An Interview With J. James McFarland of Friendly Belligerent (Denver Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with J. James McFarland of Friendly Belligerent about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/21/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

J. James McFarland at Denver Comic Con 2016 (1).

I first ran into J. James McFarland at Dink! (Denver Comic & Art Expo) in March 2016. I enjoyed his art style and picked up a few of his comics and ‘zines. When I heard that he would have some new books available for Denver Comic Con, I jumped at the chance to sit and talk with him about some of his recent projects.

Neil Greenaway: I am here today at Denver Comic Con 2016 talking with J James McFarland of many things, but first off about Cryptids and Cogs. Could you give me your synopsis of the series?

J James McFarland: So, the group known as Red Team Go is making a series called Cryptids and Cogs. It is about finding and selecting our own unique cryptid from any sort of mythology or understanding of the world, and mixing it in with essentially a steampunk country of our own creation. So that it’s united thematically but leaves a lot of room for individual artist interpretation and concepts. It’s a very loose conceptual idea.

NG: I know that you have a story in the first issue. Can you tell us a little about that story?

J James: Absolutely. The eventual title of my story became Seymour Sexton Saxon; he’s hunting an Ogopogo, which is from the Pacific Northwest Native American mythology. The story of the Ogopogo was one I was told as a child so I was drawn to it by familiarity. I was careful in my story to try and balance reverence of Native American mythology of the Ogopogo as an overview and re-telling with a whimsical hunter who is sort of, I don’t know how to say it, maybe a bad influence. He’s absurdist in the same manner as Gaston in Beauty and the Beast. A little arrogant, a little reckless. I really like the old chap.

Prints and t-shirts from J. James McFarland at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: Your story is actually available as its own separate comic. Did you do anything to change it or alter it at all for the new issue?

J James: Yes, they are both separate and modified versions of the same story. You will find the same story in each one, but on a small scale some of the art has been altered. On a larger scale, my story was originally envisioned to be black and white and it is very delicately water brush painted. So my version is a black and white that retains the original gradients. The larger compendium produces a version of it in a monochromatic style which looks a little like retouching old photographs. In that way I could retain the gradient value and tones, but also have it printed in color and I think the effect is pretty striking.

NG: Moving forward with the series, do you have any ideas for stories in future issues?

J James: I have more adventures of Seymour Sexton Saxon planned. I am very fond of him and I have outlined the future of where I would go with him. As far as Red Team Go’s plans extend they already have the next several issues planned out and each one is a different creature and a different set of creators.

Mind Blown by J. James McFarland.

NG: Are there any other books with Red Team Go that you are currently working on?

J James: I pre-dated the creation of the group as a local publishing group by a few years, back when it was still a social club. So the first book that I in was the first major adventure, Dinopocalypse. Since then I’ve been doing largely my own work. But I’m sure in the future there will be more collaboration.

NG: Fair Enough. On your own then, what books have you been working on?

J James: I have an ongoing web comic that I just debuted at Denver Comic Con in print form called Mustang Tuesday Weekly and it is an autobiographical look at relationships and car mechanics. It’s been a great joy to make and I’m going to continue to do it in nine week stints as the future goes on. My primary project and longest form project is called Maize. It’s about 4 unique individuals who meet at a speakeasy in prohibition era New York to go on an adventure to South America in search of fame, adventure and immortality. It’s so much fun; it’s so weird and bizarre. It being so rooted in a period piece aesthetic is just a joy to work on and I can’t wait to get the second issue printed and work on the third. There will be four issues. It’s pretty striking.

Mustang Tuesday Weekly chapters 1, 2, & 3 by J. James McFarland.

NG: Do you have a timeline for those issues or is it just as you can get them done?

J James: The second issue is finished and just awaiting post production. The third and fourth are written, some of its lettered. So they’re all sort of in production at the same time.

NG: Ok. And just for my own curiosity I see several copies of this Yellow Scene laying around. Why is that?

J James: I just got featured on the cover of a local magazine from Boulder, Colorado - where I live. It’s a fantastic art scene up there, just absolutely gorgeous and connected with nature. It’s a city which loves it’s hiking and biking and trail sight-seeing. I have created an image that is enormous. It’s a movie poster size and it’s all about the great outdoors, so I was featured on the cover of Yellow Scene and inside as well.

J. James McFarland convention stand-in with an X-Men: Legacy sketch cover.

NG: All right. The last time we had spoken we had talked a little bit about your ‘zine Politik. Can you tell us a little more about that?

J James: Politik was the first project I ever worked on as a series, and that was my entry into the convention scene. I started back in Portland, Oregon and started out in sort of the underground ‘zine scene that they had there. The ‘zines in Portland range from health food to well-being to politics; it’s really anything that people are interested in. And it’s very heavy on the aesthetics. It’s very craftsman like. It’s a very DIY community, just a joy to be a part of. I started writing about politics in a ‘zine titled Politik. I built 5 in pretty short succession and that lead to making comic work and going to larger conventions.

NG: Are there any other books in the pipeline that you are going to be working on?

J James: Right now I am putting together a compendium of my comic Aric thee Redd. These are 24 hour comics, which is sort of a niche audience, but they have been a joy to write. I will be making Aric thee Redd into full sized comics and so I’m going to also do a collection of the 24 hour comics and have it as a single volume for people to buy because he’s very popular.

J. James McFarland at Denver Comic Con 2016 (1).

NG: Could you tell us a little about the Aura Gaia book that you’ve got?

J James: I love Aura Gaia. She’s a newer character that I’m developing pretty heavily as a story and will definitely be coming down the pipeline in the future. Her images have featured prominently and her Facebook is almost more popular than I am. Last fall I was invited to be a part of a contest called the Cos-Art Contest for the group known as Aurora Rise, which is partnered with the Rocky Mountain Con. A little background on Aurora Rise, it is a charity fundraising event annually (and all year long on a smaller scale) to raise funds for the families of the victims of the Aurora theatre shooting (2012), and so a majority of the local Colorado artists participate in creating imagery to put into auctions and to sell at Aurora Rise booths to raise money for that purpose. The contest was to have a variety of local artists and known cosplayers partner up together to create a character, and have a public contest at the end to determine a winner. So I was paired with a local cosplayer named Krista Kirkpatrick. She was a pleasure to work with; we had a very long time to plan. I created imagery and concepts of a character named Aura Gaia, and then she implemented a costume based on it. It was an enormous amount of fun and I would like to do something like that again, but that will be a character that I will revisit as I am quite taken with the world I created for her and the imagery around her.

NG: If people wanted to see more of you, if people wanted to find you online, where would they go?

J James: The best place right now is www.jjamesdesignandillustration.com and also on Facebook. I have a number of different sites which will be going up to showcase some of the comic work and those will be updated in the future.

Aura Gaia by J. James McFarland.

An Interview With Kevin Gentilcore, Patrick Hoover, and Robert Elrod about Saga of Metal (Denver Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Kevin Gentilcore, Patrick Hoover, and Robert Elrod from the book Saga of Metal about their take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/19/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Saga of Metal #1 from Kevin Gentilcore, Patrick Hoover, Robert Elrod, and Matt Smith.

Saga Of Metal is a new anthology style comic book from CreepHouse Comics that revels in all things Heavy Metal: the fantasy, the swords, and definitely the music. I had a chance to sit down at Denver Comic Con 2016 and talk with 3 of the 4 metal-heads that helped to create this new book.

Neil Greenaway: Let’s start out basic. What is the premise of the new book?

Kevin Gentilcore: The premise is basically just an illustrated version of my own love for heavy metal.

NG: Is it anthology style or is it just one continuous story?

KG: They’re anthology. They are both self-contained stories. I have talked about doing a second volume but that would be another story, not related.

Kevin Gentilcore & Patrick Hoover at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: OK. Who all do you have working with you on this one?

KG: This one was me and Patrick, we both did a story each. Originally it was conceived with the idea that Robert would do a story, but his commitments didn’t allow him to finish in time. So it’s me and Patrick. We roped in our buddy Matt Smith to do the cover. He does an awesome comic called Barbarian Lord, he’s got something coming out soon with Image. He’s a big heavy metal fan. That is how we struck up an online relationship, so he was more than happy to do the cover for us. Robert Elrod ended up doing to back cover for us which is super awesome and that’s the four of us who were involved.

Robert Elrod at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: So, Patrick and Robert, how did you get involved in this project?

Patrick Hoover: So Kevin and I have been friends for a number of years now, back from one of the first Denver Comic-fests where we shared tables next to each other. We became friends and we’re also both big metal fans. So it was just sort of a natural thing. One day we were just talking like, what if we did a comic? Let’s do a group comic, we’ll get together and make stories about heavy metal. So joining things we like, putting them together. We had a conversation one day and it seemed like an excellent merging of two things we like very much.

Robert Elrod: Well I saw them posting about it on Facebook and pretty much inserted myself into the project by telling them that I wanted to be involved too. And originally I was also going to a story that would go into the book, but I got tied up with other obligations and when we decided on the deadline – to get the book out by Denver Comic Con – it turned out that I was not going to be able to a full story done so I ended up offering to do the back cover.

Saga of Metal #1 back cover by Robert Elrod.

NG: You guys have mentioned that there may be a volume 2, are you looking at perhaps contributing a story sometime in the future?

PH: Definitely possibly. This first one was a lot of fun to do. It was a separation from the comics that I normally do, you know, my normal stuff. But it was nice to step away from that, do something completely different- a small individual story- I think that next one we were talking about would be in the same sort of breadth, another little mini story. And the nice thing too is it’s a mix. If you look at the book Kevin and my styles are very different.

RE: I am, in fact I’m the one who said to them, hey I still would like to do this story, maybe we do a volume 2 and it gets into there.

Kevin Gentilcore at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: All right. Just to touch on it, Kevin, I know that your love of heavy metal actually reaches into its own blog just for the music, what can you tell us about that?

KG: That’s true, I do a daily blog. Well, I try to do it daily. I do little mini reviews of older, obscure and under-appreciated metal albums. It’s mostly scary black metal or super satanic stuff or power metal which is what my half of the comic is based on. Power metal. It has super high fantasy, cheeseball kind of fantasy element stuff. I do that and then I do a weekly post wrapping up all the stuff I’ve been listening to in the week, mostly just to share and get out there, I don’t really have an agenda besides everyone should be listening to heavy metal because it’s awesome.

Patrick Hoover at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: For Robert and Patrick, Kevin had said his story was based on power metal. What were yours based on?

PH: Mine is a little less genre specific. It’s more based on a lot of the same things that power metal embraces, the fantasy genre- your knights and wizards and battles and so forth; but more of the epic tale. Because one of the things I love about metal is the story telling. So my bands would be a little more- not just say like a Manowar (which is very power metal) but Aman Amarth which is Viking. A band called Visigoth, like there is just a ton of different varieties of metal that I feed into that. So you could almost lay a soundtrack of any of those songs to my story. I took more of the fantasy approach to the epic tale. That was my inspiration from metal.

RE: I’m going to say mine would probably be more in the power metal and less in the Viking. Definitely more in the power metal.

Comics from Kevin Gentilcore at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: Aside from the Saga Of Metal book, what other books have you guys got coming out?

KG: Well for this show we have the 3rd issue of The Haunter that came out earlier this year, we had it at DINK, that as actually its first appearance. Then we have the collection of the first two Krush McNulty comics that my partner William Tooker wrote. Currently we have the third issue of Krush done, which I didn’t get done in time for Denver Comic Con but it’s sitting at home waiting to be printed. And we are working on a new long form graphic novel that we are hoping to have out next year maybe. I’m spitting around ideas for Bearcano which might happen sooner than later. And we’re still working on Krush. The new Krush issue is the first of a 3 part story that will segue into another arch. So we are pretty busy.

PH: I have The Outdoorsman. The real brief synopsis is that it’s about a hunter that hunts monsters. So my dad was a big outdoorsman and growing up he taught me stuff, I hunt myself and fish and all of that. One day I was just like I want to draw a comic about monsters. I’m also a big fantasy guy, I love horror and monsters. What do I do? Well I had an idea to do a normal hunter like my dad was, but he hunts monsters instead of like deer or elk. That’s basically the story. It lets me play with the things that I love. It lets me do some actions, but play around in mythology and horror and all that kind of stuff and the hunter angle because he’s not the guy you’d expect to be hunting a monster. He’s also not a typical hero, he’s real lean, and he’s an older guy. Not like a young muscular monster killer, he uses his wits more than his muscle. So that is kind of the large thing, a story about vampires, chupacabras, werewolves and it’s just sort of growing. Right now there are four issues. I am working on the fifth one now; it’s about the Loch Ness Monster. There is also a book I did for 24 hour comic day a few years back called Son of Ymir, sort of tie-in to Saga of Metal; it’s a Viking tale, Norse mythology heavy. I did a 24 hour comic and printed that up; it was for 2013 Denver Comic Con. My intent is that when I get some time to flesh that out into a larger story into a graphic novel. But I still have at least a 22 page 24 hour comic tale that is pretty fun and that people seem to enjoy.

Comics from Patrick Hoover at Denver Comic Con 2016.

RE: I have a new hardcover art book, it’s called Former Dwellings, it’s an 83 page book. It has 45 color pieces and 38 black and whites. I have printed 500, all signed and numbered, it’s a limited edition. I’ve got a book collecting just my kaiju art. I’ve got a book collecting just Zombies and Other Creeps, that’s the title of it, so werewolves and other assortment of monsters in it. I still have a few copies of my last sketchbook I did in 2013. Those were also a limited edition book. I have a book called Nightmare which I did in 2013 as well. Same deal I only did 100 so those all signed numbered, I still have some of those. I have a book called the Kaiju Companion which features some of the commission drawings I did on the backs of the Kaiju book for some people and there’s a 6 page Kaiju comic in the back of it as well. I do have another project with Ragnarok Publications, the Kickstarter was successful. So this is a follow up to the Kaiju Rising: Age of Monsters book that we did in 2014. And I am doing 6 illustrations this time where I did 17 last time. But again they had a couple of artists on board already and I just kind of said hey I’d love to get involved again and so they had some stuff for me. So that’s my next publishing project. After that it will be this creator owned project I will be starting.

Robert Elrod with his art at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: If I could jump back to Kevin for a second, can you tell us what is the basic premise of Bearcano? That sounds epic.

KG: Well it spawned out of me and my girlfriend watching some shitty sci-fi movies and there was one called Arachnoquake, this predated Sharknado. I think Arachnoquake paved the way for Sharknado. I was like this is a good premise, but they should expand on it. You could have all sorts of wild animal related weather phenomenon, how about bears coming out of volcanoes? So I was talking to some friends about it one night over drinks and they had a bunch of ideas for like narwhal-tsunami and the Aurora Bor-eel-alis which is like electric eels flying at you and stuff. But I stuck with Bearcano because I like the idea. What it’s evolved into now is a way for me to violently kill people that I don’t care for. Not specific people, but like types of people I don’t care for. Like douche bag bros, which is really more what it is now, it’s my satire which is how I approach it. But there has been some discussion about what a Bearcano actually is. My girlfriend thought it was a volcano that spit out bears, just regular bears. My interpretation is like mutant lava bears that vomit molten hot rocks at people. So that’s what I’m saying, they can be a multitude of things.

NG: Have you heard of the Lavalanchula?

KG: I have. I am on top of the weather related animal movies, which is a genre unto itself now, which is amazing. I came up with – or it might have been someone else too, I forget – Avalanchula, which I think is a good mix of fire and ice. Like that Game of Thrones fire and ice thing but ours is better.

Saga of Metal #1 at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: Naturally. Just a final question. If people wanted to see more of you guys, where would they look online?

KG: www.creephousecomics.com, @creephousecomic on twitter, Kevin Gentilcore on Tumblr is where I do my blog stuff and I am ranting and raving as Kevin Gentilcore on Facebook and as the Creephouse Facebook page. Just look for Creephouse Comics, if you Google it, you will find something.

PH: So the easiest place would be www.blazeorangestudio.com. If you just want The Outdoorsman, he’s on www.odmcomic.com. Of course also on Facebook as Patrick Hoover and my Blaze Orange Studios are out there as well. Those are the biggest places. I think if you pretty much Google the Outdoorsman comic you will find me. There are not too many of those.

RE: They can go to my website which is www.robertelrodllc.com I update that sporadically. If they go to my Facebook page there are more frequent posts.

An Interview With Ben Mikkelsen of Six Eleven Comics (Denver Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Ben Mikkelsen of Six Eleven Comics about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/19/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Ben Mikkelsen at Denver Comic Con 2016.

Neil Greenaway: We are sitting here at Denver Comic Con 2016 with Ben Mikkelsen talking about his comic Stuffed. So, I understand issue 2 just came out. For the un-initiated, what is Stuffed about?

Ben Mikkelsen: Stuffed is about an inner city kid named Sam. He comes from a broken home, is tormented by bullies, but his biggest issue is that he is haunted by demons. He eventually finds a stuffed teddy bear in an alleyway and when he touches it, it becomes a giant guardian bear.

NG: That’s awesome. What are the plans for this series at this point?

BM: I’ve got the next 2 issues, so out to 4 issues, ready to go written. I’m working on them as I go. I am hoping to collect all 4 issues as a trade and then do a compilation anthology book. I’m hoping to do as many as I can get out quite frankly.

NG: All right. And are you both the author and the artist on this?

BM: Yup. Author, penciler, inker. I do the text, I do everything.

Stuffed #1 & #2 by Ben Mikkelsen.

NG: You also have another series, the Ghosts of Starfall, that you are doing.

BM: I do.

NG: Can you tell us a little about that book?

BM: That book is a sci-fi military space opera about two ex-black-ops guys who get torn out of time during a mission. And it’s basically them trying to figure out who attempted to kill them and why. And since they have been removed from time, everybody thinks they are dead so they are kind of clean slated in that sense. We are hoping to get another issue of that pretty soon. My writer has been working on it for a while, but you know - life happens.

NG: So you are just the art on that one?

BM: I just do the art for that one, yeah.

Ghosts of Starfall #1 by Adam Boyle & Ben Mikkelsen.

NG: Who’s the writer on that series?

BM: It is Adam Boyle, I believe you can find him through the Facebook page.

NG: Aside from those two books, are there any other projects that you’re working on?

BM: I’ve got a project that I’m working with a writer on, not quite ready to talk about it yet, but it’s another sci-fi story based around kids though, so it’s a little less adult material.

NG: All-ages sci-fi is always in fashion. I assume that that would be released under Six-Eleven Comics. Just briefly, could you tell us about Six-Eleven Comics?

BM: Honestly, I came to Denver Comic Con the first year and I saw the people that were here and I thought, I could do this. So my wife talked me into getting a table and the next year I came up with Six-Eleven Comics. And it’s just been chugging along ever since.

Ben Mikkelsen with his wife and daughter at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: I wanted to jump back to Stuffed just for a moment, I had talked to you a little bit about this at Colorado Horror Con, and you had said that he was already living a pretty horrible life by the time he realizes that he is also dealing with demons. What were your influences for telling that story?

BM: I had a very good upbringing. I didn’t have an abusive childhood. But being the person I am, I am 7 feet tall effectively and I weigh 350lbs. I have been huge my whole life and I have always been a sort of surrogate guardian for the people I’ve known. I’ve had friends that have had a lot of trauma in their lives. It’s sad, and I didn’t know how to deal with it, because I’m a big guy but I’m not a violent person. I’m not a fighter. It’s just one of those things, I became a surrogate for a couple of people and this is one way to tell that story because it happens a lot.

NG: So in this story you identify with the bear more than with the boy?

BM: Actually, I do yeah.

NG: That is really cool. And when I had spoken to you last you had said that you really couldn’t talk about what was happening with the bear, how he was this guardian. Is there anything more you can say about that?

BM: So, in the 2nd issue the bear takes the boy to the other realm where he’s from and it’s a safe place basically. It’s another world that he can remove to evade the demons or whatever problems he’s got.

Stuffed #2 by Ben Mikkelsen.

NG: I can’t wait to see how this story unfolds. What other projects are you currently working on?

BM: At some point in the future I’ll be working on The Giant, which is another book that is based on modern day Norse mythology that I’ll be doing.

NG: And that will be all you again?

BM: That one is going to be all me again.

NG: I’m a big fan of mythology, so that sounds pretty cool. One last question; if people wanted to see more of you online where would they go?

BM: You can go to www.sixelevencomics.com or you can find us on Facebook with that same name.

Ben Mikkelsen with his daughter at Denver Comic Con 2016.

An Interview With Abrahm Akin of The Ugly Tree (Denver Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Abrahm Akin of the Ugly Tree comic series about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/19/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Abrahm Akin at Denver Comic Con 2016 (1).

Neil Greenaway: We are standing here at Denver Comic Con 2016 with Abrahm Akin talking about his book The Ugly Tree. So for those that might not know, can you give us a quick synopsis of what the book is about?

Abrahm Akin: The book is about a young woman who must team up with horrifying monsters to save her family from a madman.

NG: Ok and you have two issues out so far how is the progress on the third one going?

AA: It’s going slowly. I’ve been working on these new trading cards based on the series, and I have been doing the layouts on issue 3. So it will be a while but I am getting past it.

The Ugly Tree #1 by Abrahm Akin.

NG: Very good. Let’s talk about the trading cards, how did that project come up?

AA: Well I was in a convention in Kansas City and I just happened to buy a box with some trading cards in it and thought, this is so awesome. They were Evil Ernie and Lady Death which I love, and I went  – man, I should make some trading cards. Then, once I started to do the drawings, then I said, I’m going to paint these. Because usually the book is cell shaded. I keep the coloring very limited because it is time consuming. So, I thought, I will make these nice and overly painted. So that is kind of where the time consuming comes in. Each one will be 11 by 17 inch print that is fully painted and then also a trading card as well. So once it’s all done, once the project is all done I will have both of those.

NG: Awesome. And how is that project coming along?

AA: It’s coming along really well. I have three more to do and I’ll be done.

The Ugly Tree #1 by Abrahm Akin.

NG: Are there any other projects you are working on aside from the Ugly Tree comic and trading cards?

AA: I do a podcast about horror movies, which isn’t Ugly Tree related, but it all is connected. It’s called Meet Your Monsters and all it is, I show my friends old horror movies and then I find out if they like them or they don’t. Usually they don’t. Our first episode was Slaughter High, which not many people have seen, but if you like shitty horror movies it’s a good one.

NG: Feeding off that briefly, what’s the best bad horror movie that you have watched on your podcast?

AA: Ooo, that’s a good one. We’ve done about 60 so far. Some of them are legitimately good movies. I try to mix it up so I can’t say they’re all bad. I have always been a big fan of Nightmare on Elm Street 3 and Re-Animator.

Abrahm Akin at Denver Comic Con 2016 (2).

NG: Ok, I’m a huge Re-Animator fan.

AA: It’s a great movie.

NG: You are clearly a man of taste. If people wanted to find you online and see more of your stuff, where would they go?

AA: The best place to go at the moment is The Ugly Tree on Facebook. There is an Ugly Tree website, but I’m still working the kinks out of it. There’s a lot of stuff that needs done. There is some stuff that you can look at, but Facebook is a better way to go.

NG: I think that wraps it up for us. Thank you for your time.

The Ugly Tree comics by Abrahm Akin at Denver Comic Con 2016.

An Interview With Nick Marino of Holy F*cked (Phoenix Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Nick Marino of the Holy F*cked comic series about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/11/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Dave Dwonch (left), Nick Marino (right), and Dan Mendoza (back) at Phoenix Comic Con 2016.

Last year, at Phoenix Comicon 2015, I was lucky enough to meet and interview Nick Marino from Action Lab about his comic, Holy F*ck. Now, a year later, the sequel to his book (Holy F*cked) has just been released as a collected edition. I caught up with Nick again at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 this past weekend, and we discussed comics, television pitch ideas, music, and kickboxing in the sun.

Neil Greenaway: Hello again, sir. It’s been a while. Let’s hear about the very latest official Nick News.

NM: (laughs) Is there such a thing?

NG: I don’t know if you can see it. But from where I am sitting, you look super busy.

NM: I have been taking an increasing amount of shower photos.

NG: I have seen those on FaceBook. Bringing sexy back, as it were.

(Dave Dwonch is watching from the other side of the booth)

NM: Dave is my manager, just so you know. We call him my handler, because he cleans out my kennel and such.

Dave Dwonch: (laughs) And also because I’m very touchy. Very hands-on, if you get what I mean.

NM: Yeah. See, he’s often holding the camera when I take these shower “selfies”, which are really just a part of the internet brand that I am trying to grow.

Shower selfie courtesy of Nick Marino.

NG: That makes me wonder where the hand reaching off screen is going, if you have a camera man.

NM: Don’t reveal the movie magic. So every time I say something, I will be studying his facial expressions to see if it’s ok.

DD: I’m nodding yes. Everything is good.

NG: When we left you last, your series Holy F*ck had just finished up, and the sequel series, Holy F*cked, was being planned. But Holy F*cked is out now, and both series have been collected into trades, correct?

NM: Yes, all through Action Lab’s Danger Zone imprint.

NG: You also recently released Stick Cats, which we had talked about a little bit last year. When did you start working on that?

NM: Stick Cats started in2011 when I was working on a bunch of web comics that were kinda stressing me out. And I thought, man, I need to do something where I can just turn my brain off and just have fun doodling. And Stick Cats evolved out of that desire to do something stress free, improvisational, spontaneous. And I did it for a couple of years, just off and on. If you have seen it, you know that it is very raw. Just stick figure cats goofing around. At the time I was doing mostly self-published mini comics and zines. And I found that people really responded to Stick Cats when it was at my table at that time. It was not quite what we have with Holy F*cked. But it was the best response I had gotten up to that point. But I did it for a few years, and sort of forgot about it. And then I finished Holy F*ck. And I was thinking, you know what? I really need to wrap up Stick Cats. So, I sat down (this is just after I signed the contract for Holy F*cked) and I drew maybe 70 pages of Stick Cats. In about a month. And it’s just stick figures, so I was doing 2, maybe 3 pages a day. Then I just sat on it for a few years, because what do you do with this thing? Do I kickstart it, or what? But finally I just said “F*ck it, we’ll give it away for free.”

Holy F*ck TPB by Nick Marino and Daniel Arruda Massa.

Holy F*cked TPB by Nick Marino and Daniel Arruda Massa.

NG: Which leads into my next question. Stick Cats was released with a soundtrack. What brought that about?

NM: Music is the medium I am most closely connected to. And when I’m telling a story, I’m either thinking of songs, using songs to inspire me, or I’m inspired to go and create songs after I write or draw something. And with Stick Cats, it’s so personal. It’s really just me, in the moment, exploring themes that I want to explore. Taking characters in a direction that individually, I want to see what happens to them in these situations. And that really inspires a lot of rhythms and melodies from me. That is the simplest answer. (laughs) It may sound crazy.

NG: It’s quite all right. I am well acquainted with crazy.

NM: You worked in a porn shop for a while, I forgot. You definitely know crazy.

NG: You have not lived until you’ve broken up a coke-fueled gay orgy in a 4’x4’ foot closet in the back of an adult video store.

NM: That is a small closet.

Dave Dwonch (left), Nick Marino (right), and Dan Mendoza (back) at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (2).

NG: There were a lot of dudes in that closet.

NM: You have to promise me that this exchange stays in the interview.

NG: Word for word.

NM: Shout out to Rich, Bleeding Cool is the greatest!

NG: I think that this is a fine time to segue into your pitch to Nickelodeon for a new show. What can you tell me about that?

NM: So, Daniel Arruda Massa and I (from Holy F*cked) had the opportunity to go to Nickelodeon and pitch for their shorts program. I can’t say the name of it. Because if they pick it up, I can’t talk about it. But if they don’t pick it up, we want to be able to shop it around to other places. The process for pitching animated shorts is totally open. Anyone can do it. So we put our pitch together and sent it in. And since I was in LA, I figured we might as well go ahead and check the in person meeting option. It seems like it might be fun, you know? Why not do it? I figured that they would not take us up on it unless they were really into it. But I think that anybody who checks that box gets an in person meeting because I was in there waiting with a bunch of other people who were waiting to go after me. So it wasn’t some exclusive thing. Maybe they were a little selective, but they let me in. They can’t be that selective.

(At this point in our talk a dozen donuts were delivered to the table, leading to a lengthy donut interlude.)

NM: At any rate, we went in to pitch to Nickelodeon, which sounds fancier than it is. But it’s a really cool experience if you’ve never done it. And I hadn’t. So Daniel Arruda Massa and I got our story together. I made some weird little cactus toys out of felt and tiny flower pots. I sewed googly eyes on them. We wrote some songs to go along with the pitch, so I got to bring my guitar. I think they liked it. It was really strange, kind of like being on a reality tv show. You’ve got three guys across from you at this table, and then Daniel’s face is massive on a screen (he’s skyping in from the Netherlands). So I hand them each a toy cactus and a mini comic and take out my guitar and they just look at me. The weirdest part was, they never told me what to do. They just stared at me. I was never sent any instructions from the network, so I just made up my presentation. We acted out an episode with the voices, and sang some of the songs. It was a lot of fun. And if we are lucky, we hear back from Nickelodeon. If not, well, it was a cool first experience.

Holy F*ck #4 Jesus print by Daniel Arruda Massa.

Holy F*ck #1 NYCC print by Aaron Conley.

Holy F*ck TPB print by Daniel Arruda Massa.

NG: So what does the future hold in the way of more comics? What have you got coming out?

NM: Daniel Arruda Massa and I have actually finished our next book. Or I should say he has finished it. I’m still lettering it. It is a super hero story, but not in any traditional sense what so ever. It is almost more of a workplace comedy. I don’t want to say to much, because we are really close to a deal with a publisher and I would like to let them announce it. I think that Daniel has really stepped up his art on it, and I am very, very excited for it.

I also have another book that I am working on, that I have been putting together for 5 years. That is another book just waiting for me to finish the lettering. It is another super hero story. Well, more of a super villain story. It is about three super villains who become villains based on the circumstances of their lives. And it is the story of them finding each other, finding an apartment, and moving in together. They are losers, but it’s fun to watch them come together. It is fun to take someone who is not naturally a sympathetic character and make people care about them.

NG: Going back a bit, you had said that music was the medium that you were most closely tied to. I have noticed that on social media, you will occasionally post a song that you have written that day. Are you currently in a band or musical group? Or is it all just you when you post those things?

NM: I am solo right now. I used to play in bands, and it was fun. But, because it is such a personal thing for me, I enjoy being able to take my time when I record a song. I like to write a song and have it be my full vision when it’s done. And because of that, I really just prefer to work solo on music. And I don’t really perform anymore, outside of recording.

NG: Is that anything that you would ever pursue monetarily? Have you ever put an album out?

NM: I have tried a few different things like that. Originally, I was going to make beats for hip-hop. That was what I really wanted to do, musically. And I got into a situation where I was about to be able to start selling a few. But I realized that I would not be comfortable if somebody took my backing track and used it in a way that I did not agree with. So I thought that maybe I shouldn’t monetize that. But I love making instrumental music, so I tried to do that. I did release an album under Nick Furious. Nick Furious was my music name. It came out through all the digital download services. And it sold like three copies. It was horrible. So I thought, why am I doing this when I could just be giving these songs away? If no one is buying it (so I’m not getting paid), and no one can hear the music (because it is behind a paywall) then what’s the point? But for now, it is fun to just record a song for myself or make a song for a friend. I would just get too stressed out if I thought that I was recording for an audience. But if I am the audience, it’s like a relief. Because when I’m not making music, I am thinking about it. And when I finally sit down to write it, it feels like…. Ahhhhhh…. I finally got that out of my system.

Stick Cats by Nick Marino.

NG: Well, we have talked about your comics, your television pitch, and your music. Are there any other aspirations? Any waters that you have yet to dip your toes in?

NM: I was writing a novel for a few years. About a kickboxer who had to step up his game for a tournament and learn to fight in the center of the sun.

NG: Did it star Jean Claude Van Damme?

NM: It was HEAVILY Van Damme inspired. I have recently been re-reading this novel to my girlfriend, and we are laughing our asses off. It is just SO bad. So the funny part is that in the middle of all the other stuff, I found a collaborator who is working with me on a few concepts that I had. And one of them is that novel. We found a way to spin it a bit more metaphysical, and a bit more serious. So it is actually turning into a nice little sci-fi/drama. So this idea will eventually get used, and maybe when it comes out, I can release my original novel excerpts. I actually wrote about 17,000 words that first try. There is a decent amount, but it’s not even close to fully done.

But you know what? I really LOVE making comics right now. The music I make for myself, but the comics I enjoy sharing with people. And I want to tell more cool stories with collaborators that I love to work with. I am loving the process right now. It’s really special.

NG: With that said, I know that your name is a fairly common one, and your email is one of the more easily confused addresses out there. People often send you emails meant for other Nick Marinos in the world, and you have been known to have some fun with that. How many other professions have you masqueraded?

NM: That is a really good question! It’s funny that you would ask that because while we were here at Phoenix Comicon, I got an email from this homeowners association (who have emailed me previously), so they emailed me again. They are trying to figure out what to do with this empty lot by their house. I told them that I am burying dead bodies there, so we are waiting to see where that goes. I just thought I should share that, because it is happening right now. But these emails that I get for other Nick Marinos, I would say that I have pretended to be at least 5 other guys who share my name. Let’s see, there was the corporate executive, the journalist, the hip-hop producer. Which, I do make hip-hop music. But this guy was DJ Nick of the Marino Gang. Definitely not me. That guy makes some hard core rap. What were some of the other guys? It has happened so many times that you begin to forget.

Dave Dwonch (left), Nick Marino (right), and Dan Mendoza (back) at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (3).

NG: When you were mistaken for a journalist, didn’t you actually go out on location to interview a guy?

NM: Oh, that’s right! The parachute thing? I did not go out on site. Ok, so a site had contacted me thinking that I was this other Nick. But I pretended, and went along with it. So they wanted me to interview this parachute/skydiver. I asked them to fly me to the jump site, but they did not take me up on that. All they did was arrange a phone interview. But I still had a good time with that. I can’t believe that the guy did not pick up on anything during the interview. I was asking him some really strange stuff, like would you eat your friends? It was cool because normally, I only get to mess with people over email, but this was live. So I had to be a little quicker on my feet than usual.

An Interview With Madeleine Holly-Rosing of The Boston Metaphysical Society (Phoenix Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Madeleine Holly-Rosing of The Boston Metaphysical Society about her take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/11/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Madeleine Holly-Rosing at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (1).

Neil Greenaway: Today I am sitting here at Phoenix Comic Con speaking to Madeleine Holly-Rosing about The Boston Metaphysical Society. So first, just by way of introduction, can you give us just a brief synopsis of what the story is about so far?

Madeleine Holly-Rosing: Sure, no problem. It’s a six issue mini-series about an ex-Pinkerton detective and his spirit photographer partner who battle super-natural forces in late 1800’s Boston. So think steampunk X-Files.

NG: Ok. I understand that you have used a couple of Kickstarters to get this going, is that correct?

MHR: That is correct. We have actually done a total of 4 Kickstarters. The first one failed spectacularly, like they often do. But we sucked it up and re-strategized and launched our second one which was fully funded in under 48 hours. We have since run 2 more, so we have 3 successful Kickstarters since that first failed one. So yeah, I’ve done this a lot.

NG: And those campaigns have brought us to issue six in the series. Is that the end of the arc, or does this story go farther than six issues?

MHR: No, this is the end of an arc. Any other stories for the comic will be in sequential art form. What we’re thinking of doing is having 32 page one-offs focusing on just a couple of the characters. One, that’s just easier economically and also production wise. It’s taken us just a little over three years to get all six issues out and that’s three years of my life gone. And I do want to continue writing other things as well, but anything that precedes the comic timeline we’re looking at doing in novel form. In fact, I’m putting together the outline for the first Boston Metaphysical novel now.

Boston Metaphysical Society #6 written by Madeleine Holly-Rosing at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (1).

NG: And I see that you have prose book here at the table today; can you tell us a little about that?

MHR: Yes, those are a number of short stories and novellas that I’ve written while we were in production. They are prequels to the comic (no spoilers, a few hints, but yeah, not spoilers). They are standalone from the comic but what they do is they enrich each other. Because of the limited page count for comics you can only go so far into the character and the world and in prose you can really expand on that, which was really nice, and go into some of the supporting characters.

NG: And I know that you are the writing half of the duo, can you tell us a little bit about the artist that you’re working with?

MHR: Emily Hu is an amazing young lady who I met right after she had finished art school and I met her through a mutual friend. I had spent almost a year looking for an artist. I had some that I thought were on board, and then they dropped out. You know, it happens, life happens. So I hired her to do sample pages and gave her two very different pages from the script, and she nailed it. I hired her on the spot and got her under contract and worked with her the last three years. I believe (I am not familiar with the anime/manga world), but I understand she is semi-famous in the anime world. The few times we are actually at the same convention together – our schedules always conflict – I have these young ladies that come to the table and completely plotz when they meet her. It’s pretty funny. She’s very, very talented and I jokingly say that in a few years we won’t be able to afford her.

NG: Now you have said that moving forward you would probably do one-shots in the comic world. Do you have any of those planned at the moment?

MHR: I do have a story sketched out which focuses on Granville Woods, our African American scientist who is part of the Boston Metaphysical Society team and Tesla.

Madeleine Holly-Rosing at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (1).

NG: I am a big fan of Tesla. He is of course huge in the steampunk world. How does he factor into the story? Or is that something we can talk about?

MHR: Well we can. Bell, Edison, Tesla and Houdini are integral to the story line in the six issue series. I don’t want to give away too much, but let’s just say that none of these guys get along at all but they come together because of the greater threat that’s happening in Boston and they’re trying figure it out because they are the greatest minds of the time. So it was a lot of fun using those characters. I mean, nothing about Boston Metaphysical is historically accurate and no one should even dream of that. But what I do try to do as a writer is maintain the accuracy of the relationships and thematically maintain that.

NG: With the prose Novels, are there any of those on the way or that you are working on yet?

MHR: I am doing an outline right now, like I said it’s still in outline form, it’s probably a good six months away. It will take me a few months to write and will have to be edited, re-written, you know. There’s a lot to it.

NG: When it comes time to actually put that one out, is that something you’ll look to Kickstarter again for?

MHR: You know I hadn’t thought about that but that’s entirely possible that I might do that since we already have a following just to do a small Kickstarter to possibly recoup some of the editing fees and something like that and get it out into people hands. That’s actually a good idea, I hadn’t even thought of that. Thank you.

Novels, lapel pins, and stickers from Madeleine Holly-Rosing at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (1).at Phoenix Comic Con 2016.

NG: You’re welcome. If I might touch on it a little bit, this seems heavily steampunk inspired, is that something that you’ve always been interested in?

MHR: Actually I fell into steampunk by accident. I had originally written this story as a TV pilot when I was at UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television, and it was originally designed to be a period detective piece. And a friend of mine suggested that, why don’t I set it in a steampunk world. And I had heard of steampunk, didn’t know a lot about it. So I did research, I did reading and realized she was absolutely right and that it was a perfect marriage of history and science fiction. So steampunk was made for me. It was a lot of fun redeveloping it in a steampunk world. It was great.

NG: Also, in the past few years the fandom for steampunk has really exploded. Have you been getting a positive reaction to the book from the steampunk community?

MHR: Absolutely. The steampunk community has been incredibly supportive and I mean, I can’t thank them enough. They have really come out and been helpful, not only buying the book, but in helping to spread the word. I go to the conventions, not as many this year just because of scheduling conflicts, but last year I think I went to almost every major steampunk convention from Teslacon, which is the largest in the United States, to some of the smaller ones. Clockwork Alchemy, which has been tremendously supportive and Gaslight Gathering which was the first steampunk convention I ever did.

NG: I have heard good things about Gaslight.

MHR: It’s a wonderful, small convention that brings in amazing guests where literally you can pull up a chair and start talking to them.

Madeleine Holly-Rosing at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (3).

NG: That’s awesome.

MHR: It is. It’s a lovely, lovely convention. Anastasia Hunter who, she’s one of the main organizers, has been one of my fans since the very beginning and I can’t thank them enough for all their help and support. I think they are just looking for new material and I provided it for them and I love hanging out with them. They’re really just an awesome community.

NG: And now something I have been curious about. Is there a reason the book is based in Boston?

MHR: Absolutely. It was a story decision. Boston Metaphysical is a steampunk story and a lot of steampunk is set in Victorian England. But since this is set in the states, I wanted as I was developing the story, a city that when you said the name out loud, evoked a sense of history, culture and almost mythology. Boston fit that bill. Along with the fact that it’s a very intimate town. It just has a feeling that literally ghost live in every corner and historical ghosts and metaphorical ghosts. Obviously New York and Chicago are big names and everything, but everyone does New York and Chicago. Boston just fit the bill. So it was entirely a story decision.

NG: Ok, I had wondered that. If someone wanted to find more of your work or find you online where would they go?

MHR: The first place to look would be our website at www.bostonmetaphysicalsociety.com I know that’s a mouthful. I’m also on Facebook, just type in Boston Metaphysical. I’m also on Twitter, @MHollyRosing. Those are the two I have time for.

Boston Metaphysical Society single issues at Phoenix Comic Con 2016.

NG: So if people wanted to see the work, that’s where the work is being displayed?

MHR: Yes, and cons of course.

 NG: And where is your next convention appearance?

 MHR: My next one is Amazing Las Vegas. Then after that we are at San Diego Comic Con, artist alley AA20 in the back so come find us in that chaos. After that we’re at Comic Con Palm Springs which is a brand new con, which looks like Stan Lee is going to be there. I suspect that if you couldn’t get your ticket into San Diego then Palm Springs is a way to go, they are reducing the rates. I know it’s horribly- it can’t be hotter than Phoenix right now. But yeah you can get nice hotels for cheap in the summertime in Palm Springs. Then let me think, I’m doing like 8 or 9 more cons after this so, I know I’m in Rose City, Gaslight Gathering in San Diego, I’m blanking now. It’s Sunday morning I have been working for three days.

An Interview With Josh Blaylock of Devil's Due Entertainment (Phoenix Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Josh Blaylock of Devils Due Publishing about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/11/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Josh Blaylock at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (1).

I have heard Josh Blaylock described as one of the hardest working people in comics. Between being the publisher of DDP, writing his own comics, managing a merger with 1First Comics, and a breakneck tour schedule, it is surprising that he ever gets a chance to sit and talk at all. But that is just what happened at last weekend’s Phoenix Comicon 2016.

Neil Greenaway: I am sitting here at Phoenix Comic Con talking to Josh Blaylock of DDP Publishing. How are you doing today, sir?

Josh Blaylock: Good. It’s been a great show. So I’m riding high on the momentum of the show.

NG: Well right off the bat, last night you were a part of a live event at The Crescent Ballroom, can you tell us a little about that?

JB: Yeah, it was just a cool local monthly thing an artist named Dumperfoo does, it’s called Blunt Club. It’s like a real total merger of the Phoenix Underground Hip-hop and comic book scene. A lot of really well known, talent came out of that area. Like Jim Mafood is originally from there and Jay Fotos is from here. If you’re into that scene, there’s a lot of DJ’s and stuff that come through and people know when they’re coming to Phoenix. Anyway it’s just a big fun live art thing. So lots of music, dancing and people painting on the spot and just pulling stuff out of their head.

Mercy Sparx by Josh Blaylock from the Blunt Club.

NG: And I see that you drew Mercy last night.

JB: Yeah. That’s actually kind of a new version of the very first Mercy Sparx picture I ever drew, where I came up with the idea.

NG: How did the idea for the original image come about?

JB: I was like hungover at a con in Orlando and I drew this devil chick twirling a halo on her finger and having a feather in her mouth, like in her teeth. And I was like, oh that’s a really cool idea, and it just came from there.

NG: Now we had spoken yesterday and you had said that you’ve been writing Mercy for years, but kind of spottily, off and on. I have noticed that it’s been picking up more recently. Is there a reason for that?

JB: That was part of the… well, part of it was just that things took so long to happen in the advertising process, distribution process, creation process. So when I re-launched Devil’s Due Entertainment about three and a half, four years ago, I always loved Mercy but I didn’t have immediate plans to publish it. And it was from all the people asking about it that made me realize that it was something to bring back. So then fast forward six months. Now we’ve got it together (the creative team), and then it comes out. At the same time I am trying to run the company, and I'm putting out other books. So the next thing you know you blink and the year has gone by and you got three issues out. Finally we got momentum going and now we’ve got multiple trade paperbacks and more people are picking up on it. Then with the merger (Devil’s Due/1First) that helped just continue the momentum and increase our shelf presence.

Mercy Sparx: Heaven's Dirty Work TPB from Devil's Due Entertainment.

Mercy Sparx: Under New Management TPB from Devil's Due Entertainment.

Mercy Sparx: Family Roots [Of All Evil] TPB from Devil's Due Entertainment.

NG: And If I’m not mistaken, there is a Mercy Sparx omnibus on the way.

JB: Yeah, it’s at the printer right now. It’s going to have a cool foil stamp cover on it. It’s a badass image design that Nick Apardi, our designer, came up with. It’s Mercy from a Jen Broomall cover where she’s kind of looking through a halo, almost like a scope. But it’s got a neon cross, almost like a Vegas church neon sign you know, which the image is inside of and like a cool pattern on the outside. It’s going to be every issue of Mercy ever published up until issue 9 of the ongoing series, and it includes the Hack/Slash crossover.

NG: Nice. Do you know how many pages it’s going to be? How big is this book?

JB: It’s like 400+ pages.

NG: Wow, all right. Is there more Mercy to come? Are there future plans?

JB: Oh totally, yeah. So the current series wraps at issue 12. Then we are going to go right into Mercy Sparx: Year 1. So obviously, that’s like an homage to all the year one comics out there. But it’s her first year on Earth, because we skip over exactly one year in the series, she wakes up on Earth… For people who don’t know about the series, she’s a devil girl who hunts down rogue angels from Heaven. So she’s basically cleaning up Heaven’s dirty laundry that no one is supposed to know about. She doesn’t volunteer for the job, they pretty much abduct her and put her on Earth. She wakes up as this blonde chick, no longer a devil, and freaks out. Then she realizes she can change back and forth. She lives with this genius/stoner/metal dude that makes gadgets for her. He’s kind of like her Q. She gets a paycheck every two weeks from Heaven, doesn’t know where it comes from. Just fun stuff like that. Then it opens up to this bigger serious universe. She’s not actually from Hell, she’s not really a demon either when you really get into the story. There’s different species of supernatural characters. She’s a devil or a deviling, and she’s from Sheol, which is from the Old Testament. Before the concept of Heaven or Hell existed, the old scriptures had that when you died you just went to Sheol. I guess you just hung around there or something. It was pretty much just like Hades, that’s basically what it was. In my universe Sheol is this place where everyone lives who just doesn’t fit in with in the system of human/demon/angel. Or they are born in the wrong place, wrong time in the divine realms, that’s where they live. They abduct Mercy from Sheol, put her on Earth and tell her she’s got to do this. And then halfway through, someone else from Heaven shows up, after she’s been doing this for a year, and says “What the hell are you doing here? This is totally not allowed. Your presence here is going to get you in a shitload of trouble”. So she’s totally confused but has to clean up her own mess that she never really created. So it really starts to get into like bureaucracies and someone being caught between just trying to get through life and the system. She just wants to drink whiskey and party and not do anything.

Mercy Sparx single issues at Phoenix Comic Con 2016.

NG: Something I often ask of creator-owned books, do you see a definitive end? Does the story have an end point or is this a universe that can just keep expanding forever?

JB: Yes and Yes. Oh, so the year one thing, it’s her first year on Earth, it’s also her childhood in Sheol. But time doesn’t exactly work the same way there. Just some fun things. Her father figure that popped up in the Free Comic Book Day special is like a biker but he looks like an ancient Sumerian or Babylonian. So you’re like "What’s going on here?", and we’ll get into that. I’ve had an idea on how I thought it would always end. They are not super dark but they’re usually not very happy. There’s this thing with Mercy, when people write characters it’s like an experiment of all things. It’s kind of along the lines of the same philosophy that Louis CK uses in some of his characters (and I also noticed this was very intentional in Napoleon Dynamite), whenever the character has the opportunity to evolve you kind of intentionally f-ck it up. Like in Mercy’s new position where she’s really getting deeper and deeper into the crux of some major shit going on between Heaven and Hell, Humanity, and the universe. And it’s like the person who totally wants nothing to with this. Usually characters don’t evolve from bad writing but it’s never a conscious choice. I’m having some fun with that. Maybe she’ll reluctantly evolve.

NG: You might argue that if it went well for her she wouldn’t have evolved.

JB: Yeah, true.

Josh Blaylock single issues & TPBs at Phoenix Comic Con 2016.

NG: Going back a little bit, you mentioned the merger with 1First, is that something you can talk to me about?

JB: Yeah, 1First, for people who don’t know what that is, 1First was like a big independent company in the 1980’s. It was actually like one of the only companies of its kind. They were going basically as big in comics as you could get without being Marvel or DC. A lot of really big name creators got their start there. Anyway, it was a bunch of corporate dealings, and the company went public and got sold off. They got tied up in the dotcom boom. So it didn’t really go under, it just got sold off and then it kind of went away. So one of the original co-founders, Ken Levine, he ended up getting the rights back to everything, to the name and a lot of the characters. So over the 20 year span since then, he’s an entertainment attorney by trade and he sort of manages creators. He was one of the only people who really cared about comics who was in Hollywood 15 years ago. So one of the key things he set up was Road to Perdition from Max Allan Collins, which kind of became like one of the poster child books there. It was not a capes and tights book. It was not even like supernatural in any way, it was just a straight up gangster story. And that’s when Hollywood really started to see articles and were like, this is a graphic novel? Who knew you could tell real stories in comics? That was the beginning of Hollywood really starting to pay attention. Then Ghost World came out and the cycle began. So I call him the ‘illuminerdy’ because every single high profile creator you can think of has some deal you’ll find out he was somehow involved in. But no one in the fandom really knows anything about him. He’s currently the executive producer on Preacher, and helped develop that with Seth Rogan and Evan Goldberg. So anyway that was just to give some background on that stuff. They brought 1First back about 3 or 4 years ago around the same time I did this big re-launch of Devils Due. But they were just like pumping books out, they were just building content. They would print some and go to conventions, but they weren’t really publishing them and distributing them. So we formed, kind of like doing Image Central backwards, we already had our companies and we created a new umbrella above it which is Devils Due/1First. That’s how we distribute the books through the stores, and it allowed 1First to plug into our whole infrastructure of all the crap behind the scenes you need to get the books done and our whole convention touring system. So now there’s about half a dozen to maybe 10 books a month now between comics and graphic novels that are coming out. It’s been almost a year, it will be a year in September. The one thing we have in common is the variety of genre. So there’s no house style. It’s every genre you can think of. No one comes and buys all of our stuff, it’s usually like a couple things they’re into, and then they can go deep in those titles.

NG: Now earlier this weekend I had a chance to talk to Team Ash about Squarriors.

JB: (Ash & Ashley are both at the table) Uh-oh

Ash Maczko and Ashley Witter at Phoenix Comic Con 2016.

NG: Yeah it was pretty wild. What are your thoughts on that book? What does it feel like to have that under DDP?

JB: Well obviously I like it. I saw the picture that Ashley had done of the original cover of the Kin with the ax just screaming. They posted it online to be a web comic. I think the reaction was kind of overwhelming. Like, oh shit, people really want this. I saw it and said that looks f-cking awesome but then I didn’t know anything about either creator. I looked up all this work that Ashley had done in the past. And the story that Ash put together, I knew it was something I could really help build and I was right. We plugged it on a major tour, like 40 different cities, 40 different stores and conventions. That one image was really the key to being able to build it from nothing. Like I would go to these stores and set it on the counter and like just make sure the retailers had it on the counter the whole time there was a signing going on, and it worked. There are so many things you have to do when you’re building up something like that, like there are key retailers. One of the guys was part of the Phantom groups which makes the special exclusive covers to like a dozen different stores. Another was the guys at Midtown Comics which is one of the biggest comic accounts in the country. Just getting the right people to see it and making sure they fall in love with it. It didn’t hurt that certain blogs picked up on it. Bleeding Cool loved it and it just was the perfect formula.

NG: I recently backed the Kickstarter for the hard cover. It looked pretty awesome.

JB: It’s going to be amazing. We got the proofs when we were in Kansas. I literally had them Fed-Ex'ed to the hotel and the pages are much bigger. You get to see the art blown up and see more of the pencil strokes.

Operation Nemesis TPB written by Josh Blaylock.

NG: A while back when Archie had tried to use Kickstarter to get their stuff going, there was a lot of backlash about an existing publisher using Kickstarter. Did you face any of that being DDP? I know you aren’t huge, but you are existing.

JB: No I didn’t. I had never done one, but we had thought about it. I thought about it myself and then we actually thought about it for the merger. Because by then I’d done tons of Kickstarter campaigns. I never got any flak about it and since the beginning, I see it as the future and the way things are going. It’s the ability to do books you could never do before without losing our ass financially, it’s phenomenal. It’s giving creators the power to not need a publisher if they really know how to handle things themselves. We have completely interwoven it into the traditional publishing system. Things are timed a certain way, set the print runs a certain way. I get why they got flak, I just wonder what would have happened if they had just stuck to their guns and just did it. I really think it was a vocal minority of people bitching.

NG: Being perfectly honest, I considered backing Archie’s campaign. It got shut down before I even had the chance, but I was thinking about it.

JB: I don’t get why there’s this big stigma, even though that company has money. And if they really want this to happen they should like go get this and do it and blah, blah, blah. And it’s really weird because it’s pre-sales. It’s seeing the excitement. When someone wants to do a movie for a million dollars they aren’t getting that type of reaction. So it was weird and they had to make the right choice, because sometimes it’s about perception and how much sense it makes. And like they‘re on fire right now. They have been killing it the last couple years with all the re-launches.

An early drawing of Mercy Sparx by Josh Blaylock.

NG: The books are coming out a little slower, but they are still doing very well.

JB: I confess I don’t actually read any of them. But I thought for years like, I know there’s the classic Archie integrity. They want to keep that look but why don’t they update anything? I never understood that. Then they finally started updating stuff and it was awesome. They look really good.

NG: I have really been digging the horror line, Archie doing horror blew me away, and then to do it well, that was completely unexpected. That was an odd move. Getting back to you though – what’s on the slate in the future? We talked about Mercy, but what else do you have coming up?

JB: So Mercy will be continuing. Currently the Squarriors summer series is going on. Plume Vol.3 is close to happening. We have a new really fun sci-fi action series called Galaxies for Hire. It’s by Sherard Jackson who is the artist and Shawn DePasquale who’s the writer. He’s actually here. He’s helping us run the company booth. It’s like Firefly meets Voltron in an all-female cast. They are outlaws travelling through space and it turns out their spaceship is the missing puzzle piece to a giant robot that now the galactic government want to get it’s hands on. The two lead characters are twin sisters, and one of them goes legit. Which causes strife between the group until she realizes, and then she kind of turns back over because of realizing what the significance of the ship is. There’s like a sex bot, there’s a weird alien kid genius, there’s a big giant bird lady who is like their enforcer, so it’s really fun really smart writing. They smuggle, basically shrooms, from one planet to another. They steal them from one place where they are used for religious purposes and sell them as drugs somewhere else. It’s really funny.

Then there’s Lord of Gore, it’s new horror series. All right, there’s a whole section, we’re kind of getting a whole new horror group again. It’s funny, I have never been a big super horror movie guy, but we’ve always attracted this good high quality group of horror books. Like we published the first Hack/Slash and a book with Whitley Strieber, The NYE Incidents, Chuckie – The Child’s Play books, all kinds of stuff. Lord of Gore is done by Daniel Leister who is the artist on Hack/Slash, Army of Darkness, a bunch of stuff. Him and the writer D.B. Stanley have this really cool slasher comic concept. It pulls you into the world of the actual horror movie industry, like at the cons, horror conventions, some of the infighting going on. It brings in this conspiracy that there’s a really popular franchise called Lord of Gore with a slasher – The Headsman – and the reason why this franchise even took off in the 80’s is because someone tied to the film was murdered in real life. And the guy who played The Slasher went nuts. And now in present day one of the screen writers has learned that all these rumors of conspiracies are true, just as the actual real slasher is coming into the world and killing everyone. Her plan with the visuals is that was this was an old franchise so like a really shitty 1960’s version. There’s a 70’s version. The classic 80’s version. The shitty late 90’s version. And then there’s the current version. Then Dirk Manning is a real force of nature unto himself. He’s a writer. Does horror comics. And we started publishing his book, the Tales of Mr. Rhee, who’s a paranormal fixer. Imagine if Armageddon happened one day, the rapture happens and demons are roaming the earth and you’re stuck here, uh oh they didn’t take me. You’re ready for years of tribulation and then, three days later everything was back to normal. So that’s the world and there’s already, within a few years, people are erasing that this ever happened, people are in denial of how it was. And Rhee is a magician, kind of a wandering fixer, he knows something is wrong. So there’s one volume that’s all these short stories intertwined together. They’re really crazy and really well done messed up psychological horror and gore. But he’s just like the normal guy going through it all helping people out. There’s two volumes after that. Volume 3 just funded on Kickstarter. Then we’re bringing in Rhee… the character Mr. Rhee comes from the Nightmare World series, which there are 3 trade paperback collections that Image produced, and now Dirk’s bringing them over to us with the fourth volume and we’re going to do a giant Nightmare World Omnibus. So really this whole big horror universe, and it really all goes to Lucifer colluding Cthulhu to pre-emptively kick start Armageddon so he has more control over the outcome. So that blends like biblical, Lucifer and Armageddon, with Lovecraft. And he has another book coming out called Love Stories About Death, so tons of stuff coming out there. I’m working on a new concept, a little bit in the GI Joe flavor of what we used to do. It’s a rebel task force in the future and some of them are humans and some of them are robots. They’re basically a team and they all have this camaraderie. And what they do is they go around together secretly taking out artificial intelligence technology that’s threatening the world. And the backstory to that is: What if John Connor and the rebels in Terminator were the crazy radicals, and Skynet was the good guy that had saved the planet? It’s working title, it’s called The Circuit. It will be a total departure from the Mercy Sparx stuff. Something else to do.

Josh Blaylock at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (2).

NG: Do you have any kind of time line on when you expect to see that out?

JB: I’m really pushing. I have to lock in the art team first. I’ve been doing all the designs myself so far and I’m making progress on those. I put some really, really small teasers out on my Facebook page, but I’ll start to release more of those.

NG: If people wanted to know more, where can they find you? What are your next appearances going to be?

JB: We do these crazy tours, more like an indie band or something. So now we’ve gotten to the point where we got a tour van and drive around and hit as many stores as we can on the way to different conventions. The next one is a couple weeks, Heroes Con in Charlotte, NC. We’re going to go probably down to Ohio, down through Louisville, and then we’ll get to Charlotte. Then on the way back we’ll hit maybe some other parts of North Carolina, Nashville, Tennessee, come up through Indiana. We just recently did a bunch going out west of Chicago, going towards Iowa and Omaha down to Kansas City for Planet Comic Con. I guess after that we are definitely doing the Cincinnati Comic Expo in late September. That is one of our absolute best shows. I went to high school in Cincinnati, but I don’t think that has anything to with why we sell a lot there. It’s just a really good show and they take really good care of us. Planning to do New York Comic Con. Check out www.devilsdue.net, my Facebook page, look for Josh Blaylock. I Instagram as Josh C. Blaylock. I’m on Snapchat as popcultivator. When you look it up it will say Devils Due. There’s a Devils Due/1First. If you’re looking for any of the 1First stuff, it’s spelled 1First and they’ve got a ton of great stuff. They have the classic Badger character, the craziest superhero out before Deadpool. He’s back. There’s a book called Public Relations which is really funny. It’s fantasy meets The Office kind of comedy. It’s like the cast of 30 Rock smashed up with Game of Thrones. They’ve got just as many, or more, titles than we’ve got now. So check it out. That’s pretty much it I guess. Twitter is @JoshBlaylock and @DevilsDue.

An Interview With Raven Gregory of Widow's Web (Phoenix Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Raven Gregory of the Widow's Web comic series about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/10/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Raven Gregory and his daughter at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (1).

Raven Gregory’s table was one of the popular places to be at Phoenix Comicon last weekend. It was not hard to see why. He had Nei Ruffino drawing right next to him, visitors like Eric Basaldua dropping by, and a bevy of cosplay beauties just waiting for a glimpse at his newest books. And everybody was buying his books. I stopped in for a quick chat, just to see how the Phoenix heat had been treating him.

Neil Greenaway: We are sitting here at Phoenix Comicon talking to Raven Gregory. How was the show for you today?

Raven Gregory: Wonderful show, probably the best show that Phoenix has put on since they first started putting on shows. Better and better every year. That’s a really political answer. Let me rephrase that answer because that’s the answer that everybody gives. I love Phoenix Con, this show is amazing. It is so f-cking hot. It’s a testament to how amazing this show is just because people will come out in this weather and nobody in their right mind would want to come out in this weather, and they still do so somebody must be doing something right. That’s the right answer.

NG: I’ve been coming here for a couple years myself and it seemed like this year it was busier than I have ever seen it, almost shoulder to shoulder on Saturday. Have you ever seen it that crammed in here?

RG: Oh yeah, it’s been doing that the last two years. It’s getting, not the Hollywood vibe of San Diego, but definitely that packed aspect of, there’s just that many people in here. Especially on the weekend days.

Widow's Web #1 written by Raven Gregory and Autumn Ivy.

Widow's Web #1 written by Raven Gregory and Autumn Ivy.

NG: Let’s talk a little bit about Widow’s Web. Can you give me just a basic synopsis, for people who might not be introduced to the series?

RG: Well it’s a cool little horror story that me and my co-creator, Autumn Ivy, came up with the basic premise of the classic boy meets girl story. Except in our story, the girl may very well end up eating the boy. So it’s true love and some cannibalism, good times.

NG: And boobs.

RG: And boobs. Got to have the boobs.

NG: How many issues have you guys put out so far?

RG: Well we’ve done 2 Kickstarters for the series. We’ve put out about three issues now. We were blessed in the fact the both of our Kickstarters were both successfully funded. So the entire series is now paid for. We finished penciling the last issue about 3 months ago, and it’s currently being lettered, and we should have the whole entire six issues done in less than 2 months.

Raven Gregory and his daughter at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (1).

NG: If the first arc is done- well I guess that is the question. Is it an arc, is the story done? Or is there more to say after issue six?

RG: You know, you never want to say never. If a story idea did come up that just screamed to be told, I would definitely consider revisiting it with Autumn and seeing what we could do with it. But as it stands we initially set it up to be a self contained mini-series. I’m a big fan of, you tell your story, you get in and get out. Don’t overstay your welcome, because it’s very easy to, if you’re not firing on all cylinders, to take an ongoing series and keep it up to par, keep it where it was, it’s not the easiest thing. I have written over 250 comic stories in my career and those are always just the hardest.

NG: If I could just touch on the other book that you guys have got out, The Secret Life of Crows. I actually own the first 3 issues. Are there more than 3?

RG: There is going to be – every time we do a Secret Life of Crows we are always like, we’re done. It’s the best we’ve ever done, it’s a personal story that I’m personally very proud of. It’s unlike anything that I have ever written and I can’t even remember writing it, it was one of those kind of stories. But Nei and I have recently been talking and it’s her book and we came up with an idea that we think will really set off the story in that prequel fashion, yet stand on its own as it’s own unique thing and really add to the essence of the story. So that’s something that will be done, I have no idea when.

The Secret Life Of Crows by Raven Gregory and Nei Ruffino.

The Secret Life Of Crows: Feather Into Flame by Raven Gregory and Nei Ruffino.

The Secret Life Of Crows: Broken Wings by Raven Gregory and Nei Ruffino.

NG: Is that something that you guys will look to Kickstarter to do?

RG: Oh no, she just publishes it puts it out on her own and everyone seems to just love it.

NG: The sell through on it does seem to be amazing. I have seen it jut sell out in seconds when she puts it online.

RG: Which, it stands as a testament to how talented an artist and creator she is. In that the last couple shows we’ve done together, sitting there trying to pitch the story of that book, it’s f-cking impossible. It’s like, well you know, there’s a girl and she turns into a bird. And the bird turns back into a girl and then she falls in love with the sun. And then the sun destroys the Earth. Like wow, that’s trippy, those guys must have been on some crazy drugs. But she recently pitched it to me, just last night, and the pitch she told is “It’s the story of the sun falling in love with the moon. And then darkness falls.” I was like, that’s really good, that’s basically the whole story. Like there’s all this other crazy acid induced moments, but at the essence that’s really what it is. I thought that was very cool.

NG: Awesome. Aside from those 2 books, are you working on anything else at the moment?

RG: Still trying to get Something Like Magic. That was going to be my next creator owned series. That I was planning on working next, but Widow’s Web just has taken up a lot of my time. It’s taking a while to get it launched properly. I had an exceptional artist I had worked with in the past on it who was just killing it. But he had some personal issues come up and the thing with doing – after having worked with a publisher for so many years, and having to cut corners and make compromises, and you’re putting your heart & soul into the story you are telling in this collaboration with this artist you’re working with, and all of a sudden an editor or a deadline comes in and you have to change things to suit getting the book out on time. And with my particular stories I wanted to make sure there was no compromise. I wanted it to be the best book it could possibly be. I didn’t want it ever to be late. So whereas most people put out a comic book, and they are working on it each month, I had all six issues done. Which is a huge risk and financial investment. But I feel the readers deserve only the best. I don’t want to put out a mediocre comic book. I am pretty sure I have. But when it comes to my new brand of comics, everything has to be right. It has to be the perfect artist. You can’t just throw any artist on it, it has to be somebody who really fits the story and finding that person can be difficult.

Nei Ruffino at Phoenix Comic Con 2016.

NG: If I could touch on it for just a second, you and Nei Ruffino seem to have a really awesome working relationship, and you guys seem to work together quite a bit. What’s the history in your relationship? How did you guys become friends?

RG: We initially started working together on the Return to Wonderland series. The first big book I did for Zenescope had an artist that I had worked with in the past named Richard Bonk. He had worked on a couple issues of The Gift for me. And when he was working on the series, he suggested her as a colorist. He didn’t get to stay on for the series, Dan Leister actually came aboard but we were both, all three of us were such huge fans of Wonderland that we would spend just hours on the phone talking about what different things we could do, how we could make this creepy, is this twisted, what’s the subliminal? It’s something that now, at my age, after having written all these books… I can’t possibly spend that much time on the phone with somebody. But back then it was just par for the course. It seemed like a regular thing and we just became incredibly close and she’s literally my best friend.

NG: That’s awesome. Also if we could touch on it, how did you meet Autumn Ivy?

RG: Autumn was cosplayer that I had known for quite a few years. By chance I happened across some, she would write some dark poetry or dark short stories on Facebook, like a blog. And I read a few of them, and I was just blown away by how rich and vivid and emotive the quality of her story telling was in such a short space and time. Because with short stories you really have to get them right from the hook or everybody has ADHD. No attention span whatsoever and it was from reading this that I reached out to her and said, hey I have this story idea, I’d like you to be involved in it. We collaborated and created this whole universe from it.

NG: And just to roll with the theme, how is it you guys got Ian Snyder?

RG: Ian Snyder worked on a book called Tales From Wonderland and I always loved his work and I was searching for an artist for Widow’s Web. The first artist who I really wanted for Widow’s Web was an artist named Sheldon Goh. I’m a huge fan of his, he’s amazing. Sheldon couldn’t commit to the project and I was at a show and Ian had just finished his gigs and was looking for a gig and Nei actually referred me to him and said hey take a look at some of his new work. And he was just light years away from when he did the Alice book with me. He was just so much better, and he was amazing back then. So everything was coming together and he very easily gets what I’m going for. And like all the best artists in the world, he makes me look so much better than I am. Sometimes I’ll sit there and re-read a script and say, “Wait a minute, did I write that? No I didn’t. Damn, that’s good. I’m going to take all the f-cking credit for that shit. Writer!” (laughs). And he’s just fun to work with, he’s a fun guy.

Raven Gregory and his daughter at Phoenix Comic Con 2016 (1).

NG: Are there any other team members on that book that we should give a shout out to?

RG: Our colorist is Liezl Buenaventura, she is a colorist who used to work over at Zenescope. A lot of the people who I work with on my books are just people I have met over the years, a lot from my days at Zenescope. As well people I’ve met from running the con circuit for 13 odd years and what not. Mike DeBalfo, who does a slew of covers for Zenescope, today and back in the day. He did a bunch of covers for me. Eric Basaldua, Nei Ruffino, Ale Garza. Basically all my friends.

NG: We will try to cram as many of their names in as we can. If people wanted to see more from you guys where would they go?

RG: They can pick up the books or get any news and updates on my Facebook, which is just Raven Gregory or at the website, www.theravengregory.com.

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.