeater at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (1).

Walking past Adam Yeater’s table at a convention can be a unique experience. You won’t see any licensed characters on his prints, no super heroes to be seen. Instead there are images of squids, happy mushrooms, pustule ridden bodies, and lots of bugs. He has dozens of mini-comics (all starring his original character), and original art on a variety of mediums. His distinctive art style stands out starkly against the repetition that can often be found in artists alley – and seeing his paintings at Phoenix Comicon this weekend, I knew we needed to talk.

Neil Greenaway: So, we are standing here at Phoenix Comicon talking with Adam Yeater about his book One Last Day. So could I have you give us a just a short description of what this story’s about?

Adam Yeater: One Last Day is the last day of my main character. He’s just a generic faced character that I kill off on every page in every one shot comic.

NG: About how long have you been doing this?

AY: Off and on. I used to do some stuff in art school, but pretty much for about thirteen or fourteen years.

One Last Day comics by Adam Yeater.

NG: And how is it released?

AY: I self-publish everything. Sometimes I put stuff on the web but mainly I distribute at comic cons like this and online through Facebook, things like that.

NG: You have a fairly distinctive art style, going on here. What were some of your influences?

AY: I am a huge Hideshi Hino fan, he does Hino Horror, and he’s just one of my gods. I worship that guy. It’s kind of like tales from the crypt Japanese style. Very dark, very gory, but with cartoony characters. So yeah, he’s a huge influence. I like Junji Ito, I was heavily influenced by Extreme Cinema, like the splatter films from Japan. A lot of Japanese influences. South Korean cinema, the Prime Cinema, things like that.

Adam Yeater's table at Phoenix Comic Con 2016. 

NG: Awesome. You must get varied reactions to the book, from people laughing at it to people thinking it is horrific. What is your interpretation? Comedy? Horror? What do you think this story is?

AY: It’s more like a… I guess it depends on who is looking at it. Sometimes it’s comedic, sometimes it’s really dark. Like I said, I am more into the B horror stuff so I see it as that, like how far can I press it. In the early years I used to do really veiled stuff. Like, you know, the deaths would be in between the margins – off page. Now I do it where it’s just blatant, in your face you can’t get away from the graphic violence. There’s no pornography, but it’s definitely extreme violence. And I think in American culture we are kind of used to that, but you’re kind of put in a category when you start doing pornographic. So I wanted to stick to a wordless comic that anybody in the world can read and that was graphically violent.

NG: Awesome. So since he dies in every book, what is your favorite death you have done?

AY: I guess in general it’s the death of Love. I really like that one. I keep going back to it for some reason. It’s real vague you know, he gets his Dear John letter and is really upset and he doesn’t really die but the love that he had did. That’s one of my favorites. Death through time, where somebody they’re dueling, they’re shooting. So it goes from 1800’s to the old west to gangsters to now, you know, the modern punk gangsters.

The One Last Day Omnibus by Adam Yeater.

NG: I had heard that you have a coloring book coming out, tell me a little bit about the coloring book.

AY: I have a coloring book coming out through TMI International and they’re the largest kids tattoo manufacturer, those little sticky tattoos, and they wanted to break into the adult coloring book market. So we’re all working on getting those, they did some prototypes and we’re working on getting those onto the store shelves nationally. So you’ll be seeing those pretty soon.

NG: Awesome. And I also understand that you just had an omnibus come out; can you tell us a little bit about that?

AY: Yes it’s all my single page strips where he dies on one page. And I used to print them in separate books, but now I’m starting to print them all in one book. It’s just easier for me to keep at shows in front of my table.

Adam Yeater at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (2).

NG: And are there any plans for a 2nd omnibus?

AY: Yes there is. I do a lot of one shots where it will be 5 or 6 pages that don’t fit into the single page book and I’m going to do those into one book coming up actually this year.

NG: We had talked just briefly on piracy yesterday. Have you ever had an image?

AY: Other than like the random… I’ll see somebody’s Facebook image, it will be like my guy or something. But no I have pretty much avoided most of that my whole career. I think it’s because some of the stuff I do is really odd, I think people are afraid to steal it and it’s really specific. So, like, if you use what I did it would be obvious and I think people would tell me hey there’s t-shirts going around with your art on it. So I think it would be so easy to notice that I don’t think it’s going to happen but if it does let me know.

A painting by Adam Yeater.

NG: When you see your art in black and white it can seem horrific or almost macabre, but then when you see the colors you use they are always bright and vibrant, brilliant colors and it creates a really stark contrast. Is that on purpose?

AY: Sort of yeah, I guess it would be. I try to keep the bright colors towards the cartoon, but I like adding them to the grotesque. So I kind of keep it… I think it’s also what they make it like. A lot of the colors these days aren’t muted. Unless you’re using oil paints and using a lot of gray tones and stuff it’s vibrant shit. The paints I buy are all pastel so I have just tried to integrate that into my work with markers and things like that, that bright palette is pretty much the norm of the day. And I just use the paints that I find randomly so I think it just ends up aesthetically looking pretty bright, but I still have that dark look so I like the integration of something kind of cute and something kind of twisted.

NG: it’s a very striking, very cool look. Your work is also really, quite incredibly detailed, how much time do you put into your average print?

AY: Probably maybe 3 to 4 hours. An 11” by 17” takes me about 4 hours. Mainly I do a real tight pencil sketch so I do less during inking, less changing during inking. And I use Crow Pro pens, the old fashioned dip pens and I’m just really fast with them. So about 2 or 3 hours sometimes on a more open one and I use a lot of black so all my fill ins go quick. Comic pages are quicker than prints because the prints are more detailed. But yeah pretty much a 4 hour job on one print.

A postcard print from Adam Yeater.

NG: What is coming next for you?

AY: Next I’m working on some new prints for the Tucson Comic Con and I’ve got a little toy fair local in Tucson coming up and the new book that I mentioned and I’m working on just a random art book, sketches and things like that.

NG: All right, well just one last question. If people wanted to see more of you online, where would they go?

AY: You can go to Facebook under One Last Day or Adam Yeater, and Instagram and I’m on Store Envy. I’m out on the web, just Google me, Adam Yeater and you can PM me and I’ll do some commissions and stuff like that and just check my website and you can buy everything there.

Paintings by Adam Yeater on canvas and wood blocks.

An Interview With Michael Martin of Nightshade Comics (Phoenix Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Michael Martin of Nightshade Comics about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/05/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Michael Martin at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (1).

Michael Martin and Adam Orndorf are putting together a new book from Action Lab called Blood and Dust: The Life and Undeath of Judd Glenny. The book (available this August from your local shop) follows the trials and tribulations of a family of vampires in the old west. I had the chance to sit down and talk with Mr. Martin about the book, and what to expect from the story.

Neil Greenaway: I am sitting here at Phoenix Comic Con talking to Michael Martin about Blood and Dust. So what can you tell us about the comic just by way of rough introduction to it?

Michael Martin: So Blood and Dust is the story of the first American vampire. After the Civil War, he was a pretty bad man and went out west to try and find redemption. And through a series of events went on a spirit quest and was possessed by the spirit of the vampire, one that they didn’t even think was real, only a legend. And so for 40 years Judd terrorized the west and was more myth than anything else. And through a set of circumstances he found out that he had descendants, he had kids that he didn’t know he had. So he went to go see them and he arrived in the night seeing his granddaughter dying and getting ready to orphan her 3 kids. Judd couldn’t let that happen so he turned her. She ended up turning her kids and attacking her kids and now Judd has to spend the rest of eternity protecting the world from these children and these children and his family from the world, because the only thing in the world he gives a damn about is those 3 kids and his granddaughter.

NG: All right. Now is this something that you and Adam created together? What was the creation process on this?

MM: So Adam and I met at work and we were talking about my recording studio and what I was going to build. Then he asked me are you a writer? Well yeah, I’ve written stuff, I’ve written a lot of horror and stuff. He’s like, well have you ever written a comic? And I’m like, is that thing? Do people write comics? I didn’t know that was a job. And he was all, well yeah. And he read my stories and he said we should write a comic. Adam is not really a horror guy, it’s not really his genre. So we were originally kicking around the idea of doing kind of like a Strange Tales or a Tales From the Crypt, where you would have this old man telling the really horrible stories to these little monstrous kids and that was kind of what we were talking about doing. But then how would you discipline a little monster kid, how would you discipline a vampire child? I said, well if it’s me I would pick him up by the neck and I’m going to shove a knife through their shoulder and hang them off the wall until they learn to mind. That’s page 3 of Blood and Dust issue 1 (laughs). And that’s really the thing we decided to go down this route, we started this almost 10 years ago. You know Twilight had started to become popular, I’ve loved vampires my whole life but even at that point so much had changed. The concept of falling in love with a cow is ridiculous to me, you know, so why would a vampire fall in love with dinner? That made no sense. And so that’s what we wanted to do – all of the normal things you will see in a comic, in a horror comic, in a book about vampires you’re not going to see in ours, that was the exact goal we set out to do.

The Nightshade Comics table at Phoenix Comic Con 2016.

NG: OK. If it’s been in production for 10 years or at least been a concept for 10 years, how did you guys get into Action Lab with it?

MM: Well when you say 10 years you’ve got to understand that this is the thing for creators, right? This is my very first book. I have never written a comic before in my life. Adam had done some anthology work and some very, very small indie work. You know, it doesn’t happen overnight, it’s a learning process and this business is unlike any other that I’ve seen. I think professional wrestling is the closest you can get to it because you learn the rules, you learn the craft. Nobody lets you in, that’s the thing people don’t understand. We showed up to Phoenix Comic Con in 2009 with a script. We had written a script for issue 1, I was still recovering from surgery; I was still sewn together from having my kidney removed, ok? We’re walking around and showing people we’ve written a script we’d like to make a comic. And they were like, ok awesome go do that. And we’re like, well here it is, and they were like no, no you haven’t done anything. You know you need pages. So the next year we… this was before Kickstarter or anything, Adam put forward his own money to have pages drawn and we did that. So we stuck together a book and they were like cool, where’s the rest of it? Where’s the lettering, where’s the coloring? And that was what we learned. And in the time Adam had a baby and that became his world and I am very career oriented in my day job, I have a very intense career. So I moved back to Idaho for a few years. Then I moved back in 2014, Adam calls me and says I want to get the money back that I put into the pages, I’m going to try and do a Kickstarter to get that money back, are you in? I’m like, well if we are going to do this, let’s do it right. I’m more of the business side of things you know, so we looked at it all, we launched and did it and really we achieved our goal that we tried to do. Adam got his money back and we made our comic book and it was awesome. It was awesome to hold in my hand something that I didn’t think was possible that I could do, so that was awesome. And so 2014 Tucson Comic Con we debuted, we fulfilled our Kickstarter, everyone got all their stuff. We fulfilled all over the world, which was great to me that people in Switzerland and Norway were reading my book which was the weirdest thing. But the thing that happened that we didn’t think was going to happen, let’s face facts man, everyone makes comic books. You walk around this floor and there’s a ton of indie creators man with varying levels of work. Some of it is just amazing. So people liked the book and they liked it enough that I was like, let’s try again. So our original artist, Rudy Vasquez couldn’t continue and so Adam found Roy Martinez through Facebook that connected comic writers and artists. Roy is the closest I’ve ever seen… he’s inside my head. And so when he found Roy and he showed me the pages and asked him to do a few sample pages, I think we asked him to do something like 4 or 5 pages. By page 2 I was just like you’re done, you’re done, you’re fine, you are officially part of Blood and Dust.

Blood & Dust: The Life & Undeath of Judd Glenny by Michael Martin & Adam Orndorf #1 Limited Edition Variant.

NG: And where is Roy in the world?

MM: He’s in the Philippines.

NG: Oh, OK.

MM: And that’s another interesting thing, you know we started a thing here called AZ creators right? I love Arizona and I love local artists and everything else, but the thing for people trying to get started in the world and everything, let’s face facts, you have to pay United States page rates and you know it’s hard to find the level of work I was looking for at the page rate that I could afford. You know Roy is, I honestly can’t – I mean I have met some of the most amazing artists, I know some amazing artists, it’s crazy, but I would put him up against anybody. I would put him against I do not care who- Neal Adams, or name one and Roy is going to come up with something just as amazing as theirs is. So I’m a fan of the man, and that’s the thing. Our colorist also lives in the Philippines. Raymund Lee, both Ray and Raymund are protégés of Whilce (Portacio) and they just do this crazy work. And that’s what you do, especially as a new creator if you want to do this. It’s very likely you are not going over to your buddy’s house and be doing this next door. We’re talking at all hours of the days and nights, I get a message saying, I’m not really sure what this means because it’s a second language. So I go, let me explain it you know? And there we go.

Michael Martin at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (2).

NG: What plans do you have for this series?

MM: So this series was originally written as a six issue arc, and we did that because that seemed to be what a graphic novel was. And literally I say these things because I want everybody to understand how completely ignorant you can be and yet still end up sitting here going this is freaking awesome. So we like literally counted pages in a comic book, so we started with 21, learned a little there (even numbers are good), so we evened that out. And we looked at books like Hellboy and stuff and we were like, seems to be about 6 issues, that’s what we’ll do. So after signing with Action Lab last year, the approach we are taking is we’re doing the first 3 issues, so August 3rd is the first issue release date, so they are going August, September, October. Then we are going to bundle them all together for a trade paperback for November and December. Then the next 3 issues will come out January, February, March and then will be bundled together for the volume 2 of the trade. We called it Blood and Dust: The Life and Undeath of Judd Glenny though Blood and Dust is the overall title. Each arc is going to have like Blood and Dust: The Ballad of Law Dog and Preacher Man, there will be Blood and Dust: The Life and Undeath of Sadie May Kalum which is the only other vampire he let live. So we have a lot of different stories that we want to tell and none of them are nice.

NG: At the beginning of the interview you had said that you conceptualized this as a sort of a Strange Tales with Judd telling the stories to his grandchildren; do you ever see it turning back into that anthology style book?

MM: Yeah, I think there is going to be a lot of opportunities. Like we talked about doing the Glenny Family Christmas, because the thing about this story is that Judd is not a nice man and I cannot stress that enough. You’re going to find in history and everything as things are revealed, I expect people to lose their mind. I expect a lot of controversy. I expect a lot of people will be very unhappy when they finally find out everything about him. He is not a hero and he’s not and anti-hero, he’s just him. So the kids are where the humanity comes in. Because they are kids, they’re just kids that can kill you. So there will be parts where he’ll tell stories. We’ve introduced a character named Eddie who is kind of a vehicle for Judd to kind of talk to, and kind of start off with here’s this story. In fact that was kind of a good way to allow him to tell things of his past and why these things are happening and everything. I hate blatant storytelling in comics. The best compliment I have gotten on the reviews so far is, ‘I am 3 issues in and I have no idea what’s going on and that is the best thing I have read in comics because I truly don’t know what the hell is happening,’ and that’s the way we wanted to keep it. I talk a lot about the backstory during interviews and everything but when you read the book you’re like where the hell is that at, that’s not here, this isn’t anywhere and you’re going to find it out in maybe issue forty-something where you’re like holy crap.

Blood & Dust: The Life & Undeath of Judd Glenny by Michael Martin & Adam Orndorf #2 Limited Edition Variant.

NG: So this is a grander universe, you could carry this story forward for some time?

MM: I desperately hope so. It’s hard to understand, I mean I have tattooed it on my arm. I mean this; this story is such a passion for me. When I go out, when I ride my Harley and I ride through the desert, Judd’s in my head. I don’t know what he does half the time until I start writing it and then I’m like, wow that’s f-cked up, you know? I have such a large grand scheme and a world for this that I want to play with and do things that nobody’s ever seen in a vampire story arc.

NG: Are there any other stories in you, comic wise, do you think? Would you ever or have you started writing anything else?

MM: Yeah. So Action Lab asked me to pitch for one of their Full Moon properties, I’m in the middle of doing that.

NG: I love the full moon stuff.

MM: Yeah I do too. And the one in particular that they asked me to so, they liked it. They thought it referenced too much to the original, you know because I wanted to pay respect to the history of that. I mean no matter what you can say about movies, Full Moon movies or Troma movies or things of that nature, they are specifically done a certain way for a reason and to play in that sand box was really weird because I have only been used to writing out of mine. I tried to pay a lot of respect to it. They were like, we like it but you can get rid of some of that. So we will see how that goes. I just talked with Action Lab last night and gave them another story I want to do that they really liked a lot and so I’m starting to put together another creator owned- the things like Full Moon and stuff is… well, I’m not used to it. I’d rather set goal to be like, gosh I want to write for Marvel or I want to write for DC. Those are page rates man, that’s a job and that’s awesome. It’s a badass job you can have. But the great thing about doing creator owned is that nobody tells me what to do with my story and the best thing about Action Lab and Danger Zone is that they have given me absolutely no restrictions whatsoever, they’re like go nuts, do whatever you feel like is what you want to do in your story, and I’m like OK!

Blood & Dust: The Life & Undeath of Judd Glenny by Michael Martin & Adam Orndorf #3 Limited Edition Variant.

NG: If someone wanted to find you online where would they go?

MM: Well there is @bloodanddust on Twitter, there is Nightshade Comics, Blood and Dust, and Michael R. Martin on Facebook as well as on Instagram and also www.bloodanddustcomic.com as well as www.nighshadecomics.com. I’m rebuilding the site so right now it’s a placeholder. Since we have moved over and moved to the Action Lab/Danger Zone family we’re rebranding a little bit and changing it up a little. Right now with the book coming out in August, the thing I need people to do is go to your local comic book store and ask them to please get you a copy of Blood and Dust. And if more things like that happen, the more you will see cool stuff coming out from us.

Michael Martin at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (3).

An Interview With Chris Gore of Film Threat (Phoenix Comic Con 2016)

Written by SaraJean Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Chris Gore of Film Threat about his take on publishing a children's book and running a website. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/05/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Chris Gore and his book Celebrities Poop at Phoenix Comic Con 2016.

I got a chance to catch up with everyone’s favorite cine-file, Chris Gore (aka the Silver Fox to Attack Of The Show fans), to talk with him about the book he has for sale at his booth and what is coming up for him in the future.

SaraJean Greenaway: So we are at Phoenix Comic Con 2016. Chris, please tell me about your book and recording Celebrities Poop. What inspired you first to record this and then turn it into a book?

Chris Gore: Well I’m a big fan of the book by Taro Gomi, it’s called Everybody Poops and Everybody poops is a book that teaches children that every single living thing poops. And I think that sometimes in our society we forget that celebrities also poop because we put celebrities on a pedestal. So when I was getting ready to record my comedy album I thought, well I don’t want to just put out a comedy CD because people don’t buy CD’s anymore, they pretty much just download comedy albums off of itunes. But I thought, well what am I going to do, just give people a download code? I thought I would do an art project that is one part book and if you buy the book you get this download code to download the album. So I had my daughter do 47 paintings of celebrities taking a shit and I think the opening one is – I’m really proud of, it says, “Oprah makes a big poop. Justin Bieber makes a small poop.” So she did these paintings in the style of the original Taro Gomi book Everybody Poops book and put it together to do an exact parody page for page of Everybody Poops.

SJG: And how old was your daughter when she worked on this?

CG: My daughter she actually did this when she was 19 or 20, so she’s actually an adult, but she’s a very accomplished artist and skipped a grade in art and I’m really proud of her for having done this with me.

SJG: So this project just spoke to her as an artist?

CG: Yeah, yeah. No she was a good sport to do it and it’s just a different way to like, it is sort of a novelty book right? Like Go The F-ck To Sleep? It’s kind of like that, but the book is available as an audio book because I actually read the book to everyone at Phoenix Comic Con. Then it’s available as a physical book and then you can also get a digital version of the book and you can just download the comedy album on itunes. And it’s the first comedy album- at least that I know of- that has its own theme song. There’s a theme song to Celebrities Poop. Oh and I have a funny story to tell. So you can buy the book Celebrities Poop on Amazon and it was temporarily shut down. So it was shut down and I received an email from BrandProtect@harpoproductions.com, it was basically Oprah’s lawyers they shut down my listing on Amazon. I’m not a big Oprah fan and I had this exchange with the attorney who was very professional and extremely polite. The crux of the conversation ended like look, we don’t have a problem with the fact that your book has a painting of Oprah taking a poop, that’s not the issue. The issue is you can’t use Oprah’s name in the description of the book, so as long as you delete Oprah’s name in the description, no problem. So I re-wrote the description of the book, did not include Oprah’s name and then Amazon put my listing back up. So even though I am not a big fan of Oprah, I’ve got to say that I appreciate the fact that her lawyers treated me very well. I can’t not like them.

Celebrities Poop by Chris & Haley Gore.

SJG: Ok, that’s amazing.

CG: So yeah, I’m the kind of person that when I approach any project, whether it’s a film or TV or website, I like to do something a little different. So this is my debut comedy album and I wanted to do something special.

SJG: Well ok. So last night you briefly mentioned your follow up project to Celebrities Poop, can you tell us a little about that?

CG: The next project is called Girls Eating Hotdogs at 2am. It’s also a comedy album that will come out. I’m doing a poster which is a mosaic of 100’s of women eating hotdogs. So here are pictures of some of the girls who are friends of mine on Facebook, so it’s all a bunch of Facebook friends of mine, women, eating hotdogs in cute ways, and they all gave these to me. Then what I did was a poster, a mosaic that’s all girls eating hotdogs and this will be a poster. So the next album will be a poster and you get the download code for the album.

SJG: How long until that comes out?

CG: Give that one a year. I’ve been working on new material and it takes some time to do that. So that’s the next project. I am also looking at relaunching Film Threat and I’m working on a couple web series and a movie.

Save Film Threat and Bring Back DVDuesday!

SJG: That’s awesome. Is there anything you can tell us about the movie?

CG: I can tell you about the movie. It’s actually a documentary about Film Threat Magazine in the 90’s. Film Threat kind of paralleled… Film Threat Magazine basically covered independent film. It was created as a fanzine in 1985 and I was approached by a documentary filmmaker. I have been approached over the years about doing a documentary on Film Threat and finally was approached by a guy I really trust, Runa Lind, and partnered with producer Steve Bannatyne who’s been an Oscar nominated producer and they’re making a documentary about Film Threat. I’m writing the book the documentary is based on, Film Threat Sucks and it’s all about the rise and fall of Film Threat the print magazine. But I am relaunching the website sort of as a way to do other projects.

SJG: Well I had seen you had a Kickstarter to help relaunch the website in the past.

CG: Yeah, it did not make it.

SJG: Well my husband and I were backers.

CG: Oh really, well did you want to see the trailer? This is not public.

(Chris took me to a private link on his phone and proceeded to show me a very awesome, very retro 90’s stylized trailer seeming to document much of the history of Film threat. It felt very gritty and looked very interesting to someone who was a kid and teenager of the 90’s and grew up with film threat and all the movies it discussed. This trailer made me very excited to see what the documentary has in store.)

CG: So for the documentary, it’s basically a documentary period piece it’s set in the 90’s. We digitized over 100 hours of VHS footage from the 90’s and have scanned 5,000 photographs. I’m the executive producer of the project and I have been working on this documentary for the last year, as well as writing the book. But you’re the first person I have actually talked to about it. This is not going to come out for like 2 or 3 years. So 2 or 3 years, that’s how long it takes to make a documentary

Chris Gore at Phoenix Comic Con 2016.

SJG: We get just like a first glimpse into it.

CG: Yeah so this is the first you’re hearing of it.

SJG: Well I appreciate you taking the time to talk to me about it and for giving me a sneak peek at the trailer.

CG: Oh thank you. I hope you thought it was interesting.

SJG: I did, it looks so interesting; I’m very excited to see what happens with it. So one last thing, where would people go if they wanted to buy your book or check out your new works?

CG: They can go to www.celebritiespoop.com or you could also just go to www.chrisgore.com or follow me on twitter.

Also Chris told me that I could let everyone know that inside the book Celebrities Poop, there is an illustration of Olivia Munn pooping. He also says she does not even know that, so I have added the picture, see below.

Olivia Munn on a toilet.

An Interview With Denny "Dennmann" Riccelli of Cousin Harold Comics (Phoenix Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Denny "Dennmann" Riccelli of Cousin Harold comics about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/04/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Denny "Dennmann" Riccelli at Phoenix Comic Con 2016.

Denny Riccelli is the Arizona comic creator responsible for Cousin Harold and Comics Never Stop. He also has a new action figure / comic line called Space Monstas debuting at Phoenix Comic Con 2016. I had a chance to sit down and talk to Denny (also known as Dennmann) about all of his projects, and what might be next.

Neil Greenaway: Let’s start with Comics Never Stop. Now this is a free newsprint comic that you guys have been making for how long now?

Denny "Dennmann" Riccelli: About a year. We started last September and the goal was basically to try to reach fans that are not coming into the comic book store; so people maybe that have read comics maybe throughout their histories in life but not walking in the comic book store and seeing our stuff. So we decided to kind of print up this newspaper, one page like an old style Sunday strip and distributing them in coffee shops, figuring that people would go into coffee shops and sit down and kind of dink some coffee and maybe need something to flip through or whatever and we thought hey if we had some comics we could make then chuckle and laugh and then direct them to hey where our other stuff was going on, maybe we could grow fans who are fans of comics but didn’t know that they were fans of comics because when they walk into the comic book store all they see is maybe the superheroes or this and they are not really sure where to go to look for the other things.

NG: What’s the feedback been on that?

DR: I’ll tell you what, when I take it around town I drop it off in Arizona from Mesa which is kind of far east in the valley, all the way up to the north, Peoria, which is far west valley. I spend a day dropping it off and when I’m going into those places the baristas at the coffee shops are excited and a couples places even clear off spots next to the register, put the right there immediately and before I’m out the door people have gotten up to get them. There are other places, one time I went into one shop and the girl working she goes “Oh my God, this is the new one?!” and she got excited and went over to start reading and realized she had other customers in line so then she went and put it down. I’m like here, here’s an extra one for you go help your customers, so it was kind of funny. So the places are excited we are dropping them off, so I’m assuming that the customers are excited. When I go back to restock when the new issue comes out I fond very few left. Whereas I notice we have a local newspaper and I always see stacks of those left there and I don’t know if it’s the new one or the old one, but it always seems like there are stacks; whereas I go and ours is depleted down to one or none. So it seems to be going well.

Cousin Harold by Denny "Dennmann" Riccelli issues #1, #2, #3, & #4.

NG: Do you have a rotating cast of characters who are in it or do you have a stayed set of people that are working on it?

DR: So we’re kind of rotating, kind of have a set group. There’s a ton of talented creators in Arizona and we kind of invited our top 16 or the ones we are closest to, but we only had 8 pages at first. So some people stepped out because hey you don’t have enough pages I don’t want to have to dedicate time to this. Some people said oh I want to do this every single time and some people said hey I just don’t have enough time. So the goal is to try and keep some of the core people that are really involved in the community in it and then rotate other people kind of in and out. The other thing that’s kind of happening is we have so many people interested now, both in contributing and ads. Like we’re selling ads and add contributions to the strip are what pay for it, so we have so many people who want ads in it we’re running out of ad space. So we’re actually going to go from 8 pages to 12 pages so that we can start selling more ads, we can start increasing the amount of creators we include. The other thing I did, I am a math teacher by day, I sat down and figured out the math that if we increase the pages with the amount of money we’ll be bringing in we can actually print way more copies because we actually cut down the amount, the cost, per copy because adding that extra page doesn’t really add that much money to printing costs, but it adds a bunch of money coming in for us to pay for it. Also, while I’m not a non-profit whatsoever, we’re not doing it for a profit. It’s handed out for free, I’m not making any money. If I see like hey this event coming up like this Phoenix Comic Con, I printed an extra 300 to have some to give out here, we had some to give out at appearances that led up to this so that we could just hand it out, we want people to just kind of see it. The goal is not to make any cash off of it, it’s to say here are all the cool comic creators. In addition to handing them out at coffee shops, we hand it out at an event called First Friday we have here in Arizona. The first Friday of every month they kind of close down this one area of town and there’s a bunch of art galleries that open and stuff, so I stand on the street corner and I have a little newsboy bag that say Comics Never Stop and we just yell “Comics!” “Comics Never Stop!” “Get your free comics!” and we hand out 300 to 400 on that night doing it and people are very, very excited and are all “I love comics!” or “Give me some of those!” So the feedback directly when we are handing it out is unbelievable which gets me really excited and gets me wanting to make it you know?

Get That Chicken Mini-Comics Day Special by Denny "Dennmann" Riccelli

NG: Have you had people come up to you and express interest in Cousin Harold after having read the book?

DR: You know I don’t know if it’s translating into other people making purchases from us. I know people are realizing either the paper’s name or “hey that’s the Cousin Harold guy,” or “I saw you last night at this,” or “you’re the guy who hands out the papers at First Friday,” I’ve had those types of things happening so we’re starting to make those connections, I thinks it’s just a matter of time. It’s hard to kind of get into someone’s psyche and change their responses to maybe things, so again they respond to Spider-man because Spider-Man’s been on every commercial for Civil War the last 5 weeks. So every time they are watching TV 5 times an hour it’s in their face, this doesn’t go into their face that often so I think it’s going to take a while but I think that we’re seeing those changes and there are some bigger institutes that are getting involved and helping us out while you know they’re charity organizations or whatever and we are donating, they are looking at the content and saying, “wow this is really good, we don’t mind our name being attached to this,” so that is pretty awesome.

NG: Switching track just a little bit to your other new property Space Monstas, what can you tell us about that?

DR: So maybe 5 years ago, 6 years ago, I was at this designer con in California and I saw people making bootleg action figures and they would bootleg like take a Boba Fett head and put it on a different body and call it the something or whatever and I thought wow this really cool you can make your own toys and they were packaging them up like Star Wars figures. But the thing I thought was kind of not fair was you were just making a Boba Fett, like you’re not really doing anything with it, is there any way to like move that into what I do in my comics? Could I make some of the comic characters toys? I looked at the current characters I was doing and I was like this is really hard I drew all of these characters kind of weird looking and stuff like that and they’re very cartoony and I was like they don’t look like normal humans so it’s very hard to turn them into these toys. So the goal was then now what could I take? So I looked and said what is public domain? What could I use that everyone knows? I realized basically like the Mummy, Dracula, Frankenstein- those types of things are public domain monsters. So why are all those monsters kind of in everyone’s head? Why do we think about that? I said maybe these are what the aliens really look like. So I mean I kind of said maybe these guys came down from space at some time and that is why we have all these stories. So I decided that these races kind of all live there somewhere in space and I was going to start making stories about them. Space Mummy is the first character in the series. I decided to call it Space Monstas because when I did some internet searches for Space Mummy the name comes up so I said if I make that the title of the character and someone really owns that then I got a legal issue. I did some Space Monstas like Gangstas research and no one is really using that name, so I was like ok that one seems to be, no one is using this let me use this and then I can use Space Mummy as my main character as long as I’m not printing the name as the title we’re fine, I can’t really get in trouble, like it’s not a big issue. So I said ok now can I take one of those toys and can I kind of re-sculpt parts of it to match the way my drawing looks? Sure enough I was able to and then I learned the process of how do I make a mold? How do I make the resin toy? How do I paint it? How do I make the card? I bought like the little bubble blister, but how do I make all of these things to put together because all of my comics, everything is DIY, I try to make everything myself. You know my goal is I want to make the comic and everything that’s my piece of art, not just the story but the whole process. I mean I have trades and stuff that I have had printed up by other people, the newspaper is printed by the other people and I don’t have a printing press or a silkscreen machine so I can make t-shirts I have someone else make them for me. But I am in the process of trying to learn these things and do it because it is important for me to make it. So then I went kind of crazy and said what other characters can I make besides a mummy and I had a vampire and this and I made a bunch of cards and said these look awesome and I started making story ideas and now I have like five years’ worth of story ideas because it’s not really the main thing I am doing but I’m very, very excited about it. When I started drawing it, again I draw very, very, very cartoony, so my stuff looks like the cartoons you see on Saturday morning, you know Looney Toons style, rather than your superhero style; whereas the Space Monstas stuff is looking more superhero, it’s looking more like it‘s a traditional comic book with real people in it rather than these kind of cartoony characters. So I was impressed that I could do that and everything else and I could go on and on, it’s probably the most excited I am about anything I’ve done and I wish I could do it full time but I am also attached to the other characters I’m doing, so it’s definitely like I don’t want say like hey that girl is pretty, I’ll take her and leave the wife here- no this is the carrot that got me here I’m going to stick with it but hey I’m going to play with this one too. Not like I am cheating on my wife though (laughs).

Denny "Dennmann" Riccelli at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (2).

NG: Speaking of that, can you tell us a little about Cousin Harold for those who might not know.

DR: So Cousin Harold basically is like my love letter to cartoons growing up. My dad had a rule that we were not allowed to watch anything except cartoons before 10am. He would have tons of VHS tapes on top of our television and if you couldn’t find a cartoon on TV you had to get a VHS tape and watch a cartoon. And the reason he did this was that once I got out to work I was going to know what the real world had going on and he didn’t want to know that before he left for work. He wanted to smile in the morning and laugh and giggle so he always made us watch cartoons. So I just grew a love of cartoons, all cartoons, but I really kind of got attached to the Looney Toons and then like The Ren and Stimpy Show and like the goofy stuff that was just kind of funny. So I created Cousin Harold as hey he’s a rat, he’s a detective, I wanted to do a detective story and in the first story he loses his cheese. This story I think I have reprinted about a thousand times so I am going to spoil the whole story idea right here because I have printed it a lot, if you haven’t read it, sorry. He loses his cheese in a typical place we’ve all lost our keys. So he’s looking all over for his cheese and then he finds that it’s in the other hand. Like I have had my keys in my hands and am looking all over the house going, “where are my keys, someone help me find my keys!” and they are right there in your hand. So then he finds his keys and now he thinks he’s this genius detective because he was able to solve where his keys went after walking all over town and asking everyone and everyone is kind of giving him a dirty look in the story like you’re kidding me right? Because they can see the cheese in his hand and no one points in out and they think he is goofing on them or something and he finally finds it, he’s excited and he thinks he’s a genius. So then in the next story I did he needs some money and he was going to steal some cheese, but they told him that that was wrong and you can’t just take it you need money, you need a job. So he’s like I want to do this and they are like you need to go to college and this and that on and on. Well finally he goes, well I’m a detective, I solved this case, I can make money being a detective. Then he solves a crime with a cat that ate a hot dog. Turns out hot dogs can actually cause problems for a cat. So it made the cat just pass out and the ketchup from the hotdog went all over the cat’s chest so he thought that the cat was dead, that he was stabbed. It turned out the cat was just passed out and came back to life and everything was ok and Harold was like look I solved the crime. So it’s always those types of crime. It’s not your straightforward crime of who did it and what’s going on. There is always some kind of weird switch going on. I did one story about an elephant that disappeared. It turned out that someone had just painted the background of the elephants cage the same color as the elephant so the elephant would just blend in and was like camouflaged. It was a white elephant and someone decided to paint the background white and as soon as you changed the color it was fine.

Cousin Harold by Denny "Dennmann" Riccelli issues #5, #6, #7, & #8.

NG: Those are three fairly weighty projects, how do you find time to still be a math teacher?

DR: I have a time machine and I work it out. I’m really good at time management and that’s my time machine. I schedule my life, I have two kids and a wife, I mean I have a full, full life all the time, but I just kind of time manage- this is the time dedicated to this and this is the time dedicated to that etc. When we are leading up to shows like Phoenix Comic Con my wife gets a little upset because all time gets dedicated to comics and the is kind of recedes and she gets time back and you know stuff like that but leading up to these show it’s like I always do more, there is always something extra that can be done, you know I go a little crazy.

Cousin Harold by Denny "Dennmann" Riccelli: #9, FCBD Special, Giant-Size Mini-Comic, & King-Size Mini-Comic.

NG: Do your students know that you create comics?

DR: I tell them and sometimes they are like yeah whatever, and they see it and they see the characters. A lot of times if I am working on a cover I tend to make the cover my background on my computer so that I can stare at it so that I can find the mistakes. Because I am going to have to live with that cover forever and ever and that’s what I am going to constantly see on my table and if there’s a mistake that I find later, I’m going to flip out. So I don’t care so much about the mistakes in the stories, those are ok I’m not going to see those every day, the stuff on the covers I will. So I tend to put the covers up as a background. Then they look at it and they kind of get it, they sometimes don’t understand what’s going on. This year though a lot of my seniors that were graduating asked me for autographs, just like on a sheet of paper, an d they were like “you’re going to be famous,” and I asked why “we looked at Phoenix Comic Con and you are listed as a guest,” and I was like ok. So I was signing autographs for them and I just asked them do you guys just want some comics? So I brought them some comics and autographed them and passed them out. So they get excited some of them, some of them are just like ugh, whatever. I try to make it not public knowledge, but I don’t try to hide it. I don’t try to talk about it, it’s there, but I’m there to teach math I’m not there to talk about hey I draw a bunch of comics. I do tend to lead their struggles in doing math with my struggles in whatever I’m learning to do. So going back to the Space Monstas thing, when I was making the toy, I failed over and over and over. So every time I would fail over the weekend at practicing and trying to make the toy, I would come in with the story on Monday and explain to them that why this was the new thing I tried, this is what happened, this is how I failed, now I got to go find a new thing, so how do you apply this to what we are doing in here? Did you get an F on Friday’s quiz, what are you going to do this week to change that process and I was trying to educate them more on hey you’re trying to learn math in this class but you are also trying to learn how to learn. If the kids all know how to learn, they will learn whatever subject you’re teaching them, it doesn’t matter what you’re teaching. So if they understand that ‘hey I failed, this is how you can become successful after a failure,’ they’ll get that, so I try to do that through again, my comic creating, ‘here’s how I failed, here’s how I failed with the toys, here’s how I got better, and then I got it right and I go look, I had to talk to 4 different people to find these different things and each person gave me a different suggestion but ended up being the pieces of the puzzle that I needed.

Denny "Dennmann" Riccelli at Phoenix Comic 2016 Con (3).

NG: I think that about wraps it up for us. One more question for you, what is next? With all of this already going on, I assume there must be plans, what comes next?

DR: I’m thinking it’s probably a lot of Space Monstas stuff. I have some crazy plan that I have told my wife about that I don’t know how I am going to do. But I love comics from all over the planet. My friends will always joke that if an alien came down I would ask them, ‘do you guys have any comic books?’ because I have comics from Japan and I find a comic from this country and this country. I get excited to buy them. I don’t want a Superman that has been translated into Vietnamese, I want a Vietnamese comic. So I get really, really excited to see what different cultures are doing and how they tell their stories. One of the things I have always been fascinated with is Manga and the rate at which they make it. Now I know they have tons of assistants and stuff like that- every year I participate in what is called 24 Hour Comic Book Day, we are supposed to draw 24 pages in 24 hours. I usually complete 16 pages so I can’t get 24. That got me to thinking that manga people have to make 18 pages in a week and they have to do it every week. Well 18 in a week don’t seem like a problem because I can do 16 in a day. What if I did 18 a week for a month? Would I be able to keep up with that process because that’s what they have to do, they don’t get a break. Now they have assistants, but like could I get that done? So I came up with an idea that I want to call Manga Month where you try and keep that process of that they do, that 18 a week and 1 cover for the series and try to do that for one whole month. I told my wife, you’re going to lose your husband for a month because I don’t know if I will be able to do this, I don’t know if it’s possible I don’t know if I can keep it up. The first 18, that’s now a problem. The second 18 I can probably force myself to do. It’s that 3rd and 4th, like I’m going to be exhausted, I probably will not be a nice person to live with. So I’m trying to figure out how I’m going to do this process. That is kind of the closest big thing that’s on the horizon that’s in my mind and I keep on warning her because both of my kids are out of high school next summer, so my goal is to kind of reward myself with this crazy activity, I don’t know how my wife feels about it but I’m hoping she’ll be supportive and hoping I can maybe squeeze it into six days and make the seventh day of each week hers.

NG: One final little bit- if someone wanted to find you online, where would they go?

DR: So you can either go to www.CousinHarold.com or www.dennmann.com.

An Interview With Bri Crozier of Bri Pi Art (Wizard World Des Moines 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Wizard World Des Moines 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Bri Crozier of Bri Pi Art about her take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 5/17/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Bri Crozier at Wizard World Des Moines 2016 with her mom, Rachel.

I had the chance to sit down and talk with Bri “Pi” Crozier at Wizard World Des Moines. When I started my interview, I thought I was meeting a young artist with a distinctive painting style. What I got was a conversation with a talented, driven young women who is already well on the road to her own success. Bri has only just started making comics, but her books are already touching the hearts of the people who read them – and I was lucky enough to find out why.

Neil Greenaway: Is this your first convention?

Bri “Pi” Crozier: No. Oh, no.

NG: Ok, so then how long have you been selling your art?

BPC: Since I was 16. I am 18 now, so this is my third-ish year of doing this. We’ve been to 30 something conventions? I don’t remember the exact number off the top of my head. The next one that we are going to be at is Planet Comicon in Kansas City, because that is our home convention, and the very first con that I was ever at.

Until Then by Bri Crozier.

NG: And are these the first books that you have put out?

BPC: Yes. These are the first comics I have ever done. Well, the first ones that I have sold. I have a mini-webcomic called Flower Girl that was on a somewhat abandoned blog.

NG: Is that still available?

BPC: Yes. Those are still available. It’s a word press blog called Painting The Cheese Wheel, something like that. I am going to move those comics onto my Tumbler, though, to make them easier to find. Because, like I said, that blog is completely abandoned. I have not posted anything in close to a year.

A page from Until Then by Bri Crozier.

NG: All right. And what can you tell us about your new books?

BPC: So, the first one that I have is called Until Then. That one is hard for me to explain. Last year my sister’s best friend passed away. So, Until Then is about grief. It’s about what happened after her friend passed away. It is made up of two different comics. The first one is called The Accompanying Silence, and it is about the day after her passing. We walked into the house, and she was in hospice for a month before, and it would be very loud. When she was in hospice, there would always be people around, and she had an oxygen machine. And when we walked in the day after, it was silent. And it was just weird. (stifles tears) And the next one (man, I’m going to start crying) is called Until Then. And it’s about how we had to say goodbye to just her, but she had to say goodbye to ALL of us. And so that is what that one is about. And it is really, really hard for me to describe.

NG: I can certainly understand that, it’s obviously a personal story. Now, did you do all of the art and writing on these stories?

BPC: Yes. All of the writing is my own. As well as all of the art. Until Then is a poem I wrote about our friend, and The Accompanying Silence is a silent comic. Aside from the occasional onomatopoeia, and the title. So, no dialogue.

Another page from Until Then by Bri Crozier.

NG: And what about the other book you have here?

BPC: My other book is called Oddity: No Good Deed. It is the first of a series. It’s about a 16 year old girl who makes a deal with a demon. For half of her soul, she gets the power to heal and the power to harm. Every time that she harms someone, a piece of her soul will come back to her. And every time she heals someone, a piece of her soul goes back to the demon. So, she does what any 16 year old with super powers would do. She becomes a super hero. She figures that if she’s only harming bad guys, then what’s the problem, right?

NG: How long did this book (Oddity) take you to put together?

BPC: The Oddity, I have been working on for over a year now. I actually ended up re-writing it. Because the first issue, when I was done with it, I just didn’t like it. So I re-wrote it. And the one that is out now… Actually, it won’t be released until next week. But it can be pre-ordered at conventions….

(At this point a fan breaks in, crying, to tell Bri how much Until Then meant to them.)

BPC: Sorry, where was I? Oddity, right. A lot of that year was spent on character development, and designs, and concept art, and all of that. And then I was having issues with drawing backgrounds. So I cheated, and did background cells. And just put them in using Photoshop.

Pendants bearing the art of Bri Crozier.

NG: How much of the series do you have planned out already?

BPC: I have planned three arcs. The first one is called No Good Deed, the second one is currently title-less, and then the final one is called No One Mourns The Wicked. And I am planning around 20-25 issues per arc.

NG: So you have around 75 issues planned just for this story? Would that be the end of your series?

BPC: I already have thoughts for a sequel series.

NG: I assume that this is all self-published?

BPC: Yes, as a mini-comic.

Bri Crozier at Wizard World Des Moines 2016.

NG: Now, mini-comic is an interesting term. Do you assemble them yourself, or do you use a printing service?

BPC: We use DigiPrint, out of Oklahoma. They were the best option for us.

NG: What reaction are you seeing from the people?

BPC: Oddity hasn’t been released yet. Right now, it’s in pre-order. But it comes out next week. This is our second con with Until Then, and everyone who has read it has said that it is amazing, and that it is beautiful and moving. People come up and start flipping through it, and then tell me that they have a lump in their throat. Or just start crying while reading it.

NG: It does seem like some heady material to be dealing with at your age, quite frankly.

BPC: It was a very hard situation to go through.

Bri Crozier at Wizard World Des Moines 2016 with her mom, Rachel.

NG: I can only imagine. Now if you don’t mind, I assume that this is your mother working with you? What is your name, ma’am?

Mom: Hi, I’m Rachel. I’m mom.

NG: How does it feel having a daughter in this position of being a creative, comic artist?

Mom: I just watch in awe. I’ve read comics all my life. I actually read comics to my children when they were little. So, their bedtime stories were the X-Men, and Spider-Man. Sonic the Hedgehog. So it’s just been really cool to watch her grow. And I can barely draw a stick figure, so the fact that she can draw things like this is just amazing to me. I have so much pride. I’m just so proud of her for what she does and how she touches people.

NG: A story that gets told a lot in the art community is “I wanted to be an artist, but my parents didn’t think there was money in it.” Do you find it difficult to support her in this?

Mom: No. I mean, the very first con, we bankrolled that. But after that, it has paid for itself. Her business pays for itself. And it’s actually going to help her pay for college. We got into this thinking “Well, we’ll try it out. We’ll see.” And then a fairly famous blogger saw Bri’s art and said that we should think about selling it at a comic convention. And we thought that that was just for established comic writers and artists. But we found our local convention, and found out how much tables cost, and we gave it a shot. We tried. And we made back everything we put into it, and then some. So we tried another one. And another one. And from there it just sort of exploded! It helps that my father in law is an artist. So we know that an artist can make money, and that helps. But doing these just showed us that she CAN do this. It IS possible. So we are happy to support her.

A commissioned art piece from Bri Crozier.

NG: That is awesome. Going back to Bri, I notice that the art style in your comics is considerably different than the art style in your prints. How did you develop your “faceless” art style? I have to say that it is a very distinctive, stylized look.

BPC: When I am doing prints, a lot of times I will do them faceless, as you mentioned. I do that because I want to focus on the costume and the feel of the character, as opposed to the character themselves. It is also sort of a cosplay thing where you look at that, and can imagine that it’s you. Because their skinless and faceless, it’s like a mannequin wearing a costume.

NG: They do have a very china-doll sort of appearance to them. It’s a very appealing style. Where can people find you if they would like to see more?

BPC: Well, I have a YouTube channel where people can actually watch me paint. It is called Those Girls Over There. I also have a Tumbler (Ear-A-Corn) where you can see posts about Oddity, any other comics I work on, the video game that I am making (because I cannot do just one thing, I have to do all of the things). Also, if you want to support me, you can support me on Patreon. I have various levels of rewards for patrons, including swag bags with patron exclusive stickers, buttons, things like that. I would also like to say that for every copy of Until Then that we sell, $1 will be donated to This Star Won’t Go Out and Alex’s Lemonade Stand for charity research which helps cancer families pay their rent and mortgages while they are dealing with the illness.

NG: That all sounds great. Thank you both so much for your time!

An Interview With Kevin Sorbo of God's Not Dead (Wizard World Des Moines 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Wizard World Des Moines 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Kevin Sorbo of Hercules & God's Not Dead about his take on acting. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 05/15/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Kevin Sorbo & Neil Greenaway talking at Wizard World Des Moines 2016.

Neil Greenaway: Hi! I’m Neil Greenaway, and I am sitting here with Mr. Kevin Sorbo, Hercules himself, at the Wizard World Des Moines. How are you doing today, Kevin?

Kevin Sorbo: I’m doing pretty good, you know, it’s been a busy day doing a lot of publicity. Kinda plugging the con. But I got some golf in today, which is something I have to do wherever I go.

NG: I understand that you are one heck of a golfer.

KS: You know, I grew up with the game. My dad was a golfer. He was a teacher, but he worked at a golf course in the summers. So we all just got good at it.

NG: Honestly, are you any good?

KS: I was a 2 handicap in high school. That’s not too bad. And I’m a 5 right now, so….

NG: You’re maintaining.

KS: Maintaining, yes. I shot a 78 today, and I’m happy with that.

NG: Nice. So, what are you here getting publicity for? What’s the new movie or project?

KS: You know, I’ve got a number of new movies coming out. And obviously I come here because there are a lot of Hercules fans, a lot of Andromeda fans. I’ve shot about 48 movies. It’s interesting being at Comic Con, because this movie is not really a Comic Con movie. I did a movie two years ago called God’s Not Dead.

And it ended up being the #1 independent movie in Hollywood. The third highest dollar for dollar movie in the history of Hollywood. A 2 million dollar budget, made 140 million dollars. So, a 70x return on that was pretty good. But mostly, I come here for the sci-fi stuff, or some of the campy movies I’ve done. It’s just fun. And I enjoy doing it. I try to do 5 or 6 of these a year.

NG: Now, I actually just saw that God Is Dead 2 is playing here in Des Moines right now. Did you have anything to do with the sequel?

KS: No. God’s NOT Dead. Because of the success of God’s Not Dead, they made a God’s Not Dead 2. So, I heard, I hear… I don’t know if it’s doing that great. It’s doing ok. But for whatever reason, God’s Not Dead just caught fire and went crazy.

NG: I will be honest, I haven’t seen the sequel yet. But I have read a lot of the reviews, and I have been noticing a lot of comparisons between the sequel and yours. And I’ve been hearing a lot about just how brilliantly sinister you came off.

KS: Thank you.

NG: That Kevin Sorbo makes an excellent bad guy. If you did not know that yet.

KS: Thank you! You hear that Marvel? You hear that Marvel?

NG: Oh, please, Marvel. Everybody else gets to be Marvel.

KS: Come on, for crying out loud. Seriously. They need to wake up. And Stan Lee? I know Stan! But I don’t think he has any power over who gets into the movies.

NG: I hear Marvel has a character… named Hercules. Just throwing that out there.

KS: Uh, hello. Hello.

Kevin Sorbo & Neil Greenaway talking at Wizard World Des Moines 2016. (2)

NG: I also just recently found out that you were Hercules in the God Of War series.

KS: God Of War! God Of War 3 and God Of War… Revelations? Or something. It was like… I don’t know. But I did the voice for those, yeah.

NG: I did not play those games, but I think that is a brilliant nod.

KS: It was fun. And I had a good time doing it.

NG: That’s cool. Now, I understand that recently you have been getting into a lot more of the faith based movies.

KS: I’ve been doing quite a few. You know, it’s funny. My first one I did was with John Ratzenberger (Cliff from Cheers), Kristy Swanson (the original Buffy the Vampire Slayer), Debby Ryan (from the Disney channel). And it’s called What If?, from the same writers and company that did God’s Not Dead. And then it just sort of multiplied. But I’m mixing it up. I mean, I got a movie called Julia X where I play a serial killer. So that’s a little different.

NG: We had just heard of that. I think that is an amazing idea.

KS: Well, you gotta check it out. It was fun. Unfortunately, and I think it’s a good movie, but the director and the producer… I mean, sorry, the financer and the director got in this huge fight over rights. And it stayed in court for three years. And so, I think that what happened was three years… It doesn’t mean you can’t release a movie after it’s been done for three years, but what happened was some (a lot) of pirated copies got out. And it just flooded the market. Especially over in Europe. So that kind of killed the movie for getting its theatrical release.

NG: Now, that’s actually interesting. We’ve been doing a number of pieces on Bleeding Cool recently dealing with licensing agreements and, specifically, pirated art and creators rights. Does that affect you as an actor?

KS: Oh sure it does. Sure it does. It effects Hollywood. It effects everybody. I mean, let’s face it, we’ve all been guilty of doing it. So it’s out there. How do you stop it? I don’t know. You know, people buy blank DVDs, blank CDs. Why are they buying them? You know?

NG: Well, that is very true. Now going back to What If?, I have just heard glowing reviews of that as well. I understand that is an amazing children's movie.

KS: I think that it is for all ages, it’s got a lot more humor in it. There are a lot of touching moments. I always tell people to have a box of Kleenex nearby. But it was fun. I had a fun. And John Ratzenberger was a hoot to work with. I’m a big fan of the original Cheers series. And it was, well, it opened a door for me. I’m actually directing and starring in one, in Birmingham, AL, a faith based film called Let There Be Light. It’s got a wonderful script that my wife co-wrote with Dan Gordon. People may know Dan from – he wrote The Hurricane with Denzel Washington. He wrote Wyatt Earp with Kevin Costner. He’s a really good writer, and we are very excited to get this thing going.

NG: Another thing that I had only just recently found out, but your wife played the Golden Hind on Hercules.

KS: She played the Golden Hind, yes. That is how we met on Hercules.

NG: I think that is awesome, how your on-screen romance turned into real life.

KS: Life imitating art, art imitating life. Whatever, you know. So we ended up married. And I told her, you know, every two weeks they send a hot babe for me to work with. So it’s a pretty good dating service for me. (laughs) She doesn’t like it when I say that.

NG: But hey, she married you anyway.

KS: That’s right, she married me anyway.

NG: That’s a sign of a keeper, right there. Let’s see. What else? When you are doing these faith based movies, when your career is taking that turn, are you still paying attention – are you still fielding offers from the fantasy and sci-fi front? I suppose that Julia X is definitely different.

KS: Oh yeah! I would love to do… I mean, I’ve got a movie coming up with Dean Cain. So we got Superman and Hercules working together. But it is a drama, called Carpool Lane. I’ve got one that I’m shooting in Toronto this year called Flash Drive, which is sort of like a Backdraft movie. I’m a fireman in that one. So, I’m mixing it up. And I’ve got a couple of other sports ones that I want to get done. I’ve got one, a very funny comedy called The Incorrect Man, which makes fun of political correctness. It is SO funny. And it really… It’s sort of in the vein of like David Zucker, like Airplane or Naked Gun. It’s just so over the top and ridiculous. To show how stupid political correctness is. Because I am not that politically correct.

NG: That is all right. I think that it got very IN to be politically correct for a while.

KS: It’s like everybody is looking for a reason to be offended. After a while, you’re going

“Well I love the color blue.”

“Well, I hate blue, and you’ve offended me.”

And it’s like, are you kidding me? Everybody is just looking for a reason to have a fight.

Kevin Sorbo & Neil Greenaway talking at Wizard World Des Moines 2016. (3)

NG: On your future projects, I had just heard an interview with you (a different interview) where you had said that you would be working on the new Left Behind films. Is that still in the works?

KS: It is still in the works. It’s in the works. Is it happening? I don’t know. Because I know that they had trouble with the last one, with Nick Cage. It didn’t turn out like they wanted it to.

NG: And I suppose that would be a further question. Would your movie feed off of that, or would it be a new start?

KS: A completely different start. Off one of the many books. I don’t know how many books they wrote, but they wrote quite a few books.

NG: I have actually read the whole series. And I’m going to make a confession here, I am an Atheist.

KS: Really? Ok.

NG: But I really enjoyed those books. I read the whole series, loved them. And I watched the first film… not the Nick Cage version, but the…

KS: You watched the one years ago with Brad Johnson and Kirk Cameron in it? Man that was a long time ago.

NG: I actually still own that. (shame)

KS: Well, Dallas Jenkins is the son of Jerry Jenkins who, with LaHaye, wrote all those books. And I did What If? with Dallas Jenkins. What If? is a really well done movie. It really is. It’s a good story.

NG: If you got into Left Behind, and I know that you say it is still in the works, would you be playing Rayford (the main character)?

KS: We’ll see if it happens. I honestly don’t know where they were going to go with that.

NG: Because (I’m going to be honest) after hearing about God Is Dead…

KS: God Is NOT Dead.

NG: Right, God’s Not Dead…

KS: You’re the Atheist, so you say God Is Dead. (laughs)

NG: But my thought immediately went to Nicolai. I think that you would make a brilliant Nicolai.

KS: (pointing to the camera) You hear that? You hear that?

NG: Kevin Sorbo IS a bad guy.

KS: I enjoy that! In fact, I have another one that I am dealing with right now with a couple guys up in Toronto. And it deals with basically, the last temptation of Christ. And I want the Satan role. It is amazing. I mean, I read this guys script, and they wanted me for Pilot. And I said “No, no, no” I said, “Jesus has got to be in his early 30’s, because that’s what he was. But Satan can be anything. It could be a woman, it could be a building, it can be whatever the hell he wants to be. Because he is from Hell.”

NG: Very literally.

KS: But it is such a great, well written role. And I said, “I want that part.” And also check out Julia X. I think you will get a kick out of it.

Kevin Sorbo & Neil Greenaway talking at Wizard World Des Moines 2016. (4)

NG: Ok. If I could, I have to touch on Hercules, just a bit.

KS: Oh, yeah, sure.

NG: My wife and I just revisited the entire series. Start to finish.

KS: You are awesome!

NG: And then we moved into Xena as well, and just wrapped up Xena.

KS: Xena was our third year spin-off. Young Hercules was our fifth year spin-off. A lot of people don’t know about Young Hercules.

NG: I didn’t know about Young Hercules!

KS: It was two seasons, got canceled. (To my wife, off-screen) Do you know who played me as a teenager?

SaraJean Greenaway: (off-camera) Yeah, I had just read about it!

KS: Ryan Gosling! A 20 year old Ryan Gosling. The show got canceled, and Ryan was like, devastated. So I took him out to dinner, I said, “Dude, you are a good actor. You are going to be fine.” Now he’s on all these huge movies, and it’s like, dude, throw ME a bone! (laughs) You know? It’s like, geez.

NG: Were you in Young Hercules at all?

KS: What we did was, because it’s him playing me as a teenager. So we did an episode where I was talking to myself as a teen. So you had him sitting up in a tree somewhere, watching me. And it was me at the gravesite of my mother. And we’re just having this conversation. And that was kind of the introduction to that spin-off.

NG: One thing that comes up a lot is, I know people see you at conventions. You are big in the convention circuit. You are everywhere. But what about Michael Hurst? Does he still do the conventions?

KS: He does, but you know, we shot in New Zealand. And Michael is a kiwi. And even Lucy only comes over, maybe once every couple years. She doesn’t do many. But Michael and I just did two of them in Australia last year. We were in Adelaide and Perth. And it was unbelievable. I can only hope that it is busy like that here. Because I must have signed… We each signed about 400 a day, we probably took 200-400 pictures a day. It was crazy.

NG: Are you guys really as buddy-buddy as Hercules and Iolaus might have been?

KS: Not as buddy-buddy that way. Michael and I are friends, there’s no question. We formed a friendship over seven years of working together. But we don’t keep… You know, time and distance. He’s got his kids and his career, I’ve got my kids and my career. But you know, there’s an email every three months. Just: Hey, boom boom boom, what’s going on? Catch up.

NG: You guys are still in each others lives.

KS: Oh yeah. And he’s the premiere Shakespearian actor of New Zealand. He loved doing the series, it put his face on the map. It gave him money. But he is all about being on the stage.

NG: I’m not going to lie to our audience. I still picture him in the costume of the Widow Twanky, teaching Bruce Campbell how to dance. Seductively.

KS: Hey, he directed one of those episodes as the Widow Twanky. It was very difficult to take him seriously. He has the blue wig on, with the fake boobs. And he’s talking to me as Michael, real serious. And there is a photo of me looking down at him, just starting to laugh, where he was getting real serious in this scene. And the photographer caught it just at the right time. It was so funny.

NG: That is awesome. One more question, this time on a bit of a sadder note. In our preparation for this interview, I have just heard of the passing of Kevin Smith. That must have been tragic.

KS: Gosh, that was over, probably, 13 years ago. Or 14 years ago. Kevin was my golfing buddy. And Ares was… I wanted him for Ares from the start. If you watch the first season, of one hour shows, because we did 5 two hour movies first, you will see that they had a really goofy Ares. On stilts, and stuff like that. And I hated that. But Universal wanted to make all these dolls and toys, and action figures. And I said, “It doesn’t matter. You’re going to make an action figure of me, why can’t you make one of him?” And I had worked with Kevin before, and I said, “He’s the guy who’s got to be our Ares.” And it was a no brainer. So we got him in. But my last time seeing Kevin was, when my show finished, Xena went one more year. Because we started two years before them. And I went down to guest star in one of the roles. And Kevin and I… I stayed an extra week to golf with Kevin and hang out. We went to dinner, and then I went to his midnight improv show. He did a lot of sports theater. Or theater sports, as they call it. Oh, a very funny guy, a stand-up guy. It was like Whose Line Is It Anyway?, that type of show. And I went home, and he was going to start a movie in China. And about two months later, that’s when I heard about it.

NG: That is horrible.

KS: Yeah, it sucked. I have been back to New Zealand three times. And I go to his grave site every time and have our favorite beer. And I sit there and have a talk with him.

NG: Well that sounds really cool. I think that about wraps it up for us here. It was a pleasure to meet you, sir.

KS: It was nice to meet you as well.

NG: Thank you for your time.

KS: Thanks, guys. And come to the Con!

An Interview With Larissa Zageris & Kitty Curran of Taylor Swift: Girl Detective (DINK 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

After DINK 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Larissa Zageris & Kitty Curran of Taylor Swift:Girl Detective about their take on publishing mystery novels. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 04/23/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Larissa Zageris & Kitty Curran at DINK 2016.

Larissa Zageris and Kitty Curran have written an illustrated novel about a parallel world inhabited by Taylor Swift: Girl Detective, and now they have a Kickstarter campaign in place to fund a printing of the book. I jumped at the chance to interview the two creators, if only to see how the celebrity/young adult/detective/parody mash-up came to be. They were also kind enough to provide us with a special sneak peek of the first five chapters of the book.

Neil Greenaway: Where did the idea for this story originate?

Larissa Zageris: The idea for Taylor Swift: Girl Detective originally came about when I was on a road trip with my sister. I always liked Ms. Swift’s retro-y dress sense, and realized while looking at a fashion blog that she really had an uncanny resemblance to Nancy Drew. It wasn’t just the clothes, but also the attitude – this can-do, well-put-together, unflappable energy of achievement and arched-eyebrow sass. So for about a year, I’ve been posting pictures of her looking (what I consider) detective-y and writing little captions under them. Basically, creating this alternative world very much like our own, except in it Taylor Swift is a modern-day Nancy Drew.

We wanted to create something that feels like it could be an endless mystery series, just like the actual Nancy Drew books. I grew up reading Nancy Drew, and so did my Mom, and I think it’s great (and hilarious) that this go-get-em female lead has stood the test of time. So this is our spin on that.

I’m also a mystery junkie in general. Kitty shares my lust for twisty narratives, jokes, and wordplay. We broke the outline together, I wrote the text of the book, and then we worked together to punch it up and shape things. We jam-packed the story with more feminism, puns, and feminist puns than the original.

It was also really important to us for the mystery to track, and draw the reader in. We want to give people a kick, make them laugh, and maybe make them feel like the pop star detective we all could be, if we tried.

Larissa Zageris & Kitty Curran: Purveyors of both Intrigue and Mystery!

NG: Have either of you ever published any other novels or comics separately? Have you two worked together before?

LZ: I haven’t published anything in book form, on my own or in a partnership. I do a lot of writing on my blog/s and always have, but my background is in video and theatre. I have more collaborative video stuff like that out in the world than I do my own writing, because so much of screenwriting only gets “published” if you actually make it into, you know. A thing on a screen. I’ve been working on a comic with my other writing partner, Joe Tracz, but he’s been a bit busy since he’s actually writing for the Netflix Lemony Snicket series! Kitty and I work together on many projects, but the one that got us together is actually another comics project…

Kitty Curran: We got to be friends when working on a planned webcomic that fell by the wayside after the other contributors moved away/had a baby. We still hope to get back to that at some point, but for right now we’ve got a few too many other things on our plate. We also were finalists for an educational graphic novel pitch, and have a few other upcoming joint projects planned out. We also have made some zines together, including a disinspirational quotes zine – basically a parody of those motivational quotes you see on Pinterest. As far as personal work goes, I’ve had stuff published as part of a few comics anthologies based in Chicago, and done artwork for Upworthy and CNN amongst others.

NG: Have either of you ever run a kickstarter before?

LZ: Nope!

KC: I’ve been part of comics anthologies that were Kickstarted, but this is my first time actually organizing one. It is as intense as the bards spoke of.

Taylor Swift: Girl Detective Kickstarter reward - stickers.

NG: How long have you been working on this project already? Is it done?

LZ: I started the photo blog about right at the start of 2015, and by October of 2015, Kitty and I decided to join forces and make it an actual book. And by “join forces” I mostly mean, I said “it would be fun to make this an actual book one day,” and Kitty looked me dead in the eye, opened her computer, and said “let’s block it out, then.” And she made me start outlining it with her, that very moment. This is apparently the best way to ever achieve anything: have Kitty Curran tell you that you can, and demand you start, and also lend you her brain when yours stops working.

KC: I would have been a fan of the blog even if I hadn’t known the creator because it is a work of ludicrous hilarity. I also had a suspicion that we could make a decent go of it after I made a parody Taylor Swift: Girl Detective book cover for the blog, and people responded really well. We even got a cosplayer! So when Larissa talked about doing a book for real, I was obviously like “YES. WE ARE MAKING THIS NOW.” We blocked out the basic plot together, then Larissa worked on the prose while I did a few test illustrations and worked out how stylized vs. realistic the artwork would be. Then once she finished the first draft I got down to doing the rest of the illustrations. The book is now done and laid out in inDesign. We wanted to get that done before launching the Kickstarter, in order to avoid a “it’s been two years and people are still waiting” situation.

NG: As of this writing, your project already has almost all of its funding. Are there any plans in place for stretch goals?

KC: We looked into making the book hardback, but the options were either too expensive, or would take far too long to print for our liking. Instead we are now thinking about a potential mini adventure or booklet for all backers receiving a physical copy of the book, or new stickers and other goodies. We basically didn’t expect this to take off so fast, so we’re still working out potential stretch goals if we were to do them.

Taylor Swift: Girl Detective Kickstarter reward - postcards.

NG: I met you guys at the Denver Comic & Art Expo. Have you gone to any other conventions with this project? What has the reaction from the public been?

LZ: The best part of DINK was seeing people react to the work. Pick up the book, read a joke or let a scene register, and laugh. Or when they would double-take as they were walking past the images at the art. We’ve mostly been making things in one or other of our apartments, and though we have supportive friend-fans, we never got to see a reaction like that in real time before.

KC: DINK was the first time we tabled with this project, so after showing it only to friends and family (who are of course going to be encouraging), it was a big relief to see strangers react to it so well. We ended up having to do an emergency reprint of the teaser booklet of the first 5 chapters after the first day, which was a big surprise. It’s just been really exciting seeing the reactions of people who don’t have to like the project responding so well to it. As far as other cons, we will also be promoting it at Chicago Zine Fest at the end of the month. And should we get funded, we might have a signing/event potentially lined up at a Chicago comic store around June.

NG: What are some of your favorite mysteries?

LZ: I am a mystery junkie. I prefer the fun and arch stuff to the heartbreaking or gross stuff (no Dragon Tattoo for me.) So much genre fiction is just the strongest, most engaging fiction out there, to me. I love John Le Carre, PD James, and Tana French. I have a Nancy Drew tattoo on my neck, and I think my love of her adventures is obvious. Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries is divine. Hot Fuzz is the best. Broadchurch, the first season of the British one, is beautiful and tragic. I get too into following True Crime and am afraid of everything and get rageful and cry, so I try to avoid that. Often I can’t because it’s just too engrossing. I can’t tear my eyes away from the ID Channel if it’s on. But my absolute favorite mysteries are ones when a ragtag team assembles out of necessity to Get Shit Done. Veronica Mars, rest in peace.

KC: All of Larissa’s suggestions, plus I do have a soft spot for certain police procedurals too – especially Cold Case. Also the cozy British something-terrible-has-happened-in-the-vicarage type mysteries like Midsomer Murders and pretty much any Agatha Christie adaptation. I grew up on the Famous Five so I do have a lingering fondness for scrappy-kids-solve-the-case stories. The earlier Harry Potter books fall under this category, and recently I’ve got really into Gotham Academy.

Taylor Swift: Girl Detective Kickstarter reward - print.

NG: The art in this book is heavily reminiscent of other child detective novels (Nancy Drew, The Hardy Boys, or even Encyclopedia Brown). Was it difficult to adapt your own style into these retro-feeling illustrations?

KC: I really enjoyed it overall! Once I figured out the basic look of the art and how to make a celebrity caricature work in that style, it just became endlessly entertaining. Larissa wrote in some hilariously ridiculous scenarios, so I was doing a lot of chuckling to myself when working. There is no way Lorde taking down a suspect John Cena style will not be fun to draw.

NG: Taylor spends a lot of time in Starbucks in the preview chapters. Is it a place that you often find yourself when you are looking for inspiration?

LZ: I work at Starbucks. I spend a latte time in Starbucks. A latte. But even before I worked there, I ended up there quite a bit. Starbucks is this place that embodies the idea of “the third place,” meaning it isn’t home or work but is some place in between where people can hang out or get their own work done. In that way, it’s like a universal study hall with locations all over the world.

Taylor Swift: Girl Detective Kickstarter reward - book bag.

NG: The Nancy Drew series (which you quoted as an influence) was incredibly long running, with 175 novels in the original series. Are there any plans to turn Taylor Swift: Girl Detective into a series?

LZ: We definitely have two solid stories sketched out, should we do more books. They are very much in the vein of Nancy’s “field trip” sort of adventures. Nancy Drew solves a mystery on a farm! Nancy Drew goes skiing, and what do you know, there is a mystery in the snow! We’ve had a lot of fun working out how the real-life “characters” from Taylor Swift’s life would show up in the mystery-world narrative of her life, and what their roles would be.

We’ve also been confronted with concern for the legality of the parody we’re doing. We’ve been told by lawyer friends and our extensive research into the Right of Publicity and parody that we should be okay, since the work is transformative and has such clear art value independent of Taylor Swift, Starbucks, and Nancy Drew, but you know. We also live in fear of their wrath and love them all and hope it’s all taken in good fun.

KC: We did consider doing it MAD style – ie. “Saylor Twift and Starvucks Lovers”. But that way was just not as funny – a large part of the humour is how straight Larissa’s prose plays it. It actually really works as a YA mystery of a certain era, albeit a very weird one with multiple Taylor Swift gags. But I would really love to make at least a couple more Taylor Swift: Girl Detective books if we can. And hey, if an erotic novel starring Donald Trump can become an Amazon bestseller, I hope we should be ok!

NG: Lorde seems to be the sidekick on this mystery. Will she always be solving mysteries with Taylor, or will there be a rotating cast of superstar singers helping her save the day?

KC: Lorde fulfills the role George did in the Nancy Drew series – the tough tomboyish sidekick. However, without giving too much away, some other members of Taylor’s squad do make an appearance. I also think Selena Gomez would make an excellent Bess equivalent were we to do future mysteries.

If you would like to see this alternate world of mystery become a reality, you can help fund this project here.

Taylor Swift: Girl Detective Secret Sleuth Pack.

An Interview With Dave Music of Comic Book Displays (Phoenix Comic Con 2015)

Written by Neil Greenaway

After Phoenix Comic Con 2015 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Dave Music of Comic Book Displays about his take on making frames for comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 07/03/2015, and you can read their version of it here.

Dave Music of ComicBookDisplays.com.

Dave Music owns and operates ComicBookDisplays.com, a company that makes frames designed specifically for comic books. As an avid comic collector (and shameless show-off), it did not take long for me to hear about his website. After acquiring a few of his (quite frankly, brilliant) frames for myself in Phoenix, I wanted to talk to Dave and see where the idea for his frames had come from, and what we might see next.

Neil Greenaway: Why did you start Comic Book Displays?

Dave Music: I love that question. I started it because I am an avid collector of art. I love comic book art. I love what people can create when they place a pencil to a piece of paper. No matter what it looks like, you have that persons interpretation of that character. Which is a lot of fun. So, I started out making frames for just graded comic books, because I thought that CGC was just the bee’s knees. And you could preserve your comic, that art, so that it never got ruined. At that time, I owned close to 80,000 comics. And then I started meeting a lot of artists.

Now I own maybe 150 comics, but I have an ungodly amount of art. But when I started collecting art, I wanted a way to display it. I would always buy these frames, but they were (for lack of a better word) garbage. The edge would crack, or the glass would break. And if they fell and hit the ground, it could slice your art right open. And I knew that I could come up with something way better than that. So I started making frames. I was just making them for myself, in the beginning, but then a lot of people wanted them. Three and a half years ago, we started making just 100 frames every 2 months. But now we are making about 15,000 a week.

Some of the frames available through ComicBookDisplays.com.

NG: How are your frames made? Are they one solid piece of wood?

DM: I have them machine cut. So we take a sheet of wood (we use MDF) and bolt it down to the machine. And then it is all computer controlled. A blade comes down and cuts it all out, routers it out. And it is all one solid piece of wood. So if it ever did manage to fall off of the wall it should never break. That is the beauty of it. That was important to me because I have had so many frames fall off the wall. Poster frames are notorious for that. The corners are so delicate, because they have usually been stapled together. And everything just falls apart from those seems. So we eliminated that problem.

NG: Had you ever worked in comics before, even at a comic shop? Or was Comic Book Displays your first foray into the comic industry?

DM: Nope. I never worked in a comic shop or anything. I always wanted to. I always thought that it looked fun. My love comes purely from being a collector. I remember when I first started reading comics, back in the eighties, I was really into Spider-Man with Carnage and Venom. When Todd McFarlane was drawing. I remember that the art really caught my eye when Spider-Man #300 came out. And I remember that I was about 12 years old when I paid $65 for it. And I thought that this sucked, you know? I had to pay that much just to read it. But the weird thing is, I read it. I remember laying in my bunk bed, rolling the cover back as I flipped through the pages. These days, if you pay $65 for a book, you put it in a bag & board and top loader, or get it graded and never touch it. But I guess that is the difference between a 12 year old kid and a 37 year old collector.

Dave Music at Phoenix Comic Con 2015.

NG: You recently simplified the designs of your frames. What brought that on?

DM: Yes we did, and I love the new design. It was for more than one reason. When I made the original frames, they had clips and screws on the back. Well, when you’re only making 100 frames every other month, sitting down to tighten clips and screws is not really a problem. But when you get an order for 2,500 frames (and they all need painted as well), you could spend a week just installing the hardware. But now with the new design, it literally takes 5 seconds to put a new frame together. It cut our costs, it cut our time invested. I have wanted to make the change for years, because the 11”x17” frames use a top load design, but the manufacturer we were using could not make the comic sized frames that way. So we found a new manufacturer who could do it, and here we are today.

A top loader frame with 11x17 art (by Eric Mengel) inserted.

NG: Have your customers had a positive reaction to the new design?

DM: Oh, absolutely. When we do shows, and people come up to look at the frames, I just slide the top loader out and hand them both pieces. And you can see their eyes light up at the simplicity. But that is all you have to do. And people ask “So you don’t have to fold back staples, or go to Michael’s (I hear about Michael’s a lot), so I don’t have to go to Michael’s and pay $100?”

But I tell them “ All you have to do is slide your comic book inside, and you are done.” And it is super easy to change the comic book out. And it’s so funny. After I explain all this, people want, like, 20 of them. It is a lot of fun doing shows, and seeing people’s reactions when you show them how it works.

NG: I see that the packaging art was done by Jason Meents. How did you hook up with him?

DM: So, Jason is a great guy, and a really good friend of mine. And so back in November, he had posted to Facebook. And it was a Punisher cover that he did. It was a little Punisher, holding a slingshot and tossing a rock up in the air. And I LOVED that image. I thought that it was the greatest thing that I had ever seen. And I had to find out who did it. It was around 2 o’clock in the morning, and I sent him a message saying that this was the coolest thing. And he replied back to me instantly. And we ended up chatting like schoolgirls until the wee hours of the morning. He was just starting out, he had never done a convention. He was looking for a way to get his art out there and start getting commissions.

And I said, well it’s funny you say that. I know a slew of people that collect art and would love your stuff. I started throwing his name around online, showing everybody his work. I took him to C2E2 with me, and then to Planet Comic Con. And I told him “Man, I would really love to have your art on my products. It would get into stores around the country, and get recognized.” And it does. People come up to us at conventions, because they see his art, and say “Oh, Jason drew this!” The really funny part is that in the 11’x17’ frame, they see his art and think that we are selling prints of his work. I tell them “You get to keep that, but it does have a barcode on it.” At C2E2, he was actually signing some of the inserts from our frames for people.

Dave Music showing a print in one of his frames.

NG: What does the future hold for Comic Book Displays?

DM: We are expanding dramatically. First, we are going to start making double, triple and quad frames for both standard and CGC graded books. I think that I want to start doing exclusive colors. We did a really deep, rich purple frame exclusive to New York Special Edition. And then I think we are just going to do more shows. The more people that we meet, the more retailers that we can encounter, will help us get our stuff out there. We also want to try different sizes, maybe record album frames, or frames for movie posters.

The ComicBookDisplays.com banner.

NG: If people wanted to find you in the near future, what other conventions will you guys be at this year?

DM: New York Comic Con (Oct. 8th-11th), maybe San Diego (July 9th-12th)(though that is still up in the air). Then, Cincinnati Comic Con (Sep. 12th-13th) and Cincinnati Expo (Sep. 18th-20th), Wizard World Chicago (Aug. 20th-23rd). And we always do our local cons, up here in Michigan, so we will be at Grand Rapids Comic Con (Oct. 16th-18th) as well. And Emerald City Comic Con (Apr. 7th-10th 2016). And I don’t know what comes after that….

NG: And of course, Dave and his frames can always be found at www.comicbookdisplays.com.

An Interview With Nick Marino of Holy F*ck (Phoenix Comic Con 2015)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2015 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Nick Marino of Holy F*ck about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 06/06/2015, and you can read their version of it here.

Nick Marino being held aloft by Dave Dwonch of Action Lab.

Neil Greenaway: Why don’t we start with you telling us a little about yourself and your book.

Nick Marino: Ok. The company I am here with is Action Lab: Danger Zone. Actually, its Action Lab Entertainment’s mature readers imprint. I am Nick Marino, the writer of Holy F*ck.

NG: So, what inspired you to start writing comics?

NM: I don’t know… I love comics, I wanted to make comics. Now I make indie comics. (laughs) I think really what it comes down to is that this is the medium that speaks to me the most. Just comics in general. Comics speak to me the most. And the more I read comics, and the more I learned about the business, I learned that, number one, really the best way to get involved with the business (if you want to work with a publisher, and not publish yourself) you really do need to start with an independent company who is not doing licensed stuff. For the most part. There are some people who can go directly into something licensed, but that normally means that they are transitioning from a different medium. I have a friend who is a novelist, and she is transitioning from being a novelist to writing her first comic (which was the Jem book from IDW). But that is a different bag. I’m not a novelist, I did not start with that. So I was just like, “I gotta learn how to make comics. I’m going to teach myself.” So I made self-published comics. They were TERRIBLE! But I had fun. And for me, I thought, what’s the next step? As I have learned what it’s like to self-publish and to tell my own stories with my own characters, I’m really passionate now about not just telling my stories, but about that whole side of the business. The side of the business that is about original creations.

Nick Marino and his skateboard at Phoenix Comic Con 2015.

NG: Is Holy F*ck a story that you feel you need to tell?

NM: I like that question, because there is a yes and a no answer. The yes answer is that it’s a concept that I came up with, and I loved. I was on a podcast for a friend, Kaylie McDougal who is a terrific cartoonist and did our variant covers for issue #3. And we were talking about projects that we had were never, ever going to get made. Because they were too out there, or whatever. And I talked about my idea for The Bible 2, and how I would never find a collaborator for that. I can draw, but I am not good enough to draw anything like that. And somebody in the comments left a message that said “I would draw that”. And it turned out to be a cartoonist that I was not familiar with from the Netherlands named Daniel Arruda Massa. And I said to myself “I am never going to have this opportunity ever again. So I am going to take him up on it, no matter what”. But it turns out that he is a great cartoonist, and a great person. So it worked out well. And in that respect, because it felt that it was so serendipitous, my answer is yes.

But I could also answer no in the sense that, it was not that this specific story spoke to me more than other ideas that I have. It’s just that I love to tell stories. And this one felt like it was starting to happen on its own, almost without me even trying to make it happen.

NG: How receptive was Action Lab to picking it up?

NM: You know, I pitched to everybody that I possibly could for this. Anybody that had any semblance of publishing this type of material. And, with Action Lab, it was super easy. I just emailed them. Then I waited three months. And I got an email back that said “Yeah, we’re interested”. And that was it. Now, the book was already done. But they did not ask us to change any content, they just asked us to color it. That was it. It was really super easy. They made it feel like sending an email to a friend. It was that easy.

Holy F*ck comics from Action Lab.

NG: Is this your first book put out through a publisher?

NM: Yes, it is.

NG: You had mentioned some self-published work. Could you tell us about that?

NM: Well, I did a bunch of webcomics that I would then collect into mini-comics. So, I started out with this really bad webcomic called Zombie Palin. It is almost difficult to describe, but all you really need to know is that it featured a Zombie Sarah Palin. Then there was this thing called cut-and-paste comics. Well, I did a cut-and-paste called Super Haters. And I ran that one for about 5 years. I was even doing it daily at one point. You know, it’s cut-and-paste, it was not that hard to do a daily. And I would collect those into mini-comics. And I decided to see what it would be like to work in the main stream publishers conveyor belt style. Where you have a penciller, an inker, all those steps in the process. So I got together with a group of friends to do a webcomic, that we would also collect and publish as comic books, called Time Log. Which was rejected by Comixology recently. Super Haters is on Comixology, though. Then I did a bunch of weird, little one-off things. Sometimes they were webcomics, but sometimes they meant to be mini-comics. And they were all cool, but, they were really like me training myself. It was like getting your masters in comics, for me.

NG: How long have you been making comics?

NM: I have always been cartooning. You know how kids are put into roles as they grow up? Well I was always “the cartoonist”. And so I was always making comics, and cartoons. But they were more like comic strips. So I would do comic strips for my school newspaper, stuff like that. And then I just, I guess really I started drinking more, and partying more. And spending less time on creative stuff. So I kinda got away from it for a while. But starting in 2008, with the Zombie Palin comic I mentioned, I started really hunkering down and focusing in on it. So I guess that it has been, getting close now to 7 years that I have had tunnel vision on this. Saying that I want to be a professional I need to start teaching myself how to do it.

Nick Marino at Phoenix Comic Con 2015.

NG: Do you work in a day job?

NM: I have a complicated situation, but basically I am lucky enough not to have to hold down a day job right now. Is Holy F*ck a day job? No. But I am very fortunate that right now I can focus on creativity as my day job. For a short period of time.

NG: So, what exactly is Holy F*ck about?

NM: I think that the basic concept of Holy F*ck, I like to describe it by starting with our nun, Sister Maria. She is very devout. But she is basically tested in her faith when she has to team up with Jesus and Satan to take down this army of mythological gods who want to be worshipped again. So their plan is to create a nuclear apocalypse, save the humans from the apocalypse, and then reap the benefits of the worship. Maria is the driving force behind the book. And she has dreams that lead her to Jesus and Satan. So I guess that she, in a biblical context, is like a prophet. Now, Jesus and Satan have sort of an unexplained past together. They seem to really like each other. Maybe a little bit more than anybody expected. Certainly more than Maria expected, or is comfortable with. But Jesus and Satan don’t really have much to do. They’re kinda bored, and so, they say “To hell with it, let’s help Maria.” And that’s the adventure that they go on.

Holy F*ck flyers.

NG: Is there a future for these characters?

NM: In the future, our new series – Holy F*cked which can be found in the July Previews Catalog and should be in stores around September. If the first series was an homage and satire of over the top action movies, the sequel will be both an homage and satire of what both Daniel and I love about super hero comics. I don’t want to spoil too much, because it’s not out yet. But I think that I can tell you that the main antagonist is Hercules. And he has an axe to grind based on what happened at the end of the first series. And he really has his sights set on Jesus. He is the one that Hercules blames. But if anyone read the first book, they will know that it was actually Maria. And that is where the Holy F*cked starts.

NG: Do you have any other books coming out soon?

NM: I do not have any other books set up right now. I do have a Kickstarter that I am planning for a stick figure graphic novel that I drew. It is not ready to go yet, it’s just percolating. But that’s just going to be for me, really. It is going to be a Kickstarter that I would want to back. And I think that, by proxy, it will be one that other people get a big kick out of. It is based on another webcomic that I used to do, called Stick Cats. It’s about a bunch of stick figure cats. It was a comic that I drew that was like jazz almost. In that it was improvised. I would improvise it from beginning to end. It is silly, it is raw, it’s ugly, and I think that people will really enjoy the full story if they get a chance to read it.

An Interview With Eric Mengel of Ocho Comics (Phoenix Comic Con 2015)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2015 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Eric Mengel of Ocho Comics about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 06/04/2015, and you can read their version of it here.

Eric Mengel of Ocho Comics.

Neil Greenaway: Can you start by introducing yourself and the name of your comic?

Eric Mengel: My name is Eric Mengel. I draw a book called Ocho. It’s a mini-comic. I’ve been writing and drawing it for 20 years. It’s my love letter to comics. It’s my thank you card to all the creators that did all those amazing things for me, you know, when I was reading books heavily.

NG: What books or artists inspired you to start Ocho?

EM: A lot of different ones. I mean, obviously reading comics for so long at some point you to start to think “I could probably do this on my own. I could probably write something better than this idea.” And then from there, trying to find artists. That would fail, it wouldn’t work out. So I said “Ok, I gotta learn how to do this on my own.” At that time I was reading a lot of McFarlane’s Spider-Man and he had just left Amazing and went on to the regular Spider-Man, the adjective-less Spider-Man, and I just was amazed, impressed that this artist guy could also write it. And it wasn’t the best stuff and later on I would realize that, but it was his. He did it himself. Then also these were these books by Dark horse Presents, Concrete by Paul Chadwick blew me away. Later on books like Frank Miller’s Sin City, Mike Mignola’s Hellboy, Dave Simms’ Cerebus, those books, you know, as I got a little bit older and started looking at things like black-and-white and I’m learning how to draw and it all kind of melded. And I don’t feel like any one of those guys would define my style but at the same time I feel like it’s kind of a buffet. I just like pick little things from them – I like all the blacks, or I like this idea or whatever, I like this main character that looks a little bit different. So that is kind of what I have done.

Ocho Comics by Eric Mengel.

NG: Why is the story of Ocho important for you to tell?

EM: For me, though I didn’t quite realize this early on, I feel like Ocho is me. You know I would consider myself to be a pretty good person. I try to do my good deeds. I try to help people out. And I feel like Ocho is kind of like any of us. We have our best side of us and any of us have our worse side of us. But we would like to talk up the best side and we would like to ignore the bad side. And so I feel like Ocho is probably that next level of me, and it’s just kinda like making the world a better place, just trying to make a difference. Just trying to do extra things. Ocho is sent from a far off world to make a difference. I came from Illinois to Phoenix to make a difference. I work in group homes as my day job. And because of that, like it just is a pretty good metaphor, it just works for me. And it’s also, I do it first for me, like it’s more important for me to do it as a release and as a story and as a challenge. That makes more to me, that means more to me than selling mini-comics at a convention. I just like drawing. Some people like sudoku, I like drawing comics. This is my thing.

Ocho Comics t-shirt from Eric Mengel.

NG: You recently ran a successful Kickstarter. Can you tell us a little bit about that? What was your first experience on Kickstarter like?

EM: It was actually my second experience. My first experience didn’t go, but this was before Kickstarter was really “Kickstarter”. I had heard of it, I thought it was a great idea but it had not taken off. It was very small at that point. But I thought it would be cool to do a TPB. It failed. I made some money, like some people pitched in, but I didn’t make what I was supposed to make. And I didn’t do it for a long time, and I was going to do it. Like collecting all of my work, like 3 or 4 TPB’s at 200 pages each. And then I thought, “That’s a really big gamble”. Because you haven’t tested that market in years, and your first time you’re going to say, “Hey I’m going to put out 800 pages of material, you should support me. Trust me with your money”. I just felt like it wouldn’t be a good idea. And I started also noticing at conventions, people would come up to me and they would say “Have you done any Kickstarter campaigns? I like to find new material on Kickstarter.” And that kind of sunk into my head, like I should really pay attention to that. I thought I should really think about maybe even doing a mini-comic and doing a low, low goal (which I set as $50) and it funded in less than 5 minutes. Or it pledged what I had asked for at that level. Then obviously it kept going up, kept going up and I think we made like $930 or something like that. But it’s almost 2000% of what I had asked for so it’s really good. I don’t know what to make of it. I don’t know if I’ll do the next issue on Kickstarter or not.

Although I do know that by doing that and my friends spreading the word about it, I met new people who not only supported the Kickstarter but also friend requested me on Facebook or liked my Ocho fansite or Twitter or whatever. All these things I don’t necessarily do anyway, but they jumped on board. And some of them, you know, I instant message back and forth with, like they have interesting questions or they are like “Hey I really like what you are doing”. And I’ve learned about their comics that they are making. Because a lot of us that make comics are fans of comics. And we not only like to do our own thing but we kind of like to support what other people are doing as well. So overall, I mean, it was an amazing experience. I think I will do it again, but I just don’t know how quickly. Because I don’t want to be one of those guys that swing from branch to branch, Kickstarter to Kickstarter. You know, here’s the next one. We’ll take a little bit of a break. So yeah.

Eric Mengel and Ocho in the East Valley Tribune.

NG: You’ve been making Ocho for 20 years. How has the industry changed for you personally in that time?

EM: Personally, 20 years… I mean 20 years ago there was not a Facebook page. And I sometimes think, “What would happen if I disappeared off Facebook?” If I just said, “I ‘m not going to do these posts, I’m not going to talk about any late night drawing or bother anyone with those things.” I think it would have an effect on me. It would have an effect on my sales. It would have an effect on my convention appearances. I think that certain conventions invite me to go to their convention, like Phoenix Comic Con invite me here, because they know I am going to talk up Phoenix Comic Con. And if I disavowed that, if I turned that off I think it would have a hard effect on me. So when I go back and I think what it was like to sit in a box and draw a comic. You can’t really tell the world. I mean, at that time, yeah there was the World Wide Web, but it’s a much different thing than it is now. I think Facebook and social media has been a huge thing.

I think also, comics and the people who are drawing them have changed. I think that there is (I hope, I hope that there is) this idea for individuality. And not just to do the same rote, kind of, this is the basic thing we are going to stick with, sort of “We are not going to try to evolve, we are not going to support new voices and new things.” So I feel that as the media has kind of gone on, and as comics have grown, and as those people that used to say “You have got to draw 11×17, you’ve got to use a Hunt’s mapping point 102 and you’ve got to use this kind of brush and this kind of ink.” I think a lot of that has gone away and now it’s just “Hey man, create something. Create whatever you want to do and do something outside of the box. And have fun with it.” So, I think that those two things are really key. I feel like those things have really helped, not just me. It certainly has helped me, but I feel like it’s helped a lot of different people and I feel it’s made the medium more interesting even though numbers indicate that we have had a decline, or we have a little bit of a resurgence, (the pendulum goes back and forth). I feel like the stuff that’s coming out and continuing to come out, it’s great stuff. Where as the stuff that was coming out, yeah there were higher numbers and more books but the quality wasn’t there, it was just cashing in, you know, to control market shares. I think that those things have changed a lot.

Ocho t-shirts, buttons, and original pages from Eric Mengel for sale.

NG: You recently started having your covers colored by Damon Begay. How did you guys hook up?

EM: We officially met at Jesse James Comics. So a comic book store, and I don’t know if I was appearing there, maybe we were just hanging out having a doodle night or whatever. I don’t know how Damon got in my life. I don’t really remember the moment. I am happy that he is in my life. This kid, he is the future, as far as I’m concerned. At one point I called him my nephew, now I refer to him as my brother. He impresses me. I think back to what it was like when I was a young man drawing comics, 22 years old. Damon was putting books out every other month, and he’s always like, “Oh, here’s the next issue.” He’s into the media of photoshop and coloring. He’s scanning in pages for my trade paperback collections. And it was just a natural progression. I bought a huge scanner and brought it over and said “Here you go, I’ll pay you for pages scanned and I’ll pay you for colors. Can you help me out?”

He said “You don’t have to pay me.” But I had to pay him. I don’t want to feel bad about it. And from there, his colors, I just think that he has done an amazing job. An AMAZING job. Hopefully, we’ll have more from Damon doing that. And I know we will.

NG: Aside from writing Ocho, you also work in a boys’ home. Have you been doing that for a while as well?

EM: Yeah. 20 years, both of them are 20 years. So, Ocho was created in 1993. It was kinda like shortly after Image was founded. Erik Larsen had put together this thing saying “Your character could appear alongside of the Dragon!” At the time, I was learning to draw. I had this bald guy that I was drawing on pads of paper, learning how to draw. Because all the artists that I was getting flaked out. And I just kind of made a little uniform, or a little outfit that he wore, and I sent it off. It didn’t win. I didn’t get in there. But I stuck with that guy, because it just felt right. So I had done that. At the time, I was going to college. I started working with kids in the college. I wanted to come out to Phoenix from Chicago, I did an internship to finish school. That was at the group home. They hired me three weeks into the internship, and the rest is history. So it has been 20 years living in Arizona, 20 years working in a group home for abused and neglected children, and 20 years of Ocho.

Eric Mengel of Ocho Comics at Phoenix Comic Con 2015.

NG: Do you feel that your time with the boys has influenced your comics at all?

EM: It has. They have given me ideas. And they give me things that I want to put in the book. Like, maybe not their struggle, but I definitely want to put some of their mentality in there. And it’s really a good thing for them to see, too. They know that I work really hard. With my level of quality, I want the best. We had this past year, academically, we had somewhere between 7 and 9 kids on the honor roll. That’s out of ten. That’s really good. Specifically for kids in group homes, some of whom have never been in school. One of them couldn’t even read. So we really work hard with them, but then they also see that if I have some down time, let’s say that we’re at a dentist appointment, or counseling, or whatever, and they come out.

Well I’m sitting there drawing. And I can kind of talk to them about, this is important to me too. Or they’ll see the next book come out, and they’ll ask “How do you do that?” And I say, “Well, I usually go into my office about 8:30 at night. And I usually won’t come out until 1:00 or 1:30, depending on how much drive I have or how much I need to get done that night.” And they can see that, and maybe draw inspiration from it. Not for them to be comic book artists, but for them to work towards whatever they want to do. You are not always going to get to be the football player, or the NBA star. But you can still join a basketball team. You can still have fun. And this is the same thing. I’m not super-star status. But I’m putting out a book. And I’m having fun, and that is what’s important. As long as you don’t lose focus on that. That can be where the problems start coming in. You see that in comics, people who are drawing at a certain level of skill, but they have not reached what they consider “making it”. So they give up. But these things have to be taken in small steps.

NG: What is coming up for Ocho? What is next for Eric?

EM: Well, I have jumped around in the storyline, because I do 24 hour comics or 12 hour comics or whatever, so I’m writing in two different areas. I am issue 28, but I could write issue 37, or issue 31 (because I’m done with issues 29 & 30 and 35 & 36). It gets a little confusing, but there is a science to it. And I’m trying to figure it out. Can I jump ahead in the story and then fill it in while making things work, and keeping it interesting. There was a sketchbook from Peepshow Comics, an indie book, and there was a jam strip that used different cartoonists. But they would tell the story out of order panel wise. So they would roll a die. You get panel 5, you get panel 3, whatever. And they would build this story, ad have to make it work. That was really my inspiration. Let’s see, can I jump ahead? Also, when I do 24 hour comics, I feel like it would be cheating to just do the next issue (you are supposed to come up with an original idea).

Find out more about Eric Mengel and Ocho here.

An Interview With Val Hochberg of Mystery Babylon (Denver Comic Con 2015)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2015 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Val Hochberg of Mystery Babylon about her take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 05/29/2015, and you can read their version of it here.

Val Hochberg with her husband, Scott.

Neil Greenaway: What are you here promoting today?

Val Hochberg: My name is Val Hochberg and I make Mystery Babylon!

NG: How many years have you attended Denver Comic Con?

VH: This is my second year. We love coming up to Denver!

Mystery Babylon books by Val Hochberg.

NG: What are your impressions of Denver?

VH: We love it here! Plus, my husband grew up here in Colorado (in Colorado Springs), and so we’re always daydreaming about moving out here so we can become locals to Denver Comic Con. So that’s the fantasy.

NG: What is your favorite part of coming up to Denver?

VH: Once you enter Colorado, on the drive (I mean New Mexico is ok), but as soon as you enter Colorado, it is just beautiful magnificence. Like instantly. It’s kind of weird. It’s like “Welcome to the colorful Colorado!” and you just see mountains of beauty. So, I love it.

NG: As a chibi artist, where do you draw your inspiration from?

VH: Gosh, I don’t know. Sugar, candy, cookies? (laughs) I just love cute things, and so any time that I can take something (even if it’s not cute) and make it cute, that just makes me happy inside.

Prints by Val Hochberg.

NG: You were part of Test Subjects. Is that still a thing?

VH: I guess that it is officially not a thing. It’s kind of not what it was, because Ben (Glendenning) has kind of stopped doing the convention scene. And it was a thing we had started so we could all do conventions together. As of right now, me and Jeff are the only ones really doing conventions. We actually drove up here together. So we are still a team. Ben is still on the team, but he’s doing it more at small comic stores and signings. So we’re still a thing, I guess.

NG: And what are currently working on?

VH: Ok, so, we did a Kickstarter for Mystery Babylon Chapter 3, which I was really nervous about, and the night before I was questioning if this was even going to work. But then, within eight hours, we had hit our goal, so that was amazing. We raised enough to also print chapter 4. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to get the books in time to have here at Denver, but we will have them for Phoenix Comic Con. The books are done, they are printed. They are beautiful, hopefully. I have only seen pictures, but they do look good. And so now I hope to start working on chapter 5. It’s a never-ending comic adventure around here. We also have coming up a side issue that will not be online (because everything else is online). This will be Delilah and Kick Girl’s back story. It will be a single issue that you hopefully will be able to get on Kickstarter and then through conventions after that.

Original art from Val Hochberg.

NG: Do you get a lot of support from your family, having chosen this as a career?

VH: My family knows that I love to draw. I have always drawn, and they have always supported me. They used to let me draw in restaurants or wherever growing up. I don’t think they quite understand what I do now, as much. I have started having my mom proofread my comics, because I think that’s the only way she reads them. But she is very supportive. She has three girls, and we all draw.

Mystery Babylon can be found at www.kick-girl.com.

Val Hochberg at Denver Comic Con 2015.

An Interview With Joseph Perez & Travis Rector of Buddies Cartoon (Denver Comic Con 2015)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2015 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Joseph Perez & Travis Rector of the Buddies Cartoon about their take on publishing indie comics and cartoons. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 05/28/2015, and you can read their version of it here.

Travis Rector & Joseph Perez of Buddies Cartoon.

Neil Greenaway: Why don’t you start by telling us a little bit about yourself and Buddies?

Joseph Perez: I am Joseph Perez, and I am the creator of Buddies Cartoon. It’s an animated series and comic books that take place after the animated series.

NG: How did you get into indie comics?

JP: Basically, just by starting out and doing it. That was really it. I mean, I had a story that I felt that I needed to tell. And I wanted to tell. And just went off from there. I wasn’t really prepared to do it, but I just sort of went for it anyway. That was basically how it started.

NG: Well, leading off from that, why is this a story that needed to be told?

JP: I think that everyone has their own personal reasons for it. I think that when you have a story that you are fond of, and that you relate with a lot, that you kind of want to put it out there for people to see. And see what they think about it. I think that’s how a lot of stories get told, in general. At least in my personal opinion.

Buddies comics from Joseph Perez.

NG: Do you feel that as a comic creator, you have gained (or lost) any advantage by being located in Denver?

JP: Specifically with Buddies Cartoon, it’s more of a niche market, I suppose. Instead of doing it somewhere else. In Denver, in Colorado in general, it’s more accepted. So I’d say it’s beneficial to be here than other places, at the moment.

NG: Talking about the marijuana aspect of it, as legalization spreads, because it’s passing all over the nation, do you anticipate any growth in the book or cartoon because of that?

JP: I would definitely think so. I’m actually going to a few other different comic cons this year which will be in Chicago, Nashville, Reno & Austin this year. So I’ll be going out there. I know it’s not as accepted there, but I’ll just be ahead of the curve on that one.

NG: Do you feel that attending Denver Comic Con increases exposure for your book?

JP: Definitely. I’ve been doing this for three years now. And I think that last year we had 70,000 people come through. Even if only 10% choose to stop and see my comic, that’s 7,000 people who have seen my comic that would not have if I wasn’t here. It definitely brings the exposure up. And you hand out a lot of stuff. People can come up and actually see it, physically, instead of just online.

Buddies comics from Joseph Perez.

NG: What benefits do you find in indie publishing vs. work for larger companies?

JP: I don’t know exactly how, if I was with Marvel or some other large company, how the costs get split up. But I would imagine that doing it the indie way, just going to your local printer, is going to be cheaper than asking a larger company to publish your work. It’s more work, but you are going to get a bigger percentage of the profits. More profitable, but it is a lot more work.

NG: And what are you working on currently?

JP: I have finished the first season of the animated series, and I have it on DVD. And we now have three comics that all come after the first season. One of which was supposed to be the second season, but I decided to make it into a comic book. Because I thought it would relate better. There is stuff that I can do in a comic book that I still can’t animate that well. Yet. We have two more comics coming, those should be around 40 to 60 pages each. And we’re starting season 2.

NG: So the animated series is coming back for a season 2?

JP: It is. We’ll have full episodes and everything.

Buddies Cartoon Season 1 DVD cover.

NG: And speaking of the animated series, let’s switch the interview to the other side of the table, Travis.

Travis Rector: My name is Travis Rector, I work for Buddies Cartoon, and I am the voice of The Man, the Locos Gringos, and Ozzie the supervisor.

NG: How did you get involved with Buddies Cartoon?

TR: I got involved because Joseph is my step-son. He decided that he wanted to do this. He came to me and said “Hey, do you think that you could do this voice?”

And I said “Sure, let’s give it a run”. So he gave me an opportunity, and quite honestly, I ran with it. And I love it. It’s just a lot of fun.

NG: Do you guys get a lot of support from family while working on this project?

TR: Yes! A tremendous amount of support from family. As a matter of fact, I’m one of Joseph’s biggest fans. And his mom was here today and his sisters. Everyone is very supportive. And I think it takes that. If you don’t have that kind of foundation, it’s easy to lose your way pretty quick. Because when you are doing something that’s on your own, as opposed to something that everyone knows about, it’s really hard to hang your hat on something like that. But we have a really grounded foundation. So, when things are not going the greatest, we have to pick each other up. It’s really great. And the support has just been tremendous.

Travis Rector & Joseph Perez of Buddies Cartoon.

You can find Buddies Cartoon on Facebook, YouTube or by going to www.BuddiesCartoon.com.

An Interview With Jeff Piña of Sideways 8 Studios (Denver Comic Con 2015)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2015 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Jeff Pina of Sideways 8 Studios about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 05/27/2015, and you can read their version of it here.

Jeff Piña of Sideways 8 Studios.

Neil Greenaway: What are you here promoting at Denver Comic Con?

Jeff Piña: Well, my name is Jeff Pina, and I’m doing a couple books. Dr. Oblivion’s Guide to Teenage Dating, another is Bosco & Fleet: Detectives Of The Occult Sciences. I also do Super Pawn and Imaginatives.

NG: Is this your first time attending Denver Comic Con?

JP: Yes it is, first time in Denver. Actually, second time ever in my life. But this is my first time vending here in Denver.

Books from Sideways 8 Studios.

NG: What are your impressions of the convention so far?

JP: I like it. It’s a good crowd, it’s a good vibe. A lot of people are checking things out. It’s nice, I like it. And it’s a lot bigger than I was expecting, which is cool.

NG: What is the best part of coming up to Denver for an event like this?

JP: Well, I have really good traveling buddies. I came up here with Val Hochberg, her husband Scott, Sam Sawyer. So it was blast coming up here with them, just making that drive. Because I cannot imagine making that drive by myself. Even just about eight hours in, you start getting a little space madness setting in.

Prints from Jeff Piña.

NG: As a chibi artist, where do you draw your inspiration from?

JP: Honestly, a lot of it is Peanuts, and Garfield influenced more so than by the anime. I also like the squishy aspect of things, I like things to look huggable and be poofy. But Peanuts was probably the strongest influence.

Cats Are Bad At by Jeff Piña.

NG: What projects are you currently working on?

JP: I am working on the next Bosco & Fleet issue. It’s a two-parter. It is going to be a War Of The Worlds homage mashed up with a couple of other H.G. Wells things. I just released Dr. Oblivion’s Guide To Teenage Dating in graphic novel for the first time in full color with Shannon O’Connor doing the colors on that for me. And I just released the 10/20 year anniversary crossover, Dr. Oblivion’s Guide To The Imaginatives, where they both cross over. Dr. Oblivion will be 10 years old in November, and Imaginatives I’ve been drawing for 20 years. It’s been published for almost ten years now. And I always intended them to be crossed over. In fact if you go back and read the very first Dr. Oblivion that I did ten years ago, I put the characters in on the second page. Just as part of the crowd, and nobody noticed. So I’ve got some of those panels in the current crossover I just did.

You can find Jeff’s work at www.sideways8studios.com.

Jeff Piña at Denver Comic Con 2015.

An Interview With Kevin Gentilcore of CreepHouse Comics (Denver Comic Con 2015)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2015 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Kevin Gentilcore of CreepHouse Comics about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 05/26/2015, and you can read their version of it here.

Kevin Gentilcore of CreepHouse Comics.

Neil Greenaway: So, what is the name of your company?

Kevin Gentilcore: Well, I am Kevin Gentilcore, one half of CreepHouse Comics. The other half, William Tooker, is not here this year. He lives in Ohio.

NG: How did you get into creating indie comics?

KG: I went to college here, at the Art Institute Of Animation. I thought that was a worthwhile pursuit. I just wanted to do art, and I didn’t know what that meant really, so animation seemed like the way to go at the time. It was kind of during the transition to 3D that was really big at the time. But I didn’t like 3D. So I kind of focused on 2D, and then kind of got back into my love of comics while at collage. I grew up drawing comics, with my friends at school and stuff. But we went to high school and kind of forgot because, you know, girls & punk rock. Stuff like that. As I started getting back into it in collage, I sort of decided I should start making my own comics. But I didn’t know what that meant really. Then after graduation, I ran into Will. We were “working” with some local people. We shared similar ideas. We liked old ’70s Hammer Horror Films and Gross Monster Movies. He had already written a bunch of short stories and novels. And we had the idea that we should translate these into comics. They’re really visual, and really interesting. There was a neat, poetic rhyme to some of his stories. So we just came up with that together.

And he’s like “We probably need a name. How about CreepHouse?”

And I said “All right, done.”

That was six years ago, and that’s how we’ve been doing it since.

Kevin Gentilcore of CreepHouse Comics.

NG: Do you have any inspirations in indie comics? Or are there other creators that you draw from?

KG: I really like everyone who has kind of struck out on their own, and kind of looked away from being a part of the Big Two (or Three, I guess, although I really like Image – I consider them a third of the Big Three). My original inspiration to get into web comics – which is where we started – was the Penny Arcade guys. They were really influential. I know that we’re separate, almost opposite ends of the spectrum. But I really enjoyed what they were doing. They’re kind of touch-and-go now, but the idea that they would take something that they love so much and turn it into this franchise, this huge empire was really inspiring to me.

Another big influence is Mike Mignola, I consider him indie. Even though he makes Hellboy. But that was an indie comic. I think all indie comic creators kind of want to be Mike Mignola. You know? Complete control over your own stuff and not having to compromise.

CreepHouse Comics.

NG: Do you feel that as a comic creator, you have gained (or lost) any advantage by being located in Denver?

KG: I have no idea. I wouldn’t know. I’m from Denver.

NG: Do you have a network of other creators that you work with in Denver? Do you find like minds?

KG: I am finding like minds here. It seems that I’m meeting new artists every year at DCC. These guys (points at the table to the right) have been here before, but I had never met them. And this guy (points to the left) is not a comic creator, but is local to Denver and makes great horror stuff. And I do collaborate. Me and Robert Elrod have been collaborating with our friend Patrick Hoover on a metal-themed comic, so we are all of a similar mind frame there. Horror stuff is mostly me and Robert, Dan Crosier, Stan Yan. But I think there’s a lot of people here who are trying to do their own thing as well.2-1

The Haunter #2 from CreepHouse Comics.

NG: Do you think that attending Denver Comic Con boosts your exposure for CreepHouse Comics?

KG: I think it does. Whether or not people retain it is another thing. I have repeat customers now, so that’s good. I think that probably is a good thing.

NG: What benefits do you see in indie publishing Vs. work for the bigger companies?

KG: I guess that the big one, on top of the others, is that you own it. You’re not going to cheat you out of it. I know that there is something going around with DC right now about their contracts with creators. So, ownership, complete control, you work at your own pace. The downside is obviously promotion and advertising, I mean, look around. There’s like 400 artists here.

Kevin Gentilcore of CreepHouse Comics.

NG: Would you like to talk about your current project a little bit?

KG: Currently, the new book is The Haunter #2. I had the first issue premiere last year at DCC’14. It took me a little while, but the second issue is premiering this weekend. It’s a super-hero horror themed comic. It takes place in this town called Darkport which is full of monsters and zombies and ghosts who live like average folks. And he is their super-hero. We are also doing Krush McNulty, which is me & Will’s homage to cheesy ’50s-’60s pulp sci-fi. Right now it’s only coming out digitally, through Comixology. But we are thinking about collecting it once the next issue is done. And we just started talking about a new, long-form graphic novel that is kind of in the works right now, so that should be something fun to work on. Anyone who is interested can find us at www.CreepHouseComics.com, or through our Comixology store.

Prints and original art from Kevin Gentilcore.

An Interview With Jesse Dubin of 8th Wonder Press (Denver Comic Con 2015)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2015 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Jesse Dubin of 8th Wonder Press about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 05/26/2015, and you can read their version of it here.

Jesse Dubin of 8th Wonder Press.

Neil Greenaway: First off, what is the name of your book?

Jesse Dubin: Uncanny Adventures is our anthology series. It started three years ago. The latest edition is Uncanny Adventures: Duo, which is a three part mini-series made up entirely of two page comic stories.

NG: As a local indie publisher, do you see any boost in exposure from attending Denver Comic Con?

JD: Absolutely. A lot of folks don’t understand, or don’t know that there is a large comic environment in their own community. So you don’t have to go to San Diego or Wizard World in order to have a meaningful experience involving comic creators.

Jesse Dubin with 8th Wonder Press books.

NG: How did you get into publishing indie comics?

JD: I kind of got tired of not seeing the comics that I wanted in the world. As everything got darker and more grim, I kind of wanted to see the other side. There are some really inspirational books out there like Atomic Robo and the kind of fun stuff like that, that we weren’t seeing at the time. So I thought, well I wonder if I could find people doing those kind of stories that I’m interested in and helping get them out there. And sure enough, there are those people. So it’s really rewarding. Interestingly enough, Marvel, DC, and other big companies have now started going lighter, so I know that I was not the only one.

8th Wonder Press Draw Your Own Comics Strip Paper.

NG: Is there a decent network of comic creators to work with in Denver?

JD: Absolutely! There are a ton of local folks. We’re fortunate to work with Dan Conner and Mr. V. I would say that 45-50% of our total books are local to the Denver area.

Uncanny Adventures: Duo #1 from 8th Wonder Press.

NG: Do you feel that as a publisher, you have gained (or lost) any advantage by being located in Denver?

JD: In terms of finding creators and working with people, we’ve had a huge advantage. There are very good communities of creators and artists here to work with, and everyone is very welcoming.

Denver Comic Con can be a bit of an island in terms of getting out to present your books to other people, so we’ve done Salt Lake, Kansas City and Planet Comic Con. The East Coast has another big show every weekend. So it is easier to make the circuit and meet connections out there. But in terms of making quality comics and finding content and creators, Denver is great.

8th Wonder Press books.

NG: In your eyes, is there a benefit to working in indie books as opposed to work for the Big Two?

JD: Yes. When you are an indie creator, you own 100% of what you make, and that’s a BIG deal. Our books, even though we print artists work, we do not own anything. All we are acquiring is the stories to print, and get out there, but they own every piece of the work they produce for us. Which I think is the big draw. A lot of the smaller presses offer that sort of deal. And truthfully, the Big Two, they want to see published indie work before you can get a job working on Batman. So it is also sort of how folks come up the ranks these days.

NG: Any final thoughts for the day?

JD: Just that we are always looking for talented creators that are looking for ways to get their work out there. Folks who maybe haven’t been printed before, and they are just looking for that opportunity. Everyone is invited. So hit us up at www.8thWonderPress.com or on Facebook or Twitter at 8th Wonder Press. We love meeting people, and look forward to talking to them.