An Interview With Scotlynd “Xing Xin” Bedford of Ximphonic Versus (September 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At a quiet spot in Denver, I had the chance to sit down and talk with Scotlynd “Xing Xin” Bedford of Ximphonic Versus about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 9/29/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Scotlynd “Xing Xin” Bedford of Ximphonic Versus.

“In a contemporary and Gothic world ruled by Victorian Dynasties, Modern City Kingdom’s, Magical Beings and Mystical Swords Of Power, a prince seeks to reclaim his throne as he must make a choice between two evil’s and the woman he loves.”

That is the premise of both the new television show Ximphonic Versus: Fabula Cristallum Thronus (due out in 2017 from the Global Genesis Group) and the comic book on which it was based. I recently had the chance to sit and talk with the creator of the Ximphonic Versus universe about the future of his book and how he became a writer and Executive Producer on this new show.

Neil Greenaway: Today we are speaking with Scotlynd “Xing Xin” Bedford about his series, or multiple series at this point, because you have announced extra comic series. Is that correct?

Scotlynd Bedford: There’s quite a few more, but there are a few that I am trying to bring out a little sooner than others. So Ximphonic Versus is the first. That is the one that will come out first. Then there’s 9 Ryu, SIFU, and a few others. I should have some artwork that I can show for those in a couple months. But for right now the main one is just Ximphonic Versus book wise. And then there is also the TV series that’s in development for that one.

NG: And do those all tie into the same universe?

SB: They do. They all exist in the same world. The planet is called Levisominos Vie and that means “to be under the influence of sleep”. It’s like something has almost put a spell on you, and you have fallen into this deep sleep and drifted into this dream world. Levisominos Vie is Latin and that’s really what it is making reference to. The connection between Ximphonic Versus, SIFU, 9 Ryu, and the rest is that they all exist in this same world but at different time periods. Some things are connected by genealogy; some characters are related by blood that spans decades, or hundreds, or thousands of years by the generational gaps. Then there are other books that I’ll do that have a deeper connection to each of the series. That will come out in these various stories.

Promotional art from Ximphonic Versus (1).

NG: Now are you actually doing the writing on each of these series?

SB: Yep.

NG: But you do have different artists working on a few of them, do you not?

SB: I create, write, draw, ink and do all the flats. And I’m the second digital colorist. Then my two main colorists are Endro Gatotkaca and Kevin Combs. Endro is from Indonesia and Kevin is from Chicago.

NG: How did you get hooked up with those guys?

SB: I remember I was looking for people to work with. And I went looking because I knew if I was going to try and do all this grand scale stuff, you can’t do it by yourself. It gets to this point where you reach this plateau. You say, “I can do A, but if I’m going to do B, C, D and all these other things, it’s going to take so much longer.” I need to be able to work with people who have talent and abilities that match this project. So I ran across Endro, and his talents are nothing short of spectacular. That’s really the best way to put it. Kevin in Chicago has, again, talents that are unbelievable. Things in his own personal projects that I’ve seen are amazing. So I was like, ok, let’s bring our forces together so that we can build upon something very unique and very vast. It really is, when you look at it, much like how you look at video game design or a movie. You have to have the director, you have the writer, and the producers. But then there are all these other people involved. They all help to bring that one vision to life, and it’s kind of the same fashion.

Lady Lunafryst Soir Florentissima.

NG: To jump back just briefly, how long have you been working on this? Because I know that as a series it’s gone through a couple different names, it’s gone through a couple different incarnations. How long has the core concept been in motion?

SB: Since the end of 1995 into ’96. It literally has been 20 years. It’s funny; originally, years ago, Ximphonic Versus was called Destiny. Then, after that, it was called Endless Fantasy Versus. But because of how the story is set up, there are many plays on words with musical aspects. A lot of the references made are to things in an orchestra or symphony setting. So I realized I wanted the title to be a representation of the emotional elements that were going on. So then it became Ximphonia. But I had always liked when it was Endless Fantasy Versus, and I thought, “Well let’s combine them and make it Ximphonic Versus”. When that one came out, it just had this ring to it, and I knew that’s what I needed it to be. But the core story has remained the same this whole time. Very few changes story wise. Originally the main character was Frost, and it was about her and her twin brother. But then that changed and it took this different perspective. Now, Addonnis is the main character. Addonnis’ role has always been the same in the story, he plays the villain. He is actually the bad guy, because the story is about a man who has to make these choices between two evils. When you think about it, how can you do what’s right when your only choices are both wrong? He has to pick between one of those wrongs and find a way to make it right using only the same evil choices that began everything in the first place. I don’t want to call him the antihero. As a perfect example, look at Avatar: The Last Airbender. We have Zuko, who was definitely evil. But Iroh, his character changed after his son got killed. He began to realize that the way we are doing things is probably not how things should be done. I just use that to illustrate how it’s the same kind of thing with Addonnis. He was just brought up in this environment where, you’re nobility, you’re a prince, you come from this divine linage, you can do whatever you want and there are no repercussions. And that’s the disposition that he has. That’s how he really is, and as the story goes on, elements about him change. So he is not the MAIN villain, there is a greater evil, someone very bad, very terrible, that he is fighting against. But he is a villain.

NG: And then I know you’ve hinted several times that the weapons are important, that the weapons play a big role. Is there anything you can speak to about that?

SB: Yeah, the series, really it’s about these crystal swords of power. These swords came from the celestial dragons. The dragons forged all these swords by pouring their essence into them and it created these spectacular weapons that are actually alive. They are not just sitting there, they actually have life inside of them. So most of the swords are gone, most of them have been destroyed. Either because people destroyed them in conflict or the wielder was unable to control the power of the sword and they were destroyed by it. So now we are down to the last two. Well, in the story there is a legend about a crystal throne that could be claimed by the last true king. In order to do that, he would need to have possession of both the swords. But the swords have been gone now, they have been asleep for millennia. No one has seen them, no one has found out where they are. When the story starts, the swords have begun to re-awaken. And what happens is all these kingdoms and these various powers are aware that now this power is returning to the world so we need to claim it, we need to gain access to it. Everyone is trying to gain access to these swords, because with them you can have power to dominate. I wish there is more I can say about what goes on, but I don’t want to spoil it. I don’t want to take that away from people. But in the back of that, despite a war and everything else that is going on – the story comes down to Addonnis and Lunafryst and that’s really what it’s about, the very human things that go on but they are all parts of the story.

Crowned Prince Addonnis Neos Latrunculus.

NG: So the story is also about Prince Addonnis and Lady Lunafryst. Are they related?

SB: She and Addonnis are not related but their relationship is like love, betrayal, mistrust, these kinds of things that make it work. It is inspired by and reminiscent in ways of Hamlet. Addonnis is very somber, very brooding. His disposition, he wears black all the time. There are just these very unique roles that each of them have in these divine charges that they are trying to fulfill. She is aware of hers. Addonnis, he really doesn’t like to talk about his power (the ability to see celestial light) because he feels when you are already different, the more different you are it just makes things. But when they meet, Lunafryst is very different. Her personality is very open where Addonnis is very emotionally closed off. So it’s a very interesting balance that they meet for each other.

NG: I know that you’ve had a couple publishers take a shot at this, so there are a couple comic book versions if the first issue floating around out there. As owner of a couple of these, I know the stories were different. Has the story changed at all? Or all they all in canon?

SB: Nothing changed, actually. The 2012 version was told from a later event of things that were happening. The Onyx Overture (which was just like another preview book), that is closer to the beginning of the story. So it’s not that the story is different, I have just showed two sneak peeks at two very different elements in the timeline. So when I did the Onyx Overture I decided to start a little closer to the beginning and kind of just reveal this introduction to Addonnis. I thought it was important to introduce him in the way he should have been introduced, so that’s why one book shows a certain element and then the self-published Onyx Overture shows other things.

Ximphonia Oblivium Sic Sempiternum.

NG: So if readers felt like finding those books, they are still considered by you to be in canon?

SB: Yes, it’s all still the same. The first book that came out in 2012, the events that you’re seeing are closer to episode 4 than anything else in the series. The Onyx Overture which came out last year – that is in episode 1, so it’s showing where things are starting. Then there are all these other parts that have never ever been shown the light of day, but once it does come out, I will show people everything in order the way it’s supposed to go.

NG: Also, back in 2012, there was a soundtrack with the book which you touched on just briefly. I know the soundtrack has also changed. Is the book supposed to be enjoyed with music? Do they go hand in hand?

SB: They do. The first composer that we had, he was a talented guy. He was very nice and we worked together on it. I didn’t want to put it out as soon as he did. But once it was all ready, he put it up on his website, and I was like ok, it’s already out, so let’s include it in the box set. On that soundtrack, he understood what I was trying to do, but not 100%. I knew that was something had to be revisited and had to be redone. So I met the famed composer Michael Roberts. And Michael Roberts is incredible. He has worked on award winning films. He did arrangements on Castlevania: Mirror of Fate for Nintendo 3DS, I mean he is incredible. So I had messaged him and said “I’ve got this project and I’m working on it, this is what I’m going for.” So we talked, and he saw Ximphonic Versus and I think he saw it and he could appreciate what I was trying to do. He was like, I want to help you do this. So he agreed to it and the soundtrack now is as it should be. It’s beautiful, it’s dark, it has that feeling of mystery and intrigue and suffering all of these things that play into this story. Ximphonic Versus really is just this story of victimized people victimizing each other, it’ really the simplest way to put it.

Ximphonic Versus Prelude Edition.

NG: Let’s move on to your TV show, having talked a little about the comic. How did the Ximphonic Versus show come to be? Did you have to go to them to shop it around or did someone see it and come to you?

SB: It’s funny, I had never known how to really get in touch with some of these big guys except for the open channels that they have. Like you go to Cartoon Network, or Nickelodeon or these various animation studios and they have things where you submit and you pitch it. I thought, hey, it’s a shot in the dark. Then Charles Morris, who is the Vice President for the Genesis Group, him and Rick Romano run it. I saw Charles online and I messaged him, we weren’t even friends yet on Facebook and I messaged him and said, “look I was just wondering, I see that you work with film and television, is there a way I could show you something that I’m working on, that I am trying to really show people something I don’t think they have seen in this medium, so can I just show you?” And I didn’t know what he was going to say, here was this Hollywood guy making movies, so I had no idea. But he messaged me back and he said sure. So I sent him a picture of Addonnis holding is swords and his phantom powers activated so you could see it around him. Charles saw it, and he liked it and he said, “I’ll tell you what, I’m going to give you our corporate number and you call us at 3 o’clock.” Mind you, at this point I’m freaking out, I’m like this cannot be happening. So I called and he says, “Tell me about your series.” And we talked for maybe a 12, 15 minute conversation and at the end of the conversation they said “Ok, we like it, we’re going to send you a contract for it.” And here we are with this TV deal. And the funny thing is, they said yes to something, and there’s all this stuff that is involved in it. We’re talking worldwide television and they said yes when so many people said no, because they didn’t like or they didn’t get it. And I thought the thing about comics creativity was to be unique, and to be different. But I have had all these huge publishers look at it, and nothing ever panned out the way I would have liked it to. That was unfortunate, but now we’re going to do this and it’s so much bigger. Charles looked at it and he saw enough of a value in something that we could talk some more. It was a very nice kind of like reassurance, like you’re not crazy. Because I spent a lot of time thinking maybe, did I do something wrong? Is there something wrong with the story? It’s been a really exciting experience and I’m looking forward to have things to show people. It just all kind of happened that way and we’re in active development and we’re moving forward.

NG: Having seen the book, it’s very lush, but not only is it lush there are a lot of fantastical elements to it. In bringing that to the screen, are you looking at live action that would be heavily CG’d or are you looking at animation?

SB: We’re going to do; it’s going to be like an anime. I am not opposed to live action, I would love to get live action as well. I would love to do that as well as the series, but we are starting with animation. I look at Kingsglaive, just phenomenal, that was very, very good. If we could do that kind of CG, I would love to at some point. But I know that where we are at right now is animation. So that is what we are looking at. It would be much closer to an anime where it would have that kind of aesthetic feel and what I am hoping to gear it towards production wise like the Vampire Hunter D: Bloodlust. That movie is phenomenal. That movie is one of the best animes I have ever seen. So that is like the kind of quality that I want people to see when they see Ximphonic Versus. To be able to have people see what I see in my head moving around the screen, that’s really what I’m looking forward to.

Lunafryst and Addonnis.

NG: Then going back just a little to the comics again, you had said that once the TV show gets on course you would like to revisit publishing it as a comic book, perhaps under your own publishing house. Would the comics that came out be telling the story covered by the show? Or would you be doing a divergent path, telling a tangential story?

SB: The way the story is written right now, the TV episodes and the comic episodes are the same. I want to be able to publish it with my own company. But let’s say a professional publisher came along and said they wanted to do it before the show, I would still put it out and the show would still follow those same beats. There are always little things that change between books and TV, it always happens, but for the most part it would stay very consistent.

NG: Another question looking into the future. You have said the universe is so big and there are so many stories, and you already know what the stories are, would you ever consider moving into a 3rd medium and perhaps trying to do a prose novel?

SB: I have thought about novelization for Ximphonic Versus and some of the other stories. Those are things that have come across the table and if that was something that was done, I would like to partner with an author who knows what they are doing and they are well versed in certainly something closer to that type of fantasy. That I think would be the best way to pursue that. But those are things that I certainly would like to be able to experience and do.

Lady Lunafryst Soir Florentissima. (2)

NG: You are obviously very heavily influenced by Asian style not only in the name, but right down to the art, even the writing style has a cadence to it that seems a little more eastern. Have you spent any time there, or how did you come by that as an influence?

SB: Part of my family is Asian and as far as I can remember I have enjoyed that culture. I have really come to appreciate it over the years more and more and not because of the anime or the manga, but because my day job deals a lot with Japanese history and philosophy and culture. They are amazing people, they really are, it’s just absolutely mind blowing how their culture has survived for so long. That’s where I drew it form, that’s where it comes from, all these different elements. With Ximphonic Versus I tried to perfectly meld European and Asian reference very carefully together.

NG: Really just one more kind of wrap up question. If folks who are reading this wanted to find you online, want to see more, want to know what’s going on, where would they look?

SB: So Ximphonic Versus has its official Facebook page which is the Fabula Cristallum Thronus, there is also a Broken Heart Productions Facebook page – that is my company that I own and is the studio that produces the book. The Global Genesis Group is the Hollywood company that has optioned the book and the show is also on IMDB, it’s up there. They have a synopsis and artwork so when I saw that it blew my mind. So that’s where everything is at. You can always contact us from one of the Facebook pages. I always make sure that myself or one of the admins replies to the messages that come in, so we always try to make ourselves available to anyone who is wanting to talk or curious about things.

NG: Good stuff. Thank you for your time.

Ximphonic Versus banner.

An Interview With Ron Fortier of Airship 27 (Fort Collins Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Fort Collins Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Ron Fortier of Airship 27 Productions about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 9/04/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Ron Fortier at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016.

Ron Fortier is an American author, primarily known for his Green Hornet and The Terminator comic books (from NOW comics) and his revival of several pulp heroes. He is currently writing a Black Bat comic series for Moonstone Publishing as well as a series of novels based around his own pulp creation, Brother Bones – The Undead Avenger.

Neil Greenaway: Today I am sitting at the Fort Collins Comic Con speaking with Ron Fortier. First off, I see several Black Bat comics here today. Can you tell us what you are doing with the current Black Bat series?

Ron Fortier: Yeah, ok. Basically I am working with Moonstone books (out of Chicago), and Moonstone for the last 5-6 years has been doing a lot of prose anthologies and novels featuring classic pulp characters form the 1930’s. Amongst these is the Black Bat, arguably one of the more popular grade B pulp heroes of the 30’s and 40’s. So they’ve done several anthologies with him I’ve had the privilege of writing 1 or 2 fictional stories for him. But then again, knowing my own background in comics, it was just a 1-2 step to say let’s do some Black Bat comics and see if there’s an audience for that. So over the last year I have actually written 2 Black Bat comic projects for Moonstone. One is a three issue mini-series called Guns of the Black Bat, which is available right now in comic shops. The second is a four issue mini-series called The Black Bat / Domino Lady: Danger Coast to Coast that hopefully will be out in November-December of this year.

Black Bat comics from Ron Fortier at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016.

NG: And are you writing other pulps for Moonstone?

RF: Yes, well I basically manage and run my own publishing house called Airship 27 Productions. We’ve been in business going on 11 years now and we’re primarily in business to do just that, to publish new novels and anthologies featuring classic pulp characters from 1930’s and 40’s. This movement has a tag, it’s basically called the “new pulp movement” and me, Moonstone and maybe half a dozen other publishers across the country are now doing this. Going back to the early pulps and finding a lot of the B characters, who are very much public domain, obviously. You can’t touch the Shadow, you can’t touch Doc Savage, they have always stayed in license. But the heyday of the pulps, if we talk about 1935-1945, literally hundreds of great characters appeared in those magazines. They were the inspiration for the comics that would later come. So you have such great characters as the Domino Lady, Secret Agent X, The Moon Man, The Purple Scar, I mean the plethora just runs wild. Moonstone is doing a whole series of anthologies and people like me who love this stuff have been invited to contribute short stories. To date I’ve done several Spider stories, I have a few Avenger stories. They have even gone as far as to take Lee Falk’s classic pulp comic character The Phantom and done prose anthologies with the Phantom. And I have done several of those stories. The new pulp movement is catching on and it is teaching a lot of the comic fans today a lot of that pre-history of where comics came from, i.e. the pulps.

Pulps and comics from Ron Fortier at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016.

NG: And are you getting a pretty positive response to these stories?

RF: Very much so. Only because, there has always been a pulp fan base, let’s put it like that. There has always been a pulp fandom that has been around, but pulps are now 70-80 years old and that fandom was pretty much dying out. Unlike comic con, which has sprouted up all over the world in the past 10 years, when you look at the Pulp conventions, there were only one maybe two left in this country. And the attendance was dwindling every year because your average fan is in his 70’s or 80’s. Well that is why people like me, Moonstone and other people who love this kind of fiction and are aware of it began to realize there is a need to infuse pulp fandom with younger writers. This whole movement of saving these characters from obscurity and oblivion was to create new pulp stories with them. I am happy to report that in the last 10 years, because of the new pulp movement, the attendance at the two major pulp conventions in the country, the first being Windy City Paper and Pulp in Chicago every spring in May has almost tripled. And ten years ago Pulp Con disappeared and was replaced by a thing called Pulp Fest in Columbus Ohio which is run at the end of summer, and it as well is seeing a resurgence in attendance. We’re getting a lot of college kids coming in who are finding out through the media marketing that the books we publish are fascinating. Many of them are comic collectors all their lives, have had one of two bits of information about what pulps were and now they want to see for themselves and we are providing the material and the product for them to do that.

Mr. Jigsaw Special #1 from Redbud Studio.

NG: And what about some of your comics? What can you tell me about the Mr. Jigsaw books?

RF: Mr. Jigsaw is a comedy superhero done for laughs. He operates out of Maine; Portland, Maine is his hometown because he is not quite ready yet for New York or Boston. He’s a naïve young gentleman, but his unique power is that he can break apart like a jigsaw puzzle, every part of his body. And he can still control them with his mind and reassemble them as need be. Now, he thinks that this is the greatest superpower in the world because he has been brought up by a loving set of parents who have encouraged him all his life. And he grew up reading comic books, so he wants to help people with this thing that he does. Even though it often times gets him into hot water and comedic problems he is such a loveable person and character that over the course of the adventures that we’ve written he’s gathered a group of loyal friends that are always there, always support him and basically are just there for him. It’s a fun strip. We created it almost 30 years ago, myself and artist Gary Kato. It’s always been a little short story backup feature for different magazines over the years. People like the late Don Thompson, who was the editor of the Buyers Guide, the one time newspaper for comic fandom; people like Tony Isabella, the comic historian, are all huge Mr. Jigsaw fans. We have a loyal following. So a few years ago when myself and my artist partner Rob Davis got into self-publishing our own comics and our own creations, Rob was the one who brought up that we had done close to 20 different Mr. Jigsaw shorts over the last 30 years. We set about collecting them, thank God Gary kept Xerox copies of everything he draws! So we began publishing an actual series, Mr. Jigsaw: Man of a Thousand Parts, and we filled the first three issues with those reprints. I started writing number 4, then number 5 and as of now we just released issue number 14. It’s still going great, people absolutely love the series.

More comics from Ron Fortier at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016.

NG: That is awesome. It is wonderful that it is getting that type of response after all these years.

RF: Well I was recently at a convention with Tony Isabella. For people who aren’t familiar with Tony, he had a great career at Marvel and DC both. Tony is the gentleman who created arguably one of the first black superheroes in this country, that being Black Lightning. Tony is a dear friend and every time we get together at conventions I have to bring him the newest Mr. Jigsaw because he wont let me leave, he will haunt me. It drives Tony crazy, in his own columns online, his own blog; he is forever saying this is the best comic book series you’ve never heard of. He says this should have a lot more popularity. And of course my wife and I tease all the time, that Jiggy (as we call him) would be perfect on a Saturday morning cartoon show or to be on the Cartoon Network. Who knows? Maybe someday. With the current favor comics have in culture today and Hollywood and television looking for more and more products, it’s maybe just a matter of time before somebody trips over a few issues of Mr. Jigsaw and we find ourselves there.

NG: That would be very interesting to see.

RF: It sure would, it would be a lot of fun.

NG: What can you tell me about the Paradise Falls series that I see here?

RF: Paradise Falls is again an independent black and white comic. It’s a science fiction murder mystery and it came about because thanks to the internet today and thanks to social media, all of us can reach out and meet other creators on a daily basis from around the world. I mean, I have instigated project artists in South America and Australia over the years, so God bless the internet for that. So years ago, again online, I saw the artwork for a stylish artist named John Williams. And his work is very cartoonish. It almost falls off the pages. He doesn’t do straight panels. He does twisted panels, it looks like you woke up with a hangover after a big binge and that’s a John Williams page. What the heck is going on in this page? But it’s all professionally done. He knows how to draw, he just chooses to use this unique story telling style. Now having seen a lot of his work, the challenge to me as a writer (and the one I love the most) is what would I write for an artist who draws like this? Well again, the immediate sense is to scoff it off as too cartoonish. That is all it is and you could never do anything serious with that. My take is, that’s the perfect foil. I can write a serious adult murder mystery using John’s style. I contacted him, I introduced myself to him, we got to know each other. We communicated back and forth until ultimately I suggested my idea for Paradise Falls, which is a futuristic city like Metropolis in the old Fritz Lang science fiction classic.

Paradise Falls comics from Ron Fortier and John Williams.

NG: That is a classic. I love that movie!

RF: So do I. It’s part of the fun of this book. Paradise Falls is this mega-futuristic city, they have robots; they have humanoids, flying cars, and everything. And in the midst of that city they have their own masked avenger, a character called the Red Mask, who goes after corrupt officials, police, government types, whatever. Ultimately though, he meets this young woman and falls in love with her and shortly after they are married in secrecy. Then, he is betrayed by certain people and murdered. His wife is so grieved by his loss; she basically vows vengeance against the people who murdered her husband, the Red Mask. The kicker is nobody knows she’s his widow. She sets about to solve the mystery of who murdered her husband and ultimately to get revenge and bring them to justice. That’s the core of Paradise Falls, the subtext being sex, science and murder. We’ve done 2 issues and the people who have had the courage to pick it up and take it home have been blown away by it. It’s like nothing else you have ever seen. The art sells it, and it really does, because you don’t expect that adult a story in something that looks so cartoonish. John is a real, real genius talent to work with. Whenever I send him a new script, it boggles my mind how he interprets it and how he does his layouts. So we’ve done 2 issues, and to be honest it’s a free flowing story in my mind. So it could wrap at issue 3, but it may not. It may go to issue 4.

NG: I have heard you speak briefly about one of your books, Brother Bones, being made into a movie. Could you give us the premise of that book?

RF: Okey doke. Being involved in this new pulp movement, I had this urge to create my own avenger if you will. A vigilante with a mysterious past and whatnot. And being inspired by classic pulps of the Shadow and Spider, that’s what I wanted to go after, but with a little supernatural twist. So I created a character called Brother Bones – the Undead Avenger. And he operates out of a fictional city in the Northwest called Cape Noir.

Brother Bones: The Undead Avenger by Ron Fortier.

Brother Bones: Tapestry of Blood by Ron Fortier.

The origin is there are brothers, 2 identical twin brothers called the Bonello brothers, Jack and Tommy who live in Cape Noir. They work for the local crime boss named Topper Wyld. Basically what happens is they do a hit for him. They literally are told to go to this bordello and kill everybody in the bordello. The girls, the customers, everybody, because Wyld wants to start a gang war and take over Cape Noir and his two twin boys are the most deadly gunmen he has. So they go to the bordello in the opening story and they do it, there’s carnage everywhere, they kill all these people. As they are leaving the house, Tommy hears something. He goes over and one of the dying girls looks up at him and whispers something to him. Curious, he leans over to hear her better and what she whispers is "thank you". Well they leave the house and Jack looks over at his brother and asks what was that and Tommy says, “She thanked me”. And it starts to eat away at him, what kind of a life did she have that she was grateful to be slain, to be murdered. He can’t get the words out of his head. In the seceding weeks, no matter what he is doing, he keeps hearing the words, he keeps hearing “thank you”. Well, he confides to Jack, and Jack starts to get a little worried because up until this point they have been soulless murderers. They have been monsters. Could he be developing a conscience? And if that is the case, that is totally a detriment to what they do. He knows that if this goes any further Wyld is going to find out and Tommy’s going to be in trouble. But Tommy can’t forget, the words echo and echo driving him crazy. He can’t sleep. Until finally one night driving around town, thinking he’s probably just going to take a gun and kill himself, he actually ends up in a Catholic church.

Desperate, he goes up to the church and an old pastor opens the door and Tommy has a confession. He unburdens his soul and lets the priest know he is going crazy. The priest lets him know, you have developed a conscience for whatever reason. And Tommy thinks, well what do I do? I can’t live like this. So the priest, knowing the danger he would be in sends Tommy to a monastery outside of town for monks. They live in a secluded area, they farm and have a quiet life of contemplation and prayer, and he sends Tommy there. Tommy now becomes a monk and begins to change his life. In the meantime he has disappeared from Cape Noir. Jack, his twin brother, is going crazy. It is assumed he has been gunned down by a rival mob.

So months later somebody sees Tommy at a store near the monastery, goes back to the city and tells Jack. He’s alive, he’s at this monastery. Jack is beside himself, he’s angry. He gets a mob together and they go up to the monastery.

Brother Bones: Six Days of the Dragon by Roman Leary.

Brother Bones: Bullets of Jade by Ron Fortier & John Polacek.

Now, Tommy had been talking to a monk who came from Louisiana, and he had been working in the art shop. He made a skull mask, like the beautiful white porcelain skull masks for Mardi Gras. Here comes the car with all these gunman. Jack gets out and Tommy realizes who he is and runs down the road. He basically tells his brother “don’t do it Jack, please, take it out on me, I’m the one who fouled up, go ahead and shoot me, but leave these men alone, they are innocent”. No way was Jack going to do that. He shoots his own brother and kills him, then proceeds to go in and kill everybody in the monastery and burn it to the ground. Tommy should be going to Hell, but he doesn’t. He gets stopped in this other world between Heaven and Hell. There he sees the spirit of the young girl who he killed in the bordello. She has been chosen to be his spirit guide and she tells him he has to go back to Earth and make atonement for his life of sin. Now he is going to become the avatar, the avenger, the defender of the innocent in Cape Noir.

Weeks later, Jack is about to shoot and kill this young boy, an innocent card dealer for the boss, when all of a sudden out of nowhere comes Tommy’s ghost in midair. Jack laughs, he doesn’t believe it. He thinks, you can’t hurt me, you’re ethereal. Tommy literally invades Jack's body and takes it over. Jack dies, his body dies. So now you have an animated body with another man’s spirit controlling it. So he is the Undead Avenger. The young card dealer he saved now becomes his aide because Tommy saved his life. He sets out to start this mission in Cape Noir. He has the young man drive him back to the ruins of the monastery, and in the middle of the night with the moon hanging over the clouds, the animated zombie-avenger walks around until he sees the white bone mask. He puts it over his face an becomes Brother Bones.

Now, I created that 10 years ago. We have done 2 collections of short stories and another writer who became an avid fan actually wrote a full length Brother Bones novel called Six Days of the Dragon. He came to me after reading Brother Bones and said, “Please, please, I have this novel idea”. So I read his plot, criticized a few things, said we needed to change that, that and that. He adhered to everything I said, so we actually have 3 Brother Bones books on sale right now on Amazon, in Kindle and audio. Amongst all the fans of the series is a young man named Erik Franklin who, with partner Daniel Husser, runs his own film company out of Seattle, Washington. About a month ago I got a letter from them saying they would like to make Brother Bones into a feature length motion picture. And that is where we are at. We have worked out a story plot with them. Erik has written a shooting script. They are in the process now of scouting locations and getting funding. They will probably go to something like GoFundMe to fund the special effects they are going to need for it. And hopefully, by the end of the year they will get into actual casting and start principle photography.

Ron Fortier and his wife at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016.

NG: Wow that is pretty exciting stuff.

RF: Yeah it is very much so. When I told my family the news what was going on, one of my grandsons turned around and said “Are you going to be like Stan Lee in this? With the cameo bit?” So in talking to Erik in one of our conference calls I mentioned that and Erik goes “Oh God, Ron, you gotta do that! Please, I will let you know when principle photography starts and you can fly up to Seattle and we’ll get you in a scene”. So you never know where this career is going to take you. I just have so much fun doing it. Its a love of storytelling more than anything else and I continue to do it, like I said it never ever grows tiring. I’ll be telling stories to the bitter end.

NG: That is amazing. I think that about wraps it up for us, I would like to thank you, this has been a wonderful interview.

RF: Thank you I appreciate doing it.

An Interview With Mike Baron of The Badger & Nexus (Fort Collins Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Fort Collins Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Mike Baron of Nexus & The Badger about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 9/03/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Mike Baron at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016. (1)

Mike Baron broke into comics in 1981 with Nexus, his groundbreaking science fiction title co-created with illustrator Steve Rude; the series garnered numerous honors, including Eisners for both creators. A prolific creator, Mike is responsible for The Badger, Ginger Fox, Spyke, Feud, and many other comic book titles. Baron has also written numerous mainstream characters, most notably DC’s The Flash, Marvel’s The Punisher, and several Star Wars adaptations for Dark Horse.

Neil Greenaway: We are sitting at Fort Collins Comic Con speaking with Mike Baron, creator of the Badger, and today we are going to discuss his new series through Devils Due/First. So let’s start out with, just briefly, what’s the backstory on the Badger? How did you come up with this character?

Mike Baron: We had just sold Nexus to Capital Comics and so I said, “Listen guys, I would like to get something else going”, and I had been working with Jeff Butler. So I said, “What do you want to draw?” And he said "I want to draw Druids". So we did this 10 page story about this nasty Druid wizard in the 6th century who was so obnoxious that the other druids took up a collection to pay some Vikings to drop him off the edge of the world. I took that and I said “Boys, I got this druid comic,” and Milt (Griepp) said, “We don’t want a druid, give us costumed crime fighter”. And I thought, why would anybody put on a costume and fight crime, they would have to be crazy. I had been reading The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keys (he also wrote Flowers for Algernon). The Minds of Billy Milligan was one of the first serious studies of multiple personalities, so I decided to use that as a hook to hang the character on. And I named him the Badger because in Madison, Wisconsin (where we come from) it’s badger this, badger that, badger liquors, badger pub. So I went to Jeff and said, “Jeff, they want to do a costumed crime fighter” and Jeff said “Well I’m not going to waste these 10 pages that I drew about this druid”, and I said “Fine, we’ll shoehorn him into this book”. So that is how Badger number one started, with the 10 pages that include the origin of Ham, and then we bring him up to speed where he meets Badger in the mental hospital, and we were off and running.

The Badger #1 from Capital Comics.

The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes

The Badger #64 from First Publishing.

NG: I know that Badger was at First in the original incarnation of First Comics. How does it feel to be working with them again?

MB: I just want to say my editor Alex Wald, who was my editor decades ago, is a great guy and I am very happy to be working with him again.

NG: So you are still working with the same editor? That is very cool, that you already have that relationship. Can you tell us a little about the most recent Badger series that came out?

MB: I had an opportunity to reboot the character, because the Badger has not been around for about 20 years. I did do a series through Image and those copies are very hard to find. They’re spotty, I did a lot of learning after I did those Image comics and I’m not the same person I was - hopefully I’m better and my writing is better. So when they asked me to reboot the Badger I gave him a new origin, bringing him up to the 21st century. The first issue tells a story never told before about how he enlists in the Army and goes to Afghanistan. It’s grim, but it’s absolutely gripping and it’s a terrific introduction to anyone who hasn’t read the Badger before. It ends with him meeting Ham in the mental institution again. And the subsequent 4 issues involve a struggle among four wizards who rule the Earth, one of whom is Vladimir Putin. Vlad is the bad guy, in case you didn’t know that, and he and Badger eventually come to blows. But it’s crazy stuff. It mixes real world politics with demons. Yak and Yeti and back; Doctor Buick Riviera is back; Mavis and Daisy are back of course and as we continue I’m going to bring back other characters from the Badger universe.

The Badger #1 from Devil's Due/1First Comics.

NG: What artist did you work with on that series?

MB: Well Jim Fern did the first issue and it will knock you out, it’s one of the most beautiful comics ever drawn. Tony Akins did the second issue and another brilliant job. But these guys were only available for one issue, so issues 3-5 are drawn by Val Mayerik (the legendary co-creator of Howard the Duck), who has done so much for Marvel in the past and we are hoping that Val will tackle the new series that I am working on now.

NG: Ok, and can you tell me a bit about that new series that will be coming out?

MB: Ham buys an island in the Caribbean, ostensibly to promote eco-tourism. But his real goal is to exploit it for oil and the very rare Zig-Zag nut, which has unexplored medicinal properties and is only found on this one island. He runs into all sorts of interference and friction from factors that don’t want him to succeed, from ecological groups like Humans Off Planet and Greenslice to a mysterious cabal of fugitive financiers headed by Beef Chekov. Eventually he finds himself battling not only Beef Chekov and his minions, but the Venezuelan army, a bunch of angry monkeys, and some rogue whalers.

Badger comics from Mike Baron at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016.

NG: And when can we expect that to be coming out in comic shops?

MB: Oh geez, I don’t know. I just finished the first script and I have to revise it as First sees fit. Hopefully we are going to get somebody working on it soon and ideally it will be out next summer. You know, it takes so long to get anything through First, that I can’t really make any predictions. But I know they want this out there so hopefully next year, 2017.

NG: Then to switch gears a little bit, I know that recently there was a crowdfunded Nexus newspaper, did you have anything to do with that?

MB: Oh yeah, of course. I wrote 66 pages which The Dude (Steve Rude) is working on, I think the 7th paper just came out. If you want to get this you have to go to steverude.com, all the details are there. It’s an amazing product and it’s enormous, it’s 17” x 22” because Dude wanted to resurrect the form and feel of the old Sunday newspaper supplements, so that’s what he’s done. But it’s printed on real high quality paper and a stunning printing job, because he’s a perfectionist. You have to see it to believe it but it’s hard to see because the size means that they can’t rack it in comic stores, but if you go to steverude.com you’ll be able to find it, you’ll be able to see samples and so forth.

Novels from Mike Baron at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016.

NG: Then if we could speak a little bit about them, I see you have some novels here on the table, what are you doing in novelization these days?

MB: I sat out to write novels 40 years ago. I sat down and wrote millions of words of crap, and it wasn’t until 7 or 8 years ago that I finally understood how to create a novel. When I get it, I get it, but I’m a slow learner. I get it now. Now I am like a kid in a candy store. I feel like my career is just beginning. I publish a lot through Wordfire Press, which is Kevin J. Anderson’s outfit. He has published 4 of my novels so far and they are horror novels, much to my surprise, but I’ve always loved horror and always wanted to write it. It just took me a long time to find my voice and find my themes. I didn’t want to retread what everyone else is doing. I can say with some confidence that my stories are absolutely unique. They are not werewolves, they are not vampires. They are stuff you have never thought about, but once you think about it’s going to keep you up all night. Helmet Head is about biker-Nazi-zombies; Scorpio is about a ghost who only appears under a blazing sun; Banshees is about a satanic rock band that comes back from the dead. I have another horror novel up my sleeve that Kevin will be publishing next year. In the meantime I am publishing my Biker novels with Liberty Island Press. This is a hardboiled detective series. My protagonist, Josh Pratt, is a reformed motorcycle hoodlum turned detective who get involved in harrowing cases. The first one (Biker) is grim, but I like grim, I gravitate towards grim entertainment. But of course everything I write is leavened with humor; there’s humor in every story if you look for it. I have 5 Biker novels finished and I’m about to start the sixth.

The novel Biker by Mike Baron.

NG: I also see your comic Dogs here at the table, could you tell us a bit about that?

MB: I had a bunch of dog stories that I’ve been dragging with me through the years and there was no home for them, so I said I’ll just publish these myself. I put together a little book, there are 4 stories; 3 of them are by me and 1 is by Fabian Nicieza. The art for the first two is by Cesar Madarro who is a Spanish artist. He draws only in pencils, they’re just exquisite, and when you look at the pencils you can understand why he doesn’t want to ink them. They could be inked but it would probably detract from the beauty of his pencils. Then there is a two pager by Jay Kennedy and then in the end there is a 10 pager by Neil Hansen who used to draw under the name of Spider. Neil Hansen is one of the greatest artists I have ever worked with. He lives in Canada and I’ve been trying to get him to draw for me again. He did a few covers for the Image run of Badger but he hasn’t drawn in years. When you look at that story it’s going to knock you out. It’s like a punch between the eyes, the art and the story. It’s grim story as well, it’s the only grim story in there, but the art is just unbelievable.

Dogs #1 from Baby Badger Comics.

A page from Dogs drawn by Cesar Madarro.

NG: That sounds really awesome. Jumping back a bit, you have this most recent series of the Badger, and you have the one you are working on now. Is it safe to say that the badger is going to be carrying on for a while then? Have you got more stories in you for him?

MB: You have no idea. I have so many Badger stories that I’ve written and some of them are really good. The problem is that they are stand-alone stories and right now the thinking at First, and every other comic company under the sun, is that they have to have a 5 or 6 issue story arc that they can package as a trade paperback. So that is what I’m doing. But if I get the opportunity I would love nothing more than to have a monthly ongoing Badger series, I wouldn’t have to write stories for a year I have so many great stories backed up that are already written.

NG: It would be very cool to see a monthly title that could allow for stand-alone stories. Are there any projects outside of the Badger that you’re working on that you that you could tell us about?

MB: I have a number of series in development with some terrific artists and I’m waiting to hear form the publishers now, but it would be premature to announce them. Of course, if nobody crosses our palms with silver, it’s not going to happen.

Mike Baron with Neil Greenaway at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016.

An Interview With Ulises Farinas of Buño Press (Fort Collins Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Fort Collins Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Ulises Farinas of Buño Press about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 9/03/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Ulises Farinas at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016 (1).

Ulises Farinas is a cartoonist and writer who meticulously blends genres, styles, and universes. Breaking down the walls between imagination and reality, he depicts super-saturated, hyper-detailed worlds where heroes and monsters are as fantastic as the landscapes they inhabit. Currently writing IDW’s Judge Dredd with Erick Freitas, drawn by Dan McDaid. Also with Erick Freitas, he is the co-writer of Amazing Forest, available on Comixology and in print from IDW. He is also the artist and co-writer of GAMMA, a one-shot comic previously serialized in Dark Horse Presents.

Neil Greenaway: I am sitting at Fort Collins Comic Con speaking with Ulises Farinas. Just to get us started, what books are you working on right now?

Ulises Farinas: Right now I’m finishing up Judge Dredd for IDW and we just finished Amazing Forest there as well. The trade paperback just came out this past Wednesday. I’m also working on a book called Cloudia & Rex for my own publisher BUÑO, and right now just preparing for the next year, coming up with new pitches and stuff.

Judge Dredd & Amazing Forest comics from Ulises Farinas at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016.

NG: Can you tell me a little about your work on the Transformers: Heart Of Darkness? How did you get that job, how did you first get to working with IDW?

UF: With IDW that was actually kind of a funny story. I had looked up a cached version of their website where their submissions policy was still open, because the current website at the time had closed submissions. You couldn’t submit anymore. So I found an older website and I emailed them from that email address, and it actually still worked! So I got through to Bobby with IDW and they asked me to work on a Transformers book.

NG: Wow! I have to assume that they fixed that little glitch after that. Let’s talk about Judge Dredd for a minute, how did you get that job?

UF: Well I worked on Judge Dredd: Megacity 2. I was the artist on that and I really liked working on that with Douglas Wolk and we kind of got to put our own stamp on Megacity 2. Then afterwards I was still talking to the editors, I wanted to pitch them some ideas I had and they asked me to pitch for the Judge Dredd series, so we got it.

Judge Dredd comics from Ulises Farinas at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016.

NG: Ok. That seems pretty straightforward. So, The Amazing Forest, can you tell us a little bit about that one?

UF: Amazing Forest is an anthology series. Each issue has 4 stories. It’s written by me and Eric Freitas and I started writing it about 2012 or 2013. So a while ago. And it’s great to finally see it on shelves. And there are all different amazing artists on each issue. So each story is like the Twilight Zone, or Outer Limits type of dark, weird science fiction type stories. That’s pretty much what it’s about.

NG: And then can you tell us a little bit about Cloudia & Rex?

UF: Cloudia & Rex is about two little girls who are imbued with the powers of almost all the gods from all the different world cultures. So Cloudia herself is not really possessed, but within her is the god Thanatos from Greek mythology (who is the god of death). But he is almost using her as a raft to basically shepherd all these gods who are being killed in their god realm. So it’s kind of her coming to terms with this power and also fixing her relationship with her mother after their father passed away.

Amazing Forest #2 wraparound cover by Ulises Farinas.

NG: And then yesterday at your panel, you had spoken a bit about why you started BUÑO and how it was kind of a cry for diversity, could I get you to talk a little about that?

UF: I’m not sure it’s a cry for diversity; I think it’s making sure that diversity isn’t just a marketing tactic. That you actually hire people of color, that you actually hire different people from different walks of life and it’s not just “I just made this character a person of color”, that you actually care about the comics community itself and making sure there’s diversity and that there’s value to that beyond just a marketing tactic.

NG: As a publisher, are you looking at other artists and authors submissions, or is it mostly to publish your own stuff?

UF: I am definitely looking at other people’s stories. Our first book is Light by Rob Cham who is Filipino artist. I think it’s a 100 page graphic novel. So it’s not just a clearing house for my ideas, hopefully we’ll grow to support many different artists.

Light by Rob Cham from Buño Press

NG: All right. What other ideas have you got for your BUÑO publishing aside from Cloudia & Rex, what else is in the future there?

UF: We are also kind of looking into not just publishing peoples work but also maybe distributing much smaller indie publishers, indie artists. A lot of people making books with like Kickstarter and stuff are now trying to figure out how to mail their books and get them to shops and I think personally as an artist that’s something that you just don’t want to put any time into. It’s so draining to be doing all the logistics. So I think its great opportunity right now to possibly step into that and help these artists get their books out into shops and stuff.

Cloudia & Rex from Buño Press

NG: It does seem like a lot of Kickstarters have had a rough time with delivery. They go well, they get their funding, people seem interested, but it’s the delivery that seems to kick people in the butt.

UF: Yeah, I think Diamond is kind of silly because they are not looking at this potential customer base as anything worthwhile, but so much of the comics economy is being made through Kickstarters. I think there should be someone who almost centralizes that. And if you have a great book, maybe there could be someone who could team up with you to get that out there so you’re not stuck with the logistics of moving all this inventory.

NG: Now I remember a few years back there was actually a company called FM that would work with the indie publishers, that would work with the indie guys, and try and get them out there when Diamond wouldn’t, and Diamond put them down pretty cold. Yet they are pretty adamant that they are not a monopoly. Would you argue that, do you think Diamond has a monopoly on the distribution?

UF: I think it’s obvious. It’s like calling the sky green. Everyone knows that Diamond’s a monopoly, there’s no other way of saying it. Who else is delivering the comics to shops? If Diamond is going to say it’s not a monopoly, sure tell me who your largest competitors are. It’s a real simple question.

Buño Press logo.

NG: If you had the chance, would you like to grow as a distributor and become that competition? Or would you prefer the company to grow as a publisher?

UF: I would rather grow as a publisher. Distribution isn’t a major focus so much as something I know can help with. When it comes to indie creators, when it comes to people of color, when it comes to queer creators, you know there is already so many obstacles in the way that challenge you in trying to get your comics out there. So anything that can help different types of creators get their works out there, I am interested in. Whether I’m publishing it or they are publishing it themselves, I want to create a network that can help them. I think comic book artists work together all the time, they are so much into collaboration. But they do not talk about, they do not think about how they collaborate to help their own interests economically. When it comes to diversity, how do you collaborate – how do you organize so that you help yourself in this market, so you’re not just at the whims of these larger companies? Whether it’s a distributor like Diamond or it’s a larger publisher like say Marvel or DC. I think anything that we can do to work together and to help each other; I think that’s what’s going to be the change. So we don’t have these sad stories of creators begging Hero Initiative to pay for their medical bills. And that’s the sad thing, we pay such deference to the creators that have gone by, we call Jack Kirby the King, but we don’t actually respect what that means. Because if you really felt they were the king, why do they have to beg you for money? Why do they have to beg just to not die poor, sick, starving? We shouldn’t have to go to conventions and see 80 year old, 90 year old cartoonists who should be retired still having to hawk their wares just to break even. I think it’s really a disappointment that as creators we don’t work together more to prevent that. You know BUÑO is just part of what I think is the solution, creating publishers, creating a mindset. Changing the culture so that we work together and don’t have the same problems in 50 years that we have right now, which are the same problems that we’ve had now for the last 50 years.

Transformers: Heart Of Darkness #1 from IDW.

NG: A lot of people would argue that it’s getting better, but you mentioned yesterday it seems like it’s almost getting better because of sensationalism. It’s getting better because you can get a headline saying “I hired a black woman”, instead of because she was the most qualified. It looks like they are grabbing the headline and not the author. Do you think that the big companies actually care or are they just trying to court public favor?

UF: I think the question is a little weird. When they are hiring a black woman to write say a Black Panther backup I don’t think they are doing it just because she is a black woman. We have to be careful to not diminish a person’s talents, a person’s hard work. Even if they are getting jobs which I find often times to feel like its pandering. Just because it’s pandering doesn’t mean the quality of the work is bad. A lot of times a difficult question I get is, when I talk about these things, when I criticize these systems, people often misinterpret that I’m criticizing the creator. If I disagree with Brian Michael Bendis creating say Riri for the Iron Man series, it’s not because I care about the quality of the work. It might be an amazing book, he might write an amazing Iron Man story. It is the politics behind it that are in question. When he’s saying that “I want to make a character that my daughter can look up to”, how can you not ask the question: don’t you want someone working at the company that they can look up to? Isn’t that more important? So I think that’s something to keep in mind. When it comes to pandering, we have to be careful that we are criticizing the practices; we are criticizing the institutions and not necessarily demonizing the people within these institutions. A lot of times we don’t have as much control over whether a corporation is made out of people or the corporation is something separate from the people within the company; it can be impossible to differentiate. So I always try to make sure everyone knows I am talking about the institutions and not the people.

Judge Dredd comics from Ulises Farinas at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016 (2).

NG: If this philosophy appealed to people reading this, does BUÑO have a submission policy?

UF: Well, my submissions policy, and I said this in another interview before, is the same submissions policy that every company has. If you know someone at the company, you can submit. That’s how it always is, and I think it’s silly when you see a company making a big hoopla like “our submissions policy is open now”. I just think, “I’m pretty sure I submitted a comic last year and it got approved”, no one told me like “oh buddy, don’t talk to me about that submission, it’s closed right now”. No one has ever done that. So I think we should just get rid of that façade that there are these submission policies in the industry. Why put it down or put it up? Just put an email address down there and when you feel like looking for new stuff, open the emails and there will be stuff in there. So my submission policy is, send me anything you want if you know me. Send it to the email address on the website if you want, it’s just going to be me looking at it anyway. It’s just me and Storm Smith. And I’ll tell you we don’t have any money and we can’t make it, you know? But when we do have more money, our submission policy will “be open”. With air quotes around that.

Ulises Farinas at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016 (2).

NG: Ok. I guess just a fairly basic question, with all that philosophy in mind, a lot of people in the industry are working to get to the big 2, does that even interest you?

UF: Yeah, I’ll definitely work for the big 2; I’ll work for anyone who will pay me. If a company pays you fairly and respects you as a creator, why wouldn’t I work for them? I have philosophical disagreements with the entire comic industry, not just Marvel, not just DC, but also Image, Top Shelf, with FirstSecond, with Fantagraphics, it doesn’t matter, and I’m just naming publishers that don’t even matter, with Oni, any of them. I’m doing books with Oni; I’m doing books with IDW. I’ve done books with almost every major publisher. I have philosophical disagreements with them, but if my relationship with an editor or with a publisher is fair and they treat me with respect, then I will work with them. I will still voice my disagreements with their practices. I think that the industry shouldn’t act so afraid of their creators voicing their grievances. If you say you know comics are for everyone, and comics are great and everyone should be reading them, then we should be listening to the people making the comics. They might have a good idea on how to make comics better.

You can see more from Ulises at ulisesfarinas.com or bunobooks.com.

An Interview With Felipe Echevarria of Death From Above (Fort Collins Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Fort Collins Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Felipe Echevarria of Death From Above about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 8/31/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Felipe Echevarria at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016.

Felipe Echevarria is an American artist working in the dual arenas of fine art and comics & graphic novels. He is best known for the watercolor comics adaptation of the Alfred Hitchcock film Psycho though he has also worked on a collection of underground Sandman: Death paintings entitled Ankh, as well as several other books. We talked about past works, his upcoming projects, and also his incorporation of spirituality and metaphysics in both his fine art and comic art works.

Neil Greenaway: To start us out, what books are you working on right now?

Felipe Echevarria: I’ve got several in motion. I’ve got Death From Above, which is a graphic novel. It’s a revelation stream of life, death, and true happiness. It’s kind of like a meditation. I’ve been working on that for 24 years, believe it or not.

NG: Wow!

FE: I even had to start over, because my skills had taken a huge leap. I am going to be doing a Kickstarter for that one in the spring. And the first half will be published through that.

Death From Above flyer from Felipe Echevarria.

NG: Who is writing that with you?

FE: I wrote and drew this one. It is all me. I painted it and everything. It is going to be completely different than anything out there. I am also doing a book called Kloon, which is a take on the French word for clown. I didn’t write this book, I’m just illustrating it. That has been in the works for two or three years. Hopefully it will be out this Christmas, or maybe next spring sometime. I have been working on the second issue of Stakes, with Todd Jones, but I haven’t put a whole lot into that one yet. Let’s see, what else? I have a Spirit Women coffee table book. Spirit Women are these white-Caucasian women with the red paint on their faces. There will be a Kickstarter for that one next year. That’s about it for current projects.

NG: Moving back just a minute to the Kloon book, who’s putting that out?

FE: It’s a company called Merchants of Wow and he’s got a publishing company now started, a little boutique company. It’s going to a big, very strong company because this guy is an ex-Hollywood marketing guy and he knows what he’s doing. So it a very small company and they have 2 or 3 other books that are queued up to come out with Kloon. Kloon is going to be the main book. I did like 25 color illustrations for it and the same amount of black and white. It’s a really fantastic story and there is even talk of it becoming a movie, but that remains to be seen.

Death From Above cover image from Felipe Echevarria.

NG: That would obviously be after the book was released and had seen some return.

FE: Yeah.

NG: What is this Fantasy Illustration slipcase that I see on your table?

FE: That is just a book that I contributed to, and for payment, I was given several copies of the book. So I need to sell the books. (laughs) It’s like I’m working to get my own money back. They produced this really lavish book, but it’s difficult to sell. So artists are offered either royalties way off in the future, or you can just take the books. It’s a beautiful book.

The Fantasy Illustration Library Volume 2.

NG: It looks very well put together. What did you contribute for that?

FE: I did the Hindu goddess Durga, and then the Egyptian god Geb.

NG: I see several of your past projects here at your table. Could we talk a little about those? Like the Ankh book…

FE: I love painting the Death character (from Sandman) and I had drawn her several times. And a lot of people convinced me to put all the paintings into a sketchbook, so I finally got around to it and here it is.

Ankh: Painted Death Sketches by Felipe Echevarria.

NG: What about the Troubled Youth book, what can you tell me about that?

FE: That was a character I came up with in school. Just this young troubled guy and this is way back in 1986 I came up with it and then I did a strip in the CSU (Colorado State University) newspaper for a semester with the character and then I finally got it published in Japan in a few book, so Comic Morning in Japan published it. They have about a million copies a week of this thing going out. I never heard what the Japanese readers thought about it because it was all in Japanese and I can’t even read it. I can’t even know if they translated it properly. But I just put out a little sketchbook with it, you know it doesn’t do much, I just did it for fun.

NG: Also, I see the Psycho books from Innovation on the table. I had collected those years ago when they were coming out, and they always had beautiful covers. How did you get into that? How did you get the Psycho book?

FE: That’s kind of interesting. In 1990 after I got out of the Kubert school, which is a comic art school in New Jersey, I was able put my portfolio on the table for about 22 companies in San Diego. Which you can’t even do nowadays, nobody will even look at your portfolio hardly. But I got work for 3 companies and Innovation was one of them. They loved my retro style and wanted me to do something for them. They offered me an Anne Rice book but the deadline was so tight I had to turn it down. Psycho came up, they were negotiating with Universal Studios and so they gave me that one. What was really bad about that book is that they found out about halfway through the project that Anthony Perkins hadn’t granted his rights to be used in the comic book. So I had to go back and repaint all the faces and it delayed the book and killed the sales for the 2nd and 3rd issues. But the book was well received and most people said it was well done and I can still buy stuff on eBay and resell them.

Psycho #1 from Innovation featuring art by Felipe Echevarria.

Psycho #1 from Innovation featuring art by Felipe Echevarria.

Psycho #1 from Innovation featuring art by Felipe Echevarria.

NG: Now jumping around a little, your Death From Above graphic novel, you said you were going to Kickstart that. Was that going to go through a publisher? Or are you going to be the publisher?

FE: I’m going to be the publisher. Maybe somebody will pick it up later on. I do have a company that is a marketing firm that’s going to run it for me.

NG: Are there any other projects that you’re working on?

FE: I’ve got a lot. I have a book called Soul Oil: Oil for the Soul. It’s a bunch of spiritual stories (not religious) designed to empower women, men, young people, anybody actually. I just want to get some really fabulous stories out there that when people read them, they get chills up and down their spine. And they get energized, not necessarily entertained, but energized in another way. Because I think nowadays there is a huge gap of books that are designed to make you think, it’s more like sensationalism. It’s hitting you over the head with a zombie story or coming up with the next big thing. People like my work because it has something a little bit more to offer on a deeper level I think. But that is what I want to do with my career.

Comics and art books from Felipe Echevarria at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016.

NG: As a theme, from Death From Above to Soul Oil, even to the paintings behind us, I have heard you mention spirituality several times. Is that something that is important to you in your work now?

FE: You know, I really don’t want to do it. But if I don’t do it, I get this tremendous psychic and even physical pain. It’s like the universe is forcing me to do it. I would rather be in my studio painting 10ft abstract paintings, having 2 or 3 nude models running around at one time and driving a cool car, you know? But I have been told in one way or another to do this, and I have to do it.

NG: That’s cool. Very few people in the comics industry follow the pull or their soul as it were. I agree it seems like a lot of sensationalism these days. Perhaps something a bit more spiritual is needed. If we could talk for just a moment about your series Stakes a little bit, Todd Jones has spoken so highly of you on that. He just loves what you did on issue one. What do you guys have in mind for issue two?

FE: I’m going to change the style a little bit. It was so labor intensive before. It’s going to look the same but I’m going to go a little heavier with the black ink and not rely on outline as much. And he’s got a long, long arc for this thing, like issues and issues. I don’t know if I’m ever going to get to it. But he’s such a wonderful guy and I want to get him going in the business. He’s already getting going in the business now. But I’m not sure exactly where the story is going. What I like about his story is that it’s focused on characters; he’s developing the whole thing from the bottom up, so it’s got something to offer that people will enjoy. They get a nice jolt from the story. It’s a little different twist on Vampirism, I think, and it’s an adventure and its fun is the number one thing about it. So I look forward to being with him on the ride, I just hope I can stay on long enough.

Felipe Echevarria at Fort Collins Comic Con 2016. (2)

NG: It does seem like an interesting take on the genre.

FE: There is one more thing I could mention that is coming up, I’m going to be doing a Fine Art Gallery show in Denver in the Rhino district at Helikon Gallery next May. George Pratt, who is a big name in the business, and I are going to do the show together. That will be May 3rd 2017.

NG: That sounds amazing. I can’t wait to see it.

You can see more of Felipe’s work at www.felipeechevarria.com.

An Interview With Todd Jones of Wicked Awesome Comics (Denver Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Todd Jones of Wicked Awesome Comics about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/25/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Todd Jones at Denver Comic Con 2016.

Todd Jones is a mainstay on the Colorado convention circuit. This guy is everywhere. But despite the number of times that I have seen him around, I never really took the time to talk to him until this past weekend at Denver Comic Con 2016. We talked about the new trade paperback collection of his anthology series, Wicked Awesome Tales, and I found out a little bit more about the upcoming Fort Collins Comic Con.

Neil Greenaway: Today we are talking to Todd Jones at Denver Comic Con 2016. I understand that your series Wicked Awesome Tales has a new trade paperback collection. Let’s start out with a brief synopsis. What is Wicked Awesome Tales about?

Todd Jones: Wicked Awesome Tales, I like to say, is a cross between Twilight Zone meets Amazing Stories and a throwback to the anthology comics from the 60’s. So each issue has different writers and artists that contribute stories to make it up. We try to have a nice mix of horror, sci-fi, fantasy with a little bit of humor. That is probably it in a nutshell.

NG: And what prompted the new trade paperback collection?

TJ: After we put 4 out we thought it would probably be a lot easier to just put a trade together so people can just buy them and then I wouldn’t have to carry as much to the shows. I could just grab the trade and have other new stuff next to it. Because it gets kind of tiresome to carry all these comics with you all the time, plus you have to reprint them and every time you reprint them you want to say this is the third printing or fourth printing.

Wicked Awesome comics and prints at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: You just had issue 5 come out, what can you tell us about the stories in issues 5?

TJ: They’re as weird and wacky as ever. We revisit two characters that were in issue 1, Captain Jane Marley, who is a character that was created by Ron Fortier - who you might recognize as a writer for Terminator: Burning Earth. He was actually the first writer to work with Alex Ross when Alex first started into comics. Also I knew him as a kid because he was the writer of the Green Hornet for Now Comics, which was the first comic I picked up as kid that wasn’t a Marvel or DC comic. So I was really excited when he and I became friends. He has kind of been my mentor. He actually got me into doing anthology comics. It was at his urging that we started this up and he contributes to just about every issue, in fact I don’t think there are any issues that don’t have at least one story from Ron there. What was the question, I’m sorry.

NG: I was just asking you about issue 5.

TJ: Oh so that character that Ron created, Capitan Jane Marley, she hasn’t been seen since issue 1. We had started a fan mail page and due to the emails we were getting, we realized that was a popular character with people. So Ron created another story with that character. The same for Clinton Slade, the paranormal consultant. He was also in issue 1, he makes another appearance in this issue as well and this time he’s dealing with a possession of a little boy, so it’s kind of creepy.

Wicked Awesome Tales #3 cover print featuring art by Patrick Joel de Leon.

NG: I have heard several people come up and ask you about your series Stakes. What’s a little bit of the story on that one?

TJ: I call it a horror family comedy. The basic premise is that this artist, Jack Cartwright, he hasn’t seen his grandfather in years. 15 years to be exact. He hasn’t seen him since his father’s funeral. So his grandfather shows up at his apartment to tell him his dad (who he thinks has been dead all this time) is actually undead. And that he comes from a family of vampire hunters. He thinks that his grandfather has lost his mind until his dad shows up and nearly kills both of them. So obviously the first issue is the only one out, I am not sure when the next issues is going to be in the pipe. I think we are going to do a Kickstarter for it. But over the course of the series Jack teams up with his Grandfather and his grandfather’s partner, this girl that Jack knew when they were kids, but she’s a total badass vampire hunter now. But he teams up with both of them to try to recapture his dad because he wants to break this cure. That’s the whole reason he’s still alive and his grandfather hasn’t killed him, is because they have been keeping him in a storm cellar in the middle of field on his grandfather’s farm. Unfortunately he’s escaped and there’s a reason why he’s escaped. There are other forces at play. I probably shouldn’t go too much into that. Anyway, it’s just a fun story.

NG: And there is a grander story to be told there when Felipe Echevarria (the artist for the series) has the time?

TJ: Yeah, yeah. Felipe has been working his Kickstarter for a book called Kloon. It’s a children’s book and he’s been working on that for the last couple of years and there have been some issues. I could explain more about it but I probably shouldn’t. There have been some issues with it so it has prevented him from being able to complete that project and move on to getting back to working on Stakes as well. Plus the man has several commissions and his own projects. Also I have been working on other project in the interim. So we do plan to get back to it. If you bought issue 1 and you’re ticked that issue 2 hasn’t come out, I am so sorry! But I promise you we will at some point get back to that, I just can’t tell you when exactly that second issue is coming out.

Wicked Awesome Tales #4 cover print featuring art by Jeff Herndon.

NG: Fair enough. Are there any other books that you are working on at the moment that you would like to talk about.

TJ: Not that I can talk about. Joe Arnold and I are working on a project together which is pretty big. At least to us it’s pretty big and we plan to pitch it to publishers later this year so hopefully we can get picked up. We want to have it all done and ready to go before we say anything about it.

NG: Understandably. Moving away from comics then, you are now involved in the Fort Collins Comic Con, can you tell me a little about that?

TJ: It’s a great con. It was started last year by some individuals working in coordination with the Poudre River Library District. Basically all the sales and money from it, it’s a nonprofit, pretty much like Denver Comic Con, but the proceeds go to benefit the library and the library is the primary backer of the con. But it’s a great con. It’s not to this magnitude, we don’t have a space like this up there in Fort Collins, but it’s held at the Aztlan Center in downtown Fort Collins. Like I said, last year was the first year and they had a great turnout. I think this year is going to be even bigger. They have some larger guests coming in from out of state. Including Ulises Farinas who has worked on Judge Dredd, Amazing Forest, Godzilla Goes To Hell and one of the Transformers books, I think it was Transformers: Heart of Darkness. Oh and of course just at the end of this last year he put out a children’s book called Where’s the Wookie? It’s a Star Wars children’s book. He’s a very busy guy, he’s a good friend. I’m excited for him to come out to the show. This will be his first Colorado con, at least that is what he has told me. So it will be nice to have him there. Richard Hatch will be there. He played Apollo in the original Battlestar Galactica. Gigi Edgely will be there.

Wicked Awesome Tales #5 from Wicked Awesome Comics.

NG: Do you know the dates for the Fort Collins Comic Con?

TJ: Yes it’s August 26th, 27th and 28th at the Aztlan Center in Fort Collins. Mike Baron is also one of the guests there, creator of Nexus and the Badger. He probably wrote one of the best arcs on Punisher.

NG: If people wanted to see more of your work online, where would they go to find it?

TJ: You can find Wicked Awesome Tales 1-4 on Comixology if you want to purchase the digital copies it’s available there. Soon issue 5 should be up there since we just got it from the printer, we haven’t had a chance to upload it to Comixology but it will be up there soon. They can also find 1-4 on www.indyplanet.com if they want to buy a physical issue. If they would rather just have the trade paperback which I recommend, because the trade not only has the first 4 issues but it also has some bonus stories in there from Ron Fortier and also Robert Elrod. There is also concept art and some other fun stuff. I recommend it and they can find that on Amazon.com. Just type in Wicked Awesome Tales and it will bring it up. Honestly if you are going to buy that you are probably better off buying it at a convention from one of us because it’s a little cheaper than purchasing it on the website.

The Wicked Awesome Tales TPB from Wicked Awesome Comics.

NG: Speaking of that, what’s the next convention people can find you at?

TJ: My next convention is actually the Fort Collins Comic Con. I will be there, so not only am I an Event Coordinator, I’m also an exhibitor.

NG: And we end on a Hair Club For Men joke. Awesome. Thank you for your time Todd.

Todd Jones drawing at Denver Comic Con 2016.

An Interview With David Espy & Alex Delia of Puncture Press (Denver Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with David Espy & Alex Delia of Puncture Press about their take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/25/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Alex Delia & David Espy at Denver Comic Con 2016.

There are very few comics that take place in Denver. There are even fewer that choose to show Denver as a gritty, crime-ridden city. Or whose “hero” is a serial killer. Alex Delia and David Espy are writing just such a book, and I took some time to talk with them about their latest issue and the future of their series, Eyesis: The Untouchable.

Neil Greenaway: We are here at Denver Comic Con 2016 talking to the guys behind Eyesis: The Untouchable. First, just for anyone who has not heard of the book, those that don’t know, what is Eyesis about?

Alex Delia: So Eyesis: the Untouchable is about a woman in Denver named Eyesis Rodriguez-

NG; May I just break in and say how awesome I think it is that his book takes place in Denver.

AD: Yeah that is one of our selling points. We want to keep it in Denver, keep Denver as weird as possible. But it’s about a woman named Eyesis Rodriguez who has an abusive husband. And she sees motivation from people outside beating each other up. It makes her want to try and murder her husband. So she does successfully, and she decides she wants to see how long she can keep this high, murdering people around town. So she builds this whole identity as a slasher/murderer, killing random people in alleyways. Where we are at in the comic right now is, we learn that she is not the only one doing this, and that people have been watching her the whole time. As we get further in we will find out who that is and what their motivations are.

Eyesis: The Untouchable comics at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: And what issue are you on? What issue was just released?

AD: We just printed issue 4, but issue 5 (our double issue – which is like the arc finale of this first part) is a 48 pager and will be out in 2 weeks.

NG: Ok and once this arc wraps, is there a plan for another arc?

AD: There is a plan for 3 other arcs at least. Each one about 5 to 6 issues.

David Espy: I think that is one of the best parts, just hearing Alex kind of craft the story. We’ve known that it’s going to be extensive and the way that he talks about it, you know, we talk about it like you would a television series. This is season one. The next season kind of handles these larger broad strokes and he’ll tease me with and of course I want to know. I’m an avid fan of binge watching my favorite shows, so I want to know everything. And he wants to tell me everything, but I tell him not to. And he doesn’t, so it keeps that element of surprise. Just those little nuggets. I know the scope of the mythology and I know what’s being supplanted little by little and it is just super special.

AD: David is pretty privy to the next arc and a half I would say. I am still kind of wrapping up the third arc and moving into the fourth, which I still have kind of vague ideas what it’s about, but it’s not completely written. I have the whole arc planned out. But then as I write scripts, I write them as each issue is done. So that I let my mind evolve and get to the right spot while still kind of keeping that template that we have going on. We’re thinking it’s going to be like 20 or 24 issues at least.

Eyesis: The Untouchable #2 from Alex Delia & David Espy.

NG: Is there a definitive end then?

DE: I don’t know, that is definitely a question for Alex.

AD: I mean - I do have an ending scene in my head. It’s just, we don’t know when we’re substantially built up to that point where it can be satisfying. But yeah, there is an end. Part of me wants to be like "we will do it in 24 issues" and part of me wants to be like Cerebus and do it for 300 issues. And who knows what’s going to happen. But we don’t do this as a full time job so we want to tell the story as best as we can, as complete as we can.

DE: While working on it I feel the story has come naturally in its evolution to where the things that have been said or explained are coming out organically and they are always reaching a point where – say for instance, if the second arc – if that’s the last one, it would fit perfectly. There would be no need for the other ideas that he has had that makes it possibly 24 issues. So in that sense, the end is definitive. He has said how it is going to end in his mind, but as it’s grown it could just naturally turn into some Kaiju beast.

Eyesis: The Untouchable interior panel by David Espy.

NG: Ok. How did you guys hook up as a team?

DE: Well we both went to film school together at UC Denver. And then we had a screenwriting class together and then we had a production and editing class. The phone call happened when I was on the way to Vegas, going to a rave and a party. Alex gave me a call and said, “I’ve always liked the way you have drawn in our classes and the work that you have done”. And he has helped me out on projects and vice versa so we have kind of seen where our sensibilities lie in terms of what we like in genres and how we work. He was like, “I have this project that I always wanted to make that we can’t make in film right now, we don’t have the money. And with the content, probably no one would give us the money to make this ultra-violent thing. So I’ve seen your doodles, I’ve seen the way you draw and everything, would you like to do this?” I was on my way to get high and loaded and I was like, “Hell yeah, let’s get rockin' on this.” Then from there, being friends from school it naturally became more concrete.

Eyesis: The Untouchable interior panel by David Espy. (2)

NG: Now if this whole idea started in film school, is there ever a thought of transferring it to a different media?

AD: I started writing it as a screenplay in 2008 and I would say that most of the first 5 issues comprise what that movie would have been. But since we reprised, since we started doing it as a comic and really started to explore what a comic can be and how it’s better than a movie in many ways, and how your imagination is your budget. So then we started throwing out all the stops. These next coming arcs are only stuff you could do in a comic book. If we had the opportunity to make it into a movie that would be great, but where we are at right now we would need millions of dollars to do.

NG: It’s getting to be far too big budget a movie?

AD: Totally. And I mean, we are at a point right now where film is equivalent to paper in what you can create with it. It’s just you can do it for the price of a piece of paper with a comic book. Whereas a film, we could fulfill this, just not with our current resources. So it’s better to lay this groundwork right now as a comic book and see what happens. I think it would work really well – because it’s like a hard NC-17 – to be like an HBO show or a Netflix show if they ever went that hard, you know? But we’ll see. Media is interesting now with the way that TV shows are getting movie-ified and the movies are getting TV-ified at the same time. Media is kind of becoming this whole thing. Comics, movies, TV, video games, music – they are all kind of becoming this big soup and everything can kind of pick apart and throw into that different community. John Carpenter is making music now and touring with it. Who would have ever thought that would happen? I have been wanting it my whole life but now it’s an official thing because we live in this trans-media world

DE: Yeah that’s my ultimate dream for this is as the artist, to see it in the video format as he had originally envisioned it. I think it’s going to get to that point, we are even thinking about ways we can get more of the mythology out. Trading cards or making little viral snippets, vignettes of that world and putting it into a VHS tape and just like dropping it off throughout the city. And having someone stumble upon it like the ring video tape, like OMG. If we were able to make any trailer, or any sort of video we make for it since we are making it on our own time, has to have that purpose of excelling, pushing it towards the next plateau where we can share this with people or push the story in a way. Yeah, we’re going to get it sometime on VHS or some form of visual media aside from print and get it to Westword (a local Denver paper), get it to everyone. I also think that there are some panels that I can only think of cinematically when I’m creating it. So I will always think about how this would look as a film more so than a comic book, and maybe that’s a bad approach as a comic book artist. But that’s always when I’m thumbnailing something or I’m editing it and during pencils and inks, I’m always trying to figure out how, or envisioning it on the final stage of being a film or being a television show.

Alex Delia & David Espy at Denver Comic Con 2016. (2)

NG: Is this you guys’ first book or have you (individually or together) ever worked on another comic?

DE: First comic together.

AD: First comic together, first one I have published. I used to write comics as a kid but I never actually produced them or anything because I was a kid. But you know, I knew David could draw because he would do storyboards for other people when we would make short films. I was like, “If you really spent a lot of time on this you could be a very good sequential artist”. So in storyboards for film is good practice for that. Comics are such a different language than film. It allows us to do things that benefit from people looking at it for a long time. Like the Watchmen. They talked about how it could only be a comic, they made a movie and it was pretty good, I kind of liked Watchmen. But it’s not as good as the comic because the comic has the benefit of unlimited time to examine something. To examine every panel, to see how they interact with each other.

NG: To read the newspapers and novel excerpts.

AD: Yeah. But the overall idea for this is sort of came from a tribute to all those really grizzly 1970’s exploitation horror slasher movies. Even going into the 80’s like Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, Miss .45, the Able Ferrara movies. And so we kind of wanted to start with that template and that whole art style. All our covers look kind of like VHS covers but still kind of make it a modern sensibility, set it in Denver. Denver is a weird town. It’s really peaceful and I love it because I’m a really peaceful person but it’s cool to kind of flip it on its side and make it this kind of violent, vile place where there is always something sinister going on in the shadows and alleyways.

Eyesis: The Untouchable #2 from Alex Delia & David Espy.

NG: It’s a very peaceful and quiet place now, but if you’re homaging the 70’s violence I think there is something to be said about 5 Points in downtown. It’s nicer now, but it used to be pretty gritty. Ok, so, you said that issue 5 was coming out in 2 weeks. As that is the end of an arc, are you guys planning any gap before starting on the next arc, or are you going to dive right into issue 6?

AD: Probably a little bit of both. I am writing issue 6 and 7 at the same time and David is probably going to draw them at the same time and then we will stagger the release. But in the meantime we want to do a Kickstarter for a trade paperback of the first 5 issues. We have been developing that and we want to get some guest artists that inspired us and see if we can have them do an interpretation of our work, that we are interpreting from them. It’s interesting because it’s like the covers are like VHS slasher movies and stuff, but when you look at the art, it’s like manga doing an attempt at a superhero comic and all kind of grounded within this horror slasher movie. So it’s just this huge hodge-podge of influence that wraps around itself. And so we want to get some really cool guest artists that inspired us to do different panels and inspired me to write things for David to draw. We just want to make something really cool with it and we also might shoot a few scenes from it as if it were a movie for the Kickstarter video.

DE: I don’t think there will be much of a break really. While trying to finish issue 5 we were trying to have it for Comic Con here and we were close. But in my haste I was trying to convince myself that it was fine, but Alex picked up numerous times that I was very stressed over it and the work was probably lacking or hurting because of it. So we decided to push it two weeks, and I am so glad we did because even though I have had room to breathe and have the Con be its own thing, the work isn’t going to stop. So I’m going to be getting right back into it, and then doing wallpapers and other kind of open illustrative arts to supplement everything. So while there maybe that break for a month or a couple months until we get issue six out, there’s going to be the world of Eyesis popping up in wallpaper art and stuff like that.

AD: Yeah I told David just to focus on the covers so we could sell preorders because I think David makes the best covers in indie comics for what we’re going for I just love this stuff. Either way we have something to show and that’s what we are happy about. Issue 4 is a really good issue too so we are really happy about that.

Eyesis: The Untouchable banner.

NG: One last question. If people wanted to see more of you guys or find more of the world of Eyesis where online would we go look?

AD: You can go to www.eyesistheuntouchable.com or you can go to the publisher’s site which is www.puncturepress.com and then I’m on Twitter and Instagram @alexdelia

DE: I’m on Twitter as @despyonage and then on Instagram as Espylicious. Most of what I put on those sites is usually ideas and sketches all with a purpose in the world of Eyesis and surrounding it and other personal work as well.

Alex Delia & David Espy at Denver Comic Con 2016. (3)

An Interview With Carl Buchanan of Silent Hero Studio (Denver Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Carl Buchanan of Silent Hero Studio about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/25/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Carl Buchanan at Denver Comic Con 2016.

Neil Greenaway: Today, I am here at Denver Comic Con 2016 with Carl Buchanan talking about his new series American Oni. Now, can you start by giving us just a brief synopsis of what the book is about?

Carl Buchanan: So basically American Oni is about when Japan was westernized by the Americans. The ancient demons there, they saw the Americans and they were like, man these guys are boastful, they are proud, they’re greedy, they’re dishonest. They know how to make money and they are awesome, let’s go hang out with these guys instead. So the Oni went over to America at that point and worked their way into politics and operations and kind of took control subvertly. But our comic book takes place in 2010, and now they are a little less secretive about it. They are not telling everybody, but when you find out they are like, “yeah we’re in control and we don’t really care”. So they are trying to get people to join their legions by basically keeping them in poverty, making sure they don’t have good healthcare or food or anything, because they are really just trying to keep these people in anguish. That’s how you create more demons, by people giving into more hate and more hate and then their legion grows. So we follow Matteus (our main character) who kind of gets mixed up in all this because he is attempting to assassinate a guy. This guy is a weapon manufacturer who his father worked for, which you find out later on in the comic. But he quickly finds out that assassinating a demon isn’t as easy as pulling the trigger. And then into the world of American Oni we go.

American Oni #1 from Silent Hero Studio.

NG: All right. How many issues do you have so far?

CB: This is our first one. I’ve been writing for a super long time and I have been working with comic books here and there as a creative consultant but I finally just decided to do my own thing. I worked as a quality assurance engineer and saved up a ton of money and got onto deviant art and said “I want someone, and I want to pay you exactly what you think you’re worth, and I want to make sure you are completely paid for the first issue. None of this exposure nonsense.” And people all just jumped at the bit, yes, yes, let me do it. So I got a great team put together and then we put together a Kickstarter and were successful last year. We took our time on the first one, since we didn’t have a deadline and did the best we could with issue number one and it just released last week.

American Oni comics and prints from Carl Buchanan at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: How far forward in the future have you planned the story?

CB: So far to issue 15. We want to do a trade for the first story arc and issue 15 is where the story arc ends. So we have that planned out. But in terms of the story itself, not specifically written down verbatim in stone, we’ve got all the way to the end of it. But kind of the idea we had was to – after every trade release we want to ask the audience ok, which character would you like to follow now? And then do like a Street Fighter style select a character. And then the one that gets the most votes, we will do the next story arc from that person’s perspective.

The back cover for Eyesis: The Untouchable #4 from Puncture Press featuring art by Carl Buchanan.

NG: Nice. I know that you recently did the back cover art for Eyesis: the Untouchable #4. That is a pretty wicked illustration, how did you get in on that project?

CB: So I met these guys when I was down in Denver through a friend who I played in a band with (just a bunch of mutual friends), and had no idea they did comic books at all. I have no idea how it never came up, because we are both in the same vein. Then one day someone mentioned it, and I was like, oh cool. So I told them, “Yeah, I do comic books too” and they asked if I would want to do a cover for them. I said “Yes, what would you want to do?” They were looking for ultra-violence, super gore, "I want someone’s head getting chopped in half with a chainsaw." And I was like, I am totally, totally in on that one.

NG: Awesome. Are there any other projects you are currently working on?

CB: There are many that we have in the works. My first project is called the Forgotten Forest, and it was my senior project. I did a 95 page thesis script. So it’s a feature length animation film. We have a bunch of things done for it. Already have the storyboard for the trailer. I hired an artist out of California named Luigi Lucarelli and he does like amazing Pixar/Disney-ish style art, I mean I’m surprised he’s working for me because he should probably be working for a huge studio. But because feature length animated films are so expensive, my ambitions were a little too big for my britches, if you will, so that’s why I reigned it in and started working on American Oni. Now this is our flagship, basically, but there are a couple more in the works that you can all see at my studio website which is www.silentherostudio.com.

American Oni print from Carl Buchanan.

NG: I think that about wraps it up for us, but aside from your website, is there anywhere else online people could go to see more of your work?

CB: Yes, www.americanoni.com. That is full of all American Oni and that’s basically the hub for American Oni itself and then on Facebook that’s where I release a lot of my personal work too. And I’m doing a series of Rick and Morty (not selling them, just for fun!) basically getting caught in all these anime worlds. Our first one was One Piece and the next one is going to be Attack on Titan with Mr. Meseeks as the giant. So that’s going to be a lot of fun. That is probably the best place to catch up and there’s also where I connect to my own personal stuff to so if anyone wants to see that, like my covers and stuff like that , they can see it there.

An Interview With Ben Truman of Black Mesa (Denver Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Benjamin Truman of Black Mesa about his take on programming and publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/25/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Ben Truman behind his table at Denver Comic Con 2016.

I had the chance to talk to Ben Truman (son of Tim Truman) on Father’s Day at Denver Comic Con 2016 about his Trumanthology, his work for the ominous sounding Black Mesa remaking Half-Life, and working to bring back one of his dad’s creations with Scout: Marauder.

Neil Greenaway: It is Father’s Day at Denver Comic Con 2016 and we are talking to Ben Truman. So for those that might not know, what have you been working on lately?

Ben Truman: The thing that I have been doing most recently is Scout: Marauder. The next chapter in the Scout series that my dad came up with. And we’ve been working on this, we have been rolling with this idea for the last year or two and trying to get it off the ground. In terms of comic work, we just finished a Kickstarter project, New Nebula. And I just did a Kickstarter of my own stuff, a collection of my independently published short stories that I’m calling Trumanthology. I made my goal right at the beginning of June or the end of May so that will be coming out pretty soon as well.

NG: Is the Trumanthology Kickstarter still going?

BT: No that ended right at the beginning of June 2016 I believe.

NG: How did you get involved with the New Nebula book?

BT: My friend, well a friend of my wife’s at the time, they all met at the illustration program at the University of Arizona. So this is just a book put together by a bunch of graduates from the school as kind of a way to keep in touch, and to get some published credits under their belt. I just helped edit that, put it together, did some of the lettering on one of the stories, wrote one of them, and just tried to learn the whole process of how to put a book together. I have been part of anthologies before but I never have had the experience of making a book, so I wanted to do that before I got into my own Kickstarter, Trumanthology.

Trumanthology by Ben Truman.

NG: Going back to the Scout: Marauder for a moment, is that going to be in comic book or graphic novel form?

BT: We’re not sure how to do it yet, because we are really intrigued by all these new avenues of publishing. Like making a Patreon or a Kickstarter, but we’re still also interested in trying to possibly shop it around to some of the other companies that specialize in independent work. So maybe like Dark Horse or Image or something like that, trying to keep our options open on that one. We have to make it first though (laughs).

NG: How far into that are you guys?

BT: We have the first arc all plotted out; we know what we want to do with it, we are just trying to find the time to get everything together. I am very distracted, there’s so much going on.

NG: How has the convention been treating you? Saturday was slammed.

BT: Yes! This has been great. I have had a lot of fun and I got to do a lot of panels and I got to talk a lot about my video game work, which I was really happy to have here. In my life outside of comic books I am a teacher at a charter school in Tucson, AZ called City High School where I teach a video game design program and an after school program based on game design. Then my other job is just working as a story lead/narrative director on the game Black Mesa, which is a re-make of Half Life. Also just kind of doing all the things you need to do in a very small video game company, so I do community stuff and handle our translations and getting more into the game design aspects of that. I wear a lot of hats over there as well.

The Black Mesa sign at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: All right. My wife actually walked by earlier and saw your sign and said that can’t be THE Black Mesa can it?

BT: (Laughs) It is in fact.

NG: Very awesome. Is that an official remake or is this more of a fan project?

BT: It is a fan project with the blessing of Valve. We put it out and got a lot of attention for it when we first put it out there 10 years ago. It was a fan remake officially. And Valve, they reached out and told us the only thing they wanted us to do was to remove the source from the Black Mesa title, but they told us that we could keep going because they didn’t want any licensing problems with that. Then when we eventually finished the product and we released it for free as a mod, they contacted us and said “We like what you did and we would like to offer you the chance to sell it on STEAM”. So it isn’t like an official Valve product but it does have their blessing.

NG: And is that available on STEAM now?

BT: Yes it’s been available since May I believe.

Ben Truman's comics at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: All right. Wow, it sounds like you are working on a lot of different projects. Are there any other irons in the fire right now? Is there anything else that you are working on?

BT: Yeah, I am just trying to write. I am trying to further my game design career, still trying to learn a lot of new ways to make games and just try to get a handle on all the new software that is out there. But really just trying to get out some of my own books like that Trumanthology, trying to make a name for myself and not always working with my dad on projects. Trying to branch out and do some major projects on my own and just keep it moving forward, keep the ball going and seeing where it goes.

NG: Now just to touch on him briefly since you are tabling here with your dad, is it interesting going around the country working with him?

BT: Oh yeah. We haven’t done that many cons together just because I am in Arizona and he is in Pennsylvania, but they flew him out to Tucson a few years ago and I went out to the east coast and did the Baltimore Con. This is the first one we have done where we both had to fly to a location to get together. It’s been so awesome, and the fact that it’s Father’s Day weekend makes it just even cooler that I had this opportunity.

NG: Are you guys going to do San Diego this year?

BT: No, I don’t think so. I don’t know. San Diego just doesn’t seem like my scene personally, it just doesn’t seem like it’s about the actual paper comic medium, so personally, I don’t feel like I have any business being there at this point.

Ben Truman at Denver Comic Con 2016 (1).

NG: I am hearing that a lot these days. It seems to be more if a Hollywood affair.

BT: Yeah you know, and it’s got video games and stuff like that but it’s just not my area of focus.

NG: There was a time when it was nerd Mecca but I would have to say with all of the local cons springing up, especially with ones of this size here in Denver and Phoenix has a fine Comic Con, I think it probably removes some of the relevance of San Diego.

BT: Right. That was the major one and now every city has their own Comic Con going, so you don’t have to make the big hike down to San Diego to meet people who make comics any more.

NG: All right, I think that about wraps it up for us but as a closing question, if people wanted to see more of your work or if they wanted to find you online, where would they go?

BT: Go to www.bentruman.com or you can find me on Twitter @BenjaminTurman.

Ben Truman at Denver Comic Con 2016 (2).

An Interview With Bob Parks & Colton Muheim of Red Team Go Colorado (Denver Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Bob Parks and Colton Muheim of Red Team Go Colorado about their take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/24/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Red Team Go Colorado banner at Denver Comic Con 2016.

Walking around Denver Comic Con 2016, something caught my eye. Several of the artists in Artists Alley had a small cardboard standee on their tables that said RTG. Others wore RTG shirts, or had RTG stickers to give away. And there were comics for sale with the RTG logo proudly displayed. Curiosity got the better of me, and I ended up at the Red Team Go Colorado table talking to some of the team. They told me about a group of artists who got together to share ideas and ended up publishing their own books.

Neil Greenaway: I am sitting here at Denver Comic Con 2016 with Bob Parks and Colton Muheim discussing Red Team Go Colorado. I understand that you guys are debuting two new issues at this show; Dinopocalypse #3 and Cryptids & Cogs #1. What can you tell me about these series?

Bob Parks: Ok, Dinopocalypse takes place in a Colorado that is the epicenter of prehistoric chaos, where a mad scientist has brought back the dinosaurs! It’s up to an intrepid group of motorcycle riding nerds to save the day!

And then Cryptids & Cogs is a collection of short stories featuring curious creatures, unique characters and the innovative spirit of the 19th century! Each issue will contain short steampunk/monster hunter stories by different creators.

Cryptids & Cogs #1 from Red Team Go Colorado.

NG: That sounds pretty cool. How did the idea for Red Team Go come about?

Colton Muheim: That’s you Bob. You were the starter.

BP: Well RTG kind of transformed into its own thing. I had a couple people up north who were looking to get together – we were artists and we liked hanging out, we liked going downtown to drink and draw or drink and commiserate and everything like that – but it turned into more of a social thing. And I know that I wasn’t doing any work at all during those times. So I was always going up to this restaurant up north where I had the back room to myself and I could sit and I could get all my work done. And it was quiet and it was nice. So flash forward a couple months, I haven’t been going to drink and draw that much and my buddy was like “Hey, I’m thinking about starting an art group up north. What do you think about that?” I was like, sure. So Roberto Martinez and some other friends and I, we all went up to Old Chicago. We were all thinking we were going to get a couple of beers, we’re going to drink, we’re going to draw, and it will be like Leela. (Leela European Café in Denver hosts Drink and Draws for local artists weekly.) But it wasn’t. The wait staff was like, “This is a restaurant, you eat and then you pay for your food and then you leave”. So we knew we would have to find something. I’m like, “Ok guys; I’ll let you in on my little secret up here. There’s a place that I go to, it’s like really back alley kind of stuff. It’s a nice place I just don’t want a lot of people showing up because this is where I get my work done”. So there’s like 5 people there and I’m really happy that I can hang out with my friends and draw and get some work done. And then all of a sudden it’s like 15 people the next week and I’m freaking out. Everyone is like, “We’re going to do this. We’re going to make this a community thing, we’ll be drawing and it will be awesome”. And I said “Ok, you guys really sold me on this, I’m really happy about this too”. So we started getting together. The name Red Team Go came out and it’s more like RTG is a big umbrella just to identify who we all are. We were getting ready for Comic Con and we were thinking we should put some stuff together, maybe some promotional material, since we were going to have a community table and everything. Maybe we should start doing some stuff. Colton and all of us just started getting into, “Well you had a comic book, didn’t you?” We had started a comic for fun, let’s really push that out.

CM: So we gathered the material and within like a month or two got one book out and now we finished that whole series.

Dinopocalypse #3 from Red Team Go Colorado.

NG: What was that series?

CM: Dinopocalypse.

NG: And so it was the final issue of that which premiered here, is that correct?

CM: Yeah our first issue debuted here last year. Then we did the second one at the beginning of the year. Then the third volume and the final volume of that premiered this year at Denver Comic Con again and we all premiered our new series Cryptids and Cogs.

BP: Which is like a steampunk/monster hunter/cryptids going after unicorns action - and everything like that. Lots of fun.

CM: Foreshadowing (laughs). It’s a really fun series. My issue doesn’t come out until next year. But we have so many people in our group now. It started out with 5 people in a back alley and now we have about 30-40 people in our group that just come and hang out.

BP: And we keep that open because there’s lots of people that just come in because they have a question about “How do I do this?”. Or we have a guy that knows really good Photoshop stuff. Then there’s a guy that does really good marker stuff. There’s a guy that does watercolor stuff. And we all kind of pool our resources to kind of come together and help everyone out and everything like that. We love doing free events, free shows. We love taking donations, but everything we print as an entity as RTG is all for free, except for the comics. So you will find us doing the free sketches for kids, free prints, free programming we will do throughout the year, but especially at Denver Comic Con. Because it’s a way we can show each other off. We can promote each other. And while people still have their own, separate tables to show off their art, we can kind of come together and educate people on those resources that are out there. For kids and for adults, all ages, that want to get out there, they want to draw and they don’t want to just sit there and stare at YouTube videos all day.

Bob Parks & Jessica Rubin at the Ded Hed Studio make-up table.

NG: I notice here at the booth that you guys have, we also have kids drawing, yesterday there were musical instruments, there’s a makeup-up artist, there’s an airbrush over here – is all of that tied in?

BP: Being a part of the community means we share space. This whole Pop Culture Classroom thing allows us – with the help of the coordinator, Becky Franks-Cassidy, she puts us in-

CM: She is fantastic by the way.

BP: Becky is the greatest. She’s had us come in ever since they started the Pop Culture Classroom with Ded Hed Studios – which is my make-up thing that I run with my partner Jessica. We have been doing this since the beginning. The second year I wanted a community table for RTG we coordinated with the folks at DCC and they gave us a community table. This is the first year where RTG and Ded Hed are together as a part of it. We’re sharing the community space with everybody and we get to obviously show off the RTG stuff but we are doing a whole bunch of free stuff for kids. And it just bleeds itself into all the programming in and around the Pop Culture Classroom and we’re very thankful for that.

Colton Muheim with the RTG banner at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: Going to the books that you guys have put out, are they being published by RTG? Is that the publishing house for these books?

CM: Yes. The Dinopocalypse ones no, those were still under our old publisher Legacy Action Comics which was Andrew Mark, who is in our group. Now that we started making our own books we are actually now our own publisher. We are our own LLC, we are doing all that ourselves. So yeah we are doing Crypids and Cogs, and everything after this is all RTG.

NG: Moving forward which direction would you like to see this go? Would you like to move more in the publishing house direction? Would you prefer it to be more of a community group direction?

BP: That’s the funniest thing about this. I’m not speaking on your behalf-

CM: Oh no you are great; we are actually on the same page with this.

BP: Our core group of members wants to start pushing things. We learned a lot from Dinopocalypse. We’re using the things that we learned from Dinopocalypse to push Cryptids and Cogs out. We’re learning things as we go with Cryptids and Cogs to push forward to do more stuff, to start publishing more and having things that we can drop at certain cons. All obviously locally, but some of our other members want to be able to go out and to do other cons across the state to get the Red Team Go name out there. I still want – and there are still other people out there – that just want to show up on a Thursday. They just want to show up and have a good time and we want to leave it open for those people to do that. We’re not splitting, that’s the best reason why Colton and I are up here now having this talk. Because Colton is huge in capitalism, pushing the thing and doing all this stuff and promoting, promoting, promoting. Which is awesome, I love it. And I’m like; I just want a place to draw on a Thursday. But we’re working together as a core group to make sure that both sides get taken care of and that one side does not feel left out or unappreciated of the time and effort that we put into that kind of stuff.

CM: Exactly.

Colton Muheim & Cayen Sim of Red Team Go doing free sketches at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: Moving forward with the books that you guys do, do you see them being more anthology style books or are you guys looking at all at running titles?

CM: I see our anthologies as the teaser for the story that is going to be coming. So that’s how I see them coming. But until we get a few more out I don’t know if it’s going to stay that way or if we’re going to stay on the anthology route. I would love to run an actual run of books. I would love to do an actual full story with just those characters and just continue doing stuff like that but the future can only tell me what I am going to do.

BP: Yeah if it ends up being super popular or if there’s a demand for the characters to come back obviously we’re not going to be like “Uh it’s a limited run, we’re going to snuff out blah blah blah,”. We’ll definitely bring it back and a lot of that is going to have to deal with getting it out to people and seeing if they like it in the first place.

Bob Parks & Jessica Rubin at the Ded Hed Studio make-up table. (2)

NG: Ok. And what’s the future holding just at the moment? Are there any projects in store we can talk about?

CM: Which ones? We got a lot. The whole Cryptids and Cogs run which is going to be running pretty much every main con in Denver, we’re going to be premiering a new comic at each one. The end of this year the Rocky Mountain Con which is going to be in November is going to be our next book. Then after that we don’t have anything until next year. We’re just running every con and hopefully premiering a new book at each one.

BP: We’re hoping to have a really big push on that. We’re also doing Halloween books. We’re doing a Halloween book that we hope that we can do yearly at some point; we are just kind of putting that together. There’s coloring books that we’ve been doing. There’s storytelling books where – so not all of us at RTG are just artists, we’re not all just comic book guys. We’ve got lots of writers there, poets, we’ve got people that-

CM: Oh yeah, I forgot that we had poets.

BP: Yeah, we find out that we have people that do photography and we encourage people who have those passions to come in if they want to be part of that project as well, by all means. We’ll do spot illustrations or longer stories or stories with more prose or narrative than just a script. You know we want to kind of let those guys highlight. And if we have to change the format for it too to like a magazine or to a book or to a ‘zine, we want to be able to accommodate that for all our members.

CM: Yeah. Let them all have their own opportunity to shine and where it’s not just comic books. We’re at Comic Con, of course everyone here loves comic books but they all like comic books for their own reasons. And that’s what we’re trying to help out with everyone else is show off what they love about it. They want to be a writer, show off your writing. That’s what we’re working for.

BP: That’s why a show like this is so good for a group like us, because it is all pop culture. I mean we have guys that do cosplay shoots and stuff like that, that kind of go out into the community as well. If we can help kind of bridge those gaps and put those people in touch with other artisans and put that kind of stuff together, we feel like we helped out and all the better for it.

Bob Parks & Jessica Rubin at the Ded Hed Studio make-up table. (3)

NG: So right now you guys are doing comics but if the opportunity ever arose or the demand ever arose for say a cosplay photo book or a prose novel you would also be open to publishing those?

CM: I don’t see why not. I’m an opportunist, if I see an opportunity and I think it would be fun just to go and try and see if it’s actually worth something, yeah, sure.

BP: And if there’s a call for it.

CM: If there’s a demand for it I’m probably going to do it just because from a business standpoint because I do have a business mind, if you don’t try it, you’re never going to find out if you’ll succeed. That’s the same thing with making a comic book or being an artist for a comic book. If you don’t try you’re never going to go anywhere.

BP: There is no bottom line for us. We are not doing it because it costs money or because it will get us money we’re doing it because we have a strong enough group and we have a strong enough following to put something like that out. If we can help put something like that together, I mean that is kind of our mantra is just helping each other out getting all that stuff together into one spot into one community that we can branch out into all the other various communities out there as well.

CM: Just making it like a big nerd culture.

The Red Team Go Colorado scavenger hunt at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: Awesome. I think that about wraps it up for me, but one last question, if people wanted to see more of you guys or learn more about Red Team Go where online would they go to find you?

CM: Look up Red Team Go Colorado and you will find all of our social networks. The biggest one you’re going to find for us is www.redteamgocolorado.com.

BP: #RTGCO is a big one if you want to find us on Instagram, Tumblr, Facebook and all that stuff.

CM: Facebook is the fastest way ever to get a hold of me.

NG: Sounds good. Thank you both for your time.

Walking around the floor, I was able to put together a small photo gallery of just some of the members that were present at DCC this year.

Red Team Go Colorado member Cachet Whitman.

Red Team Go Colorado member Chad Beninati.

Red Team Go Colorado member Garuda Illo.

Red Team Go Colorado member Izik Bell.

Red Team Go Colorado member Kat Jackson.

Red Team Go Colorado member J. James McFarland.

Red Team Go Colorado member Khundy Son.

Red Team Go Colorado member Michael Webber.

Red Team Go Colorado member Shana Moura.

Red Team Go Colorado member Roberto Martinez.

Red Team Go Colorado member Saro Hang.

Red Team Go Colorado member Wynn Green.

Red Team Go Colorado member Michael Howe.

An Interview With Jesse Dubin, Mister V, & Dan Conner about Uncanny Adventures: Duo (Denver Comic Con 2016)

Written By Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Dan Conner, Mister V, and Jesse Dubin of 8th Wonder Press about their take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/24/2016, and you can read their version of it here.

Uncanny Adventures: Duo #3 from 8th Wonder Press.

According to its back cover, Uncanny Adventures: Duo is “a collection of astonishing tales, told entirely in two pages each”. Published by 8th Wonder Press, Uncanny Adventures has served as a window into the Colorado indie comic scene for years. There have already been two graphic novels, and DCC 2016 saw the release of the third and final issue of the Duo mini-series. I had the chance to talk with the publisher of 8th Wonder, Jesse Dubin, as well as Dan Conner and Mister V, some of the contributors to Uncanny Adventures: Duo #3.

Neil Greenaway: We are standing here at Denver Comic Con 2016 speaking with Jesse Dubin, Mister V, and Dan Conner about 8th Wonder Press and the Uncanny Adventures series. Now I understand that you, Dan and Mister V, have been a part of the series since the beginning. Can you tell me how you got brought into it?

Mister V: Well yeah we go to the same comic shop and Jesse was picking up my books that were being sold there, so that is how we met. I actually did the flyer for your first anthology calling for artists.

Jesse Dubin: That’s right, you did.

MV: Yeah and I like to draw comics and Jesse always has really good themes for his collections. So it’s challenging to think of stories that go within those themes. I like a challenge so it’s always been really fun to work with him on this stuff.

Dan Conner: I was at an art show at Wazee Union Art Gallery and Jesse and Andrew Middleton came by and I was talking and I think I drew a penguin for them. I think it was like a gangster penguin. One who’s pretty street. He had a backwards hat and everything. That way you knew that he was street. And I wrote Bad Boy Penguin on it. So then I got an email from Jesse, and he said that they were going to do an anthology, so I was in volume one with a story about my grandpa. It was called Little Dale, because my grandpa’s name is Dale. It was about when he was a kid and he killed a rooster. So go get volume one. The first Uncanny Adventures trade. Then the second trade was Mad Science so I did a really fun, I mean I love it – it’s one of my favorite stories I’ve done, a mad scientist story versus My Gal the Zombie. And I called her the Mad Scientess, because she’s a lady but she chose that title herself. So it’s not like I’m saying put an –ess on it, she chose it, the character chose it.

Jesse Dubin & Mister V at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: All right. Can you guys tell us a little bit about the stories that you have in the newest issue, Uncanny Adventures: Duo #3?

MV: I can. It’s all two page stories and I thought that was really fun. There is something to be said for minimalism and just trying to contain a story in such a short amount of time. So I had one that was an experience my wife had when she was with daycare and kids who put things in their mouths that don’t belong there. And another one that is also in there was kind of a defense for Jenny McCarthy who I grew up just cherishing. In the late 90’s Jenny McCarthy was our goddess and she’s gone crazy with her vaccines. So I wanted to tell a story to kind of make it ok for me that she went crazy with her anti-vaccine stuff, so that was the other story.

JD: I didn’t realize the Ash Eater story was a true story. That’s spectacular.

MV: Yeah it is. It’s unfortunate.

DC: Allen Bellman, who’s amazing, he called me on Christmas day one year and said “Hey, Merry Christmas, I have this idea, you need to do a niece and nephew for Chelsea”. So I formatted it for the comic and then submitted that one. So Jesse picked that up for the comedy issue, the third one. Also, it’s the first comic that I drew that was specifically influenced by Justine McKinney’s portrayal of the My Gal the Zombie character that she does on our horror host show – My Gal the Zombie: Treasures and Travesty. For the cover he got another artist, from England I believe, who did a great job on the cover itself. So I’m just thrilled to be a part of it. I love working with Jesse, he’s the best. I really think that he’s putting out the best indie books on the market today, the most accessible. I love when publishers aren’t like, “Oh what do you have published?”, they’re just equal opportunity for submissions. But he’s also really organized, he wants to see the scripts, he wants to see the layouts during the process and most people don’t do that. So the care he puts into that shows me that it’s that much more valuable, it’s not just someone looking to fill pages.

Dan Conner at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: And then outside of 8th Wonder you both do your own books as well. Could you tell us a bit about those?

DC: Definitely. I have My Gal the Zombie. So, college girl is turned into a zombie, she doesn’t want to let that ruin her afterlife, ha-ha. But just because you are a zombie you don’t have to break up with your boyfriend or quit your job or stop playing in a band or anything. So she tries to navigate life along those means. Her niece and nephew independently also were turned into zombies, so that’s why, who else are you going to get as a babysitter? They aren’t like zombie related, they weren’t born zombies I guess. So yeah, www.mygalthezombie.com will get you there mgtz.co is a shortcut and then www.mgtz.tv.com can take to our video stuff.

MV: Where do I start? Well my current series that I am working on is a web comic on my website arborcides.blogspot.com/ . It’s Mile High: Adventures in Colorado Medical Marijuana. I am retelling all the horrific things that I got to live through as the marijuana industry in Colorado gradually matured. It’s anecdotes about sketchy doctors and horrific dispensaries. Good stuff too. Like the best kind of buds that I have been able to find.

Dan Conner with his books at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: I have to break in to say that, because they legalized marijuana in Denver and because we have a strong indie presence, I was able to smoke with Denis Kitchen for Bleeding Cool.

MV: Nice Dude. Very cool.

NG: What other books have you got out there?

MV: I’ve got tons. I’ve got my series about healthcare in Colorado called DNR. It’s 800 pages, so hit that up. I’ve got my first collection of my historical series which is published in the Grand Gazette in Kremmling, Colorado and it’s rediscovering that county’s pioneer past with the shootouts and the distilleries during prohibition and true crime stuff. I have all my ‘zines over there too. I have 30 ‘zines. I have Tumblr, it’s fistcitycomix and I have Twitter, @therealmisterv and I throw all my stuff online. I want everyone to be able to read my stuff for free, so it’s all for free on the website as well at arborcides.blogspot.com.

Mister V with his books at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: Then if I can move over to Jesse just a little bit. How you are picking up your artists? Is it just random encounters or do people submit? How are you finding the people you work with?

JD: It’s a little bit of both actually. I was really excited when I decided to make a go of this. I wasn’t sure that people would latch onto this or would be interested in the idea. The first thing I did was I knew Dan and I knew Mister V a little bit from hanging out in comic shops and the local scene, so I reached out to them to see if they would be interested. They both said yes immediately, no hesitation. I was amazed. That was the first moment I thought, we could make a go of this. So we do have an open submission period where we are trying to find people for the anthologies. We post things online on our website, on Twitter and Facebook and all of that. So we wind up with international representation in our book, people from Japan, England, Canada all over the US, clearly a bunch of people from Denver. It’s real exciting to have that kind of diversity and representation in our books.

8th Wonder Press banner at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: It is always cool when an idea can come to fruition. And if people wanted to see more from 8th Wonder where would they go online to do that?

JD: We are at www.8thwonderpress.com also Facebook and Twitter @8thwonderpress and all of our books are available at Amazon.com

8th Wonder Press table at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: Also, if any aspiring artists were reading this, could they find a submission outlet there?

JD: We tend to take submission towards the end of the year but anyone who follows us will see those announcements, we make them pretty frequently. We generally have one submission period a year and it usually lasts for a month or two just to make sure that we catch as many eyeballs as we can possibly catch. You know, nobody has to turn in complete stories at the time. We are generally pretty good about working with people, because we realize that often people will have an idea but it hasn’t been fleshed out yet. So we are pretty good about deadlines and things like that so we can work with artists on timeframes they are comfortable with. Partially because a lot of us have day jobs and we are making art in our spare time, so it takes time to do that when it’s not your main income.

Uncanny Adventures: Duo #3 back cover.

NG: Did you do anything in the latest issue?

JD: Since the third issue is our humor issue, we had so many great entries that it filled up without needing me to pad it with my own work.

NG: That is a fine answer. Then just as a wrap, what have we got coming up in the future?

JD: We’re really excited that we are going to be at SPX (Small Press Expo) in September. We haven’t been to the east coast yet and SPX is a spectacular show. So we are looking to meet some new people out there. That will probably be around the time that we have submissions for the next book so we’re going to hopefully meet some new people and get some cool creators working out there.

Mister V with his story Wild Kingdom at Denver Comic Con 2016.

An Interview With Joe Becker and Joe Oliver about Titties and Fangs (Denver Comic Con 2016)

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2016 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Joe Becker & Joe Oliver of Titties and Fangs about their 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.

Joe Becker (left) & Joe Oliver (right) at Denver Comic Con 2016.

There was a new pin-up/horror art book released at Denver Comic Con this year, called Titties and Fangs. The 18 page, magazine sized book holds full color pin-ups from some of the best and brightest talent on the Colorado indie-comics market. Several tables had the book prominently displayed, so I decided to sit down with the masterminds behind the project and see how it came about.

Neil Greenaway: So, we are here at Denver Comic Con 2016 talking to Joe Becker and Joe Oliver about their new book Titties and Fangs. I understand that you guys are both a part of Red Team Go Colorado. Is this book a part of Red Team Go or is this book a separate thing for you guys?

Joe Becker: This is a separate book. It does involve some Red Team Go members, but essentially RTGC is very family oriented, and this book is very NSFW, so we didn’t want to confuse their mission with what the content of this book had.

Joe Oliver: We do believe in both. We do drawings for kids and we do kid sponsored events. But yeah, this book is the brainchild of us because we like that stuff also, our R rated, horror themed pin-ups.

Titties and Fangs #1 - A Joe Becker and Joe Oliver Production.

NG: How did this book come into being?

JO: It actually started as a joke, we were joking back and forth about T&A and doing horror related pin-up stuff, it turned into T&F (for fangs). I was extremely busy for this first book, so Joe B. made it happen. He worked his ass off. He contacted a lot of our friends, a lot of people in the community and artists that we know about doing pin-ups and brought it together in the last 2 and half months?

JB: Yeah. I think our conversation started in mid-February and then it really didn’t start to pick up until April. We put it together and obviously you just gave a lot of props to me, and Joe O. had a lot of input and everything, but a lot of it too was the artists that contributed to the book. They all worked hard on it. As artists ourselves we understand what goes into doing a piece like that and I can’t express my love for them enough. They all did hard work and helped me and Joe O. put together a great book.

Joe Oliver behind his table at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: Did you have any trouble getting artists into this book or were they pretty eager the get a piece included?

JB: Both. The hardest part that we ran into a lot is scheduling. You know many artists are very booked up, and they have a lot of commissions and they’re doing their own books. So to say yeah, I’ll map out 8 to 14 hours or whatever it takes for your book, it’s kind of hard to get in there. And again, that’s why I thank so many of them that did. And the ones that committed to it and didn’t do it, I hold no ill will. Because I totally understand that. Then there were a lot of artists that were like yes! I want in, or I can’t do it now, what about the second book, can I be in that one? And the answer always is yes. We love art, both of us.

JO: We had such a good time putting this one together, we’re coming out with a second one this year as well.

Joe Becker beside his banner at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: So is the plan then to have this be a series? Will this run on beyond #2?

JB: I think so.

JO: Yeah.

JB: The difference between this and a typical comic is that ours isn’t story based at all, so there is no ‘story arc is over, we’re done.’ This is all pin-up art, horror pin-ups. And that mindset people are going to have forever. So I do, I’m hoping this will happen, maybe 3 a year or more if it really starts to pick up. We will see how the 2nd one does. We’re already working on it. Started working on it a couple weeks ago with a handful of nationally known artists, nationally recognized comic book artists are going to be doing it, or have committed anyway. So it’s already rolling for the next one. We’re working on more incentives for the artists with a Kickstarter that will be happening. As artists ourselves, we don’t want to tell them, “Hey this will be good exposure for you”. Because I know how that sounds. Joe O. and I are trying to come up with more incentives and things for them so it’s not just, “Hey you can be in a book”. It might not be money right off the bat, but there will be something.

JO: And starting off we made sure to keep that strong also. We made sure that they are compensated, like a couple issues of the book.

JB: If they want to buy more books we give them those at our cost, after their comp issues, so that they can also make money from it. I’m all about helping artists because I know a lot of people helped me.

Titties and Fangs table display at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: I have seen it on several tables around here today, so that’s pretty cool. Switching gears a little bit, did you both work on the new issue of Dinopocalypse?

JO: I did the last 3 pages. Roberto Martinez wrote those.

JB: I was not in that book.

NG: So you were not in the book, have you worked in the Dinopocalypse series?

JB: My contribution to the Dinopocalypse series is I designed the logo, I did the cover layout, not necessarily the art on the cover, but the general layout, the logo, things like that were my contribution. I did the second series that Red Team Go has put out. I did a coloring of one of Andrew Mark's pieces in there. But for Dinopocalypse I was more of the design aspect.

Joe Oliver Sketch Creeps sketch book.

NG: Ok then, if I can ask, are there any other books that you are working on that you would like to let the world know about?

JO: RTG’s Cryptids and Cogs, which is like a full color anthology book. That one is going to be a lot of fun. We came out with the first issue for DCC, and I think the second one is either going to be fall or spring, but coming out pretty quick. Personally, Laser Party is going strong, I have a new sketchbook and I’m working on my own personal comic which will be a collection of short horror stories.

JB: Myself, I have a whole world I am writing essentially. I have a novel I am writing. It’s a series of short stories; the first arc is six of them. I have about 3 stories done. So I am going to try to have them written before I start releasing things. Then I started working on a comic that is in the same world but is set both before and after the world. It is a steampunk zombie story, the difference is this is not just zombies that are fighting steampunk creatures or steampunk people. When you get infected you turn into a steampunk creature. So, your bones start to turn to metal. You get furnaces that start to grow and boil your blood. Fun stuff like that, really fun. It’s a fun story to write and everyone that’s read the first three parts has absolutely loved it. I actually just came up and started mapping out the 4th part, which actually takes place about 200 years in the future from where we are now. I don’t know, I don’t even want to get into it. I could talk about it for hours.

Joe Becker with his wife at Denver Comic Con 2016.

NG: It’s huge.

JB: It is.

JO: I’ve read the roughs and they’re awesome.

NG: All right. If someone wanted to see more of your work online, where would they go?

JB: Definitely Facebook is the easiest way to find me. You can also search online Joe Becker Big Blue Head that will show you a lot of my deviant art and my personal store envy shop which is where Titties and Fangs will end up for online purchases if we have any left after this show. But yeah you can easily find me just search my name or Big Blue Head and there I am.

NG: And for you sir?

JO: I’ve got a Joe Oliver Arts Facebook page, Instagram is all under joeoliverarts. And then I have a blog jolimint.blogspot.com.

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.