June 09, 2018

A Stake Through the Art - An Interview With Charisma Carpenter (Wizard World Des Moines 2018)

June 09, 2018/ R. Alan Brooks

Written by R. Alan Brooks

Charisma Carpenter in the hit show Lucifer. — **Charisma Carpenter** in the hit show **Lucifer**.

What was the 16 year old version of you like? How about the 26 year old version of you? The 36 year old version?

I’d imagine they’re all pretty different. For any of us, a decade of life experience can bring about major changes in the people that we are.

Now, imagine playing a fictional character on television for a decade; someone who isn’t quite like you. Almost inevitably, this fictional character would affect you and be affected by you, because, in some sense, you’re having the experiences and relationships that the character has.

Charisma Carpenter had just that experience, playing Cordelia Chase on the much-loved television series, Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

Charisma took a few moments to talk with me at this year’s Wizard World Comic Con in Des Moines, IA. We joked around a bit before the interview, and ultimately, I was fortunate enough to learn a lot about Charisma as a person.

R. Alan: So Charisma, what’s been the most resonant theme in your work up to this point, career-wise?

Charisma Carpenter: Well, I think the role that resonates most with people is Cordelia. And I would have to say that it resonates with me as well, just because I embodied her for so long. I really got to live in that character, and explore her, and grow.

R. Alan Brooks talks with Charisma Carpenter at Wizard World Des Moines 2018. — **R. Alan Brooks** talks with **Charisma Carpenter** at Wizard World Des Moines 2018.

R: As you grew in that role, were there elements within it that you carried into your other work?

CC: I don’t know if I can speak to that as much as... I remember a specific time on set where I told a joke, and nobody really got it (which kinda happens to me a lot.) [laughs]

And I said, “Nobody gets my humor.”

R: Okay. [laughs]

CC: And that found its way into the role. So I think, there came a point in time where Cordelia and Charisma merged. I played her for so long every day, that writers and executives would be on set, and they’d pick things from me and put it in the script.

R: I imagine that’s gratifying, that aspects of yourself; things that are important to you as a person, kinda make their way into the show.

CC: I agree that it’s gratifying. But I also appreciate how it was the other way around- how (Cordelia) influenced me- which was definitely finding my own voice and saying “no”. Being able to assert boundaries...when I was younger, I wasn’t very good at that.

And even today, James (Marsters) said to me in the photo op session, “You’re so good with boundaries.” Because someone wanted a hug, and personally for me, I’m not a hugger. I barely hug my family. [laughs]

R: [laughs] Well yeah, that’s hard to fake, if you’re uncomfortable.

CC: It’s just hard - unless it’s on my terms and I have an authentic feeling and I wanna hug somebody, then I’ll do that. I’m not like…a robot. [laughs]

But I don’t just- it’s intimate to me. When somebody asks, I say, as lovingly and as kindly as possible, “I’m so sorry, I don’t hug people I don’t know.” And, “Thank you. But I’ll shake your hand, or fist bump you.”

Charisma Carpenter in Scream Queens (2015). — **Charisma Carpenter** in Scream Queens (2015).

But I don’t press my body on other peoples’ bodies, basically, is what I’m trying to say. [laughs]

R: [laughs] Ok, well, so, are you saying that you found some of that strength…?

CC: ...in Cordelia! Absolutely, 100%. She spoke her truth, and that really informed me as a human being.

R: Wow. Ok, so you have some years between then and now...

CC: [laughs] Yeah.

R: So you’re a different person now.

CC: Because of her, yes!

R: So now, in terms of how you approach life, and the roles you’re searching for, what is it that you look for?

CC: [laughs] Well, that’s a hot topic as an aging woman.

R: [laughs] Yeah, I guess so.

CC: Well, I don’t necessarily look for any specific thing, in the sense of (wanting) this future hypothetical character to be a kick-ass woman, or “empowered” in some way. I don’t need to do Wonder Woman. I look for something that is challenging to me, or very different. For instance, I’d never know what it’s like to be a heroin addict.

I would think that would be a very interesting thing to explore - something super different from me. I think that’s what the idea of being an actress is; just getting to slip into someone else’s skin, and do it as honestly as possible.

R: Okay, so before we started recording, you mentioned some of your philanthropy work. Can you talk a bit about that?

Charisma Carpenter photo Courtesy of Wizard World.

CC: Oh sure! Pediatric cancer is very important to me. I have a friend- my son’s best friend’s mother- (she’s) in that position where she’s not gonna make it (because of cancer).

So, cancer is a big deal to me, but really particularly as it relates to pediatric cancer, because it’s the least funded cancer (research) by our government.

Nobody really wants to talk about sick kids, because it’s uncomfortable. So, that’s important to me, and the Ronan Thompson Foundation is the way that I support that. I fund raise for them, and try to let my fame and influence direct people that way; to bring around awareness of pediatric cancer. Neuroblastoma, specifically, because I’d never heard of it before. And it’s not brain cancer, which you’d think it was.

And then the Thirst Project, which is a water charity started by young people. And it’s a human thing, not even a young people thing. But I was attracted to it, because I was so impressed by Seth Maxwell, who started it at 19, and is responsible for raising 8 million dollars in less than ten years. He activated an entire movement across the country, of young people who fund raise for the Thirst Project, and bring safe, clean drinking water around the world. I think that’s beautiful!

And the last thing is this school in Uganda, that I care about and try to fund raise for.

R: That’s a lot of stuff!

CC: I have to keep working, so I can leave a bigger dent. I think, at this point in time, and my age, I’m at a place as a realized person, where I’m growing and learning everyday how important it is to give back. And how good it feels to be an activated citizen, and be politically involved and engaged - just engaged in general.

R: Yeah.

CC: I want more wealth and work, so that I can do those things that enrich me as a person as well. It’s not enough to just be an artist anymore. So I’m highly motivated to stay working for those reasons.

R. Alan Brooks and Charisma Carpenter at Wizard World Des Moines 2018. — **R. Alan Brooks** and **Charisma Carpenter** at Wizard World Des Moines 2018.

R: That’s a beautiful reason! One of the questions that I wanted to ask you- and it’s funny that you brought it to this- I spoke to two comic book creators. One of them was talking about, in this divided society, how he thinks it’s important to always communicate some type of message in his art, like just essential humanity, or being a good person. The other guy said that he felt like it was his responsibility to just entertain people, so that they have some type of escape.

CC: Sure.

R: So my question to you is, where do you fall on that, and how does it affect the kind of work that you want to do?

CC: I think when you are an entertainer, by proxy, you are uplifting - and I didn’t know that at (first). It certainly wasn’t for the masses that I chose to become an actor [laughs]

Like, “Let me give my gift to you people!” [laughs] That’s not how it was at all. I was just honoring my gifts as a person, and I was fortunate enough to be able to make a living doing that. And it seemed right and true.

I don’t know that there are a lot of people that get to have that. So I feel very blessed, for sure. But now, as an adult in entertainment - not an adult entertainer...[laughs]

R: [laughs] That is an important distinction.

CC: It is. [laughs] I feel like, it feeds my soul to act. I know that, for sure. But, there’s something really magical and transcendent about being able to pay it forward.

R: That’s really beautiful.

CC: So, I’m very wealthy in that regard - that I get to do that. Now, I want to keep doing it!

R: I hope you do. Thank you for taking a moment to talk to me!

CC: Thanks, Alan. It was fun!

You can check out some of Charisma’s favorite charities here:

https://ronanfoundation.org/

14479653_688721234608196_2712266587186799935_n (1).jpg

This interview was made possible by a collaboration between Nerd Team 30 and R. Alan Brooks’ podcast: Comics & Activism: Mother F**ker In A Cape- The Social Justice Geek podcast. For the audio version of this interview, plus some additional portions not included in this article, keep an eye out for future episodes of Comics & Activism: Mother F**ker In A Cape- The Social Justice Geek podcast.

June 07, 2018

What the Future Holds: An Interview With Nichelle Nichols (Wizard World Des Moines 2018)

June 07, 2018/ R. Alan Brooks

Written by R. Alan Brooks

If you’ve ever imagined the future, chances are, your vision of that future has been influenced in some way by Star Trek, Gene Roddenberry’s 1960s space-traveling television show. Although it’s spawned a number of offspring, the original series has been credited with an array of cultural achievements, from inspiring the design of flip-phones, to featuring the first interracial kiss on television.

The original series presented a multi-ethnic cast, in a time when that didn’t exist on television, and barreled head-first into such explosive topics as war, racism and sexism (even as its women characters sported mini-skirts- it could be argued that Roddenberry’s wasn’t a perfect vision of the future. But few could assert that it wasn’t trying to be).

Lt. Uhura and Captain Kirk share an embrace, and a kiss. — **Lt. Uhura** and **Captain Kirk** share an embrace, and a kiss.

But that momentous kiss: the significance of that moment can’t be understated.

We often hear from one of the participants of that kiss, William Shatner, who is often parodied for his large personality and distinct manner of speech, and who was also the actor who played Captain Kirk. But the other historical smoocher was Nichelle Nichols, who played the steadfast Lieutenant Uhura on the show.

Nichelle, now 85 years old, graciously gave me a moment of her time for a conversation at this year’s Wizard World Comic Con in Des Moines, IA. She was, as I expected, full of grace- almost floating into the convention center upon a cloud of regality. But she surprised me with her sense of humor.

After I thanked her for granting me the interview, and joked with her about her role in the Blaxploitation flick Truck Turner, we talked about a friend of mine, a jazz drummer who’d gone to high school with her. Eventually, I swallowed my nervousness, and asked her some questions, to which she gave friendly responses.

R. Alan: So, you’ve done Star Trek and you’ve been in this geek world for a long time. One of the significant things to me, as a black child going to these conventions, was that there were no other black people. I couldn’t even buy black Vulcan ears when I was a kid.

Nichelle Nichols: No kidding?

R. Alan Brooks with Nichelle Nichols at Wizard World Des Moines 2018. — **R. Alan Brooks** with **Nichelle Nichols** at Wizard World Des Moines 2018.

R: But now it’s changed, so it’s great to see. As you look back over your career and all the things you’ve been able to do, what are some of the most important things that stand out to you?

NN: I think all of it is. Everything. Because I meet new people all of the time. Everybody has a different light. I’m fascinated with what a lot of people do, because I know what I do, and it’s fascinating to people (too). What I like about meeting so many people is that you find out all the different things that are out there that people do for a living. For real. And I like that. I like sharing with them. They tell me what they do, and I go, “Aha!” And then they want to know what I do; all about where I come from, and so forth. Where I’m coming from. And so we all- both sides - get to say, “Aha!” [laughing]

R: With the new Star Trek series, with a black woman as the lead…

NN: I haven’t seen it yet. Who is it?

R: She’s from The Walking Dead, Sonequa Martin-Green, and it’s called Star Trek: Discovery.

NN: Oh yes! I’ve heard of it!

R: For you, starring in the original with Roddenberry, and just being able to sort of pioneer... and now we have a black woman leading the new Star Trek, it’s kind of an amazing thing.

NN: Yeah, I think it’s wonderful, because you don’t just keep doing it like that. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. [Motions with her hands to signify repetition]

R: Ha, that reminds me, I read years ago that you put out an album.

NN: Yeah.

Nichelle Nichols as Lt. Uhura in Star Trek. — **Nichelle Nichols** as **Lt. Uhura** in Star Trek.

R: Cuz I know everybody from the cast was doing that back then. I’ve never been able to find your album.

NN: I don’t know where it is. Probably at home. [laughs]

R: [laughs] What kind of music was it?

NN: I do all kinds of music. So I don’t know which one you’re talking about.

R: So you did a few?

NN: Yeah.

R: Ok. Do you still sing when you have an opportunity?

NN: Do you still breathe? [laughs]

R: [laughs] I hear you. It’s a big part of you.

NN: Oh yes, yes!

R: Well, I was wondering, because the guy that we know in common is Eugene Bass, he’s the jazz drummer. So I met him when he was 75. He was still playing drums in Denver. Yeah, he’s probably 82 now...

NN: You never stop. Unless you want to. I take off some time and go thatta-way. But it always takes me back to what I love, and this is that: doing what I do. I love it. And I’m happy with it.

R. Alan Brooks talking with Nichelle Nichols at Wizard World Des Moines 2018. — **R. Alan Brooks** talking with **Nichelle Nichols** at Wizard World Des Moines 2018.

R: I’m glad to hear that.

NN: I am, too! [laughs]

R: Is there anything new that you’re working on that you want to discuss?

NN: Yeah, but I can’t talk about it yet. [laughs]

R: Well, that’s good stuff. Top secret. [laughs]

NN: Ha, well, it’s not so much that it’s top secret, as it’s not yet going where I want it to go. I’m thinking of doing a few things that I haven’t done yet. And a few things that people are bugging me for. [laughs]

R: So we’ll keep an eye out. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I really appreciate it.

NN: The pleasure’s mine.

You can check out some of Nichelle Nichols’ music here:

This interview was made possible by a collaboration between Nerd Team 30 and R. Alan Brooks’s podcast: Comics & Activism: MFIAC- The Social Justice Geek podcast. For the audio version of this interview, plus some additional portions not included in this article, keep an eye out for the next episode of Comics & Activism: MFIAC- The Social Justice Geek podcast.

May 21, 2018

An Interview with Doctor Erin Macdonald, Astrophysicist (Starfest Denver 2018) [Video + Transcription]

May 21, 2018/ Mary Andreski

Written by Mary Andreski

At the Denver Starfest Convention 2018 I had the chance to sit down and chat with Doctor Erin Macdonald (the astrophysicist behind Dr. Erin Explains the Universe) about science and science fiction.

I have had the opportunity to work with Dr. Macdonald while I was the programming coordinator for Fort Collins Comic Con. She runs an awesome track of science panels at conventions throughout the county each year. It was great getting a chance to speak more in depth with her about her background, work, and outreach she has to bring science into the sci-fi and pop culture communities.

Mary Andreski: I am here for Nerd Team 30 at the Starfest Convention with Dr. Erin Mcdonald. If you could go ahead and introduce yourself and just a little bit about your background.

Dr. Erin Macdonald: I'm Dr. Erin Mcdonald and my background is in Astrophysics and I did my doctorate with the Lago Collaboration - searching for gravitational waves for things like dead neutron stars and colliding black holes, which is really awesome. I actually left the collaboration before they made their detection, which is fine. Now I work as an aerospace engineer and I also work as a consultant, helping writers with their science fiction as well as coming to these (conventions) and teaching about the science behind science fiction.

MA: So, what spurred you into the comic and science fiction world and why did you combine your career with that or vice versa?

Dr. Erin: I’ve always been a sci-fi fan anyway, which helps. While I was kind of working on my PhD thesis I was putting off writing it, and I was like, "I bet I can calculate how a warp drive works". So I tried to calculate how a warp drive works and did. At the same time I was starting to attend a lot of conventions just as a thing, and a few of them had science tracks. Not many, but a few did. So I started giving talks that were very science focused - just pure gravitational waves and astrophysics talks. Then I started to get more interest. I started talking about the science of Mass Effect. It was a really big one for me because the science is so expansive and interesting in that game. I found over the years that it was a great way to reach out to people and teach science in a different way. You get people at these conventions who they really are interested in science but don’t have a background in it. They love being able to make those ties between their popular culture and learn some real science behind it. It's great too, because kids get engaged as well.

MA: So you were saying that you were always interested in science fiction. Is that what brought you into science in the first place?

Dr. Erin: I never really had a real life mentor - as it were - as I wanted to get into science. I actually grew up watching the X-Files, so I had Dana Scully. And I loved aliens. For me being able to see a red headed woman, you know, don a lab coat and fight aliens was awesome. So, that's what kind of got in my head. I wanted to be an astrophysicist. Not even kidding, I literally found out Dana Scully had her undergraduate degree in astrophysics and I went, "Oh, thats a real degree. I want to do that degree". There's a straight line for me between Dana Scully and becoming an astrophysicist. So, yeah.

MA: What’s your favorite part of giving talks at conventions and bringing this knowledge from the science world to the outer world?

Dr. Erin: I think for me its meeting the people. People are so engaged, they’re so enthusiastic. You know, if you’ve been to these convention before you know how friendly people are, it really is a sense of family. But for me the most rewarding thing is when I get kids come up to me afterwards. I don’t know if you saw at the end of mine (panel earlier) there was a girl who came up and she just said, “This is great I get to meet a real scientist and I always wanted to be a scientist.” If people are able to see themselves in me or kids get excited about maybe becoming a scientist because they see a woman with tattoos, and think I like tattoos and I like science, maybe I could do that one day. That’s really my big reward.

MA: What would be some of your advice for someone who is aspiring to be a scientist if they have no idea where to start, or if there's so many options that they just get overwhelmed by the choices?

Dr. Erin: I think for young kids who are maybe are going through a high school or going into college it's just ask questions and do everything. I started out wanting to maybe be a biologist. I learned really quickly that was not my thing. But I loved space, and so I started to do more space. I started to do research in space just as I went through my undergraduate career. And I was able to find stuff that clicked. You know I ended up also with a math degree just by taking math classes. It was so cool that I wanted to learn more (about space). So it's keeping that curiosity, keeping that enthusiasm.

For people who might be later career, or second career I think what it really is - don’t be afraid to jump in and don’t be afraid to ask for help. People who are in science love science and are always happy to talk about it. So asking those questions and keeping that curiosity is really important.

MA: Now you come to conventions, do you have other ways of bringing your knowledge to the outside world? Do you have a website, do you have a podcast, things like that?

Dr. Erin: Yeah, so online I’m @drerinmac on Twitter and I do a lot of science outreach on Twitter. Actually last year, because of all these conventions I started a Youtube channel. It's called Dr. Erin Explains the Universe. I put out a chunk of episodes and I am filming a bunch more now that will be coming out later this year. It's just short videos on the science behind science fiction. I take questions from people, they give me ideas for new talks. Some of them are more science, some of them are more science fiction. I just think its a great way to reach out to people.

MA: Are you going to be at any upcoming conventions in the area or across the country in the near future that you know of yet?

Dr. Erin: So, I’ve done a few already this year. I did Emerald City Comic Con, I also did Awesome Con. I’m here at Starfest and it looks like I will be at Fort Collins Comic Con here in Colorado as well as Dragon Con out in Atlanta. That’s all I have now. There's a few more I’m still talking to. I usually do about a half dozen a year. It’s fun.

MA: As far as examples and role models, you mentioned Scully was one to you. Is there anyone else, whether real or fictional that's inspired you in your life? Not necessarily in your career choice, but just inspired you to keep going?

Dr. Erin: Yeah, for me, its Captain Janeway. (Laughs, points at star trek badge on her shirt) “Captain Janeway represent.” Honestly, I didn’t discover Star Trek until later in life. My family wasn’t into it. I didn’t have a lot of friends in school who were really into it. As I went through high school into college that's kind of when Voyager was airing its run. Oh man, I got hooked. I just felt an instant connection with Captain Janeway. To the extent that I actually dedicated my PhD thesis to her. You know, for me, I was so lucky to find women who inspired me even though they were fictional. Honestly, going through graduate school, going through undergrad, being a scientist in general can be really hard and lonely sometimes. So it's good to have mentors real or fictional, that you know. I will just burn out and put on a Voyager episode and go, “Okay now, I can do this.” That's really important to me. So I see the value in science fiction, I see the value of having representation. You know, for anyone. If they’re able to see themselves in characters and connect it goes a long way towards pushing them and inspiring them.

MA: As a closing question what would be some of your hopes as far as where you would like to see science go?

Dr. Erin: Obviously I would like warp drive. That’s the goal. You know Star Trek managed it about 2060-ish. So yeah, we’re hoping on that. But you know I think there’s so much out there. What I’d really like to see, what I’m excited about, is more gravitational wave discoveries. Because that’s allowing us to really - I use it as an analogy of almost hearing our universe whereas we’ve always looked at our universe. Now we have a different way of doing that, so I’m excited what we learn with that. I’m also excited with what we are learning with Quantum physics. Quantum entanglement and how we can start using that in our technology. So, I’m curious to see where it goes. And Warp Drive.

MA: Well, Thank you so much for your time and its been a pleasure listening to your talks and hearing you inspire those around you.

Dr. Erin: Thank you, I appreciate it.

May 03, 2018

Afua Richardson Talks About Her Music, Her Art, and Her Mermaids at ACE Comic Con AZ

May 03, 2018/ Ryan Hall

Written by Ryan Hall

Afua Richardson at Ace Comic Con Arizona 2018.

Afua Richardson is a comic artist, a musician, and so much more. She made a big splash in the comics world in 2016-2017 by providing covers to Black Panther: World of Wakanda, Totally Awesome Hulk, Captain Marvel, All-Star Batman, Genius, and X-Men '92 - and she has long been rumored to be attached as the artist for a new Blade title from Marvel. Nerd Team 30 contributor Ryan Hall had the chance to sit down and talk with Afua at the recent ACE Comic Con AZ. The resulting conversation reveals a woman far more wise than her "rising star" status might imply. Her new Aquarius project looks beautiful and I personally can not wait to see what she does next. From the sound of this interview, it could be anything.

Ryan Hall: All right so the #1 question: inquiring minds want to know, who is Docta Foo?

Afua Richardson: (Laughs) Docta Foo is Afua Ricahrdson. I am a comic book artist, a musician, a writer, just a Jane of all trades.

RH: You do have an extensive background in performing arts. Is it true you have performed at Carnegie Hall?

AR: Yes, at age 11 I was a classical flautist. I started at 9 and by 11 I joined a borough-wide band that performed at Carnegie Hall and I was accepted to LaGuardia for performing arts. While at LaGuardia I attended Julliard. Our school was adopted by Julliard and so part of the day we would be at Julliard. Learning from the teachers there was almost like a mentoring program and was a fantastic time. We were exposed to professionals, went to Marcellus, I met Tito Fuentes when he was still alive and just other amazing, amazing creators.

Captain Marvel (2014) #13 Women of Marvel variant, cover by Afua Richardson.

Then I decided I don’t want to be a classical musician, this is not what I want to do. I joined an all-female hip-hop crew. They were like break dancers and MC’s. I just discovered underground hip-hop - it was philosophical, it was like poetry, it was jazz infused and I was like, "this sounds amazing". I was their female human beat-box artist because I would read sheet music and sometimes we would have to sight sing, is what it was called. You would read the music, you have never seen it before, and you would (melodically reads out beats). It was very percussive and maybe that lent to beats but that’s what I ended up doing. I mimic drums and animals and birds and all sorts of things. I started to mimic singers and then I became a singer. So I went on tour as a background singer, toured Europe, performed with Sheila E. I always draw a blank when it comes to the artists because they are so amazing that you kind of have to remind yourself ‘Oh my God, they are right there and what am I even doing here? I play classical flute what am I even doing here?’ But John legend, Alicia Keys, Parliament Funkadelic, Sierra, TI, Outkast, I was on Soul Train. I was on Jimmy Fallon with this artist Har Mar Superstar who was amazing and hilarious and super talented. It was a lot of fun. Some of these you can find on YouTube. But I think at age 26 or so I was drawing. I had already been going to comic conventions and anything I did I was like, "I really love doing this, I want to be good at this, this is what I love". I nerd out about this stuff. I don’t want to half way do it, because when I was younger I was really shy and I didn’t really trust what I said or what I thought. I was very self-conscious, but I trust what I made. Reading comics, Swamp Thing, or even getting back into it in the 90’s with early Top Cow stuff like Fathom or Witchblade, you know the embarrassing time of comics but it was in its adolescent phase and we loved it anyway! Even manga like Blade of the Immortal- (Can-Can plays over the convention intercom) Can-Can!

RH: Well that was another one of your talents right? Back-up dancer?

AR: (Laughs) For a little bit. Gosh I keep forgetting like MTV Jams, they had like background dancers. Oh my gosh that’s right like BET, MTV Jams they had like a modern day Soul Train! They had like background dancers - so I wasn’t a professional by any stretch of the imagination but I loved dancing. Like I actually loved going to raves and I loved mosh pits and I loved metal and going to those parties, because they were just so high energy. I loved Deftones and Stone Temple Pilots. They were actually very heavy vocal influences. I loved Chris Cornell’s scream, I wish I had that gravelly timber to my voice. Later on I started doing more like RB and soul and things like that I started getting involved in a music duo. It was me and another girl - it was called ScarletBlu, and it was kind of like pop-soul. I guess I sounded a little bit like Lauren Hill, which is what I got back and is a huge compliment. If I’m compared to Lauren Hill I’m not doing too bad. Like a jazzy Lauren Hill is what I got compared to. So they were like "let’s put you with a rapper, let’s get you out there doing this pop R&B stuff" and I was like, "ah, well I really like rock and soul and I love No Doubt, like that reggae-ska kind of stuff". Like if I wanted to do pop, I would want it to be more like that but that’s not where the industry was at that time and there weren’t artists like Thundercat or Flying Lotus which were more eclectic. They would ask me not to mention Bjork or infuse any of my other more non-black influences to my voice.

X-Men '92 (2016) #1 Hip-Hop variant, cover by Afua Richardson.

I was also inspired by Stevie Wonder, who I also had the opportunity to sing with just by a random chance - not even on stage. I worked at a Sam Ash in New York City right on 48th street and he would come in and test pianos. It was before they had like whole sound modules, so what he would do is he would come into the store like close to closing and he would go through all of the sounds on a particular keyboard. This must have been in like 2001 or something like that, maybe 2000. So one time I am walking through the store, I had already met him before and he’s playing Tuesday Heartbreak and I’m carrying some boxes, I’m way in the back and I didn’t think he could hear me (maybe he has super hearing, maybe that is his super power - beyond making incredible music). I’m singing the chorus of Tuesday Heartbreak but I don’t know all the words to it but he hears me and says ‘Afua is that you? Come on up here and sing this.’ I’m like, "oh my God why didn’t I pick another song to sing?" So I’m singing Tuesday Heartbreak while Stevie Wonder is playing like a Roland Phantom Keyboard and I’m thinking, "oh my God, this is amazing! I have to take a picture of this". I had a disposable camera there were no cell phone cameras at the time. I knew this was one of the moments that I want to remember forever, because he was just so prolific and he just poured his heart into his music and anyone could listen to it and feel the emotion from it.

With all the music I performed and played the visual aspect of it never separated, like it was never a separate thing. Whenever I listened to classical music I would see images in my mind. Or when I read comics I would listen to the soundtrack of my mind. Like, what would be going along with this Excalibur comic or what would go along with Conan? There would be like a symphony orchestra, there would be like techno, there would be all these different things. So it only made sense that I continued to do both. A lot of people told me to pick one, and for a long time maybe that is really necessary and that is what I needed to do because you can’t divide your time too much. Each craft takes an incredible amount of time and skill to focus. Just like a plant, you need to cultivate it and water it and if you divide your resources then it is not going to be as strong as it could be. But when I didn’t make music I started to get sad. Or when I wasn’t drawing, something in me just didn’t feel complete.

So at one point I was doing the background singing and going on tour and they were very temporary gigs and didn’t feel very stable. I got a gig with Melvin Van Peebles. If you don’t know, he is responsible for all of the Shaft, Foxy Brown - all of those films - and his film Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song that he wrote and stared in. But he was like a WWII pilot, taught himself French - and he said one day he was flying over the ocean with the atom bomb as his cargo and he heard a voice. And he makes this face looking up as if he heard this divine voice. He said the voice said ‘Melvin, get your black ass out of the military.’ So he was due to re-enlist and he decided he served his time and he wasn’t going to get back into it. Everyone else who was on the battalion with him didn’t survive - except for his commanding officer, who was like "oh that boy is slick, that voice was right, get out now". But he decided to pursue his passion. He thought now that he had seen what the worst of life has to bring, it has to get better than this.

Genius (2014) #1, cover by Afua Richardson.

So he was like I don’t know how to make a film but I am going to make one today. I don’t know French but I’m going to learn it. And he got all these awards. At the time there weren’t any major films starring black leads that had roles that weren’t like butlers, waiters, slaves. I guess that was just a reflection of the time. So he didn’t get upset about it, he just got creative. His film was very political, very sexually charged, there was a lot going on. Basically he encounters 2 police officers who are beating up this guy, he stops the cops but kills them by accident so he is on the run for the rest of the film. It was such a success at the box office. It had never been seen or done before at the time, and they wanted to replicate it without all the politics. So someone had asked him ‘Aren’t you upset that your films are being remade without the essence and the core of what the issues are?’ and he was like ‘No I’m not. My objective was I wanted to see brown faces employed. That was it. I wanted to see more people who looked like me behind the screen. They have a job. What they decided to do with it, that is fine. I don’t need to have every moment of my life permeated by civil rights issues. I want to live my life being happy. I have friends who are not black. I have a life that is outside of this oppression and the only freedom is existing without being constantly afraid of what people think.’

Then I looked around his house and he had all these awards, and he had all this different sheet music that was noted with intervals instead of actual notes. He didn’t know sheet music, but he knew the distance between the actual notes - so whatever the bass line was, that would be like one mark and so on. And he scored an entire film with Earth, Wind and Fire (the local band at the time) to soundtrack his film. Then I was looking through some pages and I was like ‘oh this is a great graphic novel. Who drew this?’ and he was like ‘I did.’ I was like ‘What?! Melvin didn’t anyone ever tell you, you shouldn’t do all these things at once. That you should just pick one or two and focus on those?’ And he said ‘That’s because it’s difficult.’ I was like ‘Yeah that’s why they tell you not to do it.’ He said ‘Well if it were talking and walking then it wouldn’t be a problem. No one would warn you 'oh you shouldn’t walk and talk at the same time, that’s dangerous'. Because it’s difficult it makes them feel bad that they haven’t put forth the effort to be a scholar and a warrior and an artist and a poet but you can be all those things. You just have to divide up those 24 hours that you have and say I’m going to decide to do this. I’m going to decide to carve time for myself. Whatever job I am working I have to make time for me because this is my life and I’m never going to be this person again. So you have to decide who you are going to be.’

So it doesn’t matter where you come from. I mean there was a point in my life when I didn’t have a place to live. I went from eating Wonder Bread and wondering where my next meal was to drawing Wonder Woman. I taught myself how to draw and being inspired by people like him who are like yeah, people say I shouldn’t do that but people say a lot of things. They keep talking, I’m going to get to work. You know people can get upset that there is not enough diversity in comics but they could start drawing. They can support what’s there. They can honor what is and just see it as an opportunity instead of a slight. It’s like you know we all have our struggles, we all have our problems. Nobody’s life is easy. Even wealthy people, they have a lot to manage. Money is not going to fix whatever is wrong with their heart or their philosophy and they still have to manage and maintain all that. So I want to with my artwork maybe give different perspectives with just the things that I have learned and just put it out there and see what comes back.

RH: Absolutely. It sounds like for you that a lot of the different arts that you are involved in feed into each other. Maybe you take inspiration from other things you are doing for your drawings.

AR: Absolutely. And I’m working on a project right now that I can’t announce yet. But after that, I am working on Aquarius: The Book of Mer which will be a modern retelling of mermaid myths and legends from all over the world. I’m doing a lot of research right now. I have my work cut out for me. It will involve the Ningyo in Japan, the Selkie in Scotland - there are so many and some of them are creepy and scary. Even Melusine (the Starbucks mermaid), is kind of creepy - don’t know why she is on coffee.

Aquarius: The Book of Mer banner illustration.

RH: I never ever thought about that but there are different mermaids from around the world.

AR: Yeah, and I was just like, "man why didn’t I ever know about this? Why aren’t there stories?" And I thought, "oh well, there is an opportunity, I’ll tell the story. That is fine." I planned on getting started for May in 2018 but I am going to start a Patreon, and so I’ll just drip the content one page at a time until I have enough for a book. Maybe I can make some music for that and do like a Reading Rainbow style of read-along with the story and narrate and have voice over and do songs. Some of them, like Ningyo of Japan, they don’t have voices. They have flute like sounds which is perfect because I have played the flute for 20 years. So I am going to like over-dub their voices and warp the flute for sound and turn them into these creepy siren whale songs and make it more of an experience.

I had a really great experience at the last Ace Comic Con. I was sitting with a family in the hotel lobby and we were chatting about pink brass knuckles with like tasers at the end. And we were like, "How does that work?" Then we started talking about MMA and this guy overheard that I was working on a commission. He said ‘Hey are you guys artists?’ I was like ‘most of us are. That is the creator of Rocket Raccoon, Coleen Duran was working on Wonder Woman since 1988 and I am the artist on Black Panther: Wonderful World of Wakanda.’ He was like ‘Oh my god! My friend is such a huge fan of Wonderful World of Wakanda - I have to tell him. He couldn’t really make it to the show,’ and I was like ‘aww man that is too bad.’ He said ‘oh yeah he is going to die when tell him.’ So he sent him a text message and he was just so upset that he had to go to work he couldn’t make it to the show. Then I was like ‘Hey you know what, let’s send a video message to your friend and say hey it’s for Richard or whatever. Really wish you were here. Sorry you couldn’t make but we just wanted to send you well wishes.’ He was like ‘Really you do?’ and I was like ‘yeah it will take me like 10 seconds and your friend couldn’t make it and he is bummed out about it.’ I would be bummed too. This man’s son was so moved by it that after they went upstairs he came back downstairs to tell me that his son is really into the Justice League movies but he couldn’t get him to read anything. He just wasn’t interested. Then when he saw what I did and heard who I was he said ‘aww that was really nice of her. She makes comics? I want to make comics.’ So the next day he bought his first comic book ever from me and I was like oh my God! That is amazing. So it made me think, I understand media competing nowadays and books might not be as engaging as the other forms of media for kids and not all of these stories are going to be for kids, but the ones that are that are a little more general audience it might be fun to have something a little more interactive that might pull readers in like, "this is a cool video, it’s like 3 minutes and it explains a piece of the story, I want to read the rest of it". So he was also part of my inspiration for that.

Black Panther_World Of Wakanda (2017) #2, cover by Afua Richardson.

RH: Bringing in other media. That is kind of how comics started by bringing in the illustrations to grab a younger audience. That is smart, it’s brilliant. You mentioned that you were a big fan of Swamp Thing, did you start with the Alan Moore run?

AR: Yes. I had no idea what was going on but I loved it. And I loved the drawings and illustrations. I was like, "man this is deep this plant is seriously depressed, I get him". You know in this cross over universe, Swamp Thing and Poison Ivy, why has that not happened?

RH: That’s a good question. We are still waiting for that one. Do you think that is why your material is more adult because you were interested in more mature comics?

AR: I think so. I was really into Heavy Metal magazine also. That was my introduction to Moebius, just that art style. I love sci-fi and really techy, ornate, psychedelic really culty type stuff - and that was really introduced there for me. It let me know it wasn’t just a kids medium with super heroes and powers, which are awesome I am not discounting that. But it can have really, really advanced concepts as well and still be embraced and I thought, "wow this is great". It really covers the gambit.

RH: I know we have taken quite a bit of your time, but I wanted to touch on one thing, can you tell us about The Ormes Society?

AR: The Ormes Society. Jackie Ormes was the first black illustrator to be recognized for her talents and what the Ormes Society does is sort of feature female black artists or just female artists in the industry and educate the public on who they are where they can find them to support their work.

RH: That is awesome. You are involved in the Society as well right?

AR: Yeah, they made me an honorary member and they feature and support my work very prominently. There are some really great gals over there and they are really supportive. So when they let me know and educate me on other artists I should know I try to spread the word.

RH: That is awesome. Did you have anything you would like to add? Any advice for fans? Or anything just in general?

AR: Learn your craft and learn the business too - because you don’t want to be stuck asking questions after you have already signed a contract. And just enjoy what you do. It is not going to be perfect until like the 20th one - and it’s never going to really be perfect. You’re always going to be chasing this dream. Adam Hughes is constantly evolving because he is always critiquing himself, but don’t critique yourself into obsolescence. Allow yourself to make mistakes. You are not going to start doing backflips one day and suddenly become on Olympic gymnast the next. Be patient with yourself while creating. As you go along, complete things. Let yourself complete smaller goals, smaller tasks. Everyone is going to have that magnum opus that they want to create. You are never going to be able to finish it in time. Break it up into smaller pieces. Make it achievable. And it doesn’t matter if you don’t have the money or the means, you’ll make it happen, you will find a way. You have heard that saying that when the student is ready the teacher will arrive? That is absolutely true. When you are really ready to put in those work hours like drawing every single day of your life, then you are ready to do comics.

Aquarius: The Book of Mer teaser from Afua Richardson. — **Aquarius: The Book of Mer** teaser from Afua Richardson.

RH: That is great advise. So other than the things you have mentioned what do you have planned for the future going forward?

AR: Well Aquarius: Book of Mer is primarily my next focus after the secret project but becoming a better writer and a better artist overall. I want to do more storytelling on my own. I don’t know maybe I will write a Marvel story one day about all the blue folks. Nightcrawler, Mystique, Beast, why are they all blue? Like what’s the deal with that?

RH: Great question.

AR: Even throw vision in there, he’s purple, and She-Hulk and Hulk, they’re green. What’s with all of these different colored folks. Just do a fun kind of silly book about that. Or like a Road Warrior story about Storm going cross country on a motorcycle. I don’t know.

RH: That would be interesting, absolutely. Well Afua, thank you for your time. We really appreciated talking to you.

All-Star Batman (2016) #1 My Parents Basement variant, cover by Afua Richardson.

Afua Richardson at Ace Comic Con Arizona 2018 (2).

Totally Awesome Hulk (2016) #2 Incentive variant, cover by Afua Richardson.

March 08, 2018

Gareb Shamus Talks About ACE Universe at Ace Comic Con AZ

March 08, 2018/ Ryan Hall

Written by Ryan Hall & Emily Davenport

Gareb Shamus is the founder and former Chairman and CEO of Wizard Entertainment and the co-founder and current CEO of ACE Comic Con. He was the publisher of several magazines including Wizard, InQuest Gamer, ToyFare, and Anime Insider, among others. At the recent Ace Comic Con: Arizona (Jan. 13-15, 2018), Nerd Team 30 had the chance to sit down with Gareb and talk about his new ACE line of conventions: how they started, what comes next, and how he wants people to remember the ACE Universe.

Ryan Hall: Thank you for sitting down for an interview with us. How are you doing today?

Gareb Shamus: I am doing amazing. It’s game day and game day is the best day of the year. When we get to bring all of our fans the people we have been working with for months, even up to a year in one place and one time. There is no tomorrow it’s all today so it’s really exciting.

RH: Finally get the big payoff.

GS: Yeah. When you can bring everyone together in one place and one time, that payoff, that excitement, that energy that you have is just phenomenal.

RH: You said up to a year. How long have you been working on putting this particular convention together?

GS: So we started at the beginning of 2017. When you are looking at the type of celebrity talent we are working with, even comic book talent, everybody is very busy with all the schedules that are going on - the shooting schedules, their family lives, stuff like that. You really have to get on peoples calendars pretty far in advance. And that is why our business model is actually a little bit different from the way a typical comic convention works - in the sense that normally you rent the venue and then you see who’s available. But because of our going into arenas, our first thought was "who do we want at the show?" Who is that talent, who is that franchise that we want to get to make fans excited about it? So once we get the talent and the commitment from the talent we book the venue and the marketing and promotion. We kind of work in reverse. So we don’t book an event until we know we have the talent locked up. That’s why for us the shows take a long time to produce because we have to be very, very sure when it comes to the talent. So we’ve got a number of events coming out in the future but we have had to put offers out to the talent a long time ago to secure that and make it happen.

RH: Very cool. So that may be one of the things that is more difficult about doing this type of convention. Starting a brand new convention, specifically in an arena, what are some other things that were different from starting a typical convention? Were they more simple for you to put on? More difficult?

People waiting to get into Ace Comic Con AZ, at the Gila River Arena.

GS: Well the thing about it, when my brother and I started the company, we didn’t have any legacy issues, we didn’t have any old contracts we needed to fill, and we didn’t owe anybody anything. It was one of those things where we could just start fresh. And we said to ourselves, what are the problems that comic-cons have had in the past? What issues that fans have constantly said "hey, I wish it was this way" or "I wish it was this way". And what were the things we wanted to see, you know? What are the things that people wanted to see an abundance of, or things that shows did just for the sake of doing it but not because it really had an impact. And we were kind of able to craft it right from the start, part of that was who you want to see. When you’re a fan it’s like "oh my god I really want to see this celebrity or that celebrity" and that’s kind of where we started. Then the other thing we wanted to do in part with that is a much more curated experience. With so many types of these events... It’s rent a hall, try and sell and push as much stuff into one building at one time as you can - and we didn’t want to do that. We didn’t want to have hundreds and hundreds of vendors and hundreds and hundreds of comic book artists. What we wanted to do was curate it and say "hey, if we’ve got Tom Holland from Spider-Man and Chris Evans from Captain America here, what can we do with a lot of the Marvel superheroes and the people who have made an impact on that space?" So it’s like oh, let’s get Stan Lee, Todd McFarlane, John Romita Jr., John Cassaday. When you look at the list of people that we have been able to bring in that all have something to do with the Marvel universe or maybe something to do with those characters, for us it was like "ok great- let’s go to the retailers we want to bring in". Instead of bringing all the same type of retailers, how can we bring a diverse group of retailers in? Not all just selling the same thing, and not only that - let’s get the best ones as opposed to some that may not be the best or may be repetitive for us. How do we create more of a unique experience? Then the other thing was to be very open to kids, so we have a whole kid’s comic-con and we are really trying to bring that family atmosphere. Coming to an arena also, it affords us a lot of other amenities that you don’t have at a typical convention center. Number 1 is the programming. We are here sitting, and there might be a panel that’s going on that we could watch - but let’s say we want to walk the floor first, or maybe we are in line for an autograph, or maybe we are on the outer skirts talking to the writers or artists. But there’s the jumbo-tron in the middle of the arena and closed circuit TV’s all throughout, and no matter where you are you can watch what is going on. Then the last part is we really want to encourage social media, so for a lot of our show we want people who are not here to feel like they are here. We know that there is a finite number of people who could be here physically and there is an infinite number of people who would want to be there, and we want those people to still feel like they are a part of this community. We are super open and encouraging people to take out their cameras, shoot what they can and show it to their friends out there.

RH: That’s great. That’s the best way to word-of-mouth promote it, people actually seeing it out there so they actually want to come to then next event.

GS: Absolutely. For us it’s about building a community. So we’ve been in a situation where when I started almost 30 years ago, being a geek or a nerd was actually a very derogatory term, right? We were the outsiders, we were the losers, we were the people to stay away from. It took decades for us to get accepted out there - and now we are - but the next phase for us is to build it into a community. So that not just everybody feels like they are accepted, but now they’re a part of something even bigger and that there is this connection between everybody. That’s what we are going to be doing.

RH: Very good. Now one thing that we noticed with both this one and the New York convention, you tend to be a little more themed, like you said, building around the talent that you get, so this one seems more Marvel themed, New York seems more DC themed, is that a fair assumption?

GS: Absolutely. Yeah.

RH: So what kind of ideas do you have for conventions going forward? Would you plan on maybe an independent convention, or keeping it more with the big 2?

GS: So from our perspective because of the nature of the movie and television business there are constantly new themes that are coming out or new shows that are coming out or there is so much depth to the current Marvel and DC universes out there, so from our perspective it is a combination of which talent we can get or have access to and or which areas or themes we can do that we feel are big enough to attract and audience people care about. But it is all about the passion of our fans and our passion in terms of what we want to do and what we want to provide. So we are looking at a lot of different areas.

RH: Very cool. So this is the 2nd ACE Convention ever. The first one being in New York - which seems like an obvious choice. Why choose Arizona for the 2nd one?

GS: Well the first one we wanted to do close to home. We are from New York, we have a lot friends and family there. We wanted something because it was a new model, it wasn’t proven, it wasn’t tested. We knew there were going to be a lot kinks that needed to be worked out. So, for that it was really great to do it there. The arena was really great. And for both New York and Arizona, because of what we wanted to do - it was very different right? So for an arena, they were taking a chance on us in the sense that they have never done anything like this. They are used to having sporting events, or concerts, or ice skating shows, or things of that nature. They haven’t cut up their space in this way. The people who work here aren’t used to dealing with a 3-ring circus with stuff going on all over the building. So the people in New York and here in Arizona were really open and really accepting in terms of what we wanted to do and how we wanted to do it, because it really took management a long time to figure out "hey do we really want this in our building? Do we really want to work hard?" Because when you do the concerts you know how it works, when you do a sporting event you know how it works. You have 40+ hockey games a year and they know what game 2, 3, 4,5 and 40 are going to look like already. Arizona was a unique situation. We wanted to be in a warm climate because, you know, it’s cold out there in many parts of the US. They were just very very open to wanting to do something special. It was a combination of the two that worked out very well.

Emily Davenport: So did you have other cities that you were thinking of going to where people weren’t as open to the idea of a comic-con coming?

GS: Yeah. I mean we had spoken with a lot of cities. We have run comic-cons in almost 30 cities out there across the US, so we had spoken to a lot of them and a lot of them weren’t ready to do it or they didn’t have the dates available. A lot of them - most of them - didn’t have the dates available for us because it is hockey season, basketball season, you know? A lot of arenas are multiple use so they have basketball and hockey, so it was tougher to get. In this particular arena they have hockey, but not basketball, so there was a little bit more time in there where we could do that. But yeah, we were talking to a lot places out there.

RH: So going forward with these, what is your target goal for maybe how many events per year or did you have something in mind?

GS: We don’t have a target. For us it’s being very opportunistic. We have a lot of offers out to a lot talent. Once we get commitments we can figure out the best place to do them. But our goal is to keep going back into the markets around the same time of year. We love Arizona, we’d love to come back, we want to come back. Whether it’s January or February next year or December, we are going to try and time it to a similar timeframe because we love the audience here. Whenever we go into a market, we love the fans and we want to be able to keep bringing them back for an experience. As they support us we want to be able to support them.

RH: The convention is obviously an area of focus now, but what other areas of the business are you interested in going into with ACE? Are you interested in maybe being a guest at other conventions?

GS: So for us right now it is focusing on our own events but also focusing on also the streaming of all the content as well. So we are definitely going to be a 365 day a year streaming content platform. We want people to know we will get there over time where when the show is over they are still going to have a great excuse to be engaged with ACE and the ACE universe.

A packed audience watches a celebrity panel at Ace Comic Con AZ.

RH: That’s great. Do you plan creating original content on the website between events or mostly just publishing everything you have accumulated from those active days?

GS: Oh it’s going to be a combination of everything. We are recording a lot of stuff that is going on at the show that we haven’t had the chance to livestream at the event. So it’s a combination of that and of original material. It could be curating other material that we find interesting and kind of putting our spin on it. So it will run the gambit of a lot of different content. And much like our events - where it’s a curated event - so will be our streaming content.

RH: What would be a dream booking for you? Someone that you haven’t been able to have at your convention but that you would just totally fanboy out if they showed up?

GS: Well to me it’s Robert Downey Jr. If ever there was a person that embodied the character, it’s hard to compare. Although I will tell you Gal Gadot now, Wonder Woman is certainly up there but also a lot of people have Chris Evans as Captain America even Tom Holland as Spider-Man on their list. In a short period of time you feel they got that right with him. But a lot of times it’s just the people who embody the characters and Robert Downey is definitely at the top of that list.

RH: So there is obvious focus on comics, pop culture, movies- what other areas are you interested in bringing to ACE? Are you interested in bringing in gaming and anime?

GS: Yeah. You know, I think over time as we get more comfortable with what we are doing and as we start developing our audiences and fan base and things like that. In my past I published magazines in a lot of different genres out there, so luckily my brother and I have developed relationships with lots of different industries all over the world. The great part is that we have done it for so many years that over time we want to be able to bring in all those people and resources and excitement that we have been able to cultivate over two to three decades of being in business, we would love to get them into the ACE universe now. So yeah I wouldn’t count anything out on our side.

ED: What are you hoping that fans take away from this event?

GS: We hope the fans take away that they felt they were part of something that was the start of something unbelievable. They could look back years from now and be like "I was there for that", like, "this happened and I was there. I got my cell phone footage to show, I got my selfie, I got my photo" - that they were here at the infancy of something that is really going to change the dynamic of this world in a way that they will only know once it has happened.

ED: Wonderful. Well thanks so much for sitting down with us.

RH: Thank you for letting us be part of the history.

GS: Thank you guys so much. I really appreciate it.

Todd McFarlane takes a selfie with Stan Lee at Ace Comic Con AZ.

March 05, 2018

Mister V Talks the Main Street Dirt Sheet, Them There Hills, and Life at the Grand Gazette

March 05, 2018/ Neil Greenaway

Written by Neil Greenaway

I first met Mister V at Denver Comic Con 2016, where he had contributed a story to the Uncanny Adventures: Duo anthology from 8th Wonder Press. In the two years since then it has been my pleasure to grow better acquainted with his works; his two graphic novel series (DNR details his own experiences in the healthcare field & Mile High recounts his adventures in medical marijuana), his choose-your-own-adventure GN Death By Dive Bar, his numerous mini-comics and 'zines, and his little 8-pg. Tijuana Bibles. I even have the children's book he wrote and illustrated, Craterface. However, when I heard that Mister V would be starting his third ongoing comic strip in the Grand Gazette, it occurred to me that I knew next to nothing about his newspaper work. I gave him a call and we talked about what its like to work for a newspaper, what his newest comic strip is about, and what we can expect to see at his upcoming appearance at DINK 2018.

Neil Greenaway: I know that you write comics under the pen name Mister V. For the readers who might not know, what is your real name?

Mister V: Well my real name is Matthew R. Veraldo so I basically just used my initials as my pen name.

NG: Why do you use a pen name?

Mr. V: Originally it was because I was working in healthcare and I wanted to write about my experiences there. At the same time, I was employed when I started writing my DNR series (which was about my experiences at work) and there are things like HIPAA that are designed to protect patient privacy. I was so scared of violating federal law, and I was so scared of losing my job if someone found out that I was writing about my employment. It seemed the easiest way to avoid that was just to change my name and then I stuck with it.

NG: Okay, so you started on the DNR series - and you had the Mile High series as well. How did those translate into work at a Grand County newspaper?

Mr. V: You know mostly in the beginning I was just looking for a way to hone my chops. I look back at some of the early DNR stuff and - of course it's embarrassing. I was just a rookie. I think it was Dave Sim that said that you need to draw 1,000 pages of bad comics before you can start drawing good ones. I think he said that. Anyway, I attribute that to him and I really take that saying to heart. When I sent in my first submission to Top Shelf Comics they said something very similar. "You need to draw a lot more comics". So DNR served its purpose for me as a sounding board for the things that I wanted to talk about at the time - which was the state of American Healthcare - but it also was a great excuse for me to sit down and draw page after page after page of comics. That series is just a little bit shy of 900 pages long.

In Mile High I had a fun topic and I was able to use what I was doing with that to tell an interesting story. But really those two (DNR and Mile High) are separate from what I do up here in the mountains. A lot of people here in Grand County don't even know that I have written a series of graphic novels. They think I just draw the comic for the newspaper, and I'm okay with that.

NG: If it was not a matter of the graphic novels translating into the newspaper work, how did you come by the job at the Grand Gazette?

Mr. V: In a really roundabout and strange way. The reason we moved to Grand County is because my wife got a job and it was a great excuse to get out of the Denver metro area. The healthcare job I had been working while I was writing the graphic novels had been slowly grinding me down to a nub. It was a really tough job and it had me really unhappy with almost all the aspects of my life. When my wife got her job and we moved, I knew that I did not want to go back to that same type of scenario. I had been working at places that had my name on my shirt since I was 18, and it didn't sound like something I wanted to do for the rest of my life. In Grand County there are not a lot of places where you can get a job. There's a fairly small population - we don't even have a Wal-Mart or a Trader Joe's or anything like that. We have a City Market and a Subway, and that's it. So there was nowhere for me to get a job that would follow on my current trajectory and I sort of didn't want to. I started writing the Them There Hills strip, which is a single panel strip. I developed that for a restaurant up here. They had table flyers that they would put on each table - and the idea was that they would include some of my comics as well. But the gentleman I had spoken to about setting this up wanted to pay me $20 a week for unlimited comic strips - which is slave labor. (laughs)

NG: Yeah

Mr. V: There are four newspapers up here in Grand County, which is really strange for a dying industry. Who sees newspapers anywhere anymore, right? But there were four newspapers up here, and it seemed like the perfect soil in which to plant my seed - if you will forgive my metaphor. I had originally wanted to work for a few of the papers at the same time. Life Is Grand was originally intended for one of the county's other papers, the Sky-Hi News. But when they found out I was already working with the Gazette, they didn't want anything to do with me. There's a lot of factionalism and competition among the county newspapers. No one takes too kindly to freelancers. I'd originally hoped for syndication among the papers when I moved up here. When that didn't happen I tried making individual comics for each paper, but even that wasn't feasible. It's all or nothing with small town newspapers, apparently. That's how I wound up with all three of these comics in the same publication. Anyway, there can be a preconception that rural areas are very conservative and redneck, but in working with the papers up here I have found that there is a real thirst for literature. It has been an incredible experience to work on these projects

NG: You currently have three ongoing comic strips in the Grand Gazette, correct? Can you tell us a little bit about those?

Mr. V: Sure. I already mentioned Them There Hills - my single-panel gag strip which - I should be so arrogant as to say that it is reminiscent of Gary Larson's The Far Side. It is basically utilizing Colorado native animals to make bad puns and that sort of thing. Them There Hills is my least favorite comic project I've ever done, but for reasons I don't understand it is also the most popular comic I do among Grand County locals. Both my wife and Kim Cameron (the editor of the Grand Gazette) have forbidden me from ever quitting this comic. Sometime around this summer I'll be drawing my 200th TTH strip.

Life Is Grand (085) by Mister V (click to enlarge)

Life Is Grand (119) by Mister V (click to enlarge)

My other comic strip (which is weekly) is called Life Is Grand - that is a historic nonfiction strip about the history of Grand County. Grand County has a long tradition of preserving its heritage and the trials and tribulations of its previous residents, going back to the very founding of the county. There are collections of pioneer newspapers that go back to the 1860s and '70s. I have always been interested in the historical aspects of this particular area because some of the stories out here not very well known - but they are just giant in terms of scope and mythology. I would say that they are the equal of any American myth that you would find out there - say Johnny Appleseed or John Henry, that kind of stuff. We have Ute Bill Thompson, Texas Charley, the Commissioner Shootings, all these weird crazy things. It has been my absolute pleasure to dig through the history of this county - the old newspapers and Pioneer recollections - and just find good crazy mountain shit, essentially. Those two strips I have been doing for a newspaper called the Grand Gazette on a weekly basis for just about 4 years now.

I have also just launched my third strip in that same paper, which is called the Main Street Dirt Sheet. This strip is very topical to the area that I live in, they are human events stories. I actually go and talk to people and dig up stories to sequentialize for the paper bi-weekly. I'm drawing inspiration for this one from the works of Joe Sacco. For many years I've been in awe of how Sacco's work combined journalism and the sequential arts. It's a fascinating combination. Even though I'm reporting on a much smaller and fluffier scale, it's still so exciting to be dabbling in the same pool.

NG: When you lived in Denver and were writing more controversial content,

Mr. V: Yes, much more controversial.

NG: What was it like to move to more of a small town setting and start telling more rural stories?

Mr. V: Initially, it was very uncomfortable. I lived in perpetual fear of crossing some line - but I have spent so much of my career going way, way over the line that I had a hard time recognizing where the line was anymore. There were a couple of times where I would make a joke that wasn't necessarily naughty compared to my past work, but it might have been bad when you looked at the area I was living in. In this area, if you make a reference to marijuana, drinking beer, or sex - you never know who is going to be up in arms about it and writing angry letters to the editor. I was very gun-shy about it at first. I don't have another job, this is how I bring income into my home. It was stressful knowing that if I mess up I could be costing myself a whole bunch of money. On the other hand, as I have progressed and done this couple of years, I have been floored by the way the community has embraced what I do. Which is not something that I ever expected! I am regularly stopped on the street by people up here, people from all walks of life - farmers & ranchers, government employees, retired people, people who are 10 years younger than me and 40 years older than me. They stop me to tell me how much they appreciate my work and how much they enjoy seeing my comics in the paper. I have had several people tell me that they cut my comics out and hang them on their refrigerator, which is something I never thought I would achieve! that is something I have never heard any of my contemporaries say, but why would they? Who writes comics for newspapers anymore? That was definitely an item on my bucket list that I never thought would be checked off. It has all been incredibly rewarding.

Life is Grand: Texas Charley pg.1, by Mister V (click to enlarge)

NG: That's cool! When you do the comics do you do all of the art yourself?

Mr. V: Yes, I do all of the art and all of the writing.

NG: I only ask because the color choices that you use in your comics - particularly when representing the old west are very bold and bright. I wondered what leads to the colors you choose?

Mr. V: Are you referring to Texas Charley?

NG: Yes I am.

Mr. V: I have really been messing around with the colors that I'm using in Texas Charley. One of the reasons I'm doing that is because I knew it was going to be violent. It is the story of a cowboy who was essentially mob lynched by the prominent citizens of the town. At some point I knew I was going to have to draw Charley getting blown away - and I did not know how to do that for public consumption. So a lot of thought went into that and I finally decided that the best way to do it was to completely abstract the color scheme. It is something I have toyed with before and it has been fun to do, but it came about out of practicality

Life is Grand: Texas Charley pg.15, by Mister V (click to enlarge)

NG: I like it. It gives the strip a very bold look.

Mr. V: Thank you, I am glad! That is something I have to consider as well. This is only being printed in the paper one page at a time, and if I want someone to read it I need it to grab their attention before they ever read a word. So it would be an unforeseen bonus if the coloring helped to grab people's eyeballs.

NG: If I could go back to your graphic novels for just a moment - in the past your books have centered heavily around healthcare, with your DNR series and then the Mile High series. The current state of health care in America is very much in flux right now. Could you see yourself writing another story about what is happening now?

Mr. V: It is a more difficult subject for me to approach now that I am not working in the healthcare field. Particularly with what the Trump administration is doing. God, what a nightmare! Of course I'm not happy with the state of healthcare in this country. In my mind there is no debate that our country needs a single-payer system. I have worked in insurance data entry, and it is a scam! Everything that is done in healthcare in this country is done to make a profit. Even the Affordable Care Act did not do anything to help people who were struggling with their healthcare. It expanded Medicare, which is a great thing - I'm all for that. And it made it so that insurance companies could not deny people coverage, I guess. So it let the people who had not yet been screwed by the American insurance system participate. But it is still useless. it is shameful and I don't understand why there are not more people just rabid for Medicare for all in this country. There is no reason not to have it. We are just waiting for our government to realize that insurance profits are not more important than people's lives.

NG: We might be in for a bit of a wait on that one.

Mr. V: That's true, which sucks because across the world all the other countries are doing it. I remember talking to someone from Australia who was complaining because their government insurance only covered 80% of their total costs and they had to get supplemental insurance for the final 20%. I was just thinking in America we have to wait until we're 65 for that kind of coverage.

NG: And this is why I asked about a future comic. (laughs) You obviously have passionate thoughts on the subject.

Mr. V: I do, but to me it feels like such a pointless debate. I don't understand how people can actually defend the way our insurance system works in this country. I guess that's why I have not pursued that one further. I think it is a stupid argument to have. (laughs)

The Main Street Dirt Sheet (02) by Mister V (click to enlarge)

NG: Last year at DINK 2017, you debuted a new choose-your-own-adventure graphic novel - called Death By Dive Bar - and that was nominated for a dinky at the show.

Mr. V: It was nominated yes.

NG: I picked up a copy and I really enjoyed it - but I am a choose-your-own-adventure junkie from a young age. Do you plan on having any new books to premiere at DINK this year?

Mr. V: I will have the third and final volume of Mile High. I am wrapping that story up. I also have a mini-comic dream journal that will be in full color that I hope to have out for that show.

NG: Is it your dream journal? Are they your dreams?

Mr. V: It is, yes. I want to say that it's pretty honest and slightly embarrassing - as most people's dreams would be - and so I look forward to humiliating myself, yet again. I am also really trying to finish up Texas Charley. I put about a year's worth of research into this book. I have used a lot of sources that have never been used before when exploring this topic, and so I am really looking forward to that one. The story has been a lot of fun to tell and to assemble and I would love to debut that book at DINK. However, February has been kicking my ass so I don't know if I will be able to finish it that soon. I love debuting new books at DINK. DINK is my go-to show for premiering a new book.

NG: How long would be collected edition of Texas Charley be?

Mr. V: Not long, it's a fairly short tale. The comic itself should be 25 or 26 pages when it's done, but I'm also going to include a short essay about who I believe was responsible for Texas Charley's death. And it will also include some artifacts that I was able to scan in from primary sources. I think releasing 3 new books in one show is good enough.

NG: I think that is perfectly reasonable. How about at the Grand Gazette what have you got coming up there storyline-wise?

Mr. V: Well after Texas Charley I am going to go back to a non-storyline format for Life Is Grand for a while. I do have a melodrama I would like to adapt called The Moonshiner's Daughter which was written around 1900. In the long term, next January I'm going to be delving into the Grand Lake Commissioners Shooting of 1884, which is one of the quintessential Grand County stories. As far as the Main Street Dirt Sheet goes this week coming up I have a comic above the Kum & Go in Granby which is (within its chain) the number 2 retailer of pizza in the nation - which is an odd random fact.

NG: Yes it is.

Mr. V: And where else could I cover stories like that? That is a weird story! I love it!

NG: Do you have any other projects that you are working on right now?

Mr. V: On top of everything else I've been doing I do also have a year-long fan journal about the WWE, because I am a huge professional wrestling fan. It is called Marking Out 365 and I am releasing it online - either through my Twitter or my Tumblr. Any professional wrestling fan ought to check that stuff out, BROTHER!

You can keep up with Mister V's work at The Grand Gazette by reading the e-Editions online. You can follow his other work at his website, arborcides.blogspot.com.

Mister V sent me an email shortly after we spoke offering a look at one of his comic strip ideas that was never picked up. He included this note:

"I've included two examples from my failed comic strip THE COLORADO CANNABIS TIMES. Marijuana is still a hot-button topic up here, and I wanted to cover the debate. I created this strip last summer (2017), but unfortunately it proved too hot for everyone, including me. It wasn't picked up."

The Colorado Cannabis Times (01) by Mister V (click to enlarge)

January 25, 2018

Clinton T. Hobart Talks About Disney, Doritos, and Michael Rooker at Ace Comic Con AZ

January 25, 2018/ Ryan Hall

Written by Ryan Hall

“Clinton T. Hobart is a Fine Artist and Licensed Disney Fine Artist. He creates original oil paintings of a wide variety of subjects ranging from classical subject matter such as fruit and eggshells to more modern subjects such as Mickey Mouse and Doritos. Even his Disney paintings are technically still-lifes, because he works from real objects in front of him. If he cannot find the objects he desires to paint he frequently will build elaborate “Sets” to work from. For his painting of the tower from the Disney movie Tangled he constructed a four foot tall replica of it made out of stone, mortar, cardboard, plaster and wood. The sculpture has since become as popular as the actual painting.”

— From www.aceuniverse.com

At the recent Ace Comic Con Arizona, Nerd Team 30 had the chance to sit down and talk with Clinton about his path to becoming an artist, how he got into Disney, and why it is important to go to parties

Ryan Hall: What inspired you to become an artist in the first place? What led to your career in art?

Clinton Hobart: I made no decision whatsoever. I couldn't do anything else, and by the age of 12 or 13 I was drawing all the time, and I said, "You know, I want to stick with this.” It just chose me.

RH: What did you start off drawing as a kid?

CH: Copying comic books actually. The first thing I really started drawing was copying Todd McFarlane and Rob Liefeld.

A recent still-life painted by Clinton T. Hobart.

RH: What were your favorite super heroes at the time?

CH: I did a lot of Spider-Man drawings, I like Batman a lot, and then I moved into more cartoon Disney stuff as I got older. When I went into art school I got into figure drawing, people, and went from there.

RH: What drew you into wanting to become a licensed Disney artist?

CH: Pure luck. I had done a Disney internship when I was in art school, I did a mentorship, and I spent about ten years trying to get into Disney to be an animator, an illustrator, or consumer products. I got none of those jobs, so I went into fine art where I had a thriving gallery career. I was in five galleries, and I was winning awards for still-life and portraits. I had left the animation/illustration industry, and had a great career as a fine artist. Then, about four years ago, I decided to do some Disney themed still life. A friend of mine saw the paintings and said, "You should send those to Disney,” so I did. They liked them, released them as limited-edition prints, and I got into Disney in the weirdest way I ever would have imagined.

RH: Are there any other properties that you are really interested in working with that you haven't yet?

CH: I would love to do some Star Wars. I'm in talks with them right now doing fine art paintings.

RH: What other projects are you currently working on?

CH: I'm working on a lot of personal stuff doing some portraits and still-life. My favorite thing to do is just hire a model, and have them come to the [art] studio.

Clinton Hobart sells his Dorito painting to Michael Rooker at Wizard World Cleavland 2016.

RH: I understand that you hold a degree in illustration. Do you feel like that has opened more doors where you can work or helped to increase business by holding your degree?

CH: I've got a bachelor in fine arts from The School of Visual Arts in New York City. Did it help me network? No. The only thing that helped me network was going to parties. I've done more for my career at the after-party for a convention than I've ever done on the show floor. I met Michael Rooker because we were hanging out at an after party and we were talking. He stopped by my table the next day, and he bought the Dorito painting because we were clowning around the night before. If I didn't go to the hotel bar I wouldn't have met him. Be social. That's my advice to any kid. Get out there, leave the house once in a while, go to the right parties, and make the right friends.

RH: What other advice would you give to an aspiring artist?

CH: I usually do a lot of stage demonstrations where I'll paint on stage, and I always say to the kids, "Kids in the audience, raise your hand if you want to be an artist," and about thirty people raise their hand. I say, "Okay, leave them up for a second, now put them down if you play video games," and there's usually one, maybe two, hands left. Then I say, "Well great, now none of the rest of you are going to get my job!" I've got a personal vendetta against the video game industry because you don't learn anything from playing video games! I always tell the kids, "Read! Draw! Draw, draw, draw! Get out there! Work! Read a book! Don't watch television! Don't play video games, and if you can, occasionally, do a sit-up and eat something healthy."

RH: What is your opinion of ACE so far? Have you done many conventions before?

CH: You know, I had a great opinion of ACE before I even got here because the show is made up of half of my friends. The only thing that I was questionable on was that I've never done a show before at an arena instead of a convention center, but look at the turn out! It's pretty amazing. There are a lot of people here, so you can’t really argue with the plan. The first show I ever did was Wizard World Cleveland in 2015. I was invited to that show by Stephen Shamus, so to be invited to this show three years later is still a compliment, and I'm so happy for them.

RH: I'd heard that you were the target of an art counterfeiting ring some years back?

CH: So that's part of what made me famous, for a lack of a better word. When I was first starting out before I got at Disney, there was a town in China that took images off a gallery that I was showing on my website, and putting them on eBay for $39.95. It got me on CBS news with Scott Pele and The Huffington Post. People ask, "How do you feel about getting ripped off by the Chinese?" Well let's see; it got me on the news, increased my revenue, and got me into Disney, but it's still not a good thing, you know. Nobody wants to get ripped off.

RH: What are some of the stranger requests that you've had for a commission or offer from a company?

CH: You know, some of the guys in Comic Con get a little non-Disney with their requests and you have to turn them down. You're like, "No, I can't have Belle doing that. That's going to get me fired. Like, no." Some of the Harley Quinn requests, you're like, "What's wrong with you? No! I'm not . . . a diaper?! No! I'm not doing that!" You know, if I don’t want to be tagged in it on Facebook, then I turn it down.

RH: What are some of the favorite requests that you've had?

CH: I like doing large paintings. I have a guy who liked one of my mask paintings, and has an imported Venetian mask that has been in his family for 100 years. He wants a still-life of it, so that kind of request is really cool. Anytime I can paint something I think no one's ever painted before I'm happy. I like being the first person to do something.

RH: Where can fans go to find you online?

CH: I've got a website, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. It’s all just my name: Clinton T. Hobart.

Mr. Hobart's appearance schedule for 2018... so far.

January 13, 2018

An Interview With Adrienne Norris of Women Behaving Badly (Mini-Con 2017)

January 13, 2018/ Neil Greenaway

Written by Neil Greenaway

Adrienne Norris is not inspired by well behaved role models, and it shows. Her latest series of portraits feature scientists and doctors, but also protesters, revolutionaries, and warriors. Documenting the women who have changed the world and the way that we live in it, the project - titled Women Behaving Badly - has been gaining recognition through convention appearances and gallery showings (like her recent exhibit at the GLBT Center of Denver). I had the chance to sit down and talk with Ms. Norris at the Denver Public Library Mini Comic-Con in December, and I walked away with a better understanding of her art and how it is influenced by society at large.

Neil Greenaway: So I guess really to start us out, could you introduce yourself and give us just a brief background on what you are doing with the Women Behaving Badly project?

Adrienne Norris: Yeah, so my name is Adrienne Norris and I am the creator of the Women Behaving Badly series. I named it that because there is quote that says "Well behaved women seldom make history," and so I wanted to play with that concept. The series is made up of women in history who I believe should all be common knowledge - but really who are not. So what I do is I do research, then I create these paintings - they are on these boards that I make. They are all irregularly shaped which you should totally check out on my website. They are mixed media. I chose mixed media because I wanted to be able to tell stories with my series without having to - I don’t know... There is just something about a photo that really brings out nostalgia or whatever different emotion is needed for that particular piece. Drawings can do it as well but photos work and also they are quicker. So I use collage, I use acrylics, I use texture, I use toys, bullet shell casings, whatever it is that will tell the story of that woman’s life. Then I use watercolor to create an actual portrait of her face so that you get a really good sense of who she is. Then when I hang the originals on the wall they are actually paired with a card that answers 3 questions- Who is she? What did she do? Why does she matter? I felt that last part was essential because when I was a kid learning history in school I didn’t care. I didn’t know why I should care. I couldn’t see how any of these events were relevant to my life. So that Why does she matter part was incredibly essential to me. If for no other reason - if you read nothing else on that card - you get that and you’re like "Oh, this is what that person did for me, this is what my life is like because this person existed".

NG: You have said that in the scope of this project you have 20 of these ladies that you wanted to get done. How many have you finished so far?

Audre Lorde - mixed media piece by Adrienne Norris.

AN: So far I have done 16 and I am almost at 18 because I started 3 simultaneously recently. And it’s interesting, especially with the backgrounds because they are so abstract even though there are the story telling elements. I wanted each background to suit the personality of the person that I’m painting. So I decided to just do the next 3 at the same time almost so the backgrounds are done back to back, the paintings are laid out then the paintings are done back to back. Also it’s a speed thing.

NG: When you set these out, because they are collaged, mixed media - and I suppose specifically because you are working on 3 at the same time - do you find that you get to a point where you don’t know where you want to go and you move to the next? Or when you start one do you have a pretty full picture of what you want it to be in your head?

AN: It’s always Christmas. I never know exactly what it is going to look like. I do know what key elements I want it to contain. So say it’s a civil rights activist, I would want to have elements of the civil rights movement involved in the piece. Say it is somebody who is a writer and wrote something particularly poignant, then I want to have aspects of what she was writing about but also of things that were going on at the time. So if you look at all of my pieces it feels like there is a bunch of different kinds of information that I am putting out depending on the story.

NG: Having looked at your pieces, they are in odd shapes. A lot of them have different heights & widths incorporated into one piece. Is there a reason behind that?

AN: Yeah, 2 reasons. One, I have been painting on rectangles my whole life and I wanted to see what happened if I didn’t. But really reason number two is most important. When I create a portrait I have a tendency to want to fill the space with the face which works really well if it is just about the portrait. But for this particular series it was equally about the story, and if I fill a rectangle with a face then I lose space for the story. So what I decided to do was to create these irregular shapes where I could fill portions of the shape and feel satisfied that the face was large enough and yet still have plenty of room to play with so I could still have these textural elements, these story telling elements. So it just kind of adds this extra power to it. But also because it’s these unusual shapes its unique particularly when you see them on the wall. The shadows will drop differently than if it’s on a rectangle. You just feel it differently.

NG: When we spoke earlier you had said that you had broken down the portraits of these women into categories and you had done them in batches. Can you tell me more about that?

AN: Absolutely. So when I did the first round, the first 11 paintings, I basically - I call it buckshot. I just picked a bunch of women that I thought were interesting. Then I thought, "Ok I sort of followed a certain trend", and I asked my Facebook audience who were they fascinated by? And that helped me diversify. With the next set of paintings I focused on women who had won the Nobel Prize, partly because I met somebody who worked with these women and I thought, oh this is a great idea. Also partly because I realized that breaking these women down into sections it made it a lot easier for me to be diverse but in not so broad a context. It was easier for me like looking at Nobel Prize winning women; ok that is a select set so to choose individuals from on that select set was much easier than to choose from the broad scope of all the women in the world ever.

Adrienne Norris at the Denver Public Library Mini Comic Con 2017.

NG: Are these mostly women that you had a knowledge of or are these women that you are discovering as you go?

AN: I intentionally chose women who I did not know a great deal about who maybe I knew by name, sometimes I knew by face, sometimes I knew not at all. Particularly with the Nobel Prize winners I was looking at accomplishments and I was thinking, whoa this person won the Nobel Prize, I didn’t even know - or won the Nobel Prize for this, I didn’t even know this was a thing - or didn’t realize how things factored into my life. So especially with the first round I intentionally chose either unknowns or lesser well knowns because what I wanted to do was to point out that women’s history is this dark thing in our country. We don’t pay attention to it. So to bring it out into the light, I could have done Rosa Parks, I could have done Harriet Tubman, but everybody kind of knows who they are. So for me to select individuals who nobody knew at all made people that much more interested in the project.

NG: As you move down the line in this, is there a definitive endpoint or will you eventually get to women like Rosa Parks or Harriet Tubman?

AN: I probably will. Really the endpoint is whenever I can’t do it anymore for whatever reason. I have given myself a minimum of 5 years to work on this project because I feel it takes that, it’s going to take at least that to do it any justice. But to be honest I could probably feasibly do this project for the rest of my life and still not hit everybody.

NG: You are doing these as individual art pieces. Is there a plan to collect them and have an art book maybe?

AN: Absolutely. I definitely do want to collect in a book the 20 - that number you mentioned earlier was kind of my critical mass that I’ve given myself. It’s very arbitrary, there is nothing really behind it. So it could be that when I do put a book out there could be fewer individuals represented in it. But really the thing that I want to do is I have seen a number of compilation books where - here’s a picture, here’s a woman’s story, here’s a picture, here’s a woman’s story. I want to do something that is a bit more narrative than that. One of the things I am discovering as I am doing the series is not only that here are these amazing women, and here are the things they are doing, but also recognizing the context in which they are doing these things - and the places in which they overlap. So you can talk about Josephine Baker but you drill down into her life far enough you will run into Frida Kahlo, you drill down into her life you are going to hit all these different people whose lives are intertwined and that’s where I want to be. I want to find those places where that intertwining happens, where this individual inspired this individual who spent time with this individual and so on and so forth. So this narrative isn’t just piecemeal but actually creating a tapestry, a full story.

NG: That is very cool. Now it is obvious that the societal aspect of this appeals to you. I mean I can’t imagine you would take on a project like this if it didn’t. Was the societal aspect of bringing women’s stories forward something that was important to you before you did this or is this a passion that you have grown through this project?

AN: I would say that it is a little of both. Being a woman I am naturally pro-women, but it’s this whole idea of role models. So growing up I was kind of a tomboy, and I didn’t see many female role models who were into sports. When I finally did it was like the Women’s World Cup. I was a soccer player. I was thought, oh my god - there are my role models. Then I decided that I really loved art and I wanted to pursue being an artist. As far as looking for women role models - who were not only artists but who were famous in their lifetime and made money, those women were fewer are far between. You have Frida Kahlo, Georgia O’Keeffe and really how many other names can you come up with naturally.

NG: That is true enough.

AN: Right, so that kind of thing has been on my mind since I was little kid. Leading up to this series I started hearing (just through podcasts), about different things that we do in our lives - you know, refrigeration and transport ships and how they changed the food industry and stuff like that - and I found out there was a woman who came up with refrigerated ships. I thought that was amazing. Why didn’t I know that. There were so many other instances of that. It is amazing, why didn’t I know that and especially why didn’t I know that it was a woman who was responsible for that. So that is what led me to doing this project and looking into the stories of women and their contributions - to society, to technology, to policy. Seeing where I and everybody around me has been benefiting from the efforts of the individuals who are completely nameless and faceless to us. In starting this project I have definitely learned a lot about different individuals and it has opened my eyes to just the way the world could work, does work, and should work.

NG: Another question on the Women Behaving Badly series, and this might be a difficult question to answer, but what justifies greatness? When I was flipping through your pictures I saw revolutionaries, I saw doctors, I saw artists - and once again we might be talking down the road - but is there a place in the series for women who broke barriers in sports or celebrity?

AN: Oh yeah, absolutely. I actually already have a painting of Billie Jean King and so I fully intend to do a sports set as I drill down into these subsections. Sports are definitely going to be one of them, medicine is going to be one of them, and politics is definitely going to be one of them. When I think about greatness - honestly in beginning this series I had wanted to start with pillars. You know, individuals who are beyond reproach in a way or at least little enough is known about them that we can’t be bothered to reproach. But as I move forward I want to move into figures that are more controversial, figures that have done things that we would not necessarily think of as groundbreaking until you put them in a social context.

Billie Holiday - mixed media piece by Adrienne Norris.

NG: Can you give me an example?

AN: Well a controversial figure that I definitely want to draw down the line that is going to raise a lot of hackles is Margaret Sanger. She is the woman who is basically responsible for the birth control movement in this country and created Planned Parenthood. I can’t remember exactly how it was phrased, it was Birth Control something and actually sanitized down to being called Planned Parenthood. There are those who think she is into the genocide of poor and black people. She did believe in eugenics but, again context. There were different forms of the eugenics movements, it wasn’t purely what the Nazi’s were doing. But the fact remains that without her efforts the idea of women having fewer than six children in a lifetime, even fewer than twelve, was unheard of. Something like twelve live births and sixteen pregnancies was the norm in her time, and that is insane. It’s detrimental to an individual, it’s really hard on family structure, it’s hard on societal structure - particularly if you are poor and you cannot support all of these people. So to me she is a positive figure but there are a lot of people who do not like her.

NG: That leads me to another question. Earlier, you showed me a portrait of three ladies who helped with the women’s suffrage movement. You had mentioned at that point that one of them had taken a racist turn and got a back alley out of the movement. As a person of color, as a creator, as a person who is trying to support these women in history - is it difficult to say that this woman should be acknowledged for her contribution, but she was also an active racist? I assume that when you are dealing in the past that has to come up a lot.

AN: That is absolutely true. But here’s the thing: We are all humans and we are all full of greatness and we are all full of very bad faults, and to choose to acknowledge one aspect of a person over another aspect of a person is to do them an injustice. And it’s to do ourselves an injustice because we are putting blinders on ourselves, right? So for a figure like Elizabeth Katie Stanton who absolutely believed in equality for women and in the beginning absolutely believed in equality for African Americans especially those who were enslaved. Those things are all true. But she was also a white woman in a time when black people were thought of as less than, so any things that she felt in that area were also true. Going back to podcasts I listen to, I listened to a great interview where this trans man was talking to his grandmother and asking her about how she felt about this whole idea of trans people. About gay rights, about civil rights - and this woman is 98 years old and lived in the south. She has always been an advocate of civil rights ever since she knew what it was. When gay rights became a big thing she was an advocate for the gay rights movement, and advocate for the women’s rights movement, all of these things. But in this conversation with her she will openly admit that although she wants to be on the right side of history, she has a difficult time with these concepts. She was like "I absolutely believe that politically people should be able to love anyone they want, I just don’t understand it". And that to me was the epitome of that humanization. That human-ness, and so for me to say I am only going to pick saints is for me to do a disservice to women everywhere. Because we are not saints.

NG: In this modern time, when it seems that everything has gone crazy, do you see it being a climate for more women of that caliber to come forward?

AN: Yes, absolutely. Here is my take on this climate and it has to do with astrology - which I am not super into - but it was fascinating because someone explained it to me this way. Because of the way the stars are aligned and Pluto is in retrograde or some such thing (I couldn’t tell you the specifics, but the concept interested me) this is a time in which light is being cast on places which are accustomed to being shadowed. So if we look at the way things have been coming out, all the shootings of African Americans by white cops, all of the sexual abuse of women, the racism that is like the undercurrent, all of this stuff, these things have always been there. They didn’t stop in the 60’s with the civil rights movement, they didn’t stop with the women’s rights movement. None of this stuff has gone away completely, it has just been hiding in the shadows and now light has been cast on it. And because of that people are getting angry, and when you are angry you do something about it. Up until this point we have been like, "Oh no, that has been taken care of!", and ignoring all the signs. You can’t ignore the signs anymore - which means now everybody has to take action in some way, shape or form and because of that I feel like now we are in a position of growth because action is being taken on multiple levels.

NG: Do you think things are getting better?

AN: I wouldn’t say getting better, I would say things are being done. Things are being done and conversations are being had that we have not been having. Among people who have not been talking to one another. And so because of that we are in this place that - with as much vitriol as there is - people are actively seeking understanding. Rather than just saying "That guy is an asshole, I’m out", people are starting to ask "why do you believe this? I don’t understand what you believe". To take the time to ask that question and listen to the answer is going to get us to a very different place than "That guy is an asshole and I’m out".

NG: For the final question, if people want to see more of you if they want to follow you or know what you are doing, where can we find you online?

AN: So you can go to my website, afrotriangledesigns.com. On Facebook and Instagram I am also @AfroTriangle. I also have a Facebook page specifically for the series Women Behaving Badly so if you go there you can find me as well.

December 05, 2017

An Interview With Chris Gore of Film Threat and Gemr.com (Phoenix Comic Con 2017)

December 05, 2017/ SaraJean Greenaway

Written by SaraJean Greenaway

This interview took place on June 4, 2017 at Phoenix Comic Con.

Chris Gore at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (1)

I was lucky enough to catch up with Chris Gore this year at Phoenix Comic Con 2017 for a follow up to last year’s interview. This man stays just as busy at a convention as he does in his everyday life! By the time I caught up with him on Sunday he had already been a part of 3 panels, one of those being the Film Threat Podcast - which I was able to attend this year. Chris had an all-star panel joining him that night featuring Jon Schnepp (Collider Heroes), T.J. Chambers (Cosplay Melee), Tommy Bechtold (The Middle), and comedian Paul Goebel (Beat the Geeks). Current events in the film industry were discussed and Chris Gore did a ‘rapid fire DVDuesday’ in honor of the five year anniversary of Attack of the Show going off the air. Then the guys discussed terrible movies as Chris handed out DVD’s of bad movies to random audience participants. Later, each panel member recommended a ‘must see movie that nobody’s ever seen.’ Click the link to listen to any of the free Film Threat Podcasts, including the one I saw (episode 18). The next day I was able to sit down and catch up with Chris to see how the past year has treated him.

SaraJean Greenaway: So I wanted to follow up with you and see how things are going. I can see from your table you have a new website or app that you are here promoting.

Chris Gore: Well there are two things: first of all, Film Threat re-launched since we last spoke, and second I was hired recently as the Chief Evangelist for a company called gemr.com. It's a website for collectors and it allows you to document your collection of things, share them with other people, discuss them with other people, and if you want to buy and sell stuff you can buy and sell stuff too. It's kind of like Facebook meets eBay.

Gemr.com flyers at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

SJG: How did gemr.com get in contact with you?

CG: The CEO of the company is a guy named Tom Bennett. He had created this documentary and wanted to get my advice on it. I'll get all kinds of people and filmmakers who want to ask me questions about that. But his day job is the CEO of Gemr. So he says, ‘Hey, do you think you would be interested in doing some consulting work for us or maybe giving us advice?’ and I said ‘Advice? I want to work for you! I want this to be my job. I want to work on a website where we're talking about toys all day and collecting Funko Pops and Star Trek and vintage cameras. And do you mean I get to hang out with nerdy people, and talk about nerdy things all day, and tell other people how cool it is?’ That's the job I wanted. Film Threat is my passion because I love telling people about weird movies you would never know about unless you spoke to me. Film Threat’s purpose is to suck the air out of the blowhards in Hollywood and bring them down to size while simultaneously letting you know about cool films and filmmakers you would never know about if you didn't read Film Threat. It’s about helping smaller independent filmmakers while throwing darts at targets in Hollywood. And I love doing that, but Film Threat is not the breadth of my whole interest. I also love coming to Comic Cons. I like coming to Comic Cons more than I like going to film festivals. I think there's definitely just a more creative vibe in terms of just sharing resources and whatnot and I love it. So Gemr sort of fulfills the nerd part of me that's into collecting and Film Threat is sort of the pop-culture and film aspect of me. So I am very fortunate to have a day job that is also a passion

A table full of gemr.com flyers at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

SJG: That all sounds very cool! And you can actually sell your things on gemr.com too?

CG: You can sell things too. You can put stuff up from your collection and offer it for sale. I am someone who used to love eBay but it has since become so complicated that it's more for the professional seller. I am not a professional seller. Every once in a while I want to get rid of some things but I don't want to professionally sell things, I'm not a pro. So for me it's become overly complicated and too difficult to deal with. So this is really a collector community where you would be dealing with people who are also collectors.

SJG: What kind of collections can be tracked there?

CG: Absolutely anything. Vintage cameras, antiques, Star Trek collectibles, vintage Star Wars toys; you name it. If you collect it, you can find the club of other people who also collect it at gemr.com. So this is really a collector community we are dealing with, people who are all also collectors.

SJG: What do you collect?

CG: I've been a long-time collector, the first thing I started collecting when I was a kid was movie ticket stubs. I mean I collected comics right? Everyone bought comics and collected them, but after I saw the original Star Wars in 1977 I saved my ticket stub from going to see it. Since then I have saved every ticket stub for every movie I have seen, every concert I have ever been to, every event I have ever gone to that has a badge. Whether it's a film festival, or a comic con or E3, the Consumer Electronics Show; all of my badges from those events get put in the binders. Well, some of them are in binders and some of them are in bags. But it's interesting because you can see the history of the tickets, right? First there were these little cheesy ticket stubs; then they were the heat-sensitive tickets and now they are the ones that we print out as PDF's. But if I have the option to have physical tickets I will always pick that. I never get the PDF that you can print out because that doesn't create a memory. So one of the things I want to eventually do with my stubs is there's a coffee table you can get at Ikea with a glass top and I want to put my ticket stubs in there so you can see them. When I am at a convention like this, I always say I'm looking for the one thing that I must have but I don't need. Gemr.com is for that kind of collector. So Gemr.com is a great way to find people who are into the same things as you, this is a way to connect with those people. I'm lucky because I am a collector and I'm into collecting, so it's the perfect job for me.

Celebrities Poop and Film Threat stuff from Chris Gore at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Chris Gore at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (2)

SJG: Well it must have been a pretty cool job working at Attack Of the Show as well.

CG: That was a fun job too. But that type of job (TV hosting) has kind of gone away. It's more migrated to YouTube, which I think is really interesting. On YouTube now a lot of the people seem to be inspired by Attack of the Show. Because on AOTS, we were all people who were experts in our own thing. Now you have a lot of people talking about movies on YouTube; we have a lot of people talking about video games and gaming on YouTube. I think AOTS showed people that they don't need to be a professional TV host, you just need to be passionate about your thing. So there's a bunch of people I watch on YouTube who talk about movies. A couple of my favorites are Alachia Queen is amazing, when it comes to comic books comicbookgirl19, and then also my friend Jon Schnepp who does Collider Heroes. John is not like a traditional TV host, he's just really passionate about things that are nerdy. I think Attack of the Show just showed people what they could do. When the show started in 2005, YouTube wasn't particularly sophisticated and was just about funny cat videos. Now it's all shows produced just for YouTube, and on a model that allows for people to make a living. You should checkout comicbookgirl19, Jon Schnepp, Alachia Queen, Jenny Nicholson and RedLetterMedia. I think Attack of the Show just showed people that we can get together with a camera, and talk about the stuff that we're passionate about. We don't really need Attack Of the Show anymore because YouTube replaced it in when AOTS went away in 2012. This is the 5 year anniversary of that, and I keep getting approached by fans of the show asking if there is going to be a five-year reunion. I don't think there will be. The only person who could put it together is maybe Kevin Pereira but I think there are certain people who wouldn't want to participate

Paul Goebel, T.J. Chambers, Tommy Bechtold, Jon Schnepp, and Chris Gore in the Film Threat panel at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (1) — **Paul Goebel, T.J. Chambers, Tommy Bechtold, Jon Schnepp, and Chris Gore in the Film Threat panel at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (1)**

SJG: We can at least hope he tries (Chris laughs). Anyway gemr.com is now your day job but how are the Film Threat movie and website doing these days?

CG: So the website (filmthreat.com) finally relaunched. We fulfilled the Kickstarter rewards, which is way more difficult than one would think. The thing is, and everyone always makes this mistake, never underestimate the cost of postage. Postage is way more expensive than you would think. But I feel really good that the site is up and running. There are still some random Kickstarter rewards that are not fulfilled yet but it's things like people who paid to appear as a guest on the podcast, or other stuff like that, so that will happen throughout the year. We're still working on the app; we're trying to get the mobile version going. There's all sorts of little improvements to the site being made, it's updated daily and the Film Threat podcast is out every week. It was on Thursday, but we're switching it to Friday's. We did the live version here in Phoenix last night.

Now, the Film Threat documentary is going to take a couple years to get out for a number of reasons. First, we keep uncovering more footage from the time. Second, we need to have some kind of budget - because it's a 90s period piece, so we want to have music from the 90s in the film. When I say music from the 90s - if you recall - early 90s music with shit. It was boy bands and sugar pop garbage that I hated. We want more like Nirvana and the indie rock that all of us with the Film Threat staff were into, so we need money for that. Also, we're trying to coordinate the documentary and two books coming out all in the same year. It's looking like 2019 or 2020 is when all three will be out.

Chris Gore poses at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (3)

Film Threat t-shirts and stickers at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

SJG: There are two new books coming out as well?

CG: Yes. There's a book that I'm writing, which is called Film Threat Sucks. It’s a first-person account of doing Film Threat from my point of view. Then there will be a second book written by Robert St. Mary, an author from Detroit. He is doing a book called The Worst of Film Threat. The Worst of Film Threat will be a coffee table book that is going to have reprints of some articles and all the art from Film Threat. It will also have unpublished articles, material, and photos from behind the scenes. It will have interviews from anyone and everyone who had something to do with film threat history. It will be a whole telling of the history from multiple points of view, and it will be mostly photo based. So you will have your coffee table book, my book and then the documentary. For the documentary - it's too early to say anything - but we have some big filmmakers that want to be a part of it. I think in a month or two I will be able to announce who. For now, with the money that we got from the Kickstarter we did, we got our first round of interviews with people. We interviewed most of the people from the old days of Film Threat, like the early days. Then we talked to Todd Phillips, the director of The Hangover films. He started the New York Underground Film Festival and we (Film Threat) distributed The Best Of the New York Underground Film Festival on VHS back in the day. We distributed a bunch of Todd Phillips' old films that he made early on, before his Road Trip/Hangover days, so he's a part of Film Threat’s history. We really wanted this to be encyclopedic and I guess that's why it's taking so long, but the status of the doc is that it's in production thanks to the people on Kickstarter. So, thank you all.

SJG: That all sounds pretty fascinating. I will admit I'm kind of intrigued by the coffee table book. I love looking through stuff like that.

CG: Robert did a similar book before. He did a book called The Orbit Anthology. Orbit was this underground zine. It was one of those free giveaways in Detroit. In LA it's the LA weekly, in Denver its the Westword. I'm sure Phoenix has one too. It's a free weekly that's underground, that has like sex ads in the back of it and ads for local businesses. They’re always very local based. But this magazine from Detroit was created by a guy named Jerry Vile. We worked together, that was like my first professional job writing for a magazine called Fun. Then from that he spun off Orbit. So I am in this book, this coffee table book about Orbit. Quentin Tarantino liked it and wore a t-shirt of the Orbit character in Pulp Fiction. There's all this weird history and Robert created this book around that history. When I saw it I said ‘Oh my God, I wish Film Threat had something like that, a coffee table book like this,’ and Robert said ‘Okay, let me write it’. I don't want to say it was as simple as that, but it was kind of as simple as that.

SJG: So it sounds like you've been keeping yourself very busy with all of this.

CG: Oh yeah. I like my day job and I don't mean ‘day job’ derisively like people say ‘my ex-wife’ or ‘my day job’. It's not like that at all. The stuff I'm doing with gemr.com is awesome. It's very creative. I'm doing a whole bunch of marketing initiatives that are fun.

Paul Goebel, T.J. Chambers, Tommy Bechtold, Jon Schnepp, and Chris Gore in the Film Threat panel at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (2) — **Paul Goebel, T.J. Chambers, Tommy Bechtold, Jon Schnepp, and Chris Gore in the Film Threat panel at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (2)**

Paul Goebel, T.J. Chambers, Tommy Bechtold, Jon Schnepp, and Chris Gore in the Film Threat panel at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (3) — **Paul Goebel, T.J. Chambers, Tommy Bechtold, Jon Schnepp, and Chris Gore in the Film Threat panel at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (3)**

SJG: Where can people reach out to you or where can people find you online?

CG: Just Google me (Chris Gore) or ThatChrisGore and you'll find me on everything. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. That's also a cool thing about gemr.com, though. You can actually follow people on gemr. So if you follow me on gemr.com - I am ThatChrisGore on gemr - and if you follow me on gemr you can see my collections of stuff so you'll see my vintage camera collection, my collection of Star Wars stuff, Batman stuff and the cosplay stuff. I make cosplay stuff and then also just weird DIY projects.

SJG: I will be interested to see what stuff you have. I can't believe you have any time to upload anything at all to gemr with all this other stuff you were working on.

CG: I like to make it seem like a lot but really I am just consistent. I work on stuff a little bit at a time every day and eventually I'll finish a thing. I tell people who ask me ‘How do you write a book?’, I don't know, just write a thousand words a day for about 2 or 3 months and then you'll have a book. The average book is 60,000 words. Books - like those digital books on Amazon - some of those are only twenty or thirty thousand words, so they're not that long. But it's all about being consistent. I create a really long and detailed outline. My outlines are generally 15 to 30 pages and sometimes more. Then I will just say, this sentence represents 500 hundred words - and I'll write that. Then the next day I will write the next one. So really it's just consistency. There's this really good app, it's called Grammarly and it's a desktop application that you install. It will keep track of how many words you write on a weekly basis. I was finding out that just with Facebook posts, emails, chat and articles I had written I was writing 50 to 70,000 words on my computer on a weekly basis. So it's just about being consistent and persistent. Do it and you will achieve your dreams.

Encouraged by Chris, we created an account on Gemr.com and entered some of our private collection. You can see what we've got and follow us at norrinradd on gemr.

Chris Gore at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (4)

Chris Gore at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. ()

December 01, 2017

An Interview With Phil Buck of Buy Indie Comics Day (BICD 2017)

December 01, 2017/ Neil Greenaway

Written by Neil Greenaway

At my home in Denver I had the chance to sit down and talk with Phil Buck of Nematode Records about starting a movement with Buy Indie Comic Day. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 7/30/2017, and you can read their version of it here.

August 5th, 2017 will be the 3rd annual Buy Indie Comics Day — a day set aside to celebrate everything independent that comic books have to offer. I personally love all of the variety in style and flavor that can be had from indie comics, but I had never heard of BICD before. I recently had the chance to sit down and talk with Phil Buck, one of the creators behind the Buy Indie Comics Day movement. We discussed the origins of the day, the changing perception of comic books in the public eye, and what interested comic shops and creators can do to get involved.

Neil Greenaway: How did the idea for Buy Indie Comic Day come about? What started it for you?

Phil Buck: For me — because there are two other guys that are involved, and they came to it in two different ways — but for me it started with Free Comic Book Day 2014. There’s always a lot of hype for that. After it was over in 2014 I thought, how cool would it be if we could have some sort of initiative for indie comics? All of that energy and money, frankly, that ends up going into Free Comic Book Day — what if we could siphon a little bit more of that in the direction of indie comic creators? It was the same weekend as FCBD 2014, and I just took the logo — kind of as a joke — I took the logo and I put an indie spin on it. Free Comic Book Day turned into Buy Indie Comic Day.

I posted it for my own comic book (Those Shadow People) Facebook page, and it just went super viral. Beyond anything that I would ever have expected. I mean hundreds of shares. I would check on it every now and again there would be several hundred more shares again. It was clear to me that tons of indie creators love this idea. Lots of people talked about “When should we do it? What day should it be?” At that point I had put it out there, but I didn’t know what to do with it. Actually, that’s how I came back into this.

An artist named Manuel Carmona found the logo the next year, and he made a BICD Facebook page, put up the logo, and decided on the first Saturday in August. Then he started promoting it, and when I saw the page being spread around again I said, “Oh, this is my logo. This is my idea, let me get back in on this with you.” So he and I and a third person named Carmelo Chimera, all of us came together to kind of give an initiative to indie comic creators. To see people come together on this day and see what we can do.

NG: At this point, you are really looking for more comic shops or creators who would be willing to participate in Buy Indie Comics Day and help get the word out, right?

PB: Yes. I would definitely call it an awareness campaign. There is no major infrastructure behind this yet. We have created graphics that everyone can use and we are trying to be a hub for information about BICD, but yeah, at this point it’s mainly about trying to get the idea out there. In particular to the local comic shops that would want to do events, but also for any creators that would want to do something on this date. We just need to get the idea out there further.

NG: Do you feel that there is an inequity between the coverage given to the Big Two versus what is given to indie comics? (or the big four, or big seven, however many count as big these days) Do you feel the need to have this push to have a day just for indie comics?

PB: That is a really good question, and I was thinking about this the other day. And I thought about how people try to consider comics a competition between the Big Two and everybody else, but really it’s just entertainment. Everybody is just trying to come up with an idea that will hook you enough to give them a dollar. We’re all doing the same thing, so I do think that you should do what you can to help your creation stand out.

In this superhero/comic book fatigued era that we’re reaching — with comic book movies being so huge — I think it’s worth it for the folks that are making new and interesting independent comics to try to get themselves out there. They should differentiate themselves a little bit because the Big Two aren’t going anywhere. But there are a ton of smaller press publishers that are trying to break out, and there is a lot to be gained by supporting those. I think if we all band together and just say, “This is a day for the indie books,” we can make it into the mainstream consciousness. That is something that I think FCBD has had huge success with.

I have noticed that even people who don’t collect comic books regularly still know about Free Comic Book Day. Folks that I know that don’t collect comic books will turn to me (because they know I’m a comic book fan) and ask if I know about the free books. How cool would it be if we could break through to the part of the world that doesn’t pay attention day in and day out like we do? We look at indie comics all day everyday, but there’s a ton of people that don’t. If you could just get them to see for one day a year that all these people are making their own comics. That it runs the gamut as far as genres and art styles. If we could draw a little more attention to that, I think we would all gain a lot.

NG: You touched briefly on how comic book based movies have become the big thing. It seems these days that — largely because of the movies — even people who have never read a comic have at least a base understanding of the Marvel and DC Heroes. Do you think that with comics breaking into the general zeitgeist that the time is right for more indie creators to be discovered? Do you think the public is ready to move beyond the Big Two and see some of the deeper things that are there?

PB: I’ll just say “I hope so.” That is some of my thinking behind this whole initiative in the first place. Yes, the public is really primed to pay attention. But it’s hard because there are so many indie books out there. I think most people gravitate toward the superheroes, but there’s so much sci-fi and fantasy and just everything in comics. People are now primed in so many ways to give that stuff a chance in their realm of entertainment. Indies now have a better chance than ever to showcase what they offer. Now you have this chance to not only be seen, but maybe actually gain some real fans in people that are tired of what has become so popular. I know so many people that are saying, “I’m so over you know superheroes,” or “So over this particular type of sci-fi.” We want to see something that’s new and interesting. That’s where indie comics are right now. They’re taking unique and not-played-out ideas every day of the week and they’re putting them into comics.

NG: This year after FCBD, I remember thinking how cool it was to hear two non-comic collectors discussing the World’s Greatest Cartoonists book from Fantagraphics. Only a few years ago, a book like that might have even escaped the notice of people who frequent their local comic shops.

PB: That’s a good sign to me because I know so many people are coming around. Free Comic Book Day is really not about free comics when you get down to it. The idea is to get people to rally to their comic book shops. Just like Record Store Day is about support of your local record store. Its the brilliant idea of people banding together to give the public a reason to support their art. FCBD is not necessarily just about getting free comics, its also about getting people to spend money at the comic shop as well. I want there to be a day where you can say, “I know that my buddy makes a comic, I’ve never read it. This weekend is the day for indie comics.” And then you go spend five or ten bucks on his Kickstarter or something. That’s how my thinking started for all this.

NG: It is a sad story that gets told a lot in the comics industry — that friends and family can be counted on for a lot of support, but usually do not actually buy the books. It would be great if you could get the people who are already aware of creators to buy the books that you know are there, even if it didn’t mean going to a comic shop. Everyone knows someone who is selling their book on Facebook, or Instagram, or somebody who’s got a Kickstarter or a Patreon.

PB: Totally! That was my thinking when I originally came up with this. Honestly, I wasn’t trying to commit to anything bigger than “this is a great idea, let’s see where it goes.” I thought that if it got out there it’s easy enough for anybody — even other creators. We put so much time and work into our own books, but it helps so much as a creator to turn to your other buddy that’s a creator and just support them. Buy a $5 comic book or put in a $10 pledge to their Kickstarter. It would be cool if we could turn this into a day that prompts you into action on something you always would have done — if somebody had just given you the right push.

I know so many people that went into a comic shop for the free comics and found a $30 trade that they like. You can spend half of that on any indie creator and make their whole week. As much as I would love to see more Buy Indie Comics Day events in stores, because events are so essential to spreading the word, this is about supporting the creators. You don’t even have to get out of your pajamas to go online and show support.

NG: If there were retailers or creators reading this who wanted to be a part of Buy Indie Comics Day, how would they contact you? How do people get involved?

PB: We use pretty much every social media outlet, but I’d say we’re most active on Facebook. We’re also on Twitter, and we have a website. It is a little bit barren at this point, so I would encourage most people to go through Facebook if they want to talk to us. If they need help with any resources, myself Manuel and Carmelo are all pretty active in different shifts. We just volunteer, so we get back to you as fast as we can. If there is any information that people need, we want to provide it. If you are reading this as an indie creator, please use one of the graphics we provide for free and put it out there with your project. If you are a retailer, it may be too late to plan an event for this year (and it may not be, depending) but at least consider adding a sign on a table highlighting some of the local independent work being done.

December 01, 2017

An Interview With Robin & Cory Childs of LeyLines and Wavemen (Denver Comic Con 2017)

December 01, 2017/ Neil Greenaway

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2017 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Robin & Cory Childs of LeyLines about their take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 7/04/2017, and you can read their version of it here.

Robin and Cory Childs at Denver Comic Con 2017. (1)

Robin and Cory Childs have been fixtures on the Colorado convention circuit for years. Watching their web comic LeyLines transform into a series of graphic novels has not been a long ride at all. I saw the pair at Denver Comic Con 2017 with the recently released fourth volume of LeyLines and the first volume of a new series, called Wavemen. The time seemed right, so I sat down to talk with them about where the story came from, where it’s going, and how the couple work so well together.

Neil Greenaway: I am standing here with Robin and Cory Childs talking about their series LeyLines. Can you start by bringing our readers up to speed on what the series is about?

Robin Childs: Absolutely! LeyLines is the story of three siblings who are on the run from a conspiracy that claimed their mother’s life. In the process of fleeing their assassins and the machinations of those that would harm them, they wind up stumbling onto the schemes of the Gods themselves. Ultimately they will be forced to choose between their future and their family. There is a lot of mystery and mysticism and magic, but ultimately it is about who you are and who you choose to become.

NG: How many books into the series are you now?

Robin: We are four books in now. We just released volume four this year. The story also continues online, so there is always a portion of it that is ahead of what’s printed. But the books come with all sorts of little extras for those world-building people who love that nitty-gritty stuff.

NG: So you put this out as a graphic novel, and you’ve said that it was released as a web comic as well. Have you ever considered printing some traditional single issues?

Robin: Actually we have a new series (called Wavemen) that we are approaching from the single-issue perspective. Where LeyLines is content online first and then in book format, Wavemen will be done in sort of the reverse of that — with single issue individual episodes. We’re building it like a TV series, where there is a continuing story, but you can enjoy each individual piece on its own as a stand-alone story.

NG: Does Wavemen tie into the LeyLines story at all, or is it in a separate universe?

Robin: They are each in their own separate universe. I will actually let Cory tell you a little more about that, because he is definitely the head honcho on that project.

Cory Childs: Wavemen is a project I’ve been working on for quite a while now. I think I had the original idea back in 2008. My folks originally came from Hawaii, so I grew up with a lot of eastern fairy tales, mainly Japanese. I was on the trip back home visiting my grandparents. We were taking a drive in the countryside, and I was remembering all of those stories that I grew up with. I thought, what if all of these legends that I grew up with were on a team and they fought supernatural crime? That was where this story was born, but it has been through a million iterations. Then two years ago at this show, Denver Comic Con 2015, we met a man named Jonas Goonface who ended up being our first artist on the project. From there it really took off, and it has come into its own since then.

Robin: Jonas is actually working on a new project right now for Boom! Studios called Godshaper, and I highly recommend that everyone go check that out.

LeyLines books at Denver Comic COn 2017.

NG: You have said that you both work on LeyLines. What is the division of work on that?

Robin: Cory is my editor. I am the writer and the illustrator, but occasionally I will write myself into a corner. I go to him saying “Help,” and he figures out what to do. Also I am a very verbose writer, and getting a page down to the minimum amount of dialogue needed is a specialty of Cory’s. So I will ask him to take the “red pen of death” to my scripts.

Cory: Yeah, I do a lot of content editing, rather than things like punctuation. My specialty is really just focusing the story. It’s really easy to let a tale get away from somebody and sometimes complexity is confused for a compelling story. It’s my job to re-focus and make sure that the big thing we want to communicate in the story is the thing that comes across. So that is primarily my function in LeyLines. We joke around that I’m the editor so if anything is wrong it is clearly my fault. That is kind of how we let people know what we do on the project. But Robin is the driving force behind it. It’s her brainchild. It’s something she has always taken point on both in terms of the art direction as well as the storytelling and writing.

NG: Cory has given me a little background on where Wavemen comes from; where did the story of LeyLines come from?

Robin: Oh man. There are so many different influences for it. I view LeyLines as the project where I finally admitted to myself that comics were something that was a passion of mine. I had been doing comics before that starting when I was 15. I worked on a project for eight years and finished it after 800 pages, but I came from a family where my dad was an engineer, therefore I was supposed to be one too. I really repressed any sense of passion, any sense of what I care about. So if you had asked me “Is this something you want to do?”, I would say “Oh no, this is just a hobby.” Well, I finished that “just a hobby” project and said, OK, now I can get to my real life and get a real job. About two weeks later I felt like I was just drowning. I realized at that point that this wasn’t just a hobby. This was something I always cared about, was always passionate about, and I was going to be doing comics for the rest of my life. That is when I started LeyLines; that’s when I started my own company with Cory.

LeyLines at its core is “could you choose between your future and your family?” There’s a reason that’s the core of that story, because I had to make that choice, and it’s not an easy choice. It’s a complicated one. How you define family and how you define your own future varies drastically from person to person. That is my way with every character — exploring different ways to view what it means. Can you balance that question, is there a way to have both or is it truly a binary? That is the personal background for it.

Inspiration wise, I love mythology and history and I’m just always consuming more. All of that stuff just sneaks in there and people will ask “Is this based on Mayan, is this based on Japanese?” I say, “I studied that at some point, so I am sure that it’s in there somewhere. Whereas with Wavemen I do a ton of research to make it period accurate. We don’t use myths that don’t have their origins around that time or before or it can’t justifiably be said to possibly have existed at that time period. We are incorporating real historical figures into the story. If you have studied history, there are spoilers, but we chose an era that is not explored that often. So I think that will help people discover all this amazing history we have learned as we work on this project.

Cory: Yeah. Wavemen is something we have set in Japan. The year the first episode takes place in is 884. Most people are very familiar with the warring state periods, where there were a lot of Samurai fighting each other. This takes place about 800 years before that. This era is really defined by its peace, by its cultural growth, and as a result a lot of the mythology that we are delving into got its origin in this period. For us its really cool to have these historical figures and these mythological figures living side by side, affecting each other. The supernatural world having an impact on real history and history having an impact on the supernatural world. That is one of the big things we wanted to explore with this series.

Wavemen comics and prints at Denver Comic Con 2017.

NG: If you are writing that one, Cory, do you have any part in that Robin? Are you the artist?

Robin: I am not the artist, I am the co-writer. It took us five years. The only thing we ever fight about in our marriage is writing, because we have such drastically different styles that we would butt heads constantly. But after five years of trying, we finally figured out how to work together as a team. I think we make some of our best work as a result because where I’m strong he’s weak, and where he is strong I am weak so we have learned to just hand it over to the other one and say this is your thing, go make magic and then we will workshop it afterwards.

I also kind of take on the role of director because the artist will send me back their thumbnails, and I will take that and say “OK, like this, don’t like that, change that, flip that, try this angle.” I’ve built so many 3D models in Google SketchUp! It’s funny because half the time I don’t know that I (as an artist) could do what I am asking them to do and I might have to scale it back. Then there is always silence for a day and then they come back and they have made something that is just jaw dropping and gorgeous.

Cory: That has really been the theme of this project: challenge. It’s something that we have really pressed for in ourselves in the writing and definitely something that we were asking our artists to step up to the plate for and they have delivered.

Robin: Jonas Goonface has always been amazing. He was the first one to sign on to the project. Jackarais of Bicycle Boy, too. The detail he puts into every page is just stunning.

NG: Will he be the artist on the second story?

Robin: One of the things we want to do is actually work with different teams. I would love to work with him again, but I think for our next project we might try to see if we can get another set of artists. When we started this project our favorite comic of all time was Lucifer from Vertigo and Lucifer had a different set of artists for different arcs and it felt like they always paired just the right artist for that particular piece. We kind of thought that was a really neat idea and we wanted to bring that energy to it. That’s part of why the first issue has both the artists working on it.

Joel Mercer is the third one because we wanted people to get used to seeing different art, so that it wasn’t shocking. People get really set, when it comes to artists on books. But if you introduce that concept early it sort of says “This is what’s normal, so chill.” We are always going to make sure the quality and the skill level is high. I’m always going to challenge artists to do well and their best work but we want them to bring their own spirit, their own voice to the project.

I think part of the fun is we have an idea in ours heads of what it should look like and then you get back something that is totally different. Or the artist will think that pacing wise we might benefit from and extra page here or a little chunk here. We will actually edit and change the script based on their notes and suggestions. Or there will be little details. I know this is really small, but there is a sandal that one the characters wears. They are grabbed and flung across the room and a sandal comes off in one of the images and Jackarais kept that sandal consistent as it appears over and over. It’s just a tiny little detail, but it’s the consistency like that that just really makes it feel so real. It sounds so silly to say out loud, but I love that sandal.

LeyLines: Touched By The Gods, a short story collection.

NG: Now you had said that LeyLines was released as a web comic, is there a date yet for releasing Wavemen as a web comic?

Cory: We originally released LeyLines as a web comic and it is still continuing as a web comic. You can find that at LeyLinescomic.com. As for Wavemen we are still a little bit in limbo. It was originally decided to be a web comic, but right now we are seeing where the project will go and what it wants to be before we release it. I think it will probably still be a web comic, but I would like to get a leg up on episode two before we really pin down an initial offering for it.

When we originally designed this project, I wanted a full episode out online ready to go before we even started with a second episode so you have a story, you have an arc ready to go. You can enjoy that fully before you come to the end of the archive. So now we’ve got episode one done. Episode two is written, we just have to line up that art and work with the people who will bring the best tone to the project. As soon as we do that, we will decide where it’s going to go.

NG: With LeyLines, how often do you guys come out with a new book?

Cory: We try to do one once every year. The first one was 120 pages of full color and the second book is about 20 pages longer.

Robin: I am actually thinking about making bigger more omnibus style books because one of the things we are running into is this series could easily be 10 books long. That’s a lot of books to haul around to shows. So if I made thicker books people could get more satisfying chunks, which might be a direction I move. It’s one of those things where you are constantly learning, constantly changing and trying new things and you just learn as you go. Hindsight is 20/20.

The Wavemen table at Denver Comic Con 2017.

NG: I think that wraps up my questions except for this last one. We know about LeyLinescomics.com where else can people find your work online? Where can they see what’s going on?

Robin: So if you’re on social media you can follow me on Twitter @robinoflaylines. I love Twitter — it’s probably the place I am most active because I love to talk and it forces me to get it done in 140 characters, so it’s a great writing exercise for me. I’m on Facebook, I’m on YouTube, I actually do weekly vlogs on Patreon. Then we also have mokopress.com; it is kind of our central hub. We have a link to the story there and a link to my other services too, because I do commission work, I do editing. I think that is everything.

December 01, 2017

An Interview With Jake Roth of Art and Home Life (Denver Comic Con 2017)

December 01, 2017/ Neil Greenaway

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2017 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Jake Roth of Art And Home Life about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 7/04/2017, and you can read their version of it here.

Jake Roth does not write a superhero comic, nor do his books rely on the gritty pulse of a big city street. Instead, his comics tend to center around the small town of Bakerstown and feature the trials and tribulations of the people who live there. Citing old Dick Tracy comics as an inspiration, his characters have names like Reed Porter (the journalist), Lou Chadore (the retired wrestler), and Phil M. Griffey (the photographer). His charming art style lends itself easily to the small town aesthetic that he aims for. That art style, combined with a shared cast of characters through all of his books, make Bakerstown feel like a place we have all visited before.

Neil Greenaway: You have a new book out for DCC 2017: the second issue of Art And Home Life. Can you tell our readers a little bit about the series?

Jake Roth: Well, number two is the Christmas issue. I end up doing just as many Christmas comics as anything else. I’m trying to switch the balance away from that but we’ll get there. This particular series is about a photographer and his family. I have done it in like a daily diary comic style. I am just trying to show the balance between trying to be an artist, trying to work, and trying to be home for your family and stuff, too.

NG: And you said that parts of it were inspired by your own use of a Polaroid camera, right?

JR: Yeah. My parents did not know what to get me for my birthday last year. I wanted a Polaroid camera and they said “You’re not going to use that,” but I finally talked them into it. It was that or nothing. Now I just walk around my neighborhood taking pictures of fire hydrants, or that mailbox might look interesting. Right now I’m doing a lot of street signs, like if I find something where it’s “Speed Limit 12”. I’m trying to collect all the numbers.

NG: Are you able to still find Polaroid film?

JR: It’s expensive. Oh, man. The one I have is actually like an off-brand because it’s cheaper, it’s a smaller picture. But the actual Polaroid film, at the low end you are talking $4 a shot now. The film I use is like $1 a shot so I can be experimental with it, but I’m still kind of careful, too.

NG: Tell me about your other book here, the Good Reception Coloring Book.

JR: When I draw I’m very fond of old radios shows for background noise. I listen to a lot of old westerns and mystery shows. It started out I just wanted to draw a couple people recording an old western. Then it turned into a coloring book about all aspects of the radio, whether it was like the morning traffic report or people just dancing in the twilight to whatever is on.

Coloring books were pretty popular last year when I started on the book. When Denver Comic Con 2016 came around, I thought “This is my ticket to stardom! Finally I am riding a trend. I have never been in time before.” [Laughs] And it wasn’t my ticket to stardom, I’m still here. But it was the ticket to meeting people at the shows. When they see it, they tell me really interesting things about radio stations where they are from. Or radio memories they have from growing up. That has been worth it. It’s just interesting.

I was talking to this guy at Zine Fest recently. He told me that he grew up in Olympia, Washington and they had this station called “WBRD The Bird”, and there was this parrot that would be on in the booth with the DJ. So he’d be playing some old jazz record and if the parrot started making too much noise, like squawking, that meant it didn’t like the record. They would cut it and switch to the next one, and that’s gonna ruin payola for sure. But hearing things like that has been super interesting. That has been the payoff for that project. I’m proud of it. It’s the biggest book in size that I have done. Because it was a coloring book I tried to do a lot of different textures and different angles to make it interesting. So it was a challenge, too.

Lou Chadore in The Old Stompin' Grounds by Jake Roth.

The Turbo Collins Interview by Jake Roth.

NG: Have you seen any of the colored results?

JR: A little bit. There was one page in there, I had an example book out at Comic Con last year and I had a box of colored pencils and a sign that said “Try me”. People would stop by and pick a picture and color for a while. There is one character that I do plan to make a book about. I haven’t done it yet. Her name is Madison and she’s just some indie rock chick, she will have an album out and that’s her thing. But these people started coloring her, and they were doing it wrong! She’s not supposed to be blonde, they made her blonde. Her shirt is supposed to be red, but they made it pink. They didn’t know. Why would they? But for about 10 seconds, that was really bugging me. This is something I need to learn to let go of. As soon as I thought about that, I did let it go — and yeah, it looked good.

There was also this other probably 12- or 13-year-old girl that I remember. It was opened to a blank page that hadn’t been colored in, and she was just staring at it for a while. I said “It’s OK, you can color it if you want to,” and she just grabbed a pencil and she just looked at me with hate in her eyes. I don’t know if you watch wrestling, but they often show this little girl who reacted when the Miz won the belt. She has this evil eye, and it was that face! Every time I see the Miz clip I think of this girl. But she just took a pencil like you would take a shiv and in this grand violent sweeping motion she stabbed at the book, but she didn’t actually mark the page. I wish she would have. It would help the story, or provide evidence, I guess [laughs]. She just sort of swept at it, then threw the pencil down and walked off. It was weird.

Enamel pins from Jake Roth at Denver Comic Con 2017.

NG: Also you have a new enamel pin out, and I understand that it may turn into a line of pins. Can you tell me about that?

JR: That’s me riding trends again. One of my favorite things to draw in comics is city scenes. I like to do a lot of buildings where I show a lot of houses and a lot of trees. I always go for this medium-small town vibe and architecture is a great way to do that. I really like to show things in the windows. Lava lamps are a favorite of mine. I also like to put cats in windows, so the first enamel pin I made is of the window with a cat in it. I figured that had more appeal than a lava lamp. Maybe not as much as the Grateful Dead poster I was also thinking about.

If they work and it goes well, I’d like to do a couple more. I have plans for doing other windows to kind of represent my comics more fully. Do the lava lamp, do the air conditioner, bookstore window, café window, and things that sort of speak to my art. And if they really really take off and I get a few of them going, and they are moving well — I’d like to do a sweatshirt that has the city printed on it with kind of a space for each of the windows; like cat goes here, bookstore goes here. That’s a small dream, I admit, but it is a dream.

Books from Jake Roth at Denver Comic Con 2017.

NG: One last question for you: if people want to see more of you or your books online, where would they go?

JR: Instagram is the best place. That’s the one I update most frequently. It’s @bakerstowncomics, and I have a Big Cartel webstore set up, which is linked to me on Instagram also: Bakerstowncomics.

December 01, 2017

An Interview With Dan Conner of Crazy Good Comics (Denver Comic Con 2017)

December 01, 2017/ Neil Greenaway

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Denver Comic Con 2017 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Dan Conner of My Gal the Zombie about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 7/04/2017, and you can read their version of it here.

Dan Conner at Denver Comic Con 2017. (1)

My Gal The Zombie is the story of Chelsea, an ordinary teenage girl with ordinary problems – who also happens to be a zombie. But she’s not going to let being a zombie ruin her afterlife! The creator of the series, Dan Conner, has been working professionally in the comic book field since 2002. Working primarily as a colorist (though his credits also include writing, illustrating, and editing), he has done projects for Antarctic Press, Lamp Post Inc., American Mythology Productions and Scholastic/Graphix. I had the chance to talk with Dan at Denver Comic Con 2017. We discussed his zombie comics, his work as a colorist, his line of hot sauce, and how he came to work on an Archie Meets The Ramones cover.

Neil Greenaway: Can you start us out by letting the readers know what My Gal the Zombie is about?

Dan Conner: Definitely. I started by doing a zombie version of a character named Chelsea (from the Heaven Forbid series that I did), I did a story about her and it’s kind of ballooned from there. It’s about a young lady – around 19 years old – who became a zombie, but didn’t want to have to give up on her friends and they were willing to stick with her. Sometimes they’re facing another monster that she can kind of stand up and defend them from, and other times they are trying to figure out what to do on Valentine’s Day.

NG: Do you release the stories as single issues or as graphic novels?

DC: The first book we did, I made mini-comics that I just printed and made at home. Then I did a graphic novel. And just over a year ago I started doing more black and white mini-comics. We did those about once a month. We are still doing them, but I think we got through about 9 issues in just under a year. Then, my friend Bob Conway (of Avanti Printing and Bubble Gum Comics) had some really good prices for printing color. I really like to do coloring so we did some stapled floppy comics in full size & in color. This is the first time I’m doing full size color floppy comics on my own and it’s going good. I like it. Then I have the new graphic novel and that’s black and white and the main reason is just economics. It’s so much cheaper.

My Gal the Zombie: The Delusional Life from Crazy Good Comics.

My Gal the Zombie: Color Catastrophy #1 from Crazy Good Comics.

NG: Can you tell me a little bit about the My Gal the Zombie show?

DC: After I started doing the comics I really wanted to do horror hosting. I had been trying to think of different ways to go about for years. So Justine McKinney reached out to me – she had backed our Kickstarter back in 2013 or so. She sent me a photo of herself in character and it was perfect. There was someone else I had been talking with, but that didn’t pan out so the timing with Justine was perfect. So we started filming. We did a holiday special for Christmas that year, 2014. Then shortly after that we heard from The Bone Jangler who does horror hosting in the Chicago area of Illinois. He said that if we did non-holiday stuff he would get it on the air. We were going to do a season or so and then try to get air time, but he offered that to us first. So we did the first season and that went pretty good. We just learned as we went. First we did some Bella Lugosi movies, then we did Frankenstein’s Daughter, Night of the Living Dead, and K. Gordon Murray’s Santa (the one where he’s fighting Satan). We hosted those movies. Then we did a Kickstarter for the 2nd season and a lot of it is filmed but we are still editing. We’ve also been on TV as well all throughout Illinois; we are on sometimes in Milwaukee right now. We’ve been on in the Denver area – that also reached Nebraska and Wyoming. Also we are on some ROKU channels and then some internet channels. A lot people have come to us and I don’t want to say that we are in demand, but the horror hosting community is really tight knit online and it’s a ton of fun. There are some channels like The Vortex or The Creepy Castle and we’ll be on those and we get rotated with other stuff. That community is really supportive. I thought we were really going to have to chase after that but people just really dig the medium.

NG: I also see that My Gal the Zombie also has a line of hot sauces, tell me how that came about.

DC: Yes we do. This is when I was going to Discover the Earth church. I was going there in Denver and I met with the pastor one morning for breakfast and he said “Hey, that guy Danny Cash who goes to the church, his store is just down the block and he does hot sauce and it’s just amazing”. So one of my first questions for him was how do you get your labels? They said they have their own graphic designers but that people could private label, a lot of restaurants do that. What I did was got him art that week so that I had some ready for Denver Comic Con 2013. I have had a Zippin’ Zombie that I have had every year. We did a Sriracha one. Then I did a habanero one after that which I called Zombanero - that was like a Cajun habanero. Then we did a pumpkin spice habanero. The Cajun and the pumpkin spice habanero are sold out. Now I just started a red habanero and that one is just called Zombanero Red. I just got those today but they are great fun and I figured at a comic convention there are some people who aren’t here for comics you know? A lot people dig them and they taste good.

Comics from Dan Conner at Denver Comic Con 2017.

More comics from Dan Conner at Denver Comic Con 2017.

Close up on some of the comics from Dan Conner at Denver Comic Con 2017.

NG: I know that you have been doing a lot of work for other publishers lately. Can you tell us a little bit about what you’ve been doing?

DC: So Adrian Ropp has been a pal of mine for a few years. I love the guy, he’s great. Last year – after Denver Comic Con – we were talking. He and a couple of my friends who do a lot of Archie stuff had started working on Pink Panther for American Mythology. Then I learned that they were also working on The Three Stooges. I was able to show some of my coloring stuff to them and I started on a Three Stooges election special last year. It was called Red White and Stooge. I think that I have done at least a story or colored some pages in every Three Stooges issue since that one. After I did that then I got some Pink Panther stuff and I’ve been on pretty much every Pink Panther issue since then. I did write and draw an Inspector [Clouseau] story that was in the Cartoon Hour Special and I’ve done some inking for Bill Galvan on Pink Panther. I’ve also done some inking and coloring on Underdog, I was in the FCBD issue of that. That was a ton of fun. I’ve colored one piece for Casper and that new Casper book should be coming out soon. I have done some stuff for Equilibrium and a little bit for Stargate. I have been doing a lot for them and really enjoying it. I have been trying to work for Archie for years, and you know they have a lot of great stuff they are putting out. So when this opportunity came up for Archie Meets The Ramones, I did all I could to get in on it.

NG: That’s a really cool project.

DC: Yeah it’s the best one. I was talking to everybody like, “Hey, what do you need? What can I do?” And everybody said, “Oh, it’s taken care of.” Meanwhile, shortly before it was supposed to come out, a pal of mine (Batton Lash) mentioned that he knew John Holmstrom – who founded Punk Magazine and did some early Ramones record covers among other stuff. So I friended John on Facebook and we started talking. Then a couple months later he posted that he was drawing a cover and I asked who was coloring it? Then I reached out to the store that was doing that exclusive. It’s one of the lowest prints of an Archie book ever, one of the rarest exclusive variants. It was for Main Street Comics in New York. But I got to color it and work with John Holmstrom. Working on Archie Meet the Ramones was so much fun because I love the Ramones, they are my favorite group and I really got to have fun with it.

Dan Conner at Denver Comic Con 2017. (2)

My Gal the Zombie DVDs at Denver Comic Con 2017.

NG: Moving forward, where do you see My Gal the Zombie going?

DC: I’m not sure. We are now doing these color issues. I really like color. I figure that we will keep doing those. I would love to have it out through Diamond [Distribution] and I’m always talking with different folks. The first book out was with Antarctic Press through Diamond. I would I like to see the book more widely distributed to folks but I’m happy with what it’s doing now. It has just about tapped the resources that me and Justine and Patricia can offer. So the plan is just more of the same, refining and learning what’s best. I was doing a lot of merchandise before, we had eye shadow and lip balm and hair clips. Those are all great fun but I’m just streamlining it with comics, DVDs and hot sauce.

NG: You told me a little bit about Justine, what can you tell me about the other member of your team Patricia Krmpotich?

DC: So she came on to help with the show at least two years ago. So she was helping us with production and stuff like that. Then she mentioned writing, and she was coming up with stuff while we were filming. She wrote some parts and they were really good, I thought it was as good as anything I was writing. Then she wanted to write some comics. So she has pretty much taken over writing the comic series and it’s good for me because she has a lot more ideas than I do. I wrote a lot of what I wanted to, and now I’m just letting her take the reins. Sometimes she will get someone else to draw and I will color it and then sometimes I will draw it as well, but it’s really easy when you just need to color something. I’m finding that I really like the coloring because I can let other people draw it.

My Gal the Zombie hot sauce at Denver Comic Con 2017.

Dan Conner at Denver Comic Con 2017. (3)

NG: Are you available for other coloring projects if people reach out to you?

DC: Yeah, definitely! I also do flat colors for Cleopatra in Space with Mike Maihack and Scholastic. I love that. So if anybody is interested, I pride myself in being fast, economical, and good. At the end of the day I want to be glad to have a page at my table and I want to be proud of what my name is on. Sometimes that means just spending some more time on it and I would rather do that. So please contact me at Dan@crazygoodcomics.com.

NG: Are there other places online that people might find your work if they wanted to see more?

DC: Yeah, mygalthezombie.com , Facebook, Instagram (Justine’s account) has almost 30,000 followers. She does a lot of other makeup tutorials and all sorts of things. That is also her handle on Twitter @mygalthezombiefx. I am @crazygoodconner on Instagram and Twitter. Patricia is @thexzoomxcat on Instagram and Twitter. We have a channel on YouTube. Oh and crazygoodcomics.com also.

December 01, 2017

An Interview With Daniel & Dawna Davis of Steam Crow/Monster Scouts (Phoenix Comic Con 2017)

December 01, 2017/ Neil Greenaway

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2017 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Daniel & Dawna Davis of Steam Crow/Monster Scouts about their take on creating a new scouting organization. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/08/2017, and you can read their version of it here.

Dawna Davis in the Monster Scouts Info Center at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Daniel & Dawna Davis believe in monsters. They have been creating monster themed art and apparel for the last 11 years. Over the past several years, they have also revealed (bit by bit) their world of Obscuria – the veil separating our world from the world of the monsters (Monstru). As the lore behind their world grew, so did their following. The people who wanted to know more about the hidden world of monsters transformed into the Monster Scouts. The scouts led to rallies, the rallies led to campouts, and the campouts changed the direction of Steam Crow as a company. This year, at Phoenix Comic Con 2017, I was able to sit down and talk to both Daniel and Dawna. We talked about their origins, their current projects, and what the future might hold. We also discussed their push to start a nationwide Monster Scouts initiative and how people could join the Shindigs that are already planned. At the end of this interview, I have included a photo gallery showcasing the scout parade and panel.

Neil Greenaway: To start us off, can I just get a brief history of how Steam Crow came to be? And how did it evolve into the Monster Scouts?

Daniel Davis: We attended the 2005 San Diego Comic-Con as fans

Dawna Davis: It was my very first con ever.

Daniel: I was 35. I was an artist with a really boring day job. I was a graphic designer for credit unions, so I designed websites for them. Dawna was a full-time art teacher. But it afforded us enough money to take a vacation, and we went to SDCC. Now, in my brain it was too late. I was never going to get to be an artist like I wanted, but it was still so exciting to get to go to the con and to see all the big spectacles. But better for us was getting to see all the creators, the guys who worked at Pixar and DreamWorks and Disney – because the artists that were there were concept artists, mostly. We were like “Wow, you work at Pixar?”, and they would say “Yeah, but that’s just a job. What I’m passionate about is this book I made.” That was eye-opening for us, that was really amazing that we got to meet these guys. So then Dawna says “You should do a book, you could do a haiku monster book,” and I was like “What? Really?” That’s how I remember it anyway. It was like a gift that she gave me – when she told me that – my eyes opened and I said “Yeah, let’s come back to San Diego Comic-Con next year with a table and a book!” Which is kind of audacious to say, but at Royal Thai down there in the Gaslight I started drawing some of the monsters for that book.

Dawna: We started writing, but the thing is he already had a CafePress store filled with shirts with monsters on them that all had backstories. So everything he creates always has this little backstory, to create content so people can search for and find things.

Daniel Monster Davis at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Monster Scouts poster at Phoenix Comic COn 2017.

Daniel: In reality I’m like a dungeon master, right? So everything is around this dungeon master mentality of building this world.

Dawna: He already had this world. This is how I remember it – he said to me that he wanted to be an exhibitor at San Diego the next year, and I said “Write the book.” And he said, “I don’t want to make it too long,” so I suggested a haiku book. Haiku is so concise and has such nice rules to follow. We started writing at Royal Thai. He finished it in about two months. We had a two year old at the time, so I said “You go work and I’ll take care of all of this stuff and let’s get this done.” He got it done, sent the proofs in, and it got us into WonderCon and into San Diego 2006. That started it all.

Daniel: We got into Phoenix that year as well. We got in, and WonderCon in San Francisco was our first show. The amazing point for me was that I got the most attention and praise for what I had been creating I had ever had in my whole life. In just one day of the show. It was amazing for my ego, and not in a terrible way. I just thought, wow! There’s so much energy and its exciting. Then somebody at the end of the show said this was his favorite stuff there, and it blew my mind that that would even be possible! I didn’t think anyone would ever tell me that! When I realized that, I thought, “Man, we could do this!” With that person there’s one, but there could be many. So we started being road warriors, making our own content, illustrating these worlds, and making Steam Crow.

Dawna: And we kind of fumbled through things. That first show, we did it completely wrong. It was awful but we learned quick, thankfully. We are really good at modifying and adjusting and you have to do that. Otherwise it’s just not going to work for you. We’ve been really fortunate that we have been able to innovate within ourselves and keep one step ahead. The Monster Scouts came out of that, it was really a happy accident.

Daniel: Yeah, our brand was in search of a focus.

The Monster Scouts from Steam Crow at Phoenix Comic COn 2017.

NG: How did the monster Scouts come about? I suppose it naturally lends itself to the cryptozoological aspect of your storytelling, but how did the actual meeting of people at a campsite come about?

Daniel: So sometimes you’ve got to put on the artist hat to be really creative and sometimes you have to put your business hat on, right? You kind of have to switch those back and forth. At first, it was simply to solve a business problem. After we saw the stats for people coming to our booth, we were seeing that the return rate was really low. So we had to fix this problem, but I don’t know what our brand focus is. Steam Crow is a little too vague, it’s vaguely monsters, it’s vaguely steampunk, but it isn’t really steampunk. It was a problem. So I thought, “Well, what if we made badges?” What if we made badges for people and they came to our booth? They could join our little fan club, and we called them Steam Crow Scouts. Then we had the badges, why don’t we make a bag for them? So we made a bag that they could put their badges on, hoping that if you were a Steam Crow person and you met another one at a bus stop you would go – "hey, Steam Crow" and shake hands. That was all it was going to be, this rewards program with some story behind it. But then I put on the artist hat again and I really started to cook up some fiction around it to make it interesting and cool. What happened next was people said, “That’s great. I’ll see you at the next show in my uniform.” That was not expected. What uniform? And they’re like, “My Scout uniform, dummy.” So I asked what it looked like. It was a boy scout shirt with a blue bandana. So I said, “I can’t wait to see it.” But then someone else told me the same thing, and they were doing something different. Then someone else told me. So I told everyone making a scouts uniform to stop and I made some uniform guidelines and, being a dungeon master, I made all the different kinds of Scouts. There are Monster Medics, Scare Force, Forest Rangers, all these crazy things that can never be Scouts. And 26 people showed up in uniform. What happened next was one of those Scouts said “We need to do a rally at Phoenix Comic-Con!” And I’m thinking, I don’t have time to do a rally. Why would we do a rally? But they talked us into it. That room filled with 100 people that were scouts, and we made it exciting for them. Then we made missions to go with the badges and uniforms. Then someone said, “Let’s go on camps!” And I said, "No. No, no way. We don’t camp." In the close to 20 years we’ve been together, Dawna has never said “Let’s go camping”. So I said “No, that’s a bad idea.” But it kept coming up, and we realized we had to do it. Now, if we’re going to do something we need to make it meaningful and interesting. The first one, we weren’t even quite sure what it was going to be. We made some secret opening ceremonies. We summoned Marrow Thatch, a pumpkin golem that came out of the darkness around the fire. He hands out sweet potatoes to some favored Scouts. We just made it an experience that was interesting, weird, and cool. We played board games and made lots of food.

Dawna: Yeah, it was just relaxing and fun.

Daniel: Once we did that first one, we realized that this was way cooler than anything we could do at a convention and that changed our whole vision of what this is. Steam Crow has been eclipsed by the Monster Scouts. Monster Scouts tells you a lot more than Steam Crow does. So now that’s what we’re all about.

Monster Scout badges at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

NG: So do you see yourself as a company moving away from prints and t-shirts and more towards camping and badges and that sort of stuff?

Dawna: They all really work together.

Daniel: It’s all related. I’ve never thought of myself as a print artist. At our very first con, we had resin cast toys that we made. The whole thing is a huge multimedia experience and experiment. Designing a badge is not too different than designing a shirt – and we’ll do both – but you’ll see that the prints that we make are mostly Monster Scouts now. The shirts crossover to camping or Scouts, so we are slowly focusing in. The more we focus the more people are interested in it.

NG: You guys recently finished a Kickstarter that was wildly successful, earning you 271% of what you had asked. What were your thoughts on that? Did you expect it to do so well?

Daniel: No. Not at all. Our Kickstarter’s have all been successful so far. We’ve done six of them but they’ve all been pretty modest.

Dawna: Our biggest one up until this time was $7,000 and that was our first Scout Kickstarter.

Daniel: I always think of the Kickstarter’s as another test. Like, is the Scouts a great idea or not? But it went well. Generally, we’re making our goal in a day, that is our goal for every Kickstarter. If we can get that to happen in a day, we are happy. But this one just kept going.

Dawna: We were pleasantly surprised! It was great! We knew we could fund it, but they went above and beyond. Our Scouts spoil us rotten, they treat us really well.

Daniel: Yeah they do. So we’re taking all those proceeds to just invest more into scout gear and stuff like badges for the next year. That was kind of the point of doing this. When we make a badge order for all these embroidered badges, it costs thousands of dollars. So this is a great way to do that.

Dawna: It’s also allowing us to focus the Scouts more. We have 12 distinct branches and now each one will have a core patch. Then we’ll have other things like bandanas and everything that go with that. When you join the Monster Scouts it’s not just the generic Scouts. We have Psychic Scouts, Deep Sea Scouts, the Conjure Guard, and they all need their little identifications.

The Monster Scout claw salute at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

NG: How many states do you currently have camps in?

Daniel: 5 States right now. Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Washington, and California.

NG: Obviously, it’s you guys doing the camps right now. Do you ever see a time when the Monster Scouts might exceed your reach? At a point when you might need to have other scoutmasters?

Dawna: Yes, and it’s happening fast!

Daniel: Our goal is to do a national tour of campsites. But we can only see so many before we’re going to be exhausted. With that giant tour, the hope is that we can come up with a model that allows us to identify these great personalities and people in these different cities. We would like to set people up as scout leaders in their state so that they could run events. Maybe we’ll even make them a special patch they can sell so it’s like a little mini business.

Dawna: So it’s either going to be a franchise or like the Avon method.

Daniel: It’s a great thing, but if you’re going to be calling yourself Monster Scouts it creates a challenge – people expect that it’s an ongoing thing in their community, and I agree. But it can’t always be me and her doing it.

NG: What is the age range that you guys generally get in your Scouts?

Dawna: We have from 3 year olds to mid-60s. It’s family-friendly. Most of the time the parents are the scouts and the kids come along, and then the kids are scouts. It happens that way. Very few times has it been kids that are the scouts first and then the parents join.

Daniel: For us, we wanted to be open to everybody. Mostly its adults, but sometimes cool adults come with cool kids.

Dawna: We have a son, so what are we going to do? He has to come with us, he’s 14 so it has to be family friendly.

T-shirts from Steam Crow at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Steam Crow Maker Aprons at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

NG: Does your son enjoy the Monster Scout events?

Dawna: Yes, but he’s the typical teenager. For the longest time he was like, “I’m going to be an artist too”. Now he’s like, “no I’m going to be an engineer.”

Daniel: He likes the campout stuff because it’s like a weekend of play for him, so yeah, he digs it.

NG: You guys have said that you plan to camp the whole month of August. Is that one consistent camp or will you go to different places?

Dawna: This will be the start of our campground tour. So we’ll start in Colorado and do a campout that first weekend, then we go to Idaho, and then Washington, and then California, and then we’ll come back home. We camp in between stops because we’re already set up for camping.

Daniel: Right now, we can’t really string together a tour of conventions. There is no way for us to really go to New York Comic Con without really risking everything or just doing a really small table. That doesn’t make sense for us, as our brand is big in its own little way. We have a lot that we want to bring and there’s no way to do it unless we have the legs to get us along the way. This camping tour will help us get those legs. And next year we’ll make that tour bigger.

Original art and potion bottles from Steam Crow at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

NG: You had mentioned hiring extra personnel across the nation and scaling your own operations back to just Arizona. What would your timeline on that be? For reference, you’ve said you’d been doing Steam Crow already for 11 seasons. How much longer do you see yourselves living the road warrior life?

Daniel: I don’t know. We have a couple years of just seriously being road warriors on tour to build this.

Dawna: That’s where we have to put back on our business hats, too. It’s easy to be the artist, it’s easy for us to take it with us and go, and do it ourselves. But now we have to look at that business side, the legal side. So that’s a whole different ball of wax. We will need time to finalize that and learn about that.

Daniel: And we have to show up in these other places that want us, like New York and New Jersey and Philadelphia. There are people there waiting for us to go. There are not going to be Scouts until we show up there and make them Scout somehow. When it comes down to it we need those other core people who believe in the monster Scouts movement.

Dawna: The thing is, if we don’t do that then this whole business collapses.

NG: Switching tacks just a little bit: Dawna had mentioned that you guys liked to play tabletop games at the campouts; and Daniel, you have been showing a gaming table on social media that you made. With this love of gaming apparent, have you ever thought of making a Monster Scouts tabletop game?

Daniel: I am working on it right now! My game of choice is called Fate Core. Its open source, so I can get a free license. I am building our game right on the back of Fate Core, so it’s a gaming system I’ve been playing for a long time. I am writing it right now which is really great because as we expand this universe, we’re adding four new branches. Well, somebody has to write about what they are! When I write for the RPG, it’s doing all that work. I think our goal is to run some games and either record or video them so people can hear the Monster Scout story, what it’s about. I think that through the game would be a fun way to do it.

Daniel Monster Davis displays his Monster Scout badges at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

The Monster Scout badges worn by Daniel Monster Davis (detail).

NG: You have created so many different monsters and backstories for them. Have you ever considered making a cryptozoological encyclopedia, or something to keep track of all of the monsters?

Daniel: We grew up with monster manuals, right? So, yeah of course eventually. With our Kickstarter we’re going to put out a little mini handbook every year. The one for this Kickstarter is just a simple rundown of the core of what Monster Scouts is. The next one could be focused on something else. Just on Monster Medics or just on a monster encyclopedia kind of thing. It gives us the ability to do that. Right now I’m building all of that on our monsterscouts.com website. When I make up the monsters, they go over there and it is an encyclopedia (kind of) right now.

NG: So there is a backstory for every monster that is out right now on the website?

Daniel: Right now we’ve got a good start. We’re just beginning this thing, so there’s years of writing to do, but yeah we’re getting there.

NG: And now we’ve talked a little bit about your campouts, you’ve also got the Monster Scouts rally here this weekend. What takes place at one of those?

Dawna: That depends…

Daniel: Basically, we get the greatest group of people together that we’ve ever known. Dawna and I both come from bands. In 16 years of me playing in bands, there were two shows that were amazing and the people were really on our side. Every time we do a rally, every time we do a campout, it’s that high again. Generally what we’ve been doing at the rally is we form three teams, and we’re going to give them a challenge they have to work on while we are doing the panel. They will be working on translating Montalk (the monster code) and it tells them to do things and they’re going to build something and it’s going to be ridiculous. While we’re in the middle of doing our panel that will happen, hopefully. We don’t know how it will happen because it’s all really organic. Then, the reincarnated body of Klein Redback (a musician from 1967, wink wink) – whose album was found and played for the Monster Scouts – he is going to perform at the rally as well.

Dawna: And we’re going to tell a little bit of our story, because we always have new scouts and new people who come in. They don’t quite understand that the Monster Scouts is not a cartoon, it’s not a corporate brand or anything, it’s just the two of us.

Daniel: And it all comes from us. I think some of the new people think this was an organic thing that just somehow happened. So we’re trying to teach them that we’re the people writing this stuff.

Monster Scouts Assemble at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

NG: Showing up at so many different comic conventions, do you guys ever get requests for a sequential art book, just a regular comic or graphic novel?

Daniel: We do have a couple. We did a webcomic called Monster Commute but it got inundated with spam and the site got destroyed. We did do two volumes of that in print. It’s about the monster world. It’s the world on the other side of our own, so it’s still the foundation of the Monster Scouts. Its just the monster world, where sometimes they leak through to ours.

Dawna: It does tie in. Actually, it’s funny because everything we’ve created – from the very beginning – ties in. The first book that we wrote was about Duke Davis. He captures monsters, puts them in this castle, and writes haikus about them. Well, Baron Davis created the Monster Scouts. His brother Duke Davis is a Monsterologist, so he’s the evil to our good. The other thing that we’re working on letting people choose: you could be a Monster Scout or you could be a Monsterologist…

Daniel: They’re the monster hunters, so they’re at odds with us. We (the Scouts) are the newcomers who are trying to save monsters, and the Monsterologists think that they protect Humanity. They go to academies and learn about monsters, and then kill them to protect Humanity. That’s our major conflict, which is perfect for the RPG too.

NG: That all sounds really, really cool. If people wanted to find out more about Steam Crow and the Monster Scouts, where would they look online?

Daniel: Monsterscouts.com is the core site and then we have a Monster Scouts Facebook group. It’s real easy to find. Those are the core places, and then, of course, steamcrow.com is the people who make the Monster Scouts.

Dawna: And that’s where you can buy your stuff, the gear and all of that. So steamcrow.com is the store and Monsterscouts.com is all the info on the Scouts.

If you would like to experience a Monster Scouts campout for yourself, you can see the events that they have available here.

Daniel Davis talks to some Monster Scouts at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Monster Scouts Assemble! At Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Dawna Davis leads the Monster Scouts meeting at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Monster Scouts meeting at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (1)

Monster Scouts meeting at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (2)

Dawna Davis answers Monster Scouts questions at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Marrow Thatch appears at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Monster Scouts on parade at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

The Monster Scouts Rally at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (1)

The Monster Scouts Rally at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (2)

The Monster Scouts Rally at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (3)

The Monster Scouts Rally at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (4)

The Monster Scouts Rally at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (5)

The Monster Scouts Rally at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (6)

Some Monster Scouts trying to solve a puzzle at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Daniel Davis inspects the work of some Monster Scouts at the rally.

The Monster Scouts Rally at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (7)

The Monster Scouts Rally at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (8)

The Monster Scouts Rally at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (9)

Daniel & Dawna Davis at the Monster Scouts Rally at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (1)

Daniel & Dawna Davis at the Monster Scouts Rally at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (2)

Daniel & Dawna Davis at the Monster Scouts Rally at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (3)

Monster Scouts take the stage during the rally.

Monster Scouts building a crown for Marrow Thatch.

The performance of Klein Redback. (1)

The performance of Klein Redback. (2)

The performance of Klein Redback. (3)

Monster Scouts working together at the rally.

The performance of Klein Redback. (4)

The performance of Klein Redback. (5)

Marrow Thatch wears his crown.

The performance of Klein Redback. (6)

The puzzle solving portion of the rally comes to a close.

Prizes are awarded at the Monster Scout Rally at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Marrow Thatch and Monster Scouts at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

The Monster Scouts give the Claw Salute at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

November 30, 2017

An Interview With the Fillbach Brothers of 1First Comics (Phoenix Comic Con 2017)

November 30, 2017/ Neil Greenaway

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2017 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Matthew & Shawn Fillbach of Illuminati Transport about their take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/05/2017, and you can read their version of it here.

The Fillbach Brothers (Matthew & Shawn) at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (They share a brain)

I had first heard about the Fillbach Brothers through their collaborations with Joseph Michael Linsner on some of his Dawn comics in the ’90s. They followed that up with comics of their own from Sirius and then Dark Horse. They spent almost a decade working on the Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures series. They now have an exclusive contract with 1First Comics, and they are busy pumping out a whole line of new graphic novels and follow-ups to stories that were never finished.

When I found out that Matthew and Shawn would both be at Phoenix Comic Con 2017, I knew that I had to take the opportunity to meet them. My reward was a conversation with two of the most genuine and warm individuals you could hope for.

Neil Greenaway: You guys have several new books on your table right now and I thought maybe we could talk about that for a bit.

Matthew Fillbach: We have a plethora. Though we are known for doing Star Wars: Clone Wars Adventures for LucasFilm, and we have none of that here with us.

Shawn Fillbach: Clone Wars Adventures was our big thing, our big seller.

NG: You guys actually did that for several years, right?

Shawn: Yeah, we did.

Matt: About eight years.

Shawn: We did 15 volumes. And basically we thought, why are we giving all the money to George Lucas? We got to make some of that scratch.

Matt: So that is why we did a digest book called Tales of the S.S. Junky Star Vol. 1 with 1First Comics, and Vol. 2 is coming out next month.

Books from the Fillbach Brothers at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Top Secret binders full of unfinished stories from the Filbach Brothers.

More comics from the Fillbach Brothers at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

NG: Why don’t you tell us about the story on that one?

Matt: It is essentially a story like Guardians of the Galaxy.

Shawn: Guardians of the Galaxy ripped us off big-time [laughs]. We even have a plant character called Cricket that is going to grow as the series progresses. It is across six volumes. We have it all mapped out.

Matt: We have a color edition coming out next month and Vol. 2 is also coming out next month. They are going to be in hardback for the libraries. We go to the ALA, the America Library Association, next month. We got involved thanks to our mother.

Shawn: And for libraries, hands down, their biggest market is graphic novels. It has been growing exponentially. Anyway, we have got the volumes of Junky Star coming out.

The next book we could talk about would be Captain Freebird. He is our outlaw superhero.

Matt: He is insane. We realized that basically all superheroes are insane.

Shawn: You have to be insane to be a superhero.

NG: To jump in front of a bullet, you have to have a screw loose.

Shawn: That’s it exactly. Well our guy has the soul of a shaman living in his heart. A Native American shaman who gives him crap all the time. He’s mojo rising. He’s a buffalo half the time, but then sometimes he will be his full shaman self.

Matt: Then it’s like everyone has a spirit animal, right? Well, his is a frog. So it’s Freebird Frog. We originally did this series in 1997/98. But it has a trade now.

Shawn: So we’re getting old.

Matthew Fillbach at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Shawn Fillbach at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

NG: Now would that come out as a trade paperback or single issues first?

Shawn: Nope, we don’t do floppies anymore. We did that for so many years; now we just want to tell a single story.

Matt: The direction of the industry is moving towards doing graphic novels.

Shawn: And it’s so much easier for us to do it that way. We see things as a movie.

Matt: Long-form — for us — is where we wanted to go. I see everything at once.

Shawn: So basically we want to put it down on the page.

Matt: It’s a film on the page.

Shawn: We couldn’t afford to go to film school because we were poor and–

Matt: A little short of supplies, and our “edumacation” was not that good [both laugh]. We achieved in shop class and gym. We got A++++.

Shawn: So we thought we could draw a little bit and we would tell our movies on the page. Oftentimes we’ll do like 50 or 60 pages of just visual storytelling. We find that, for us, it just works out perfectly, and we like watching people’s reaction when they are reading.

Matt: Years ago we just looked at each other over a cup of coffee in the morning and went, “From now on it’s just visuals and dialogue. No narrative, no ‘it was a dark and stormy night’ or ‘meanwhile, back at the ranch’.”

Shawn: Elmore Leonard said it perfectly. He said “Cut out all the stuff that people don’t want to read.”

Matt: He also said “If it sounds like it was written, re-write it.” Because we catch ourselves once in a while going like “OK, that’s crap.” Then we have a punch-out and it’s like, “You’re right, that was crap. OK, we’re moving on.”

Shawn: For Captain Freebird, we are planning two more volumes.

NG: Is that also completely planned out?

Both: Yes.

Matt: The first volume is American Prayer. The second volume is called Outlaw Invincible. The third volume is post-apocalyptic.

Shawn: The Apocalyptic Opera, which we wrote. Something like Logan.

Matt: But ours is going to be better. Ours is always better.

Shawn: Of course.

Matt: And then we have Cadaver Dogs of Winter, which is a vengeance tale.

Shawn: It’s a cowboy story.

Matt: A small-town Montana doctor’s daughter is found dead. And then it gets into bikers. The story involves meth and everything that goes with that. Then it gets into his vengeance trail. So he becomes a wraith of vengeance going after the people at the top. The ending is like pretty amazing and we were going to leave it there. Then one morning (over coffee again), “Holy crap, we have Cadaver Dogs of Summer.”

Shawn: Yeah, Cadaver Dogs of Winter and Cadaver Dogs of Summer.

Matt: We can’t say much about the story.

Shawn: But we can say Doc Cooper comes back, and he has gone straight crazy.

Matt: He’s still on his vengeance trail. I don’t want to give anything away.

Shawn: OK, I’m following your lead here. So we’ve got that, and then we’ve got the Dog Soldiers coming out as well.

Matt: Dog Soldiers is coming out in the next couple months. It deals with PTSD and service dogs and how service dogs help military vets.

**Illuminati Transport by the Fillbach Brothers (from Devil's Due/1First Comics).**

An interior page from Illuminati Transport by the Fillbach Brothers. (1) — An interior page from **Illuminati Transport by the Fillbach Brothers. (1)**

An interior page from Illuminati Transport by the Fillbach Brothers. (2) — An interior page from **Illuminati Transport by the Fillbach Brothers. (2)**

NG: I don’t know that I have ever seen that tackled in a comic or graphic novel before.

Matt: There was one day — it was Memorial Day or maybe Veterans Day — but we were out barbecuing.

Shawn: And Matthew saw this show about these veterans coming on with their service dogs.

Matt: They were talking about how these dogs saved them from suicide. Our book deals heavily with veteran suicide, as well. And it’s like our only book that doesn’t have someone die a violent horrible death. It’s a love story, too.

Shawn: There’s absolutely no violence in it. We’ve gotten to know so many veterans through the years at all of the shows, and we tapped them for this.

Matt: For questions, because we didn’t want to do some crap that was all Hallmark channel and weepy. One of our best friends is Scott “Big Sarge” Garrett; he’s the one we first sent it to. He’s the one we would talk to a lot when we were doing our research. We had an ulterior motive when we sent it to him. Before we told him our motive, we just wanted to see, “What do you think? Did we get it right?”

Shawn: And he said, “I don’t know how you did your research, but you got it spot on.”

Matt: Our ulterior motive was for him to do the introduction because he is in the Austin Texas 1919 chapter of the Military Purple Hearts. He is their president. He has become a really good friend and it would be an honor to have him write our introduction.

NG: Wow. That sounds like a book that could have a lasting impact for a lot of people. moving on to something a bit more light hearted, can we talk a little bit about Illuminati Transport?

Shawn: Oh yes, that is the newest book that just came out.

Matt: There is a first volume to this story. The first book was called Roadkill, done in about 2008 by Dark Horse Comics. It was a graphic novel. So we’ve wanted to do the continuation for years, but we ended up doing like 5000 pages of other books first [laughs]. Then we ended up at 1First Comics with Ken Levine. When we met him, it was just one of those moments where everything just came together perfectly. And we were drawing a bunch of different stuff for him; in fact, we were drawing The Badger for Mike Baron. Then we just decided to take a couple of months and just started doing our own thing.

Shawn: Kowalski [character in Illuminati Transport] was also in Roadkill with Dark Horse earlier and we just came up with this weird story to follow up on that.

Matt: Basically, it’s like when you have a team like Hellboy and the BPRD — what happens after the chaos? Who cleans up after that? People have to sift through stuff and take stuff. So he’s a trucker, he transports. Hence, Illuminati Transport.

Shawn: So Kowalski, he’s the pickup, trucker guy. So imagine like Jack Burton as the hero, but he’s not a hero. He’s just kind of like meh. Mike Mignola is so awesome, and we loved the Hellboy movies. So we created this character that we thought Ron Perlman could play. So we basically drew Ron Perlman–

Matt: As a giant douchebag. And his name is Branson Missouri.

Shawn: And Kowalski says things like, “We’ve worked together for 25 years and he doesn’t even know my name.” He goes over to get forms signed and Branson says, “Oh no, we don’t do autographs here. Oh, you’re the trucker guy. You must be new I haven’t met you before.” And Kowalski’s like, “We’ve been working for 25 years..TOGETHER!” So it’s fun like that.

Matt: And he has a talking dog named Geech and a Crystal Skull of Doom, which is their GPS. In this story he gets bro–

Shawn: No, you’ve got to read the story.

Lives graphic novel from 1First Comics. (front cover)

The Fillbach Brothers at Phoenix Comic Con 2017 (2)

Lives graphic novel from 1First Comics. (back cover)

NG: OK then, no spoilers. I think Lives is the only book we haven’t discussed. I know that it takes place in New York on 9/11, and deals with five people’s lives and how they intersect on that day. What else can you tell me about that one?

Matt: Glenn Farrington (the author) is an ex-cop from New York City. He is also a writer, and he works for Disney. He talked to us about this story and we said OK, let’s do this.

Shawn: It’s very visual. (There are only four pages with text in the whole book)

Matt: So Glenn asked us what we thought. And we were like, “We know how to do this because it is about the minutia of life, the little things that you never think about that happen every day. And then the culmination of five people’s lives. Some days matter more than others.

Then we also have Shotgun to Sugarland, which is coming soon. It is 300 pages.

NG: Is that all one volume?

Shawn: Yes, we only do long-form.

Matt: We did Maxwell Strangewell and that was 400 pages from Dark Horse, out of print. If you find it, you should pick it up and bring it over and we’ll sign it (both laugh).

But Shotgun to Sugarland — it’s another kind of epic story. It’s about the importance of women in the world. It’s about two women. One is just known as “The Girl”, and she’s a serial killer. And one is a detective–

Shawn: Hunting her down and figuring out the pieces. We were actually inspired by our good friends the Soska Sisters, whose first film was Dead Hooker in a Trunk. They did the amazing American Mary. We met them and were like, “We’re going to draw this for you.”

Matt: So we actually dedicated the book to them, too. They are our best friends.

Shawn: They’re our girls. That’s what we say.

Matt: Hallelujah is another book we’re working on right now. So we’re like, 150 pages in, I think it will be about 300 pages.

Shawn: We’re about halfway done with that one. Hallelujah is just — again, our hero is female — you know the old True Grit? She’s like the female Rooster Cogburn.

Matt: She’s got an eyepatch on the opposite side that he did.

Shawn: She ends up in this purgatory land and it’s a lot of– It’s very cowboy.

Matt: Very cowboy?

Shawn: Very cowboy.

Matt: Thank God. (laughs) Everything we do is so cowboy.

The Cycle of Life comic that the Brothers drew on their table during the convention.

NG: And that will be coming out from 1First, as well?

Matt: Yeah, we are exclusive with 1First Comics. All of the books we have talked about can be had from them.

NG: That’s awesome. Having an exclusive contract is very cool. Looking through these books has got me wondering something. When you sit down to do a book together, what is the division of art and writing? Do you both do both? Does one of you sit down and rough out a story while the other works on some art? What is the collaborative process there?

Matt: Well, we share a brain. So if we get more than a quarter mile from the other we just fall down and then have to tell people to bring us together. It’s hard to explain. Everyone says, “Oh I want to be there when you are working on stuff.” And it’s like, “No.” Because we can’t when people are around. It’s like I said several times, over coffee in the morning, we go out back and get to talking and then we start getting some ideas together. Then at night we’ll barbecue and have a couple beers–

Shawn: We actually make an entire story ourselves, and we’ll see everything ourselves in like a movie so we can act it all out, we know it.

Matt: We listen to music a lot. We just sit there and listen to the music, zoned out in the way that you do when you are barbecuing and having beer. And then it’s like [epiphany face] and it happens like that.

Shawn: Exactly, but the technicalities happen just back and forth. That’s always the boring part.

Matt: As soon as we get the fast roughs done — it’s like what Alfred Hitchcock said, “When the story board is done, the film is done.”

Shawn: And then we still have to go and actually make it. That is how Matt and I always feel. We are the happiest when it’s just the two of us.

NG: If people wanted to see more of you guys or if they wanted to check out your work, where would they find you online?

Matt: Well Facebook is probably the best place. Usually we go through Matthew Fillbach on Facebook and you can follow us there. Or 1Firstcomics.com or look up Devils Due or 1First Comics, and that’s where you will be able to get all of our stuff.

Matthew, Neil, and Shawn. Looking stoic at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Matthew steals a kiss from author Mark Gardner while Shawn stands by at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

November 30, 2017

An Interview With Ash Maczko and Ashley Witter of the Squarriors TCG (Phoenix Comic Con 2017)

November 30, 2017/ Neil Greenaway

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2017 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Ash Maczko & Ashley Witter of Squarriors about their take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/05/2017, and you can read their version of it here.

Ash Maczko & Ashley Witter at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Ash Maczko & Ashley Witter (creators of the Squarriors series from Devils Due Publishing) are busy people. Not only do they write and draw (respectively) the Squarriors comic, they are the driving force behind the Count-i-Con pop culture convention, they make appearances all through the year at other comic conventions, and (as of this year) they also have their own gaming company. At Phoenix Comic Con 2017 I had a chance to sit down and talk to the duo about their new Squarriors Trading Card Game, the first game to be released by Cold War Inc.

Neil Greenaway: Today I would like to talk to you guys a little bit about the new trading card game that you are starting.

Ash Maczko: Squarriors the Card Game, right. So I’m Ash Maczko, creator of Squarriors the comic series and lead developer and designer of the card game and we are with Ashley-

Ashley Witter: Hi, I’m Ashley Witter and I do the artwork for Squarriors.

NG: To get us started, just for folks who might not be aware, could we get just a brief synopsis on the story of Squarriors?

AM: For Squarriors – in 1986, mankind dies off. And the same thing that kills man off, gives all the little woodland creature’s intelligence. Now it’s their turn to run the planet in this post human world. So they are creating tribes, religions and going to war with each other. That kind of stuff. That is the quick pitch I guess.

NG: And off of that quick pitch, how did you decide to turn that into a card game?

AW: Honestly I think that was planned from the beginning. I think originally it was a card game before we made it a comic in concept.

AM: As we developed the comic series, right from the start I wanted to do something that I could branch off and have some kind of universe where I could have a video game, have a board game, have a card game, and have all kinds of other things. So literally day 1 of Squarriors, we were already planning the card game. We have been actually working on mechanics and things alongside the comic series. So that was planned from the beginning.

A card from the Squarriors Trading Card Game from Cold War, Inc. (1) Art by Ashley Witter.

Squarriors: The Card Game KickStarter banner.

NG: Is it going to be built on the rule set of any existing game – because I know that a lot of them have base rule sets that you can then build on – or is this an entirely new concept that you guys have come up with?

AM: This is top to bottom totally new. We were developing it for a little over 3 years now. This is actually like the 4th iteration of the game. That is how many times we completely made the game. We tested it and broke it down, kept what worked, got rid of what didn’t work, built it up into a game again, broke it all down again. And once we got to the 4th version, that is where we really got a stable format where we were ready for it to be the actual game. That was about 8 or 9 months ago and that is where we have been focusing since.

NG: I assume that like most card games, this will release with a base set that then has expansion series?

AM: Yeah. The core set that we did on Kickstarter is 250 cards. Effectively it is for one person, it is the complete set and then you can build any tribes you want out of that, though other players could build out of the same set as well. And yeah, we have already worked on the expansion. In the rules that come with the set we actually have an ad in there that is going to announce the first expansion to the game. So people will see that in a couple months.

NG: Now going to Ashley for just a moment, about the art on these cards. He said there were 250 cards in the base set. Are you doing all original art or are you reusing art that was drawn for the comics?

AW: I wish I had the time to do all original art for the card game, but we are reusing a lot of the art from the comic. I already spent so much time illustrating the comics, so we will just be repurposing some of it. Some of them will be getting a little bit of enhancement to the existing art though.

AM: She did do all of the frames for the cards though. We have a different type of frame for every different card type, and she drew all that stuff. She drew all of the background imagery and the boarders so that is all new artwork. The individual pictures are all repurposed from the comic series, which was again the plan from the beginning.

Squarriors comics at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Ashley Witter at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

NG: When I had spoken to you guys last year, you had said that Ashley was the artist for the Squarriors comic, period. Is that the same approach going into the game?

AM: That is actually an awesome question. We obviously do have lots of artist friends, lots of buddies who would love to work on some Squarriors stuff. I think the plan is – going forward with some expansions and things – we are probably going to try and work with some of buddies and get some exclusive artwork. We have variant versions of cards, full art cards, frameless cards, those kinds of specialty cards. So yeah I have talked to a few of our friends and we are planning on having some guest artists.

AW: I am actually very excited because these are friends of mine too, and I just love their artwork. I would be very happy to see them doing some Squarriors art.

NG: That would probably be interesting for you guys, to see other people’s interpretations of your creations.

AW: That is what I am excited about.

AM: We kind of did that with Squarriors #1, we did a gallery in the back where we had a couple of artists do some Squarriors pieces. We are open to that, and would love to see more of that. You just aren’t going to see it in the actual Squarriors comic, that is going to be Ashley forever. So there won’t be any guest covers

NG: I see that you have the Squarriors blank sketch cover made up. Have you guys seen any other artists takes on a Squarriors sketch cover?

AM: Yeah we have seen a couple Squarriors sketch covers. We have seen some fan art online. We just recently saw some 3D animation using one of the covers for Squarriors to make some sort of 3D animated squirrel.

NG: We spoke briefly about an expansion pack. Do you have any kind of timeline planned out for that?

AM: The expansion? Kind of, sort of. We don’t have anything really set, but we are hoping towards the end of next quarter.

NG: Would that be something you would look at another Kickstarter for?

AM: Not for the expansions. We are going to do those just as regular releases. It will probably just be 40 or 50 cards in a little pack. That will be sold directly to wholesalers and be for sale on Amazon and our website. We are also moving on to our next game with Cold War Inc., and there is an ad for that in the manual as well. That will probably be on Kickstarter the beginning of next year.

NG: So will that be an entirely different game from Squarriors?

AM: This is a whole different game. I can’t say a whole lot about it. It’s a whole new game; it’s from the same company, Cold War, which is our gaming company. It will be announced once the first game ships. We are going to let people discover it as they get the game. Then probably a few weeks after that we will post the announcement up online as well.

Sample cards from Squarriors: The Card Game from Cold War, Inc. Art by Ashley Witter. — Sample cards from Squarriors: The Card Game from Cold War, Inc. Art by Ashley Witter.

What comes in the Squarriors: The Card Game box?

Different creature types in Squarriors: The Card Game from Cold War, Inc.

NG: Moving back to the Squarriors TCG, what will the story be like in the game? When we had spoken last year, you had talked about expanding the story out of the forest the current arc takes place in. Does the card game allow you to do that?

AM: Our intention right now is that the card game just follows the comic series. So everything that happens in Spring is effectively the first core set of cards and there will be couple of expansions. It will be just from the first volume. As we finish up the second volume (which will be finished this year) for Squarriors, then next year we will be kicking off the core set that will follow the second series. Everything directly goes along with the series, so you are playing the story as it develops. I would say that you probably won’t see any cards set outside of the story until we have some other books come out.

NG: Then in that vein, how is the comic doing?

AM: The comic is doing awesome. We have issues 1 and 2 of Summer out. Issue 3 of Summer should be out next month with issue 4 following that up. Then at the end of the year we will have another trade hopefully out around Christmas time. That is the plan. How is it coming, Ashley?

AW: I would be working on it right now but I am at the convention. I feel kind of guilty that I’m not at home working on it. But I am also working here. We have to survive.

AM: Exactly. We have to make sure there is an audience to sell the book to once it is done.

NG: You guys have Spring, you have Summer, ostensibly Autumn and Winter will follow. Is Winter the end of the current arc? Is the end of Winter the point at which you would move on to a different story?

AM: The end of Winter-

AW: NO SPOILERS!

AM: I can spoil a little bit. The end of Winter is the end of what I consider the pre-story for Squarriors. So this whole thing is a very long intro to when the actual series is going to kick in, as just a long-running regular numbered series. That will be after these 16 issues. First we have the four seasons, and after that it will just go into a straight series. So again, this is sort of an intro to all that – if that makes sense.

Different tactics in Squarriors: The Card Game from Cold War, Inc.

Different domains in Squarriors: The Card Game from Cold War, Inc.

Recruits in Squarriors: The Card Game from Cold War, Inc.

NG: People love the Squarriors comic, with fans clamoring for more. When it comes to the new game, what has the fan reaction been for you guys? Are people enjoying it?

AM: Naw, everyone hates it. We’re going to make it anyway though (laughs). No, it’s been great. Again, I’ve said from the beginning that we were working on a card game for this series. I think that a lot of core fans already knew that was coming and were excited that it wasn’t just pillow talk and it’s actually, really going to happen. It’s been good. We have a lot of stores that are really interested, saying they have a lot fans that will be really excited to have a game like this. The game plays very differently than most TCG type games. There is no deck you pull from. There is no shuffling of cards. You just put together your tribe, you lay them down, and you fight each other. It’s more like a strategy battle game. That has really turned on a lot of players, even people who weren’t familiar with Squarriors. They just really like the concept. Build your army, sit down with your buddies, and fight each other. That is really what we have going. Testing has been good. We have been working with Gamer’s World up in Chicago. They have about 12 or 15 stores and we have been able to go and do little events there and get a lot of feedback so it’s all looking really good.

NG: You said you have been speaking to stores. Are a lot of stores excited to see the game?

AM: Yeah. Obviously some stores are waiting until it’s actually at a distributor, which we haven’t done yet because we don’t have a physical game. Most distributers won’t pick anything up until they actually see the game. On Kickstarter, we had several stores order retailer bundles and things like that. We have a couple direct accounts with stores that we are close with that already carry a lot of Squarriors things. So that has been good. The lifeblood of launching the game is making sure that you have got some stores that will cover you and push the game for you when it’s out. We do have that and it’s been great.

NG: The Kickstarter ended very recently, have you guys started production? Have you seen any cards yet?

AM: Backerkit is still going right now, that is how soon it’s been. When Backerkit ends, then we have about 2 weeks of polishing up some things before it goes to production but we’re right there. The game is done, the cards are done, the rules are done. It is just a matter of working with some templates and getting everything to get produced and then it’s all in their hands, maybe 30 or 40 days to get the game back and it goes straight to shipping after that.

NG: I can’t wait to see the final product! Before we go, if people want to see more of your comics, your game or just more of your smiling faces, where would we look online to find that?

AW: Squarriors.com.

AM: Squarriors.com; squarriorstcg.com has stuff; coldwar.us is our company site which brings you to everything; ashleywitter.com. We have a lot of things, but if you go to any one of those it all links to everything else. So if you go to squarriors.com it leads to all of our stuff.

November 30, 2017

An Interview With Rich Vincent of the DrawerBox Storage System (Phoenix Comic Con 2017)

November 30, 2017/ Neil Greenaway

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2017 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Rich Vincent of Drawerboxes Storage Systems about his take on making a better comic box. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/05/2017, and you can read their version of it here.

DrawerBox Storage System signs at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (1)

I have used the DrawerBox Storage System for years. When I first found them, I fell in love with how easy they made it to sort through and file my comics. Through the past few years, I have slowly replaced all of my traditional long whites with the stronger drawer-style boxes, and it has revolutionized my collection. This year at Phoenix Comic Con 2017 I was able to sit down and talk with Rich Vincent, the creator of the amazing collectable storage system.

Neil Greenaway: You are the creator of the Drawer Box Comic Storage System. So first off, if I could get just a little bit of history, how did you come up with this box?

Rich Vincent: Oh it was definitely out of need. I had a huge collection of comics, over 20,000 books that I had stuck in long boxes in the closet. These are comics that I bought when I was a kid. I have been collecting all my life. So one of my favorite comics is Magnus, Robot Fighter - the Gold Key comics from the 60’s. And there is one issue I really wanted to read, and I spent 2 hours pulling boxes out of the closet to find it. So I realize then that this is it, I have too many comics. I have to get rid of half my collection. But since I had bought them when I was younger there were a lot of memories attached. I had to find a better idea.

NG: And you produce all the boxes yourself, is that true?

RV: That is correct.

NG: How did you go about getting that set up? How does an average guy go about getting production lines put in place?

RV: The inspiration was, when I was younger in high school some of my friend’s parents worked for Frontier Airlines and they used to use the banker boxes (that worked like drawers) for archive storage. When Frontier would clean out the files every once in a while, they would bring them home and I used to put my comics in those. I remembered that idea and so I went to a company, a box manufacturing company. People don’t realize this but there are actually people with college degrees in package design, and so I worked with a package designer to actually work out the specifics of the box.

NG: When did you start producing these? When were they first available?

RV: I’ve been doing it for 12 years. And interestingly enough, I had done an earlier run maybe 18 years ago but I ran out of space. I needed some more. I thought well, if I make some, I should make a big run of them – like maybe 1,000. So I thought I could try selling them. I passed out fliers to a bunch of stores in Denver. I went to the San Diego Comic Con and passed out fliers at the San Diego Comic Con. I only got one back. So I thought, nobody cares, I’m not going to do it. For 3 years the idea gnawed at me. So I decided that I really needed some more boxes. If nothing else I’m going to do some and take the loss. The rest is history.

A DrawerBox Storage System table display at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

A DrawerBox Storage System poster at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

A DrawerBox Storage System floor display at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

NG: Do you find that you sell more to stores or to individual collectors?

RV: Really to individual collectors. It is a really interesting thing – psychology I guess – in the retail part of the industry, where the stores don’t tend to want to try new things unless the customers are asking for it. So I found I am in 125 maybe 150 stores in the country. Out of all those stores maybe 5 or 6 are stores that I approached and they started carrying the product. Every other store is because customers are going in and demanding it.

NG: Well that is really great to be that in demand from your customers.

RV: It is, it really is. God love ‘em.

NG: Do you find that once a store starts carrying your boxes, selling to the public, and getting reactions back, do the stores start using them for their own product?

RV: Yeah, that is actually happening more and more. When I first started selling them, I thought that as a promotional thing I would give some to the stores to use. What I found was I really didn’t have to do that. There are a lot of stores out there that are operating on a shoestring budget and they need to get their back stock out and available to the customers. And of course it’s hugely expensive to build custom cabinets and stuff like that so we became an alternative.

NG: I myself have a huge collection of comics that for years was basically inaccessible for casual viewing until I found your boxes at my local comic shop. I will confess to the interview audience that I have more than 100 of these boxes holding my own collection.

RV: God bless you for that.

Pricing structure for the DrawerBox Storage System.

Wall O' Comics drawer front labels for the DrawerBox Storage System. (1)

DrawerBox Storage System signs at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (2)

NG: What appealed to me right away was the $15 price point. I find that a regular long white with a lid still tends to cost between $8-$10. The price of your boxes is higher, but the quality is there to justify it.

RV: Well I’m not quite that comparable. I’ve surveyed stores across the country. I would say the average price of a top loading long white, what I call the old fashioned long boxes, probably runs around $7 maybe $8. Ours obviously sell for more than that. One of the things that drives our price point is shipping. And people don’t realize this, they go onto our website to order and they say, ‘Oh, I don’t want to pay for shipping, I’m going to buy them in the store.’ The reality of the situation is the stores have to ship them in and they are paying for that shipping so they have to roll it into their price. So where it looks like people are paying extra for shipping when they order direct, the reality is they are paying for shipping either way. It’s just built into the price.

NG: Well even at that I would still say the longevity of the box is probably worth the increased price.

RV: Oh absolutely. I know I’m kind of prejudice, but I think there’s a couple of reasons. I know our prices have to be higher just because there is twice as much material to ours as there is in an average long box. Our drawer alone is the equivalent of a long box. Then the long box only comes with lid, which is a very small amount of cardboard, and ours comes with the support sleeve and a shell. It is easily more than double the material, which means our manufacturing cost is going to be more than double. Plus the fact that we are using upgraded materials. A lot of long boxes use fairly cheap materials. You see a lot of boxes out there that they advertise as Heavy Duty 200lb cardboard. First of all, 200lb is not the correct measure for the strength of a box, 200lbs means it takes 200lbs to puncture the box. Secondly it’s very low grade, pizza boxes are 175lb cardboard. Our shell alone is 300lb test and our support sleeve is well above that. The correct measure for the stacking strength of cardboard is called the ECT rating, and our boxes ECT rating is closer to 44lbs per inch. Our sleeves are now rated over 80lbs per inch because we use custom manufactured corrugated cardboard.

NG: For those of you who haven’t seen these drawer boxes, you have an exterior shell that the long white itself slides into but the piece that you can’t see (hiding inside the exterior shell) is an interior shell that provides support. Was it always the three piece system or was that something that evolved?

RV: It was always three pieces. We knew that one sheet by itself would never be adequate.

NG: Your boxes are stackable. I’ve heard a lot of people concerned about the boxes on the bottom. Because of the weight involved, people are afraid to have books in the box on the bottom for fear that the boxes on top must be squishing it. What has been your experience with that?

RV: Well that is understandable thinking because people are used to having a bunch of long boxes. Long boxes were never designed to be stacked at all, which is to say if you go two or three high they are going to start collapsing on you. We were designed to be stackable. So probably the most critical component was that support sleeve that goes inside the box. That’s why we are moving toward a triple wall construction. We have always used a triple wall in the magazine size, a double wall for the support sleeve plus the outer shell. We are now offering the same triple wall construction in our long size. We are going to do the triple wall construction in the short size this summer because it’s all about that support sleeve. Funny story about that, I have a certain number of calls from people time to time that say, ‘Hey, I’ve got a problem. My husband ordered some of your boxes and I thought I would be helpful and put them together. I thought this sheet of cardboard that came with it was just scrap, just packing material, so I threw it away. What do I do now?’

Wall O' Comics drawer front labels for the DrawerBox Storage System. (2)

Box Lox box anchors for the DrawerBox Storage System.

NG: Buy more?

RV: Well, we take care of our customers. That is an understandable problem and we help our customers out that way. It’s because people are not used to seeing that support sleeve and just take it for granted that it’s just a piece of cardboard. But it’s not, it’s the most important part!

NG: It is nice to have a company policy that can be forgiving of a customers inexperience with the product. Your boxes can also be locked together using small plastic clips. Could you tell us a little bit about those connectors?

RV: Oh yeah, the Box-Lox connectors. People use what I call the knee technique to open a drawer full of comics. In other words, they pull a drawer open and rest it on their knee or they lift their knee up to kind of prop it open. With our boxes it shouldn’t be necessary to begin with because we designed our boxes to work like drawers, and part of any file cabinet or grocery drawer is you can pull it all the way out and it’s going to hang open on its own. So we designed the boxes to be able to do that. The problem we had was with the top row tipping up, because normally the lower rows are counterbalanced by the box on top of them. But if there is nothing on top of the top row it is going to tip up when it’s pulled out. So we knew we had to find a solution for that, and it took a lot of thought because we had a very narrow space that whatever locking mechanism we used has to fit in. You have the exterior of the shell on one side and then the drawer on the inside. So there’s a very narrow space in between to work with. We just had to develop a product that fit in that narrow space that locked everything securely.

NG: And did you guys design and produce those yourself or is that something that you found?

RV: We kind of found it. The material we use, I found it because it was used for corrugated cardboard tents in the Middle East. It was used to connect the sheets. So we decided that since it was flat headed we could use that kind of material for the inside of the shells. We had some inspiration in that way.

NG: Also, you had shown me today that you are creating a new line of self-adhesive box front labels. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

RV: Yes, this is going to be a lot of fun. There’s a trend out there right now to have decorated boxes, decorated long boxes. They are printed, well most of them aren’t printed, there are 5 sheets that go on the exterior of the box all the way around. I contemplated that for a while but it didn’t make a whole lot of sense because of all the costs involved. Those boxes are really quite expensive. Just to have the decoration costs as much as our plain boxes. So I thought, it’s senseless because ours are designed to work in an array, with boxes on the side, boxes on top and bottom which means you never see the tops and the sides so it doesn’t make sense to spend a lot of money decorating those. In ours, all you see is the front of the boxes. So what we’re developing now is a series of labels that can be applied to the front of the box and it decorates the front of the box. We are going to have a whole variety of things; once we cut the dies we can print a whole variety of fashions off the same die. Our first one is what I’m calling the Wall Of Comics. When you go to any comic book store it’s an endless source of fascination to see all those old comics behind the counter. We are going to try a recreate that effect with classic covers. Our first run will be famous artists. These will be artists like Frazetta, Reed Crandall and Al Williamson, covers from old historic comics. You can have a different label for each drawer. That should be coming out in another month or two. We are working on the final measurements and the dies right now. We are also working on licensing some classic covers that I can’t really announce yet because the licenses aren’t finalized. Then our long term plan is we are going to follow that up with what I call the Drawer Box Window Panes. We are going to create the effect of looking out the window with your array of boxes and seeing a scene. Any kind of scene you want. Maybe it’s various characters flying across the skyline of the city or something like that. It would be modular enough that if someone has an arrangement that’s 5 across and 4 high, and someone else has an arrangement that is 4 across and 4 high, or 6 across, they will be versatile enough that they can adapt to whatever the arrangement is. What we’ll be able to do is create a mural on the boxes which will be very dramatic. Maybe eventually we will even do some with very large images of some characters. Of course, all of that depends on the licensing but that is the long term vision.

Some of the DrawerBoxes from my private collection. (1)

NG: I know that you are based out of Colorado, but I know that you also ship nationwide. What are the options for people who wanted to buy from another state?

RV: First your local store is always an option, and as I said earlier, stores seem to be driven by customer requests. So let your store hear you loud and clear that yes, they can order boxes from us. We always love to talk to stores. Option number 2 is to go online to our website which is collectiondrawer.com and they can go in and see the website. So either way works.

NG: One more question, if people wanted to interact with this on Facebook, what is your Facebook page?

RV: We do have a Facebook page, it’s called DrawerBox Storage System because first of all we are not just a box. We are a mechanical device. We have to have load strength, we have moving parts and things like that. When we designed the box it had to be designed like a mechanical device. Secondly, we no longer think of ourselves as a box or a unit, something to put your comics in. We have multiple sizes for different types of collectables. They are all interchangeable in terms of the mail order. You can match then side by side for your collection so you can take your magazines and put them beside your comics or have your records and put them beside your comics, whatever you want.

NG: It is worth noting that the magazine size boxes are perfect for holding a record collection as well, or slabbed comics.

RV: And of course we have the upright divider system to organize the collectables inside the drawer. So we are no longer just a container. We are a comprehensive system. So we changed our name to the DrawerBox Storage System, and that is our Facebook address.

NG: If people reading this wanted to interact with the community and see what other people thought, I think that would be a great place to start.

RV: Yeah I love to hear people’s ideas and how they are using the DrawerBoxes on the Facebook page.

November 30, 2017

An Interview With Reset Survivor of Ecos De Xochitl (Phoenix Comic Con 2017)

November 30, 2017/ Neil Greenaway

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2017 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Reset Survivor (Will Hines) of Ecos De Xochitl about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/05/2017, and you can read their version of it here.

Reset Survivor at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (1)

You can not look very far into the indie comics scene in Phoenix without hearing about Reset Survivor. I have had his books recommended to me by people like Denny “Dennmann” Riccelli, Eric Mengel, and Adam Yeater – all of whom have been creating their own original-character driven comics in the area for years. Still, even with all the recommendations I had received for his computer-based art style, I had never managed to meet Mr. Hines – the Reset Survivor. I made up for that at this year’s Phoenix Comic Con, and I’m glad I did.

Neil Greenaway: Today I am speaking with Will Hines, otherwise known as Reset Survivor. First off, for people who might not be familiar with your work, what kind of comics do you make?

Reset Survivor: I do a book called Ecos De Xochitl, which is kind of a webcomic. I started it and then I gave up on it for about a year. I gave up on it when times got hard. I said “I ain’t got time for this shit”. So I set it aside I recently picked it back up. There were other books that I wanted to do and this was just in the way. So it had to go, I had other stuff to do that was better. Not that my webcomic is bad, just that there were other things I really wanted to do

NG: What is the story in the Ecos De Xochitl?

RS: I was watching this Superman movie a while back, and he passed out like every 5 minutes. I don’t know if that’s how it happened but that’s how it seemed to me. But it gave me this idea. What if there was this person that passed out and woke up in another body? And what if it kept alternating? When the new person passed out they woke up in the other person’s body again? And you wouldn’t know which was real and which was the dream. I was really into that idea. And the webcomic just kind of ran with that.

Ecos De Xochitl Disk 1 from Reset Survivor.

An interior page from Ecos De Xochitl Disk 1 by Reset Survivor.

Ecos De Xochitl Disk 2 from Reset Survivor.

NG: Do you intend on returning to that?

RS: Oh yeah! I’m finishing it right now. I am about halfway through the story right now. I have it all written out. That was the weird thing. I had it all planned out before I quit, but then I just stopped.

I draw this all on the computer, it uses a weird art style. It’s called ANSI art. It is a lot like ASTI art, but more like a cousin to that. A lot of people think it’s 8-bit or pixel art and I’m totally fine with that. I always just say “Yeah, that’s what it is”.

NG: Is that the same art style you used on the Cockroaches you have here on the table?

RS: It is.

NG: You have several cockroach stickers available here. What inspired those?

RS: Just living with bugs I suppose. When I was living in Mesa, I lived on the bottom floor of a building. And every summer, man, they would come out. You walk into the kitchen and they scurry, and you think “Well, that’s disgusting”. You can tell the apartment complex, but nobody cares. I tried bug bombs, but they didn’t work. If those things want inside they get there. For a while I sort of developed a relationship with them. They just don’t want to be on fire, and that’s the same reason I’m in there. I understand.

Cockroach stickers from Reset Survivor at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Reset Survivor at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (2)

NG: That is very compassionate of you. I see that you have a Kaiju book here on your table. What can you tell me about that?

RS: The Kaiju book came about because I am friends with Brad Dwyer and Damon Begay and we are all into tokusatsu, stuff like Power Rangers and Kamen Rider. We are really into that stuff! So we decided to create our own characters and put them in this pseudo-world, that would be our own version of that stuff. Brad does a character called Zodiac Man, where he uses the different zodiac signs as power moves. Damon has a character called Phoenix Night, who is a girl with the soul of a reincarnated hero. My strip is about a Japanese girl group, a singing group, that transforms into a giant robot, Ultraman-type character. I really just wanted to do a story about a Japanese girl group that turned into robots.

NG: You also have your sketchbook here, Beer and Ramen. What can you tell me about that? I am drawn to the name right off the bat.

RS: Well it was my life for at least a couple of months. Every night it was just beer and ramen until my guts gave up. My insides were saying “you cannot have anymore or you will die”. Anyway, its just a sketchbook basically filled with alcohol-fueled doodles. This was me just drinking and drawing. The good thing to come out of this book is that I recently decided to buy plane ticket and visit Japan. And now I am saving money to really enjoy that trip.

Reset Survivor and his banner at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Comics from Reset Survivor at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

NG: Your table includes several original Mini Comics, some cockroach stickers, and some original art, all of it your original creations. Do you find that you do well at conventions selling only your own IP?

RS: It is a hard sell because I’m not selling Deadpool prints…

NG: And bless you for that, sir!

RS: I am trying to do my own original stuff and it is a harder sell, but honestly when people walk by they almost always snap their neck looking at it. They’ve never seen anything like this before.

NG: If I could go back just a little bit to Ecos De Xochitl, is that still coming out as a webcomic or is it only in print?

RS: I only just finished the third print issue in the last month or so, but I haven’t posted them to the webcomic. I do plan on overhauling the webcomic website after this event. I have been planning for Phoenix Comic Con for a while and after this I can take a deep breath and get back to work.

Ecos De Xochitl Disk 3 from Reset Survivor. (back cover)

Ecos De Xochitl Disk 3 from Reset Survivor. (front cover)

NG: And then the webcomic comes back?

RS: Yeah, I really do plan on overhauling the whole site though. I just don’t like the way it is. I want it to be way more simple, it’s far too complex. When I say that people will go look, and there are maybe four buttons on the site (laughs). But it could be simplified even further.

NG: I think that about wraps up my questions for you today. If people wanted to see more of you or your webcomic where could they look online?

RS: The best place to find me is on Instagram, I am @ResetSurvivor. And I guess you could look for me on resetsurvivor.com. This will give me the push I need to actually get that site finished!

November 29, 2017

An Interview With Mark Gardner and John J. Rust of War Of The Worlds: Retaliation (Phoenix Comic Con 2017)

November 29, 2017/ Neil Greenaway

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2017 I had the chance to sit down and talk with novelists Mark Gardner & John J Rust about their take on publishing new novels. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/05/2017, and you can read their version of it here.

War of the Worlds: Retaliation by John J. Rust & Mark Gardner.

I had the chance to sit down and speak with novelists Mark Gardner and John J. Rust at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. I was eager to hear about the books they had each authored individually, and equally excited to hear that they had recently co-written a sequel to the classic H.G. Wells novel War Of The Worlds. Our conversation ranged from cryptid hunters to space disasters and from superheroes to sea-raptors. Of course we also discussed Martians, and why the humans had to take the fight to Mars.

Neil Greenaway: Let’s go ahead and start with Mark. I know that you and John have a novel that you have co-written, but to start, why don’t you tell me about some of your earlier books?

Mark Gardner: Well, I mostly write sci-fi, dystopian. I’m a big fan of historical fiction. I recently collaborated on a space disaster with two great authors, Greg Dragon and David Kristoph. They both have successful space opera series. I had read some of their work and I was impressed. With today’s technology and instant communication, I emailed them both. I said, “Hey, would you guys want to collaborate on a space disaster with me?” I figured we could do it on my blog.

The catch was that each of us would write a particular perspective. For instance, I write the engineers, Greg writes the bridge crew, and David writes the miners. And so we could all write our own point of view while maintaining a style for that faction. Also, we did not know who the bad guy was. We all assumed that we were responsible for this space disaster. And then in week 18, the fans got to vote on who the villain was.

The fun part of that was whichever two teams turned out not to be the villains now had to resolve all the red herrings. It’s interesting when you don’t know how the story is going to end, because it forces you to stay on your toes. You don’t want the other guys to have to pick up your slack.

NG: Now when you describe this, did this all play out in a written format or was this a podcast?

MG: This all took place on my blog, article94.com. And every week we would write a new chapter. We would go in the order of David first, then Greg, then myself. And we never knew what was going to happen. We had a vague outline, obviously, but whatever happened in the chapter was up to that author.

It was a lot of fun because we have very different styles, but the styles meshed because they were consistent to a viewpoint. We will be releasing this as a novel called Days Until Home. It should be out this fall. I actually brought a bunch of early copies to con to sell to fans. This early edition is just an unedited blog compilation; the edited version is what will be released in the fall.

NG: Who will that be putting that out for you?

MG: I’m actually going to self-publish this one. A lot of publishers don’t know how to deal with multi-author books, unless all of the authors are really big names. We just decided it would be easier to self-publish it. The blog itself was a super mega hit, and so we are also expecting the novel to be a super mega hit. (laughs)

Mark Gardner at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (1)

NG: When you say you were looking to self-publish it, does that mean crowdfunding?

MG: We might do a little bit of crowdfunding for the hardcover. We are going to need an ISBN. But it would be a small amount of money; really, a couple hundred bucks is all we would need for that. It is written and we have paid for all the editing out of our pockets, so it is done.

NG: I understand you also have some superhero novels. What can you tell me about those?

MG: I do have a superhero novel. It’s called Sixteen Sunsets. I have a funny behind-the-scenes story on that one. When I finished writing it two years ago, I was short on my word count. Well, I have a great friend over in Bulgaria named Cindy Vaskova. I called her up and told her I was short on my word count but I was burned out, and I asked if she could give me a subplot. So Cindy, in like a week, breaks out a 10,000 word subplot.

I got her draft, read it, and it blew me away. I loved the character. So when it came time to write a sequel, I asked her if she would like to co-write it with me. We just finished that sequel about a month ago. We came up 25,000 words over our projection. Joel Cotejar did the art for the first book and he is back for the second one. He is a former Valiant Comics artist.

NG: Can you give me a brief synopsis of the story in that series?

MG: Sure. Sixteen Sunsets is about a guy, just a regular guy, who gets a diagnosis of cancer. And this is semi-autobiographical because I have leukemia, and this allowed me to put some of my thoughts and feelings on that into the novel. Anyway, after my character gets this diagnosis, he also finds out he has superpowers. He finds out other people have superpowers. And superheroes have been around for much longer than people thought. Every time something strange has happened, it was probably because of some super-powered person. So it is the story of him coming to accept that he has superpowers, and cancer at the same time.

It shows how having these god-like powers can really change the way someone thinks. I have my bachelor’s degree in applied human behavior from Northern Arizona University, so I used my training from that to make the behavior of my characters as real as possible.

Now in the sequel, Moonrise, we have kicked up the superheroes a notch. We have a character who wants to create a super-powered army, to basically wipe out all humans. They see the humans as defective because they don’t have superpowers. Of course, there are returning characters, as well, from book one. Then in 2018, we will probably start writing the third volume, which will be called Starfall.

Books from Mark Gardner at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

NG: If you already have a third novel planned, do you have an endpoint for this universe? Do you know how the story ends?

MG: Each novel really is self-contained. I am not a big fan of the cliffhanger ending, or of the gratuitous cliffhanger ending. If you can end your story, but then say, “Oh, look what was happening over here,” that to me is an acceptable cliffhanger ending. So each of my stories can be read by itself, but of course it’s more enjoyable as part of an overarching sequence.

NG: You have said that this is a superhero story, and you are even working with a comic artist. Have you considered turning this story into a graphic novel?

MG: I have done some research on that. And as I’m sure you know, writing a graphic novel is extremely different from writing a novel. If I found the right team to do it, because I would need an editor who knows how the graphic format works. Then you need to consolidate a 300-page novel into a 40-page graphic novel or a series of floppies. If I ever did it, I would want the Fillbach Brothers for the sequential art.

NG: I think that brings us to your War of the Worlds sequel, War of the Worlds: Retaliation. How did that come about?

MG: My co-author for that one, John J. Rust, is a big fan fiction writer. He has, I think, over two million words written [of] Harry Potter fan fiction. One of the other pieces of fan fiction he had was a sequel to War of the Worlds. It was probably novella-length. I read it and thought that it would make a really great novel, and the worldwide copyright on War of the Worlds was expiring. We did a little research and found out that the copyright did indeed expire on December 31st, 2016. So we teamed up and rewrote his fan fiction into a novel. We are both big Harry Turtledove fans, so we strove for realism and accuracy.

The premise is that when the Martians died in 1898, they left all their stuff behind. Tripods, communicators, everything. And the humans are a wily bunch, so they reverse-engineer all that stuff. Now that we have the technology, we don’t want to be attacked again. So we take the fight to Mars. The fight will feature Patton, Rommel, all these historic figures. It will be a classic alien invasion, except the humans are the aliens.

More books from Mark Gardner at Phoenix Comic con 2017.

NG: Interesting. How did you and John come to collaborate on this?

MG: We actually work together in radio broadcasting, and we’re both authors, and friends. So it came about that way. We pitched it to a few publishers, and we actually found out there was another author working on a different sequel [to] War of the Worlds. But it has been great, and we were able to sell our story to Severed Press, out of Tasmania.

NG: All right, I think with that we can ask your partner, John J. Rust, to step in and answer some questions. We can start with John where we left off with Mark, with War of the Worlds: Retaliation. Can you tell us how you came to be a part of this collaboration?

John J. Rust: As Mark said, this started as a fan fiction piece. One day I just got to thinking about War of the Worlds. I was thinking about when the Martians died, their tripods were left behind, mostly intact. A few tripods we’re taking out by the British army, but most of them would have been fine. The ships that brought them to Earth were still intact. If all this stuff was left lying around, still intact, I think it makes sense that humans would try to figure it out.

In my story, the humans are able to successfully reverse engineer the tech. And by 1924, humans have spaceships, tripods, jet fighters. I figured a 25-year gap would be enough for them to have reverse-engineered some of this stuff and also done an element of rebuilding in the cities.

NG: What makes you think that humanity would go after Mars?

JJR: Considering how devastating the invasion was — mind you, we only see it from the British perspective, but this was happening all over the world — millions must have died, cities must lie in ruin. I think that humanity would be so terrified of this happening again that their focus would be on going to Mars and stopping the Martians once and for all. We need to ensure that this tragedy never happens again. And of course, the attack changed history. Because this happened, there will be no first World War. Earth joins in an alliance to defeat Mars.

Mark Gardner at Phoenix Comic Con 2017. (2)

NG: With this role reversal, where the humans become the invaders, do we get a taste at all for Martian home life?

JJR: That is of course one of the things that we never see in the H.G. Wells novel, because everything is told from the point-of-view of the nameless narrator. And the answer is yes, we do. I wanted to see what would the Martians be thinking, what would their reaction be to their Cleansing Force having been killed off by bacteria?

Without giving too much away, in our novel the Martians are now afraid of humanity. We pose a threat, and not even through a weapon. Just by breathing, we pose a threat to them. So we find that in this 25-year gap, the Martians have become almost an isolationist race. They want nothing to do with Earth. They have a military leader (called the Supreme Guardian) who sees the threat that Earth poses, but his leaders won’t listen to him.

NG: Proving that politics is universal. I think that about covers War of the Worlds: Retaliation for us. What can you tell me about your other novels?

JJR: A lot of what I do is sci-fi or action adventure. Mark had mentioned Severed Press, they also published my novel Sea Raptor.

NG: Sea Raptor? What is that one about?

JJR: That one is about a group of Cryptid Hunters. The main characters are an ex-Army Ranger named Jack and a wildlife photographer named Karen. Jack has been out of the army for over a year, and this is a guy whose whole life was about becoming an Army Ranger. He achieves that goal, but during his service something happens (I won’t tell you what) and the Army has to let him go. So he gets hooked up with a group of Cryptid Hunters and they start investigating a new sea creature that has been killing people up and down the Jersey Shore. That investigation leads to the team learning about a whole new conspiracy. And we actually have a sequel to that one, called Reptilian, coming out in maybe another month or so.

Books from John J. Rust at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

Hardcovers from Mark Gardner & John J. Rust at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

NG: As we get close to wrapping up, do you think you and Mark would collaborate again? Do you have more to say in the Martian saga?

JJR: It is funny that you mention that, because probably in the next month or so we are going to be beginning a sequel to Retaliation. It is tentatively titled War of the Worlds: Firestorm. And that should pick up about 20 years after the events in Retaliation.

NG: As a final question, if people wanted to see more of your work, or find out more about your books, where would they look online?

MG: The best place to find out about everything Mark Gardner is article94.com. And my Twitter handle is article_94.

JJR: My Amazon page on amazon.com, and you can find me on Facebook as John J. Rust, author. I am also on Twitter @JohnJRust.

November 28, 2017

An Interview With Keith Foster of Kodoja (Phoenix Comic Con 2017)

November 28, 2017/ Neil Greenaway

Written by Neil Greenaway

At Phoenix Comic Con 2017 I had the chance to sit down and talk with Keith Foster of Kodoja about his take on publishing indie comics. This interview originally ran on Bleeding Cool on 6/05/2017, and you can read their version of it here.

Kaiju have been around for a long time, and they have amassed a huge following over the years. There are thousands of movies, games, novels and comics dedicated to the stories of these monsters’ destructive powers. At Phoenix Comic Con 2017 I met a man named Keith Foster who felt he had something new to add to the world of giant monsters. When he said that Cthulhu and the Elder Gods were involved, he really had my attention.

Neil Greenaway: Can you start by giving us just a little bit of backstory, what is going on in this series?

Keith Foster: Sure. So the series Kodoja is really two stories that kind of join. On one hand you have this giant-monster-on-the-loose side of the story, which is Kodoja itself, a 200 ft. tall super weapon gone wrong. The story starts with you finding out that there are some people remaining from a certain military division, they are the people who are left to deal with Kodoja. As luck would have it they are also the estranged creators, designers, and architects of the monster. Now they have to figure out how to shut down this thing that has been designed to be unstoppable. That is one part of it; the other part is that you have this Elder God’s factor – these creepy monsters that have possibly been here for a very long time all of a sudden rising up from the earth to do something presumably pretty bad. As that happens, Kodoja then starts tracking one of the giant monsters that comes up out of the ground and that leads to a big confrontation at the end of the first arc. And that is the narrative arc of it; you have a monster on the loose side that seemingly continues to outwit its creators and develops new techniques and tactics that shouldn’t have happened, it’s kind of thinking for itself. Then you also have this growing concern of other worldly evil that is going on as well.

NG: And that is where we come into Volume 2?

KF: Yes.

NG: You have the first 3 issues of the 2nd series, what is the length of that arc?

KF: Each arc is going to be 5 issues. The 2nd volume has 3 of the 5 issues out.

NG: Was the 1st series released as individual issues or was that just a graphic novel?

KF: Yes, it was issues. The very short version of Kodoja is that we self published it for a while. Then after about a year and a half, when the five issues had been done, we were approached by 215 Ink (the publisher) and ended up kind of taking our stuff down and re-launching it with issue 1 through 215 Ink. So it’s been single issues actually twice, a self published run and a 215 Ink run.

NG: When did you start this project?

KF: June 2012 was when the first issue came out, so maybe a year before that we actually started working on it. All 3 of us (the creative team) – myself who writes it, Rory Smith who does the interiors and Lance Pilgrim who does the graphic design and editing – we all have day jobs, so we put it out as often as we can. But life can get in the way and stuff happens. We are basically about to celebrate 5 years, and we did have that 1+ year of a holding pattern with the first 5 issues kind of re-launching.

Kodoja banner at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

NG: What can you tell me about the rest of the creative team working on it?

KF: Rory Smith (our artist) has – over the time that we have done Kodoja – switched jobs. He now has a day job in animation, so he now works for an animation studio. I love his style. Lance Pilgrim (our graphic design/editor), he does graphic design for his day job and he also does all the great treatments and creates the look of Kodoja. We keep the colors down and it kind of has the look of a propaganda poster feel, but updated as well, so like some bright colors that really pop.

It started with Lance and I. The whole thing started with a music project originally intended to be this lost Godzilla soundtrack that we were going to release. Then we had this music in our hands and we thought, what if we created our own story that kind of goes with this music? And so we did that and that was where Kodoja was born. What really drew Lance and I to Rory was that in his original art he used perspective incredibly well. He could just move the camera around in so many creative ways. He had never really done a lot of giant monster stuff before, but he was just a natural for it in his ability to just create these huge things.

NG: Speaking of the music, I see that you have several CD’s here. Is this meant to be accompanying music to the story?

KF: Yes it is. There are 3 CD’s. The first one is called Terror Mountain Showdown and it is the companion music for the first story-arc, also called Terror Mountain Showdown. Valley of the Giants, we just had that come out with the release of the 3rd issue, so that is the accompaniment to the 2nd arc. Then Sentient is a story all in itself with its own soundtrack, so it’s an audio drama. We harken back to the old school radio serials. It’s like 20-27 minutes, something like that, just a quick story that brings you to the doorstep of the first issue of Kodoja.

A kaiju poster at Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

NG: Is it you guys playing the music in that, or do you have another band that you use?

KF: I write the comic and I am the guitarist in the band Big Pimp Jones. We do the music to this. So that is the connection. There are couple guys in Big Pimp Jones and a couple guys that do the Kodoja stuff and I am the link between them.

NG: Nice. It must be great to have that bridge between your two loves. You had said earlier that this story was planned as a series of mini-series, how far forward does your plan go?

KF: We have concrete ideas for basically the first 5 mini-series. Which would be the first 25 issues. That 5th story will be the narrative arc that all the other narrative arcs kind of build to. Then we will take it from there. It could end or we could do something else with it. We will see what happens.

NG: It has to be asked: Are you building to any Island Of the Monsters type grand showdown of the beasts?

KF: I will answer your question like this – We definitely have a design on each arc to up-the-ante on monsters. So the further it goes along, the more monsters we are going to throw out there.

NG: Before we leave you today, is there anything else you think people should definitely know about the series?

KF: Giant monsters are awesome. Go out there and get some. Whether it is Kodoja or something else, I think that Kaiju have an untapped element of story telling.

NG: If people wanted to find out more about you guys or about Kodoja, where would we go to see that online?

KF: You could go to our website which is kodoja.com.

NG: Do you have any social media presence?

KF: I personally keep bigpimpjones on social media. Then we also have a Facebook page for Kodoja, the Kodoja website, @kodoja on Twitter and there might have been some social media thing that got invented in the last 4 hours and we are probably Kodoja on that as well.

Kaiju posters at the Kodoja table in Phoenix Comic Con 2017.

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