Discovering the Ethereal In Comics - An Interview With Dustin Brunell

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Written by Neil Greenaway

Ethereal Comics Banner

In the short time since Ethereal Comics has joined the throng of independent publishers on the market these days, the company has already distinguished itself with a line of varied and distinct titles. My own first exposure to the company was through their recent KickStarter campaign for the new book "If It Hops" - a story about anthropomorphic animal police in a world of surprisingly adult themes and consequences. Intrigued by what else the company might offer, I spoke to Dustin Brunell - publisher of (and often author for) Ethereal Comics.

An If It Hops sticker.

Nerd Team 30: How long has Ethereal been around?

Dustin Brunell: Ethereal Comics as a company was formed last year around Christmas. We published with a couple of friends before then that were kind enough to help us before we got our feet on solid ground.

NT30: So fairly new. Cool. Why did you start Ethereal? (And is it you alone running things)?

DB: I started Ethereal because I wanted a home and a legitimate company for all the talent we work with. It is me with my wife and Blayden Hunter, plus 35 talented folks.

NT30: That is a huge stable to be working with so quickly. Does it feel like the company is growing already, or do you still feel like you are finding your footing? Did you have comics experience before hand?

DB: Lots of folks to be sure, all tremendous people. I feel like year one was finding our footing, now it's all about growth. I owned a comic shop for a couple of years in Florida, been buying and selling since I was knee high. By the end of this year, we should have nine ongoing titles.

The Listener cover from Ethereal Comics.

NT30: Excellent! What was your first published title?

DB: We published The Listener issue 1 October 2020.

NT30: What was the first comic that you wrote?

DB: The Listener. I had never intended to write in all honesty. I was a big fan of writing Werewolf the Apocalypse campaigns and D&D games for folks. When we moved to TN my uncle died and I wrote a eulogy. Friends of ours in the industry said I should write comics. That pushed me in the "write" direction if you will. The Listener is loosely based on my uncle’s stories he would tell us. Spiced with theology and horror.

NT30: Is The Listener going to be an ongoing series?

DB: It's an ongoing title, we just finished up the preorders for issue #4 and the trade paperback for the first arc. Currently I have 28 issues written for it and will continue with it as long as the fans are interested.

NT30: Wow. Is the entire run connected to your uncle's stories? Or do you have to take it in its own direction as the series goes on?

DB: His stories are spiced throughout the series. His time in the service, stories about things he dealt with as a Native American, his beliefs in spirits. All of these things are tied heavily in.

NT30: Do you feel like his storytelling affected your own style?

DB: I don't think so, I think it was more of a push for me. All of our series are very different. I don't know if you could classify my writing style. At least I can't, I wouldn't know what to call it or how to explain it for that matter. I just go with the flow if that makes any sense.

NT30: You have a KickStarter campaign running for a new title right now, correct?

If It Hops #1 cover from Ethereal Comics.

DB: Yes. Currently If It Hops is running with a preview for Theater 7. Then the KickStarter for Greed #3 will start up in 2-3 weeks.

NT30: Can you give a brief pitch on If It Hops & Theatre 7?

DB: Absolutely, If It Hops is like an amalgamation of beauty and terror, wrapped in an anthropomorphic bow. Like if you made a smoothie with Zootopia and Seven. It follows Agent C as she chases a serial killer through the streets of Eden, and as she traverses further into the dark she begins to learn - all is not as it seems.

Theatre 7 is our first comedy, a tribute to the 90's with Cavewoman artist Devon Massey helming the art. Penny is a college student and avid movie enthusiast who gets a job at a newly renovated theatre. What she doesn't know is the Theatre has plans of its own for her. Think Quantum Leap meets Last Action Hero.

NT30: And can you tell us about what title is the next one in the pipeline?

DB: Greed #3 drops in a few weeks with a preview for Underland.

Greed is in the same world as The Listener but in modern day. It's about a young boy and his monster under the bed. Said monster has secrets of his own and inadvertently draws our young protagonist into a war between gods and monsters.

Underland is about a young engineer who gets drawn into a steam punk sort of world, and she is expected to save it - but all she wants to do is get home. It's a wonderful take on a story that's been around for ages. After that we're back to Babes, Gore and Dinosaurs with issue #3.

Babes, Gore and Dinosaurs cover from Ethereal Comics.

NT30: Have all of your issues run through KickStarter so far?

DB: Yep. We fund them first, which means all of our books are done or almost done by the end of the KickStarter. Our turnaround is generally 4-6 weeks from the end of the campaign. It's about the same time as ordering from Diamond.

NT30: As an independent publisher, does it feel like getting into Diamond Distribution still matters? Or does crowdfunding directly from the fans feel like the way forward?

DB: I wanted to get into Diamond and they were going to put BGD in but we couldn't agree on prices. Then I spoke to a few brick-and-mortars about things and it seems like cutting out the distribution middle man in favor of fans and shops is the way to go. For us anyway.

NT30: I've heard similar stories from other small publishers.

DB: Our books are already lower than a lot of indies - especially for the quality you're receiving. Going any lower and I couldn't afford the talent we use. I mean we don't just use anyone; we have team members who work at Marvel, DC, Zenescope, Image and Disney. I can't ask them to work for pennies.

NT30: I think that’s great. An awful lot of small publishers exist solely because of the low-to-nonexistent rate that their talent receives.

DB: It's like anything else though, ya know? You pay for what you get. If I'm going to stick out and people are going to know who we are we have to bring 110% to every aspect of what we do.

NT30: What titles have you published so far for Ethereal?

Greed #2 cover from Ethereal Comics.

DB: There are five that have already been released. The Listener/ Greed/ Babes, Gore and Dinosaurs/ If It Hops/ Theater 7. Then we've got Underland/ Fallen Leaves/ and a third book in development. Plus, our Australian company and our After Dark labels.

NT30: Do you have a team in Australia? What is After Dark?

DB: We'll be releasing different series from Ethereal Down Under and Ethereal After Dark later this year. Both with their own teams. Ethereal Down Under will be books we publish in Australia with Australian talent. The management team is already building that up now. Readers should look for the first book at the end of the year or the first quarter of next.

Then Ethereal After Dark is our mature publishing label which already has two books ready to release, we just haven't set dates yet.

NT30: That all sounds seriously ambitious!

DB: It's a lot of work but this is my full-time job, so it's no different than any other. Plus, our teams are amazing.

NT30: It sounds like you have a lot on your plate with several interesting new books coming out. Before we wrap up here, is there anything else that you would want readers to know about Ethereal?

DB: I would stress that we always give every issue everything we've got. And from one comic reader to another, it's always an adventure jumping into an Ethereal book. We grow with each issue and we want our readers to grow with us.

NT30: If our readers wanted to see more work from Ethereal, where would they look?

DB: Head over to WWW.Ethereal-Comics.com. That has everything on it, Instagram etc. I appreciate the interview, it was fun.

Greed #1 cover from Ethereal Comics.

Theatre 7 cover from Ethereal Comics.

Cover art from Ethereal Comics.

Comics, Movies, and The Prom of the Dead - An Interview With Dave Dwonch

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Written by Neil Greenaway

Dave Dwonch poses with with his banners and books at a convention. (2018)

Dave Dwonch is the kind of guy who has done it all in the comics industry. In 2010 he founded Action Lab Entertainment, where he would go on to write comics like Vamplets, Cyrus Perkins, Double Jumpers, and Infinite Seven. As Creative Director for Action Lab, Dave helped produce several other titles for the company - including the Eisner nominated Princeless. Though he works mainly as an author and editor these days, he has accrued a list of books that include credits as penciller, inker, letterer, and colorist. He has even been the cover artist for a handful of comics.

I first met Dave in 2015 at a convention in Phoenix, where he made it clear that he was an approachable and knowledgeable point of contact in the industry. In the years since then he has become a go-to source of comics publishing wisdom for me, and a real friend. Dave has a very gentle way of exposing harsh truths, always has a few minutes worth of GENUINE advice for up-and-coming creators, and really seems to care about the direction comics are headed. He is taking chances and making the kind of comics that he wants to read. If you see him at a convention, stop by and say hello, pick up one of his books. You wont be disappointed.

Prom of the Dead, cover by Santiago Guillen.

Neil Greenaway: I see that you have several new books out and we’ll talk a little about all of them. Why don’t you start out by telling us a bit about Prom of the Dead?

Dave Dwonch: Awesome, yeah. So, Prom of the Dead is my newest creator owned book. I just nailed the publisher down on it, they’re a bunch of guys out of Texas called Behemoth. They are going to push really hard in 2019. We met each other when I Kickstarted the book,  and some guy named Behemoth liked me on Kickstarter. I just started doing some research and I met up with them and they are really great guys, really enthusiastic about the business - and we worked out a deal. The book is really about three outcast friends that end up stuck in a zombie infested prom, voilá, Prom of the Dead. That said, it rapidly becomes less and less of a zombie book and more of a sci-fi horror series. It is scheduled to be a series (called SPORES) of three graphic novels, one a year. I’m just really excited to be doing something, stretching the muscles in my writing. I did Cyrus Perkins a few years back, but I wouldn’t say that was a horror book. I think it’s more in the horror / dram-edy area. It’s exciting stuff.

NG: Now with Cyrus Perkins being set in a kind of horror world, is there going to be any kind crossover? Will there be any tie in?

DD: You know it is so weird that you say that. Before Cyrus, all of my books tied in. If you read any one of my graphic novels they were all set in the same universe. Cyrus is the only one that didn’t. Prom definitely isn’t going to tie in to anything because the scope of the story is so vast and great that... I mean it’s truly the end of the world - I really can’t have that event affect all the other books that I love so much. I’m also working on a web comic that should be out soon, called Mind Palace. So, things are good. I’m not with Action Lab anymore. I was the president of the company for a couple years. I was the creative director for several more on top of that. But as I’m getting older I feel like I have the right to be a little selfish. I wanted to do me for a little bit. Now I’m working on a handful of new projects that are going to find homes, I may self-publish. I don’t know - I feel like I’m going forward and backward at the same time but it’s good.

NG: Now you had said that Prom of the Dead quickly moves itself out of the zombie horror genre. Is there going to be an introduction of other horrific figures?

Dave Dwonch (2018).

DD: Well it’s sci-fi, and I don’t want to spoil too much, but we will just say that the zombies are kind of like the first stage of the infection (if you even want to call it that). It evolves so that you will get more monsters. I wouldn’t really say there is going to be more typical monsters in that regard, but creatures.

NG: Very cool. As you had so many of your books out with Action Lab - and now that you are on your own - are we going to see continuations of any of those series?

DD: Oh yeah. In fact, Double Jumpers is getting a sequel. It’s so funny, I had it done - I’ve had the art and scripts done for like a year now - and were just waiting for the right time to put it on the schedule. But that’s going to be out in September, the first issue. There’s a deleted scene one-shot issue coming out digitally only on Comixology and I think I am going to tell them to put it out for free. I like the idea of putting books out for free. Comixology Unlimited is really good for me, a lot of my older books are on there. I’m going to put a new book on Unlimited probably to coincide with the first issue coming out.

NG: Just moving over a little bit, can you tell us about Infinite Seven, which is another of your newer series?

DD: Yeah. There was a rumor when - I think it was Skyfall came out - that James Bond was a code name, that all James Bond’s exist on the same timeline. I was really fascinated by that. It’s kind of how the Daniel Craig James Bond had the Aston Martin. I was like, yeah, that’s really cool that that can sit in the same universe. I liked the idea so much that I kind of took it and expanded upon it. So Infinite Seven is basically about seven master assassins that work for a secret world government. The only way to become one of the assassins in the group is to kill one of the members and replace them, so there is an infinite loop of agents coming into this. Well, a kid stumbles onto a conspiracy and accidentally kills one of the members. Now he has 72 hours to prove that he is worthy of it or they will just wipe him off the map completely, because he would be a liability at that point. It’s like a little fall-from-innocence as this teenage boy has to become a killer. Then, through that, gets a little motivation and honing of his skills in becoming the monster that he must become. So, we did eight issues of that. My artist, Arturo Mesa, and I are also working on another book right now called The Unbearable Grizzly Boy - an all ages hardcover series - and once we get that first hardcover done we’re back on to Infinite Seven. So more Infinite Seven next year for sure.

Some of the Nightmare Nursery plush figures from Vamplets.

NG: Changing gears a little bit, you do a lot of the darker (more adult) books - but then you have Vamplets. You were mentioning a new children’s series -

DD: Yeah, Cyrus Perkins is younger-age appropriate too. You know I don’t like to stick to one genre. I don’t like to stick to one set of readers. If you look at my table, it’s really colorful. Really diverse, sometimes really messed up and sometimes joyous right? For me it feels good to put on different hats - and that’s why I did Prom of the Dead. I love, REALLY unapologetically, LOVE teenage dramas. Don’t tell anyone, but I love The OC and I love 90210. On a long weekend you will see me eating ice cream watching really bad teen dramas. That is where Prom came from. I just wanted to write that you know? And I think it is fun. But it does speak to my darker sensibility because, like anything, I think a huge disaster like that will change people really quickly. So where it starts and where it ends are two very very different places. And then with Grizzly Boy we just wanted to do something... I have kids that come up to my tables at conventions and the little girls - they all love Vamplets. But I always feel bad about the quiet little brother that is next to them, that can’t have something to freak out over. Grizzly Boy is for them. It’s going to be the same oversized hardcover, it’s going to sit next to Vamplets and it’s going to speak to a younger reader. But like Vamplets, I feel that I don’t talk down to kids. I feel like parents might want to read it too. I have had many, many parents come up and say that they read it with their kids over and over again. So, I am hoping for the same with Grizzly Boy. I haven’t really written superhero stuff, so this will be my first real cape and tight book. For me it was important for it to have more of a social commentary element to it as well.

NG: Now with that being a hardcover in the same size and in the same age group would we expect to see crossovers or at least nods to the universe there?

DD: You know, it’s a good idea. There are some thematic parallels. In the Grizzly Boy book there is a magical place called the Underwoods and it’s very much like Gloomvania (from Vamplets) but the monsters are – I want to say they are a little sharper. They’re a little bit toothier. Imagine like a Thundercats enemy in a purply, almost upside-down world. So you will see themes that are similar but nothing that is going to crossover. Plus, I don’t own Vamplets. I am just one of the writers on the book, so it would be a little tough to navigate that.

Infinite Seven (2017) #5 C, cover by Dave Dwonch.

NG: I suppose that makes sense. It sounds like you have a lot going on! What’s next?

DD: Oh man, what’s next? Grizzly Boy for sure. More Infinite Seven. Eventually we are going to get to the Cyrus Perkins sequel, which is partially written but we were optioned a year ago and I started developing the TV show - and that informed the writing on the comic book - so we will see how they can play together. We are kind of in a holding pattern there until we can figure out where that is going to land. After that I am working on a book called Party Monster with my crazy, insane co-writer Brockton McKinney - who is just a joy to work with. The way we work is really interesting. We have a Google doc and I write a page, then he writes a page. It goes back and forth and it’s just like a swordfight or a sparring contest to see who can best the other, and the book is bananas. It’s crazy. So, you can look for that next year. After that, man I have a couple pitches - we’ll see where they land. More horror stuff - in fact, it’s really weird. I look at the stuff I’m working on and I feel like horror is pretty rad because you can cross genre on horror way easier than you can with any other genre or subgenre. It speaks to my dark side and I like that.

NG: You have said that you have another volume of Infinite Seven planned, is there a definitive endpoint to that series?

DD: I think every endpoint is just a new beginning, so we’ll see how far we can take it. I know that after the next four issues it jumps a year ahead, and because the nature of the book is so cyclical with the characters - it was a long year between the two volumes. It is a very, very different book after the next four issues. So, we’ll see how far we can get down that road. You know, it’s indie comics, it’s hard to keep a monthly book afloat. Some of the guys at Action Lab have been able to do it with books like Zombie Tramp and Dollface and Vamplets and stuff like that, but you know the fans for those books are rabid. They are what’s keeping those books out there. It’s a challenge but we will see if we can make a go of it. The reaction for Infinite Seven has been really great, it’s just trying to convince the retailers that it’s great - that’s the hard part I think.

NG: As retail space becomes harder and harder to come by for the indie comics, I’m noticing a lot of new retail options opening up - Comixology being one of them. They have recently announced they will be doing a print on demand side to their business. Are those more appealing than the brick and mortar stores?

Some of the graphic novels and trades from Dave Dwonch.

DD: For me no. I grew up working in comics shops and love the interaction that you have. You’re everyone’s bartender and I love that about comic shops. Anyone can come in and you can recommend the flavor of the month, or something that’s been hotly reviewed, or something that you just personally think they are going to like. You can’t really beat that in my opinion. Will that last? I hope so, but the industry is a tough one. Maybe digital will become more viable just because rent doesn’t go down. At $4 each, a comic shop is making maybe $2.25 an issue. Imagine that, like how many issues do I have to sell so I can pay my rent, own a business and make a living at it? It’s a tough business. We’ll see. I really do hope that the retailers get it together. The best retailers, they’re not going to go away because they understand that their retail space is based on their fans. They cater to their fans and they grow their business naturally and organically. I think that if a retailer only stocks Marvel, DC, and some Image - they are doing their fans a disservice. And I feel they are doing their business a disservice. What happens when Marvel or DC have a skip week? You’re not paying your bills. You have to cultivate the safety net for your own business, right? Whether you like it or not, it is part of the job. It’s not a vacation, it’s a job and the best retailers get that. The other ones don’t, and they go out of business.

NG: Speaking on other media  - having said that Cyrus Perkins had been optioned - I am wondering about your opinion. With the Marvel universe going really strong, Valiant just sold to a media company that hopes to extrapolate the comics into a media universe. Do you think that this is the time for indie comics to start moving into the other media as well?

Dave Dwonch (2018)

DD: You know I do. Whether or not the world at large understands (or knows) that I Kill Giants was a comic book series or graphic novel - I won't know that because it’s not like the ads are saying ‘Based On the Bestselling Graphic Novel By Joe Kelly’ right? They are just letting it go unsaid. I don’t know that the movie industry is necessarily designed to help the comics industry. We have the most creative people in entertainment working in comics, right? So of course, you are going to mine it. Unfortunately, any good idea can be optioned or made into a movie - and still never help the creator sell more books. I think it’s a balancing act. But yeah, I am excited. A good idea is a good idea is a good idea, and I love when people respect and appreciate and respond to what we do. I think there is going to be a little fatigue on the Marvel thing. I am a little worried about after Endgame because they are either going to get rid of the heavy hitters (and I say this even after the fact that Black Panther was huge). I’m worried about Star Wars a little bit. I’m worried that we may be at an oversaturation point. The Marvel TV shows I am not really that keen on. I feel like they are best when short lived. The longer they go the less impactful they are, or the more there are the less impactful they are.

NG: Yes, and I have heard a lot of that. Speaking of Star Wars - when Solo came out and underperformed, Disney immediately released statements saying that they were reevaluating their release schedule. Turns out maybe two Star Wars movies a year might be overkill.

Cyrus Perkins and the Haunted Taxi Cab, cover by Anna Lencioni.

DD: Yeah, well how about this: Putting a pretty good movie on the heels of a very polarizing movie was part of the problem. I think people were over Last Jedi and heard so much bad press about Solo that they thought "I’ll just wait". Now they are like "Oh crap, what are we going to do? Should we do another Solo movie?" I don’t know. I mean clearly, they are building it up to be 3 movies. You can see by the ending of that movie that they want more. Or they did want more whether or not that happens is hearsay at this point. It’s kind of amazing to me that Deadpool 2 could just destroy. That’s another thing – you look at the big blockbuster movies that were released right up to Solo and most of them are Disney movies and most of them killed. They re-released Black Panther again and it made more money than Solo just in that re-release. So yeah, it’s really really rough. I think that Star Wars, it used to be an every 2 or 3-year event, right? I used to love that you could build excitement around that, no so much anymore. But we’ll see. They are going to do an Obi-Wan movie I think. They are going to wrap up the current trilogy which they better stick the landing on; if they don’t stick the landing on the new Star Wars trilogy that could really hurt them.

NG: So, with that opinion rendered: Are you ever writing a story with an eye on other media? Or do you just write them to be comics and hope?

DD: Everyone accuses me of writing screenplays but that is just the way I write my scripts. I started as an artist, so in my mind everything is big and widescreen cinematic anyway. That is kind of how I write, and everyone is like "Wow, if you just took out the panel breakdowns this would make a really great movie script. I think I am clever. When I come up with something that I approve of, I write it. I don’t think that I am looking for a film deal at all. Whether or not someone from Hollywood or wherever sees the validity in the work, I’m much more into kids coming over and giving me reviews of my books. I have kids that will come buy my books, go up to their hotel rooms to read them, and come back down and give me honest reviews on my Instagram. It’s the cutest thing ever. I give a money back guarantee for kids, too. It’s pretty rad. So, I don’t really think like "Ooo this would make a perfect movie, this a great launching board." With that said I have a lot of Hollywood people who are asking me to develop stuff with them and for them, and they don’t know how to write a comic book. They don’t even know what would be cool in a comic book. It’s really weird to me because it feels like Hollywood reverse engineering (we need a comic book property, someone develop a comic book, so we can say based on a graphic novel) even though they know full well they are going to make a movie. So, I get notes from directors and producers and creators on that side of things and I’m like, "That doesn’t work in comics at all", and they don’t like to hear that. You know? It’s interesting. It’s a strange pendulum.

Mind Palace Season 1, cover by Santiago Guillen.

NG: With the prevalence of other media and the rise of digital, has the industry itself changed in the time you have been working?

DD: Oh man, I have been in it for a long time. I have been in it for about 15 years. I think comics have become more accessible. I think that retailers have gotten more cautious and jaded. I think that fandom itself is stronger and people want to read anything and everything. I don’t think it’s just Marvel and DC anymore - which I find ironic because the retailers are saying the exact opposite. I mean, on my side of things I think it has just gotten stronger. Creatively it’s gotten better and bigger. If you look at artist alley 10 years ago versus now, it’s night and day. I think everyone has stepped up their game. Even just the people who make prints - and there are a lot of those people too. I can’t knock them for making a living and a lot of them do very well. Do I wish that everyone who had an artist alley booth at a comic con had a comic book that I could read? Sure, for me that would be cool. But I think that everyone has upped their level.

NG: It is always good to hear an optimistic take on the industry! I think that probably wraps this up today but one last question for you. If people want to follow you, if people want to see more from you, where can we look online to do it?

DD: My website is called outofmymind.co or you can just find me @davedwonch (Twitter), @davedwonch (Instagram) or Facebook. I get around.

NG: Thank you for your time sir.

You can find most of Dave's comics at Comixology (by CLICKING HERE) and you can follow his webcomic, Mind Palace, at MindPalaceComic.com.

Stranger Comics On the Rise! - An Interview With Darrell May

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Written by Neil Greenaway

Sebastian Jones & Darrell May at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018. (1)

If you have been to a major comic convention in the past 2 or 3 years, you have probably heard of Stranger Comics. With the huge banners, cosplayers dressed as their characters, and a four-sided booth packed with sleek, black hardcovers - the presentation is impressive. But there is more than visual flair at work here, and it can be seen in the way that people line up to buy the books at conventions. It can be seen in the crowdfunding campaigns that raise well over their target amounts. Stranger Comics has curated a sterling reputation among their readers. As an independent publisher with a strong lineup of fantasy titles connected by a shared universe and tight story continuity - it is easy to see what appeals to longtime comic and fantasy fans. More importantly - with a diverse roster of creators working on the books and a real push to break the racial barriers set up by traditional fantasy, they are bringing new readers to a genre that may have excluded them previously. I sat down with Darrell May (Art Director & Chief Creative Officer of Stranger Comics) at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018 to talk about what the future holds for the company.

Darrell May in front of a Niobe banner.

Neil Greenaway: Can you let us know a bit about what it is you do with Stranger?

Darrell May: Yeah, I oversee the production and development of all intellectual properties here at Stranger Comics. So that could be anything: facilitating and designing, helping other artists, or actually completing my own stuff.

NG: What is your focus with Stranger Comics? What is your drive here?

DM: Right now our main focus has been on the Asunda franchise where Niobe - a lot of people know us through the Niobe series – she is our Luke Skywalker, our Aragorn, but she also happens to be our fantasy world’s messiah. So, kind of like the offspring of a deity essentially. This is kind of like a Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones style universe. Think high fantasy.

NG: I noticed that a lot of your covers feature various characters from the other books. Is this a connected universe?

DM: Yes, it is. Very much like Marvel or DC universe with shared heroes and villains. We do have a lot of continuity. This franchise has been in development probably about 30 years. I have known Sebastian (Jones) - who created the world of Asunda and is the publisher of Stranger Comics - since I was 19. I am now 40, so we have been developing this for a very long time.

NG: Wow, more than 20 years together! Now you had told me earlier that it was important to you to have strong black female creators as well as characters. Could you speak to that a little bit?

DM: Yes. A lot of what we do is not really hero-centric stuff. And in our experience, here in the United States most media is catered to a Caucasian male demographic. I grew up being able to recognize that - hey, Luke Skywalker looks like me! I was a little blonde kid from the United States, so I could identify with that character. It’s extremely important for people to identify with heroes that look like them. I feel like there is a responsibility to do that with my company. That is why I work with people from all over the globe, from different races and nationalities, and have them as a part of the Stranger family. It was important because I can draw books, I can layout and design characters, but I can't speak to that experience. It was important for us to have a young black woman drawing Niobe, we have a young black woman cowriting Niobe. It was just important for us to expand representation in our media. I love drawing Niobe, but on the Niobe: She is Life series and Niobe: She is Death (and eventually we will be doing Niobe: She is Spirit) I am going to want to make sure and have a young artist of African heritage drawing that book every time. It’s important.

The Untamed, Niobe, and a few other Stranger Comics titles at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018.

I Am Living In Two Homes & Piñata, both from Stranger Comics.

A stack of The Untamed, Niobe, & Dusu hardcovers at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018.

NG: Now is it difficult being a white male trying to champion representation for other people at this point?

DM: No, I just go ahead and do it. I majored in Anthropology. I didn’t go to art school. I told my grandma ‘Hey grandma I don’t want to go to art school’. And she asked, ‘Why not?’ I told her ‘I don’t want to draw fruit,’ basically - and that was my bad joke at the time. But we at Stranger have a very clear vision, and I have no problem stepping aside and letting someone else handle stuff that I helped design and curate. Like my friend Ashley A. Woods (who drew Niobe) her version of Morka Moa - a villain I created that ended up being in the series - is amazing. It’s not my version, it’s her version - and her version is awesome! You know what I mean? And I take pride in seeing that. I love seeing Jim Lee draw Darkseid even though Jack Kirby created him. I love seeing artists, like Michael Turner’s version of Darkseid in the Superman/Batman series. It’s important to have variety. Variety is the spice of life. I will work with anyone who’s good at what they do, and it doesn’t matter who they are. But on certain projects with us we’re going to want certain artists, certain writers and creators - because I feel it’s important.

Sebastian Jones with a Stranger Comics banner.

NG: Now what are you guys doing for your distribution model? Are you releasing books through Diamond?

DM: Yeah, on the trade paperbacks and stuff, but our model is very different. We do heavy sales at conventions and we have an online store; all our stuff is available on Amazon and Ingram, but I am not doing the single issues monthly. It’s hard to keep up with the pace, that’s why a lot of companies tend to collapse - trying to keep that pace. So, we have to keep things lean and mean. So, our model is a little different that the traditional independent publisher because we are a new breed of independent publisher.

NG: Now, can you tell me a little bit about Dusu?

DM: Dusu is the story of a human being raised by Galemren wild elves. There are 4 different types of elves in our world, Galemren happen to be what we call wild elves. Those wild elves specifically are from the Ugoma forest which takes place in Ujoa. Ujoa is our Africa in the world of Asunda. So, humans and elves and dwarves and gnomes from Ujoa are all black.

NG: Ok. Black dwarves? That's cool.

DM: Yes, absolutely. My new series Morka Moa: Rise of the Jade Lord features mostly black dwarves. They are the heroes in the story. So, it’s important to see that kind of stuff. Dusu, though has the spirit of the cougar within him and he’s being hunted by the spirit of the wolf (which is Delgoth who is a marauding Viking and hails from a more eastern European part of our world, Russia essentially). He has the spirit of the wolf within him and he has come to devour Dusu before he manifests his power because (like in Highlander) they wipe each other out to gain their power. They get more powerful when they devour other animal totems - so the wolf would eat the cougar and take its power, or the mouse or even the whale for that matter. They are usurping god powers when they devour other totems. That’s what that series is about.

The Untamed & Niobe banners look over the comics at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018.

NG: Looking at your layout, you guys already have a base of about 5-7 titles that you are concentrating on and really pushing. Would you like to see those core titles get a bit more recognition, or expand the universe instead? Maybe both?

DM: The universe is being expanded as we speak. And those titles have sequels. The Untamed: A Sinners Prayer was the first book we ever put out - we already have a sequel to it, it’s called Killing Floor. It ties into all this universal world building as well. So, the main villain in that series is Essessa, our editor in chief Joshua Cozine and Sebastian Jones are actually working on an Essessa book right now which also ties into Morka Moa and Niobe. These different characters are all being introduced, and characters are returning into other titles, crossing titles. Niobe is going to be in the Essessa book.

NG: Also, just so our readers know, can you tell me a little bit about Erathune?

DM: Erathune is a book that I co-wrote. It’s based off a D&D adventure I ran over 10 years ago and it’s about Buxton Stonebeard who has a cursed ax of death. There is a goddess of death in our world and death (like in our world) falls on everyone, the good and the bad. So death has called him to come back to his homeland - upon pain of death - to kill his wicked brother... And you’re just going to have to read it to find out the rest. (laughs) But it is based off an actual D&D adventure I ran, so we have Pathfinder 3.5 stats for a level 17 ogre the size of Kong.

Terrance Bouldin-Johnson in his Dusu cosplay.

NG: So bring a Tank and a Healer.

DM: Yeah, it’s good times.

NG: Now going back to Dusu for just a minute: I know that when I see you guys at shows you have a guy who dresses as Dusu, and he looks just like the character!

DM: Yeah, he’s our friend Terrance Bouldin-Johnson. He’s one of our executive partners as well. Yeah, he cosplays as Dusu.

NG: Did you guys just luck into that physicality? Or is the character based on him?

DM: No, he became a fan after the book was out and he’s become a friend and one of our business partners.

NG: So, it was just luck then. That is awesome, and he looks great in costume.

DM: He’s our booth babe.

NG: Well that’s hot.

DM: Yeah.

NG: I notice that you guys are doing just a simple black hardcover for your collections. It’s very classy looking. How did you guys settle on that?

DM: Sebastian did. It’s what he wanted. We have a bit of a model for what we are doing with our oversize hardcovers, we want them to be just beautiful. Our Kickstarters usually pledge for $25 to $30 for these oversized hardcovers. Those same editions that people are buying here at the show sell for over $60. So, our Kickstarter backers get something more. We always have a new Kickstarter coming up.

NG: Your next Kickstarter is going to be for the Erathune hardcover, correct?

DM: Yeah, that's the next hardcover that we’ll be releasing. It’s that plus we will be doing Niobe: She is Death issue 2 and Essessa issue one. 

The Untamed hardcover from Stranger Comics.

The Niobe: She Is Life hardcover from Stranger Comics.

The Dusu: Path of the Ancient hardcover from Stranger Comics.

The Erathune hardcover from Stranger Comics.

NG: Other than the Erathune Kickstarter are there any other upcoming projects you can tell us about?

DM: Yes, I have a book that I am on issue 5 on and it’s a six-issue series and it’s called Morka Moa: Rise of the Jade Lord where we are connecting some dots and we are learning the history of one of our main villains. So, it’s going to be a lot of fun and I’m working on finishing that up right now. There is some other really big stuff in development right now, but we can't talk about it yet.

Sebastian Jones & Darrell May at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018. (2)

NG: All right, awesome. If people wanted to follow Stranger Comics or see more of you is there a digital or online presence where they can find you?

DM: Absolutely. The website is strangercomics.com. We have a presence on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. Stranger Comics, just Google it and you’ll be able to find us.

NG: Cool. I think that about wraps it up for me. Thank you for your time.

DM: No problem man. Thank you.

A short while after I spoke with Darrell, it was announced that HBO would be developing a new television series based on the world of Asunda. At SDCC 2019 it was revealed that Prentice Penny (the showrunner of HBO's Insecure) would be joining series creator Sebastian Jones with both credited as co-writers and executive producers. Mimi DiTrani (Stranger Comics VP of Film & TV) and David Levine (former SVP of HBO) are also attached as executive producers. Echoing the timeline of the comics, the first season of the show will focus on the story of The Untamed.

Villainy, Chaotic Gods, & Self Publishing - An Interview With Aneeka Richins

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Written by Neil Greenaway

Aneeka Richins at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018. (1)

Aneeka Richins sits in rarefied air as a creator. In 2010 she started writing and drawing her own webcomic, Not A Villain. In 2012 she ran a successful Kickstarter campaign to fund a Not A Villain graphic novel and, in the same year, released the first novel in her prose series - Chaos Gods: The Wanted Child. By the time I sat down to chat with Aneeka at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018, she had just released the third novel in her Chaos Gods series and was only a week away from successfully funding the fifth graphic novel in the Not A Villain series. And eight years in she still does it alone, handling both the writing and art duties in her comics (and even illustrating the covers to her novels). I was eager to listen as she spoke about her growth as an artist, the changing publishing model for independents, and the struggles that come with original IP. 

Chaos Gods: The Wanted Child - by Aneeka Richins.

Neil Greenaway: First, you have two series here: a prose and a graphic novel series. Are they connected?

Aneeka Richins: No, they are completely different.

NG: Cool. Can you give us a rundown on what each universe entails?

AR: The Chaos Gods series is set in a world of nine gods and the main character, Ki. To save her parents she has to train a hero destined to kill her.

Then Not a Villain is a graphic novel series set in a virtual reality world. The main character (Kleya) is a genius hacker. She’s trying her best to be good and not take over the world anymore.

NG: Anymore?

AR: Key point - anymore.  It’s very difficult for her.

NG: Fair enough. So, the prose books I imagine you wrote alone?

AR: Yes.

NG: With the Not a Villain series, do you do that alone as well?

AR: I do it all.

NG: Oh wow.

AR: I do it all except make the paper.

NG: Well that is a shame.

AR: I know.

NG: (laughs) I mean where did all the artisan work go?

Not A Villain Volume 1 - by Aneeka Richins.

AR: I need to buy a tree farm but haven’t done it yet. (laughs)

NG: I see that you already have several books in each series. How long have you been working on each of them?

AR: The Chaos Gods series has been going for about nine years now - since I got the idea in my head and I started writing them. But published for about 5 or 6 years now. The Not a Villain series started out as a novel, my background is novel writing, but the different settings - the jumping around, the virtual reality section - I knew it would work better in a visual format. I couldn’t afford an artist at the time, so I started teaching myself how to draw and about a year later I started the web comic.

NG: Are you an artist who is never happy with your own art? Or do you like the way it came out?

AR: I... from the very beginning, I’ve never been a perfectionist with my art because I am learning still, and I know I am learning. I see the web comic as a way to improve and continue to experiment, so I’m not a perfectionist, no. With the storyline and storytelling, I am more of a perfectionist in that area.

NG: How far forward do you plot?

AR: A long ways. I have the ending and everything pretty much all done.

NG: Very nice. If you already know where it ends, how long is the journey between here and there?

AR: So that’s the difficult part. How I like to describe my plotting process is this: When you go on a road trip and you’re going from LA to New York, you know the towns you want to go through. You know the basic route and the amount of money you have to get to that route, but as you’re driving you may have a detour, construction, your car may break down. So you have to re-evaluate that. Or you’re like, "Hey I didn’t know that this cool place was so close to that town", so you add on. You may have thought your trip was going to take two weeks but it takes four weeks or more. I’m estimating somewhere between 20 and 40 volumes for the series.

Aneeka Richins at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018. (2)

NG: Wow.

AR: Right now, I just finished the fifth one and I’m working on the sixth.

NG: So, this is going to go on for a while then.

AR: Yes, it’s a very massive story.

NG: Jumping back to the prose novels just quickly: You do the art in the graphic novel. Do you also illustrate the covers of your books?

AR: Yes, I do.

NG: I notice the covers for the two series are done in fairly different styles. Is that on purpose?

AR: Yes. Actually, Not a Villain has several distinct art styles in order to show the different settings. The life setting is very simple, very basic - because it’s bandwidth friendly for everyone to log in. So, to make it look like that I made the art look very simple, very basic. Then you have the game which is a lot more intensive colors. Then to show when we are offline, or we are not in any type of virtual reality format I do an entirely different art style, a more realistic format. The reason why I did the different art styles is because when I was starting to learn how to draw I read up on several different artists. I read that they felt trapped in a cartoony style, or the one that they started with - particularly Fred (Gallagher) from Megatokoyo - and I didn’t want that same experience because I knew I would be going through this for several years. So, for virtual reality I thought, "Well, we can change the setting".

NG: In speaking to independent comics creators I find that a lot of times they will make a book in the beginning of their careers and just stop because they are not happy with the art they started with.

AR: And they will redo the art each time they restart. Correct, I saw that too - and even though I hate the art in book 1, book 2, book 3 and so on - I have a hard time looking at the art nowadays - but I still enjoy the story. I think the story is solid, I think the characters are good and I’m a firm believer that story is key, and art is second. You can have beautiful art but if you don’t have a story to support it no one is going to care. But I just know from my love of reading web comics that if it has a really good story, I don’t care if it’s stick figures. I will read it.

The Chaos Gods series, by Aneeka Richins.

The Not A Villain series by Aneeka Richins.

NG: I assume this is all independently published, do you self-publish everything?

AR: Yes I do.

NG: Have you ever thought about moving to a publisher, does that appeal to you at all?

Not A Villain Volume 2 - by Aneeka Richins.

AR: It depends on what they are willing to offer and what they will bring to the table. If all they want to do is take all the control and then 90% of the profit and give me the leftover 10%, then no.

NG: So you are happy with the self-publishing model?

AR: Yes, for now.

NG: Do you do any sort of crowdfunding?

AR: Yes, I do Kickstarters. Book five is going right now.

NG: As an independent publisher who’s been doing this for a while, what is your opinion: I find a lot people talking about the death of the current publishing model, do you think that that rings true? Do you see the way you are doing it as the new way forward?

AR: Yes and no. There’s a variety of people and everyone has their own way of handling things. I don’t think the old way of just – how do I put this? If you go with a traditional publisher, they are expecting you to market. They are expecting you to pull your weight and do all the work. What I object to is that you do all this work (which I’m already doing self-publishing) but with a publisher I only get 5% of the profits, while self-publishing I get 70% of the profits and I’m doing basically the same amount of marketing effort on both sides. Also, the traditional publishers are too behind on understanding the sales. When I try a new marketing tactic I can look at my sales and I see it day to day and I can say, "Ok this worked". Or if no sales were made I can say, "Ok don’t ever do that again". But with traditional publishing you don’t find out that information - those day to day sales. Sometimes you only get quarterly sales. So you don’t know if any of your marketing tactics worked, and you get those results 6 months to a year later.

Chaos Gods: The Servant Lord - by Aneeka Richins.

Let’s say you put in hundreds of dollars and 20, 50 or a hundred hours into this marketing tactic that they told you would work, and six months later you find out that it was a total waste. And you’ve been doing that for the past six months! That really hurts! For me I can start putting in the hours and see, oh this is not working. Change, change, change, change. I just think that if the traditional publishers want to stay in business they need to upgrade faster, which is really hard. It’s like us old folks. (laughs) Us 30-something people we have our own phone, our own way of doing our computer and then they have an update come in and it messes all your systems up and it’s really annoying and it’s really hard to update sometimes.

NG: I have heard a lot of people saying that just the lack of desire of original characters anymore - the fact that you can’t write an original character anymore or the company owns it - is pushing a lot of recycled product. In that way do you feel that offering something new, something people haven’t seen, has an appeal?

AR: Yes and no. The key point, especially when you are at a convention, is that when people are wandering around they are looking for a character that they have an emotional connection with already. That’s why fan art sells so easily - because the artist doesn’t have to create an emotional bond with the buyer. They see that character and they already have the emotional bond. You’re just feeding on that emotional bond with the art that you made. That’s why fan art sells so easily. With my original work I have no emotional bonds to the buyer. If they don’t know my character, they have no emotional bonds with it - so it requires me to be more proactive. I need to bring people to my table, I need to give my pitch, I need to hone my pitch and make it enticing enough that they will be willing to try and read it in order to develop that emotional bond. So that’s the aspect you have to look at. You can’t just draw art and expect them to develop the emotional bond that you personally have with your character. It’s a lot easier to sell an original character when you have a story to go with it.

NG: Ok. I notice that you don’t have any at your table, but have you dabbled in fan art at all?

AR: I’m afraid I’m the weird one who has never had any interest in fan art.

Not A Villain Volume 3 - by Aneeka Richins.

NG: I hear that a lot more, and - well honestly, I see it go both ways, I see people lean into it hard and I see people swear it off completely.

AR: I have friends who love doing fan art. That is just what they love doing. I have never had that passion. They do. I have too many characters of my own, I have no room for other people’s characters. There are artists who don’t have any of their own characters, they have an emotional bond with these others and that’s how they interact. That’s what the fan art is for to them.

NG: Do you hold any animosity towards those who do fan art?

AR: I understand the purpose of fan art, it has a lot of pros to it. I also see a lot of cons to it. And I know the frustration I have seen with other artists, where they make a lot of money with their fan art. Then when they try to switch to their own original work, no one is buying them in comparison to the fan art - which sold like hot cakes. So, it’s usually a huge downer to them and they give up on their original work because they can’t get the sales. It’s really because they were trying to apply the same tactic to selling both, but they are two completely different beasts. You can’t do that. I’ve always been wondering myself how – because fan art is technically illegal - you are making money off someone else’s hard work that they did. I don’t know. I mean, I’ve been toying with ideas of how to make it more legal. I mean I don’t think fan art should be banned, I just think we need to develop a way that it can be encouraged but at the same time you don’t feed off someone else’s work fully. You know what I mean? I just want to be more fair somehow but not banned. I know people love doing it and personally I have characters I love. If I see a piece of fan art that really gets a character - I rarely buy fan art - but there a few where I’m like, "I really like how you did that".

NG: Then feeding off that just a little, has anyone ever done fan art of one of your characters?

Chaos Gods: The Unified God - by Aneeka Richins.

AR: Yeah and it’s a lot of fun. I have not yet seen them selling it and this is why I want to figure out a way to work with it. Because I know eventually people will start selling fan art of my stuff - because I intend to get famous like everybody (just add my name to that long list) - and I don’t want to discourage people. At the same time, if I get famous it takes me 20 years. If I come to the convention and someone is selling my characters like hot cakes, and they don’t know the 20 years that I put in... I just feel like, "Wait a second". Again, that’s why I am trying to figure out a way to make this a little more fair.

NG: Going back to the books, you had said that the Kickstarter campaign for book five of Not A Villain would be up soon, with a release coming in October. How often do you put out a new Chaos Gods novel?

AR: Every year and a half.

NG: So, when would the next one of those be ready?

AR: Next year. This one just came out, The Unified Gods {Chaos Gods Book 3}.

NG: I think that just about wraps up the questions that I had for you, but I do have one final query. If people want to see more of you, experience more of the story, where can we find you online?

AR: You can type in Not a Villain in Google and find me or you can go to navcomic.com or aneekarichins.com.

NG: And is Not a Villain still posted as a web comic?

AR: Yes, it is.

NG: And how often does that go up?

AR: Twice a week, Tuesdays and Fridays.

NG: Everyone reading needs to check that out! Thank you for your time.

You can also find Ms. Richins' books on Amazon.

Not A Villain Volume 4 - by Aneeka Richins.

Aneeka Richins at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018. (3)

Lucid Dreaming With Rio Burton at Fort Collins Comic Con 2018

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Written by Neil Greenaway

Rio Burton at Fort Collins Comic Con 2018. (1)

Fort Collins Comic Con is always an interesting show for me. Even though it is a relatively small show, and the vendors are almost all artists from the local scene, I ALWAYS see projects that I was not previously aware of and meet people whose work I have never seen before. Such was the case with FCCC 2018 and the illustration work of Rio Burton.

Inktober 2018 Witches - Day 16 by Rio Burton.

As a student, Rio had lived in the UK for 6 years and earned her BA Degree in Illustration before taking a few years off to travel the world with her husband, Rob. Now settled in Colorado and working full-time as a freelance artist, she recently released the third issue of Lucid Dreaming - her self-published comic about a boy living in a world without dreams (available on Comixology and WebToon).

I thoroughly enjoy Ms. Burton's art. She draws an elegant, effortless looking line with her inks and uses a lighting technique (combined with pops of bright color) that lend her pieces an ethereal, backlit glow. I am excited to see what she does next, she strikes me as an artist with a lot left to say.

Neil Greenaway: Can you start us out just a little bit by telling us what Lucid Dreaming is all about?

Lucid Dreaming #2 by Rio Burton.

Rio Burton: Sure. Lucid Dreaming is set in a dystopian future, where everyone has lost the ability to dream. It’s a crappy world and no one is happy. So, everyone finds their escape through a drug (called a “Fix”) which enables them to dream - but it has negative side effects on the body. You end up just overdosing and deteriorating mentally and physically. In this world is a boy that can dream naturally, but unlike the drug - which gives you these really good dreams - his dreams are a mix; they can be bad. They cause him to question his life, and he wants to find answers as to why the world is the way it is. His dreams push him to seek out answers, and he is travelling to find these answers - but he doesn’t know really what they mean. That is (basically) the story.

NG: How far into it are you?

RB: I am currently working on the third chapter. Each chapter is about 30 pages long and I am planning it to span 12 to 15 chapters.

NG: What is your release schedule like on this? How often does it come out?

RB: I am trying to release it once a month, but it depends on how much client work I get during that month. So sometimes it is every other month.

NG: What sort of art do you do for your client work?

RB: Right now I am working on comic books, but I have in the past done various projects: book covers, table top games, random things. It’s quite interesting because this year is my first year going full time into illustration. Before that I was working a second job, and we have had kind of a roller coaster of a life - let me tell you. I used to live in England. My husband and I went travelling for a couple of years around the world and when we went back we found that they had changed the immigration rules. So all of a sudden I had to move back to America. We had to get his green card, and I just got so caught up in working a dead end job - just to try and get all that sorted out. I felt like I had lost my opportunity to work as an illustrator full time. It was kind of a dark time, and I am so happy I climbed out of that.

The Thing by Rio Burton.

NG: What motivated you to get back into art?

RB: Well I never stopped. I was always working on it on the side, but I just felt like I missed the opportunity to do it as a career. It was actually talking to Jen Bartel that... She really gave me a kick up the butt, like, it’s not too late. Just go for it! So I did, and ever since then doors have been opening. It’s only really been a couple of years since that conversation with her, but it has really changed my life. I owe a lot to her.

NG: That is so cool. Looking at your art, I see that you have quite a few wolves. Is that because wolves factor into one of your projects or is it just a personal fascination for you?

RB: That’s a personal fascination. That actually is how Dailen Ogden and I bonded.

NG: Really?

RB: Yes. I love wolves, I always have. I started doing a couple wolf pieces and found that there is a market out there for people who also love wolves. It’s really fantastic. I love to do wolf pieces for comic conventions.

NG: You find that the fans like them as well?

RB: Yeah, yeah.

NG: Wolves are awesome. When you are creating your art, do you usually work traditionally or digitally?

RB: I used to start off traditionally. I would ink traditionally, scan it in, and do the rest in photoshop - but now it’s all purely photoshop. That took a while to get used to.

Original art by Rio Burton for sale at Fort Collins Comic Con 2018.

NG: As someone who used to work traditionally and moved into digital, does it bother you not having a piece that you can hold at the end of the day?

RB: It actually doesn’t. I find that my work is more flexible. I feel like in a way I have more confidence working digitally.

NG: Really? Why is that?

RB: Yeah. At first, it didn’t start off like that at all. Now I feel like it’s easier for me to make mistakes and easier for me to change the piece as I’m working on it. Whereas when I was inking traditionally it was kind of just set in its way, now as I am working digitally I can change things so much easier. So I feel more confident in my work. I also think about the environmental impact that is might have, you know? The effects that it has on the environment producing paints and paper. So, it’s an interesting thought.

NG: Speaking of that, I think the European rules on cadmium in paint just changed. I have been hearing a lot of artists complaining because paint companies are going through and removing all of the heavy metals - and a whole lot of popular colors are disappearing off the shelves. I am a fan of traditional art myself, but I think that the change in color availability might affect more people going digital.

Flightless by Rio Burton.

RB: Yeah, it is interesting. I mean, I love digital because I have all the colors I want right there. I can pick and choose. I adjust my hues, saturation, and colors all the time - like a DJ. So, it’s really easy to make those changes and have all these colors you want without having to buy every color off the shelf and stick to it.

NG: Going back to Lucid Dreaming for a minute, are you the only one working on it? Do you write and draw?

RB: Yeah, yeah.

NG: In your mind do you have the whole story planned out? Do you know the whole arc of the story?

RB: Yup. I have the whole script written out.

NG: Oh wow.

RB: I haven’t divided it all up into the chapters yet, so I am kind of doing that as I go along, finding good stopping points for each chapter. That’s why I only have an estimation as to how long it is going to be. But yeah, I have the full script. It’s just actually making the comic now.

NG: That is a huge step. There are a lot of people doing web comics, just sort of making it up week by week, and I honestly can’t fathom how that works in their brain.

RB: I can’t fathom that either. I like to know where I am going. I think I would get a lot of anxiety trying to think of what’s going to happen next each week, so you know hats off to them for being able to do that.

Lucid Dreaming (2018) #2 pg.13, by Rio Burton.

NG: As your story deals with dreams primarily, is there going to be – I don’t necessarily want to call it dimension hopping because it would be dreams - but will he be visiting different versions of the dream reality in the story? Or is it a stayed world when he goes to the dream place?

RB: It’s more like very quick clips and visions; snapshots of different scenes. I wanted it to not quite make sense because it doesn’t make sense to him, so it leaves you kind of questioning, "Ok what was the meaning behind that dream?" I just saw all these little snapshots and him trying to piece together what it means. And some of his dreams are flashbacks to his background story so you get an insight also into what drives him forward.

NG: Nice! If you were to classify this story, is it a fantasy, mystery, horror perhaps?

RB: A sci-fi drama.

NG: A sci-fi drama, very cool.

RB: Yeah.

NG: And just because it is the hot topic these days, could you ever see it transferring to other media or is this one comics only?

RB: I would love to see it transfer to other media. I would be fascinating to see especially if someone else was working on it - to see their take on it, what they take from the story and their vision. How they would envision his world. I would find that very interesting.

NG: It used to be such a pipe dream, you had Marvel and DC making movies in a void - but these days I have found there’s quite the well spring of little film start-ups just like there are little comic start-ups and a lot of them are looking at smaller indie comic projects to do short films on.  In the past year or two I have had several friends say "Some film company approached me and wanted to do a little short movie." It is happening more and more.

Enamel pins available from Rio Burton at Fort Collins Comic Con 2018.

RB: I think it’s great. I love it. I love all forms of storytelling.

NG: If you love all forms of storytelling, if I may go back just one step further, what inspired you to start writing? If you had started as an illustrator.

RB: I actually always loved writing, I just never went down that path because I saw myself as a concept artist for games. I got into that when I was little, playing Final Fantasy VII, going through the guidebook. I just loved all the character art and that’s what I wanted to do. I would develop these characters to go along with these stories I was writing in school, instead of doing my schoolwork. I just fell down the illustration path and didn’t really focus on writing so much. Now I’m veering back towards that passion. It’s just interesting to see where your life takes you.

NG: Yes ma’am, it sure is. Now that you have the writing bug again, would you ever consider moving yourself into a different medium? Do you have any interest in a novel or perhaps writing a script?

RB: I do. I actually have a novel in my head that I don’t know if I am ever going to get the opportunity to write, but I don’t see it as a comic. That is just kind of up on the shelf. I don’t know if I’ll ever touch it, but it interests me. I consume books and films.

NG: I have noticed a lot more novels springing up at comic cons. People obviously like the artistic aspect but novels are also selling here so…

RB: Yeah, and I think it is easier now because you can self-publish. More people are able to try and get themselves out there.

Variant Cover for The Liminal #2 done by Rio Burton.

NG: I know that CreateSpace has helped a lot of people out with the print-on-demand option. That is a cool thing that the industry is doing. I know that you are working on other comic projects that you can't talk about, so I won’t ask. Aside from those and Lucid Dreaming is there anything else on the horizon for you?

RB: Well so far, I just recently quit my second job and went into this full time. I have some savings set aside so that I can just focus on Lucid Dreaming. I really want to push myself and get that out there but as I have been working on it other opportunities have opened up in comics. So I am kind of juggling everything right now.

NG: Such as the variant cover you did for Dailen Ogden's book The Liminal?

RB: Yes! Dailen is such a sweetheart and hopefully by the end of the year we will be working on a comic together, she wants to write it and I will be doing the art. We are both very excited but trying not to get too excited right now, so we can focus on our other work.

NG: Yeah, got to get through the other projects first.

RB: Yes

NG: Cool. As a closing question for you - if people wanted to know more, if people wanted to find you online where do we look?

RB: You can look on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook those are the major ones. I am @RioBurtonArtist Twitter. On Instagram it’s just @rioburton and it’s Rio Burton Illustrator on Facebook, and I have a website rioburtonillustration.com.

NG: Also, if people were to reach out to you, are you available for commissions?

RB: I am, yes. I have some information on my website concerning commissions. Feel free to reach out to me. Depending on my schedule, hopefully I can help you out.

NG: I think that about wraps it up for us, thank you for your time.

Rio Burton’s table banner at Fort Collins Comic Con 2018.

Rio Burton at Fort Collins Comic Con @018. (2)

Rio Burton at Fort Collins Comic Con @018. (2)

TOG + Rose by Rio Burton.

When Baked Things Attack Fort Collins Comic Con! - An Interview With Elisa Sargent & Laurissa Hughes

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Written by Neil Greenaway

Elisa Sargent & Laurissa Hughes at Fort Collins Comic Con 2018. (1)

When a lovelorn chef makes a deal with Stan (the devil's-left-hand) and his pastries start coming out a little bit evil, its up to 11-year-old sleuths Lilly and Sol to save the day! If the premise of the new graphic novel - When Baked Things Attack from Elisa Sargent & Laurissa Hughes - does not grab you, the animatronic cupcake monsters they keep caged at their table definitely will! When the book debuted at Fort Collins Comic Con 2018, there was a throng of people gathered around their display and I heard several rave reviews from fellow artists at the show. I had to speak with the creators behind these catastrophe causing cake-monsters. The pair told me about how they got together for the book, the project's past (and possible future) in film, and what we can expect to see from them next.

When Baked Things Attack (2018) by Elisa Sargent & Laurissa Hughes.

Neil Greenaway: So first for Elisa, I understand that this idea started as a short film, is that correct?

Elisa Sargent: Yes, that is correct. It actually goes back to when I was hanging out with my younger brothers and they were having little battles, so I decided to calm everything down. We actually got the family camcorder and we made the movie When Baked Thing Attack. We used things like pillows and sheets and everything; we sort of taped up Nilla Wafers on fishing wire to the ceiling fan and flipped on the fan and it would come and smack you in the face. (laughs) So, we just made this goofy little thing and then I ended up going to film school. I’d been doing a lot of sewing; I was a seamstress from the time I was a child. But I was doing a lot of sewing for my brothers friends who went to film school and I eventually said, "I really want to go to film school". So I got a chance to formally write that up, and instead of the baked things coming from outer space it sort of morphed into a heart broken chef - sort of enchanting his culinary creations.

NG: And Laurissa, how did you get drafted in as the artist?

Laurissa Hughes: It was actually at Fort Collins last year and it’s a very strange story. I was standing talking to our friend Joe and then Elisa came over. She had a little Halloween monster (that I had drawn years ago) and she says, "Look I found this, some guy sold it to me!" That was my boyfriend - it was one of his favorite drawings, too. So she said, "I think I found the person that I want to do the comic!" I was standing right there, but she had no idea. Joe and her were talking about it and it was a very surreal experience. I was like, "Um, wait, that’s mine..." and so then we started talking about it.

NG: Very cool. How long have you guys been working together to get the book out?

When Baked Things Attack (2018) interior pg.23.

LH: Like seven or eight months.

ES: We started in January. We did a project plan and we decided that our start date was going to be January 1st and we just worked it out that July 15th was going to be the end date.

LH: Close to there, yeah. Then trying to get the inside cover and everything done took a little time.

NG: Now is this a standalone graphic novel or is this beginning of a series of stories?

ES: I think it is probably standalone. It could be fun to do other ones and I definitely want to explore it, there’s so many more places. But I don’t know if we could do it with film or you know we could do it with other media.

NG: Now that you have had the experience of seeing as a comic do you have any wish to make it a film still? Or are you happy with it as the graphic novel?

ES: Oh definitely, because there’s so many more things that go into it. Just the characters and personalities of each of the pastries as they come to life and become murderous. There’s so many more characteristics I definitely want to expand upon. Especially working with the automation of these puppets that have come about to do the promotion for the comic book. It’s actually been really inspiring because a lot of people have come together with some really unique skills that we weren't able to use the first time for the film.

NG: Noticing at your table that you have animatronic cupcake monsters, that is something most folks don’t have.

LH: They are so cute. I love them so much.

NG: They are an awesome attraction I would say. I have heard around the convention floor a couple people are saying (jokingly) that you ladies have no right at all making a first effort this strong together; that most teams take a little longer to coalesce. How do you feel about getting a positive reaction to the book?

LH: (Laughs) I think it’s awesome. My favorite thing in the world is to tell stories and to make people smile and to make people laugh. That’s why I went into – well I have been drawing forever, but when I decided to go to art school it was because I wanted to tell stories. So, getting a positive reaction to the story Elisa wrote and that I got to help bring to life is really cool. It makes me really happy.

NG: Now for you Elisa, this is your first published story correct?

ES: Mm-hmm.

NG: Do you see yourself moving forward in other comics?

The original “kaiju bunny” mural behind Mutiny Information Cafe, done by Daniel Crosier.

ES: Yes definitely. My boyfriend is Dan Crosier and he has wanted to do another comic, so we have devised another comic it’s called Stanley Kaiju and the Subterranean Bunny Defenders.

NG: (Laughs) Naturally, naturally.

ES: Yeah, it’s kind of where you go after pastries, subterranean bunnies.

LH: That feels like a natural progression.

NG: When you do that one, would you be writing, and Dan would be doing the art? Or would you guys be cowriting?

ES: I think we would be doing a little bit of cowriting. It kind of comes from a mural that he did on the back of Mutiny Café. It was something that we were talking about - trying to figure out a mural to do, bouncing ideas back and forth and Dan says, "How about a kid in a bunny costume?" So he ended up doing it and, the face on this kid is just weird! The story for it became this alien defender that was going to save the planet - he’s really little, he’s addicted to bananas, he grows really quickly and eats spacecraft out of the sky. He’s this ancient, genetically modified creature that is so terrifying to look at that they put him in a bunny outfit - which makes him cuter. (laughs) But that’s all down the road a bit. You are working on your other series, too. Are you on season 3?

Tess & Jack (2014) #1, by Laurissa Hughes.

NG: Yeah tell us a little about Tess & Jack.

LH: I have a comic called Tess & Jack.

NG: Tell us a little more about Tess & Jack (Laughs)

LH: Yeah, it’s about a cowgirl named Tess and a robot named Jack. They live in sort of a futuristic cyberpunk wild west and they take odd jobs to make a living. Each issue is a different job. Right now, I am about halfway through issue 3. I have it planned through issue six or seven. But they are just really like silly, out of the ordinary jobs. I like comedy. I like really sarcastic, crazy sci-fi stuff. The series actually started out as an illustration I did a long time ago for a show. Then I was thinking about redoing this illustration, and I thought, "I’m going to do it in a way that is different. I’m not going to do an illustration, I’m going to do it as a comic because that’s what I have been doing." Then it turned into a whole thing. But I really like doing it, it’s really fun.

NG: Aside from Tess and Jack do you have any other projects you are working on?

LH: Yeah, I have a longer project that I’ve been working on for about ten years, it’s been a long time. It’s sort of one of those magnum opus stories, is what everyone calls them. I was going to do it as a comic, but I am thinking I might do it as an illustrated novel - or maybe a series of a few. I think if I do it that way it will help me get it out quicker, and I’m having so much fun with Tess & Jack. Originally I was only going to go through issue 4 and stop to do my longer story, but now I think I want to keep doing Tess & Jack.

NG: Coming back to When Baked Things Attack: Elisa, you already had the story more or less in your mind - since you had been planning this short film and building animatronics and such. Did working with Laurissa add anything in terms of story elements? Were there things that changed along the way in your collaboration?

Killer cupcakes attacked their cages!

ES: Quite a bit. The spirit of collaboration changed things, because Laurissa came by the house and saw a lot of the props and she was able to just absorb it. She saw the props and the costumes and she just absorbed it automatically. The collaboration was just really inspiring, it made me want to do the movie even more because I had so many roadblocks before. I liked not only how the comic turned out in the end, but this collaborative process where you could just explain something briefly and to the point and she just got it and ran with it. So, it was that level of collaboration - and then getting something that is so magical straight off the bat was really encouraging.

LH: Thank you!

NG: Because it is printed, it has an ISBN, where can people buy it?

LH: Well we have an online store at WhenBakedThingsAttack.com, and several of the comic shops around Denver have agreed to carry it.

NG: Ok, awesome. On an individual level, if people wanted to find more of your work online where would they follow you personally?

ES: You can follow us on the When Baked Things Attack website or on the Facebook page. This is my first effort so that’s it for me, but Laurissa has a whole portfolio of comic books.

LH: I’m on Twitter, Instagram and Tumblr and my user name is @WhimsyInk. Then Tess & Jack is at SmackJeeves, Topastic, and Webtoons. I also have a portfolio website which is laurissahughsportfolio.wordpress.com.

NG: All right I think that about wraps it up for us. Is there anything else about the comic that folks need to know?

LH: It’s fun and you should read it.

NG: I think that will do. Thank you ladies for your time.

When Baked Things Attack (2018) interior pg.24.

Elisa Sargent & Laurissa Hughes at Fort Collins Comic Con 2018. (2)

When Baked Things Attack (2018) interior pg.35.

Magic & Mystery In the World of The Liminal - An Interview With Dailen Ogden (Phoenix Comic Fest 2018)

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Written by Neil Greenaway

Dailen Ogden at the 2018 Phoenix Comic Fest. (1)

When you see Dailen Ogden's art, you are almost certain to stop and have a closer look. Her pieces have a naturalistic fluidity to them that is hard to quantify, but it is her masterful use color that really makes her work stand out from the crowd. Before I had met Dailen at the 2018 Phoenix Comic Fest, several friends had already told me that I needed to seek out a copy of her self-published comic, The Liminal #1.

The Liminal (written and drawn by Ogden) is a story about Taylor Holt - a paranormal investigator with a weird eye and a ghost for a roommate. She gets migraine headaches and helps stranded mermen. In a world where magic is just as real as technology, Taylor is just trying to get by.

Dailen was kind enough to take a few minutes away from her table to tell me a little bit about her new series, the learning curve she went through creating a new comic, and what the future holds for The Liminal!

The Liminal (2018) #1 by Dailen Ogden.

Neil Greenaway: Can we start off by having you tell us a little bit about The Liminal?

Dailen Ogden: It’s a comic that when I pitch it to customers I basically say that it’s Jessica Jones meets Sailor Moon in the unending horror of the void.

NG: At the very least, the premise sounds unique.

Dailen: So definitely magic, bright colors, and blood. The actual premise is that of a mystery/thriller: set in the backdrop of a world where 25 years ago they cracked open a mountain and found an artifact that introduced magic to the people. Flash forward to the modern day - magic and the internet have both filtered into the cultural world consciousness in the same way, or in similar fashions. They are both a big part of worlds both developing and developed, and there’s all kinds of weird spooky mysteries going on.

NG: Is there a central mystery? Is there some plot to be solved?

Dailen: Yeah there is. It’s only very lightly teased on in the first issue, but if you are the kind of person who will read little captions and look for little details in the background - then it will come as a little less of a surprise to you later when more chapters start to release.

NG: Intriguing! Now, is The Liminal your first book or had you put out other comics before this one?

Dailen: I’ve never put out a book before this. I’ve done a little bit of like contract work on a couple of comics for Pop Culture Classroom, their Colorful History comic series - but this is the very first book that I am completely at the helm.

NG: Very cool. With you being the only one working on this, how long did it take you to put this issue together?

The Liminal (2018) #1, pg.6 - by Dailen Ogden.

Dailen: A really freaking long time, let me tell you. It’s taught me a lot and it’s given me a major appreciation of why most comics are done with a four-person team. There are a lot of things that go into it, a lot of working parts in comics. Even though they take you a very short amount of time to consume, to make them correctly takes a long time. A big part of comics is that if you are doing your job right people won’t even notice you. I’ve learned a lot about those things through this process.

NG: Are you also doing the coloring and the lettering?

Dailen: I am, everything. Design work, too, for the book. The logo is mine. All of it.

NG: When you do all the art for this, are you working digitally or traditionally?

Dailen: A little bit of both. For The Liminal I tend to mostly work digitally but for other comics I’ve worked traditionally as well. It’s just whatever strikes my fancy.

NG: There has been a bit of a resurgence lately of people hand lettering their comics. Are you doing traditional or digital lettering?

Dailen: I am doing digital lettering. I have very abysmal handwriting. As much as I would love to hand letter comics in the future, I really need to work on my lettering skills first. It would have to be up to my standards before I would include it in a book. In the meantime I am using Blambot Fonts. Nate Piekos, he has very courteously put his fonts out for free for smalltime freelancers and people who are self-publishing. He has made his work readily available as a resource for people like me who can’t hand letter for anything.

NG: I was just talking to Ed Piskor, who does Hip Hop Family Tree, and he said he spent 12 years teaching himself to hand letter only to realize that the computer still did it better.

Some of the prints available from Dailen Ogden at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018.

Dailen: Ouch.

NG: Yeah that’s got to be a hard pill to swallow.

Dailen: (winces) Youch, I feel that in my soul.

NG: Going back to The Liminal a little bit, how far forward have you planned it? Is it a 6-issue miniseries, is this a universe?

Dailen: I have a 3-arc story planned. It will probably be 3 volumes. I don’t know – the volume lengths are a little bit indeterminate at this point but it’s definitely going to be a full-length feature rather than a novella or a miniseries. I don’t have it quite mapped out enough to tell you the exact page count incoming, just to say that there’s going to be 3 major arcs that I want to split up into volumes.

NG: Do you know where it ends?

Dailen: Absolutely.

NG: So, it’s just the middle stuff that is missing at this point?

Colorful History #20: Red Rocks pg.1 - Written by R. Alan Brooks, Art from Dailen Ogden.

Colorful History #20: Red Rocks pg.1 - Written by R. Alan Brooks, Art from Dailen Ogden.

Dailen: Yeah just a little bit. It’s interesting because beginnings and endings are the most important parts sort of the story. Those are like the buildup and the resolution, but those middle parts need to be gracefully done and I find that to be the most challenging part of any story that I tell. It’s like, I have this really cool climax and ending figured out - but how do I get from point A all the way to point B?

NG: Given how long it took you to put the first issue together by yourself, in the future would you like to work with a team? Or do you feel it’s important to keep this story to yourself?

Dailen: You know, I love working with teams on other comics, but this one is kind of my baby. It’s not that wouldn’t trust anyone else with it, but I wouldn’t want to burden anyone else with it. It’s definitely very much my experimental foray into all of these things and so on top of being very much my story to tell, it’s also my avenue to practice all of these techniques. That said, R. Alan Brooks did write me a guest script that will be coming out in a couple of issues. I have a little more character and plot build up to do first, just because his script contains a pretty important reveal, but I am very interested in bringing in talent. Rather than having a team work with me on the full comic itself, I’m really interested in bringing in guest creators and things like that. I really love the idea of variant covers for my book. So, it’s not so much that I want to be a lone wolf as much as I need the practice on these things. But I am interested in seeing other people’s contributions as well.

NG: If other people wanted to contribute, which would be more important for you to maintain control of: the art or the authorship?

Dailen: Probably the authorship for the most part. The nice thing about Alan’s script is that we sat down and had a long, really thorough conversation about where the comic is going, what the world looks like and how it functions. When he wrote something for me it was sort of like getting to read a script that I had written myself but had forgotten about, where it was very exciting because it fit in really well. But definitely maintaining the authorship is the most important part for me because I have a very clear idea of where this is going and what story I am trying to accomplish. I do like seeing other people’s contributions to it. I need control over the main cannon, the main storyline - but other people bring really interesting things to the table.

Colorful History #20: Red Rocks pg.1 - Written by R. Alan Brooks, Art from Dailen Ogden.

NG: Did going through the production process on the first book give you any insights that will help with future issues?

Dailen: Yes! So much, absolutely. I have a much more consistent coloring scheme down, like a real strategy. I have learned a lot since then making sequential pages for other people also, so I do feel like issue 2 is going to happen at a much more reasonable pace. Now I have a very clear idea of what kind of formatting I need, what kind of files I need to export, where I send them, how I organize them. All of those things were very much kind of a shot in the dark learning process in the first issue, and so it should go much much more smoothly the second time around.

NG: When you put The Liminal #1 out, did you do any kind of crowdfunding for that?

Dailen: No. I backed it myself.

NG: Wow.

Dailen: Yeah, it cost a lot.

NG: I have to imagine.

Dailen: I did The Liminal myself. Entirely. I didn’t really know that much about comic printing. I didn’t know what the quality would be like, and I am always a little afraid to put something out to a crowd if I can’t guarantee it’s a good product. So, for the first one, I did fund it for myself. I’m actually funding a second run myself, too, but with a different printer. We will see what happens.

NG: That was actually going to be my next question - Are you looking at crowdfunding at all for the future of The Liminal? Having felt the financial burden of self-publishing the first print, why not look at something like Kickstarter for the next one?

The Liminal (2018) #1, pg.12 - by Dailen Ogden.

Dailen: I guess it’s one of those things, with crowdfunding and things like Kickstarter - I always feel put off by the fact that it doesn’t go all the way through if you don’t make your goal. And I’m still a little bit low in terms of social media reach. I guess what it comes down to is at this current point in time I’m not sure that I trust crowdfunding to get it done for me. With that said, for some of my upcoming books and probably for the next few issues of The Liminal - I will likely take preorders to help offset some of the costs. That is something that I do with my enamel pins and with some of my other prints, but I know and trust where they come from. Preordering is probably going to be the way to go for me in the future rather than crowdfunding, and let the crowd sort of help me with it but not relying on them entirely to get it paid for.

NG: Speaking of your enamel pins, you have some really cool designs. Are these all your designs as well?

Dailen: They are.

NG: And who do you go through to have those done?

Dailen: I actually have a relationship with a factory out of China.

NG: Nice.

Dailen: Yeah, it’s a pretty good time. People are a little bit secretive about their sources for that kind of thing because sometimes if a source gets overloaded the quality dips strongly. So I won’t mention their name in the interview, but I do like them very much and I think they are lovely people and I like working with them.

Some of the enamel pins available from Dailen Ogden at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018.

NG: If people want to see more of you or find more of your work where would they look online to do so?

Dailen: Well I am Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter and Instagram and that’s where you can get a really nice tasty look at my personality but you would find all of those links at dailenogdenillustration.com.

NG: Thank you very much for your time.

You can also purchase prints, pins, stickers and more at Dailen's Etsy store!

Dailen Ogden at the 2018 Phoenix Comic Fest. (2)

Illustration Takes A Fashionable Turn - An Interview With Kelsi Jo Silva (Phoenix Comic Fest 2018)

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Written by Neil Greenaway

Kelsi Jo Silva at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018. (1)

Even though Kelsi Jo Silva has been working as a professional illustrator in Denver (my home town) since 2014, I had never had the pleasure of seeing her work before we met a few months ago at the 2018 Phoenix Comic Fest. A mutual friend had recommended her art to me, and he was right. I was taken in by the soft curves and the bold use of color.

Having already accrued an impressive list of credits (including illustrating three children’s books for Good Luck Black Cat Books), Kelsi Jo has set her sights on writing and illustrating her own creator-owned comics. She has two major comics projects in production and was able to take a few moments away from her busy convention table to speak with me about both of them.

Mermaids by Kelsi Jo Silva.

Neil Greenaway: Can you start us out by giving us just a brief overview of what your upcoming comic project will be?

Kelsi Jo Silva: I am working on several projects right now. I am working on one with a writer, Sid Mulholland. It has a lot of Greek mythology vibes or Greek philosophy vibes more so. It’s about a girl coming of age who finds out that she has the ability to alter reality, so that’s what I am working on with him right now. Then I have my own comic project, which is about a witch who has a curse that has been placed on her and now all her internal emotions show on the outside of her body in the form of things like blisters and bruises. The story will show how she is dealing with that internal conflict that has become now an external conflict.

NG: So, is that one going to be completely you? Art, Writing, Color, all that?

KJS: Yes

NG: Ok now when you do something like that all alone, are you going traditional or digital?

KJS: It’s going to be all digital.

NG: Do you work with traditional art at all?

KJS: I do traditional sketches but if I am going to do a finished piece it is going to be digital.

NG: Is it just easier to work with?

KJS: It’s easier to translate, it’s easier to work with clients, it’s all just easier. It’s all in one place and you don’t have to deal with the paper or spilling your ink on things.

Some of the art available from Kelsi Jo Silva at the 2018 Phoenix Comic Fest.

NG: Are you already working on both of these books (the Greek philosophy and the cursed witch)?

KJS: Yes

NG: Would you be putting these out traditionally when they are finished or would you look at a crowd-funding model? What is your distribution going to look like?

KJS: I know that Sid wants to look at publishers, so that’s probably what we are going to do as a team. For my own comic I’m not 100% sure how I want to do it. I know it’s important to me that it be in print at some point and I also know that it is going to be in some digital format.

NG: So, perhaps released first as a web comic?

KJS: I’m thinking about it. I am teetering on it. I haven’t quite settled. I know that Webtoons a really good location for it. I’m struggling with the idea of having that vertical format and also having it in a print format. So, the idea of taking my print pages - because that is more important to me - and turning them into a vertical scrolling format is daunting. (laughs) It’s a lot of work.

NG: If you were going to try and do it as a web comic, would you finish the book first and then release a page a week (or something like that)? Or would you try to release the pages as you finished them?

A one-page comic from Kelsi Jo Silva.

KJS: I think I would start with the first book and then release the pages one at a time and see where I’m at from there.

NG: And what kind of timeline do you have on these books? Or is it still completely theoretical?

KJS: For the pitch with Sid, I should be done with that by the end of the week. We are looking at publishers now and looking at putting together our pitch packet, so whether or not we get picked up is where that timeline is. For my own comic it’s kind of theoretical. I’m still in the process of designing and writing.

NG: How did you get your start in the art world? How did you get into working on comics?

KJS: I went to RMCAD so I have a degree in illustration. When I graduated I did a couple of children’s books, so I have 3 children’s books out right now, and I decided that I wanted to do something that’s a little more adult. I really like drawing fashion and clothes and you really don’t get a lot of that with children’s books. You draw a lot of animals and flowers - and that’s nice, but I like drawing fashionable young ladies.

NG: Can you tell me a little bit about the children's books that you've done?

KJS: I worked with an author - a lady named Niki Knaub who owns the Good Luck Black Cat publishing house, and we’ve done 3 books. They’re about a little black cat named Ela. We’ve got Ela Cat in the Jungle, which was our first book. Then we did Ela Cat at the Beach and then Ela Cat in the Mountains which is the one that I finished earlier this year.

Ela Cat In the Jungle - Written by Niki Knaub, Illustrated by Kelsi Jo Silva.

Ela Cat At the Beach - Written by Niki Knaub, Illustrated by Kelsi Jo Silva.

Ela Cat In the Mountains - Written by Niki Knaub, Illustrated by Kelsi Jo Silva.

NG: You said you wanted to work more with more fashionable things, have you done any fashion design or fashion illustration?

KJS: I have not done any fashion illustration but my mom has her degree in fashion design, so it’s kind of been a part of my life for my entire life.

NG: Was she in clothing design then?

Enamel Pins, Stickers, pencil cases & prints from Kelsi Jo Silva at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018.

KJS: She did yeah, she worked as a pattern maker for a really long time.

NG: growing up, did she teach you any of that? Did you pick anything up from her?

KJS: I think it has been an influence. I’ve done a lot of sewing, I know how to sew pretty well. Drawing clothes is just something that I have done. Like it’s just a part of it.

NG: With her having that background, is she pleased to see you moving forward artistically as well?

KJS: She is, yeah.

NG: That’s cool.

KJS: I’m very grateful for it because I don’t think a lot people have that. She has this attitude that if you do what you love, then success is going to follow you. She didn’t have that from her parents. She had tried to go to school for business at first, and it didn’t work out for her and she dropped out. Then she went back for fashion design and was top of her class. So, she has this attitude that’s like "you need to do what you love to do".

A print available from Kelsi Jo Silva.

NG: If these books are just still being worked on, your first comics, how long have you been doing the convention circuit?

KJS: My first convention was Denver Comic Con in 2014 and I only did the one that year. The following year I think I did 3 of them, but last year was when I started really diving into the convention circuit.

NG: Have you done Phoenix Comic Con before?

KJS: I did Phoenix last year, yeah.

NG: It seems a little slow this year.

KJS: I was up on the 3rd floor last year, so it’s been less slow than it was for me last year. I have heard that it is slow from a lot of the other vendors, but I don’t see it. I saw like half the amount of people when I was upstairs.

NG: You are having a good weekend here, then?

KJS: I am, yeah.

NG: Nice. That is good to hear. One more question for you before we close out, if people want to find more of you, or follow your work where would they go online?

KJS: They can find me at kelsijosilva.com. I am also on Instagram, twitter, Tumblr, & Facebook.

NG: Ok, thank you very much for your time

Kelsi Jo Silva at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018. (1)

Morgan Beem - Turning Watercolors Into The Family Trade (Phoenix Comic Fest 2018)

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Written by Neil Greenaway

Morgan Beem at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018.

Morgan Beem at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018.

With her first published work in comics making its debut in 2013, Morgan Beem is still fairly new to the industry. In the five years since then she has made quite a splash at Image Comics, with her watercolors appearing in titles like Shutter and Goners. She really came into her own last year as the cover and interior artist for The Family Trade - a book following the story of a young woman rising through a network of thieves and con-men on a floating, ocean-borne city. When I caught up with Morgan at the 2018 Phoenix Comic Fest she was kind enough to take a few minutes away from the convention to discuss her work. We talked about The Family Trade (the trade paperback had just released), as well as some new projects that she has in the works from Image and Webtoons. This was the first time I had spoken with Morgan, and I am glad that I did. Her work is beautiful and I can not wait to see where it takes her next!

The Family Trade (2017) #3, cover by Morgan Beem. 

Neil Greenaway: Let’s start off assuming that the readers don’t know anything about you. I know that you have been working on The Family Trade, what else can you tell us about yourself?

Morgan Beem: I am a comic artist and illustrator, and I use traditional media. So I watercolor all over the comics! (laughs) I am the interior and cover artist for the Image book The Family Trade, which is a fantasy/action/adventure book. It’s very fun. It’s written by Justin Jordan and Nikki Ryan and lettered by the wonderful Rachel Deering, so it’s a pretty good book.

NG: Now I know that the Family Trade trade just came out (which is fun to say). Is the series still moving forward?

MB: You know, I think we are going to have a meeting here soon to talk about it. I think we are going to do a volume two - but we want to go straight to a graphic novel and not do the single issues.

NG: Ok. What length would you guys be looking at for a GN?

MB: Probably about the same as the first one - which was one hundred something pages, one hundred and fifty pages maybe - somewhere around there.

NG: So, a five or six-issue equivalent?

MB: Yeah, 5 or 6 issue equivalent probably.

NG: Nice. Now aside from The Family Trade do you have any personal books that you are working?

MB: So, I have a lot of things that I am working on.  Not necessarily ones that are just myself, I'm still working as part of a team. I have a Webtoons series that is up and coming with writer Ryan Cady that should be pretty fun. I don’t know how much I am allowed to tell you about it right now, but it will be horror based and I am pretty excited about that. It should be out probably early next year.

An interior page from The Family Trade. Art by Morgan Beem. (1)

NG: I will be intrigued to see your art in a horror based story.

MB: Yeah, I really actually like creepy fairy tales, they’re sort of like my main jam so…

NG: Nice!

MB: I’m pretty excited about it. And then I have another graphic novel coming out from Image with writer Jacob Semahn that was called HERE//after. It will again go straight to graphic novel format. And that one is a really great story. It’s kind of like... I want to say a slice of life comic with supernatural elements to it. It has ghosts, but it’s not really a ghost story. It’s kind of a personal adventure story. You follow a character as she explores who she is, dealing with grief and not being ok with the unknown. It’s kind of a personal and moving book, so I am pretty excited about that one.

NG: That sounds awesome! How did you come to work at Image? How did you break in there?

MB: Writers (laughs). Yeah one of the great things about comics is that it is a pretty small, close-knit community and everybody’s pretty rad. So just going to shows like this, networking, and working with other people, you just start to meet writers. Then they say, "Hey I have this book idea, I think your art would be great. Do you want to work on it?" It worked like that for both HERE//after and The Family Trade. Justin Jordan is a pretty well-established writer with Image and Jacob has also published with them a couple of times, so they both have a pretty good relationship with that publishing company. They pitched the book and Image said yeah, and that’s where we are at.

NG: I find that while I'm walking around and talking to people, your name is one I hear a lot. Specifically at D.I.N.K!, everyone was talking about you. Does it feel cool to have such a heat about you?

West of Oz (2017) #2, cover by Morgan Beem.

MB: It’s great. You know I’m not sure I’d call it a heat, though I will thank you for that. The Denver comic community it one of the most wonderful comic communities that I’ve seen. It’s pretty small, it’s so accepting and supportive. Everyone just loves to see everybody else’s stories and see everybody succeed. I have been just so exceptionally fortunate that that community has really helped me along, helped hook me up. The people at D.I.N.K! and a lot of the people that I met through a Drink & Draw that happens in Denver - it’s the same thing, they have just really been a champion for me and they do everything they can to help me out. We are all just pretty close. Do you know Lonnie Allen?

NG: Yeah, of course. I loved his Delineate book!

MB: Ok, so Lonnie is a pinnacle (for those of you who don’t know) of the Denver comic community and he was actually the person who helped me get my very first Image gig. It was a 4-page short story in the back of Leila del Duca’s book Shutter. Denver has been extremely kind to me and I am really grateful for that.

NG: Cool. Now at D.I.N.K! I had actually spoken to the West of Oz guys and they were very pleased to have a cover form you. How did that come about?

MB: Ah, so those guys are actually my students (laughs)

NG: Oh really?

MB: Yeah, I was teaching for a while. I was an adjunct professor for the Arts Institute in Denver, and I helped them run the comic book club that they have there. So Sean (the writer of West of Oz) and Nick (who draws it) are both really great rising star members of that comic club. They are super hardworking and they have really got their stuff together. You know, even beyond what I do. So just in getting to know them and being supportive of their project, they were like, "Hey, do you want to do a cover for us?" and of course I did. So, it was really great.

NG: Are you no longer teaching then?

An interior page from The Family Trade. Art by Morgan Beem. (2)

MB: Not currently. I am still technically on faculty there and would really like to go back to teaching one day, but now with the comics projects I have going on - it’s just not the time.

NG: That’s cool. It’s cool that you have the amount of work that you can choose to stop teaching.

MB: Yeah, it’s pretty exciting, I am very fortunate.

NG: What projects do you have coming up?

MB: So, just the big horror Webtoons project, then the Image comic HERE//after. Then I have a couple of short things coming up through BOOM! Again, I am not sure if I can tell you about them or not so for the sake of keeping my job I’m not going to. But possibly yeah, some small chapters will be coming up for certain things at BOOM! I am just kind of moving and shaking on those things.

NG: It certainly sounds like you have plenty to do. As a closing question for you, if people wanted to find you or see more of your work online where could we do that?

MB: Pretty much on any social media (facebook, twitter) it’s just going to be my name - Morgan Beem. Or they can check out my portfolio site at morganbeemart.com.

NG: Awesome. Thank you for your time.

A commission of J.M. Linsner's Dawn, done by Morgan Beem.

Morgan Beem at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018.

Morgan Beem at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018.

Some of the art available from Morgan Beem at Phoenix Comic Fest 2018.

Sean Benner & Nick Winand Head West of Oz! (DINK 2018)

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Written by Neil Greenaway

Sean Benner & Nick Winand at DINK 2018.

Sean Benner & Nick Winand at DINK 2018.

West of Oz is an all-ages, western themed retelling of the Wonderful Wizard of Oz story produced by the Colorado-based White Stag Productions. Featuring a bounty hunting Dorothy Gale, a Munchkinland full of revolutionaries, and a fresh take on the mythology, the book is aimed squarely at bringing more young readers into the world of Oz while also doing it's part to improve the role of female representation in comics. At the 2018 Denver Independent Comic & Arts Expo in April, I was able to sit down and speak with Sean Benner and Nick Winand - the creators (author and artist, respectively) of the West of Oz series. Having just debuted the second and third issues as well as a trade paperback, the pair had quite a bit to talk about.

West of Oz #1, cover by Nick Winand.

Neil Greenaway: First off can I get just a brief synopsis of your book? What is West of Oz?

Sean Benner: For us we wanted to remake something form our childhood in a non-gritty, non-dramatic way. We wanted to take something we really loved and bring it to a new audience that isn’t as familiar with it. So, I grew up loving escapist fiction for children like Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Willie Wonka. All of that I loved and so the first thing I thought of was the Wizard of Oz, and we thought what would be the most cheesy, dark, gritty version of that world? And we thought of Dorothy Gale, Bounty Hunter. That would be the most ‘Oh, this is so hardcore!’ version. So, we took that idea and turned it into an all ages action/adventure story. We tried to keep as much content from the original novel as we could and really make something that anyone could pick up and read through and get a new take on the Wizard of Oz.

NG: All right, and where did you come into that Nick?

Nick Winand: Well actually we went to the Art Institute here in Denver and we decided we wanted to make a real property and push something out that was complete and finished. Sean wrote it, I kind of helped him co-write it, but it was mainly him. I started doing the art. And Jay Peteranetz actually got me into comics. I didn’t care about them at first, but he taught me how comics work, and I thought I might as well give it a shot. So we got together and did it in school, while in college, and knocked out the first issue.

NG: And now here at DINK 2018 you guys have got the 2nd issue and a new trade paperback, correct?

Nick: Correct.

Sean: Yeah. All in the last year, since DINK 2017 was the first thing we ever tabled at, our first convention - and we had no book for it. But in the last year we have put out three issues and a trade paperback just in time for DINK this year.

The West of Oz character sheet, from Sean Benner & Nick Winand.

NG: And is this a series that you have a definitive ending to? Or could you see this ongoing, is this something you could keep adding to?

Sean: I think from a writing perspective, we have encapsulated only the first novel in our first 9 issues, the novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. There are 14 Oz novels written by L. Frank Baum and there are over 50 Wizard of Oz novels all together. We would love to continue with a new story, but we want to make sure each one is encapsulated enough that you could buy the TPB and feel like you get a whole book from beginning to end. And for Nick, he’s got so many characters that we haven’t got to use yet. Oz is much wider than what we have got to show so far.

NG: Now, is that problematic for you Nick? Are you trying to stick to the original interpretations of these characters or are you trying to make them your own?

Nick: That’s a good question. Because I like Wizard of Oz and I care about it. I don’t want to stray too far from it. Of course we always have to give a nod to L. Frank Baum, but at the same time his writing and my character design... It always ends up being a deviation - in a good way, to something that is new and fresh. It has been a new take on it, yes - but with the spirit of staying true to his story. Every time I do it I try to create something brand new.

NG: If you guys are to keep pushing forward, would you try to do a novel for each series?

Sean: The next book in the series is about the search for the rightful heir to the throne - which is supposed to be the queen. She was a young princess who had a spell cast on her that turned her into a boy, who was then sold to work on a farm. Her name is Tip. We snuck her into issue 2, to put a nod and to show that we do want to do that book. I would love nothing more than to write a transgender 'search for the king' book. That is an amazing opportunity to me and Baum wrote it in 1902. To me that is mind blowing and still pertinent today. I would love to do that one. And Nick has helped me work out a lot of what happened before our book. L. Frank Baum, every time someone asked about the origins of Oz, he would give them a new answer. So, we also have a script for a prequel book. I think Oz - if Nick is not sick of it, we would do Oz books for as long as people want to read it.

The West of Oz crew! DANIELLE HINES, SEAN BENNER, JEREMY TAVERAS, and Nick Winand at DINK 2018.

Nick: I think the only reason I would get sick of it is if people didn’t like it anymore. If everybody got tired of what we were doing, maybe I would need to try something else. But if people like it and are receptive to it, I say we’ll keep pushing until it’s no longer valid.

NG: Nice. You had talked a little bit about a prequel. If you did a prequel, would that in any way be based on one of the stories Baum told? Or would you try to make that story your own?

Sean: So, L. Frank Baum really mythologized it a lot. He says the Wizard came to Oz – there’s a couple different versions of how he got there – but once he got there, he met the King and became the advisor. Then there was a war with the witches, and that’s where the King and the Queen died and the Wizard took over. So, he laid the framework over the 14 books. "Oh, I mentioned this here, and this here, and this here." Having read all of them, you can really piece it together. But we really added to it, too. Our main character would be the Woodsman because he was a normal guy, a normal logger, and then he got drafted into the war of the witches. That backstory really maps the story out for us to lead directly to the events of our first book. You’ll see the Woodsman, just like in the original - is sort of trapped in his house in the woods and he needs someone else’s help to escape. So the last panels of our prequel would be him going into that house and getting trapped. Narratively, we want to keep the same group of characters and make it 20 years earlier maybe? No, longer than that. So we can do a lot of, "Oh look, it’s that lady who had the cow in issue two, but now she’s a little girl! Oh hey, that’s that witch when she was a lot younger." We have a lot of, would you say backstory for the witches?

An unfortunate beginning for the witch. An interior page from West of Oz, written by Sean Benner with art from Nick Winand.

Nick: Yeah, especially with that war that goes on, that the Woodsman is drafted into. That whole war itself is huge. It’s just one giant episodic tale by itself.

Sean: And a lot of times we feel like our witches - like our first witch is a gag appearance. She is on one page and she looks up and sees something falling and says, ‘is that a house?’ and gets crushed.

Nick: That’s all you get to see of her really.

Sean: Yeah. But she would be a very central character in the prequel book.

NG: Now with Oz recently being revisited in Wicked and trying to tell the backstory of the wicked witch, do you take anything from that? Or is that completely aside?

Sean: Ah, I loved Wicked. Have you ever seen it?

Nick: Actually, I haven’t seen it.

Sean: So yeah, I have read the first two books and then I started the Lion Among Men but I haven’t finished that yet. I think Gregory Maguire's version is brilliant. But I think he is doing a fundamentally different thing where he is adding a drama element, and we’re taking out drama and adding comedy. But his Elphaba is amazing. I think any novel or story that’s going to be based around a strong female representation has to have a character fairly similar to his Elphaba because she was so well written.

NG: There’s another question: in the original Oz, Dorothy is the picture of naivety when she starts and she grows into a stronger character through her experiences to the point that in the end you would almost think she could deal with real life. Since you guys are writing her as a bounty hunter from the beginning, is there a reason she is that strong at the start?

Nick: The main reason why we did that is so we could thrust her into a world where there is more action and adventure that she can deal with from the get go. That way the war she is dealing with at the very beginning is more dangerous, more exciting, more fun to be part of.

West of Oz Vol.1: No Place Like Home, cover by Nick Winand.

Sean: Yeah. Less of the ramp-up till you can get to the part where she can deal with life, and we did realize that was her central development arc. So, our main arc for Dorothy has her feeling that can solve her family and everyone’s problems, realizing there’s things that she can’t do alone, and being willing to ask for help. Our book starts out, right at the beginning, someone offers her help and says I can help you pay for that. You don’t have to worry about your family’s ranch if you don’t want to. A guy comes along and says, "Hey, you should be getting married soon anyway. Here’s an opportunity to take care of your problems and take the easy way out." And she is like, "I can take care of it myself."  Then at the very end of the arc, when she goes back to Kansas we definitely touch on that. It wasn’t just something we threw in, those are our bookends. The representation of her in the real world thinking I can take on anything myself, and then her getting back and realizing there are things you need to accept help from others for. I really liked that arc. Bigger than that though, I read through the novel and just took notes. Dorothy is an 8-year-old girl and she’s involved in 4 homicides of people and they kill well over 200 animals in that original book. I just couldn’t put an 8-year-old in that place. I would also hate to do an adult female character who is a damsel, because I am married to a woman who is a military veteran. My family is full of women with service time also and so I don’t know how to write that damsel character. I know how to write a strong female who 'don’t need no man'. I can do that. I have been around those women all my life and they have all been married, so they’ve gone through this personal arc I am trying to write as well. I have a lot of reference for that. And for me - I think it’s important to give little girls something to represent them, but there’s a lot of women who could use a strong representation out there as well.

NG: If you guys are trying to stick close to the novels but trying to make it your own as well, are there any additions? Any new characters, for instance?

Nick: I don’t think so…

West of Oz TPB credit page, art by Nick Winand.

Sean: Yours really. Nick comes up with characters to add into the scenes, one an issue at least and they are more like-

Nick: Side characters

Sean: Environmental characters almost.

Nick: Participants. I think we stay true to the story overall - the main thread of the story. But aesthetically, character design wise, we stick to those main beasts that are close to what he first envisioned. The ones I add in, they are just an accent to what L. Frank Baum originally created.

Sean: And I think they are some of the most popular things. We have very stylized munchkins, dressed in the garb of Mexican revolutionaries. They are having their war against the witch, trying to fight for independence. They look like revolutionary Muppets or like wild west bandit\Muppets. I think the only major character change we have made is that we left Toto in Kansas. We went through the book and the only thing he says, ever on any of the pages is "Arf". He usually says it multiple times on every page. I am not going to letter that that many times in 9 books.

Nick: It’s useless for us. Everything else is pretty much the same exact way the original book was

Sean: And then it gives us another reason for Dorothy to pine for her home. She misses her doggie. Just one more reason to get her home, right?

NG: You guys had the first issue a year ago, you’ve got the second issue and the trade.

West of Oz #2, cover by Morgan Beem.

Sean: And the third issue. We got Morgan Beem, she does The Family Tree for Image right now, she is doing great. She did the cover for issue 2. Then Jorge Corona, he’s been doing Number One with a Bullet for Image, he did the issue 3 cover. We were really blessed to get them to agree to work on our project and they really enjoyed it. So, when we found out we could get them for covers I thought - no, we are doing the next 2 issues, we can’t just do one. If we got both of them we’re going to do 2 and 3. We’ll just push.

NG: So, what is included in the trade?

Sean: We included the first 3 issues, a cover gallery, a little write up I put in there, and then we put a special thanks page for all the people who were exception donors during our Kickstarter. We really couldn’t have got off the ground without those people. We produced the book all digitally without any pay or compensation and then monetized it. We were going to put it out either way, but we couldn’t have made all 3 unless we had strong supporters.

NG: And has the support been pretty strong? Do you guys hear good feedback?

Sean: I always make anyone that wants to buy the book at our table look at it and I say if you don’t like it don’t buy it. I only want people who like it to buy it. Our largest fanbase so far has definitely been in Mexico.

Nick: We have a huge fanbase down there.

Sean: Yeah. A lot of digital rewards and digital packages we offered sold great but when we did our first physical book we didn’t offer fulfillment to there. So, our next projects we are trying to stretch outside of the US. It seems like maybe people are watching the Wizard of Oz more often in other countries right now.

West of Oz #3, cover by Jorge Corona.

Nick: It seems like a lot of the people who have the exceptional fulfillment of the Kickstarter tend to be outside of the US in the first place.

Sean: Yeah, a lot of UK, Australia, we even had one in India, a couple in Sweden and Denmark.

Nick: Europe in general likes us. But our main focus besides getting it out here in the states has been Mexico. They loves us and we want to be able to give them what they need when we do the next Kickstarter.

Sean: And a big thing for us is we are really trying to get the book in front of as many publishers as we can. And we know you have to have 3 issues before anyone will even consider picking you up. So, we made sure to get our first three in a TPB, and we have shopped it around. We are going to go to Rose and Emerald City this year and hit up Image and IDW and Boom and everyone else. Really the next push is to show we don’t need their help. Maybe that will encourage them to help us.

NG: What happens moving forward? What’s the plan for the next issue?

Nick: We are actually deciding that stage right now, figuring it out.

Sean: Yeah, right now with the middle of April and we’ve done enough work together and enough crowdfunding that we could have a new Kickstarter out as soon as the beginning of May. We could be working on the Kickstarter for issue 4, 5 and 6 and then we would have that out around or before September. I would hope. If we can start it in May we can get it out before September, and then there will only be the final 3 left - 7, 8 and 9. We plan to have those done before DINK next year. So, we should have all 9 issues done in the next 364 days. Oh my God that sounded terrible!

West of Oz: all three issues and the trade paperback at DINK 2018.

Nick: That’s crazy. It’s nuts. I started sweating.

NG: That about covers it for the questions but I do have one more to close. If people wanted to see more from you guys, if people want to find you online where are they going to look?

Sean: The easiest place to find us is either Facebook or search West of Oz on Kickstarter we are the only one that will come up. We do a lot of our news on both sites, so either Facebook or Kickstarter. Our twitter account is woefully unattended but we have a twitter, it’s @westofozcomic.

NG: All right. Is there anything else that you would add?

Nick: No, I just want to say thanks for interviewing us today, it’s been really good.

Sean: And thanks to everyone who likes the book. It’s a really great thing to make, and it’s a fun thing to hear people have feedback for us.

NG: Awesome. Thank you both for your time.

Sean Benner & Nick Winand at DINK 2018!

DANIELLE HINES, SEAN BENNER, JEREMY TAVERAS, and Nick Winand at DINK 2018. (2)

The Campfire Stories of Bill & Pepper DeLuca (DINK 2018)

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Written by Neil Greenaway

Pepper & Bill DeLuca at DINK! 2018.

Pepper & Bill DeLuca at DINK! 2018.

Craig "Pepper" DeLuca and his husband Bill DeLuca are not only the driving force behind Peppercopia Publishing, LLC - they are also the creators behind the company's current comic title, Campfire Stories of Lake Kikipapi. With Bill writing the story and Pepper handling the art duties, the pair debuted the series at the 2017 Denver Independent Comic & Art Expo (or DINK!). One year later (at DINK! 2018) they had a new issue, Side Stories of Camp Lake Kikipapi. I sat down with the couple to see what we could expect from the new issue, where it fit with the main series, and what the future holds for the Lake Kikipapi campers.

Campfire Stories of Lake Kikipapi #1 by Bill & Pepper DeLuca.

Neil Greenaway: I am sitting here with Bill & Pepper DeLuca - the creators behind the Campfire Stories of Lake Kikipapi series. Can I have you start us out by giving me the elevator pitch for the series?

Pepper: So, take 90’s realness of Salute Your Shorts and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, mash them together with a little bit of side humor like you find in Gravity Falls or Dead Like Me.

NG: Ok. That’s a very nice elevator pitch. Now you guys already have issue 1 out and here at DINK! 2018 you are releasing the Side Stories. What’s going on in that?

Pepper: Yes. So, the Side Stories kind of briefly touch on 2 moments in the Campfire Stories of Lake Kikipapi that were interrupted in the main story. They both involve screaming. It is basically bringing up some things centered around trauma, and we kind of explain that trauma in the Side Stories. Since Bill is the writer maybe he should kind of explain that and talk a little bit more about it.

Bill DeLuca: I think the best way to explain it is that these are the stories that will literally lead you into the 2nd chapter. So, we’ll cover some things that happened in chapter one, give you some backing there, and then introduce some things to help you read into the next part.

NG: Will this be a model going forward? Would the releases see a main issue and then a side story issue?

Pepper: Yes, since I am working on chapter 2 right here at the table. Once this is done we have another 16-page side story that Bill has to start writing in about 2 months - because he has to take some breaks and some time between each one to figure out how he’s going to write it.

Bill: It’s a process. I kind of outline it to figure out what I want.

Pepper: But it’s going to be fun, I have already talked to him about it. It’s introducing three new characters, all of whom are important and integral to the main storyline that he has in his head.

Craig & Annie talk in the nurse's office. An interior page from Campfire Stories of Lake Kikipapi #1 by Bill & Pepper DeLuca.

NG: Looking through the book, one of the most distinctive images is Ant Gal. How did you guys come to her? What is she to the story?

Bill: Well it was actually born out of us exercising and going hiking. In Colorado, when the earth finally thaws out, the ants come out - really lethargic and in a pile. And he would occasionally step on these piles, and I would say, "Don’t step on the ants!" And he kept doing it. So, I was like "You watch, there’s going to be some demonic soul that is imprisoned in these ants and you’re going to let it out." Then we just kept talking and talking about it, and it kind of evolved into this story. We decided to make a commitment to it and put it out there. That’s where Ant Gal comes from. Now, staying with the campfire story theme - that is just one story. Our next story is going to be about a zombie theme. It’s going to be different characters and everything, but still all based around the camp.

NG: Because this is based around the idea of a summer camp, is the cast going to rotate? Will there be new kids occasionally?

Pepper: Yes.

Bill: We have a whole set of characters and we actually roll dice to figure out who is going to be in the next one.

Pepper: We have 10 campers that we rotate that are non-town characters. Granted, there’s more than 20 kids at the camp, so we just focus on 20. Making this kind of simple for ourselves but not too simple. So, Archie from the first comic - he basically did the screaming in the middle of it, he’s back in the story. He’s doing the campfire stories again, giving it a 2nd chance. We have - and I am not mispronouncing this - this is actually a character based off of someone I knew when I was a kid, his nickname was Cooter. So this character's name is Cooter. It’s a southern thing. If you know what I’m talking about you’ll understand. Then we have some new characters which I cannot for the life of me remember off the top of my head... We have Nigella, we have Ramona, and Melody.

Bill: Is Suzie in this one?

The coming of Ant Gal! An interior page from Campfire Stories of Lake Kikipapi #1 by Bill & Pepper DeLuca.

Pepper: Suzie is not in this one. I am also having fun drawing Dick Pover, which is the assistant camp director - who also happens to be a person classified with dwarfism. Classified little person if you want to be more PC. But I get to draw him as a child and as an adult, and that’s what is going to be fun for the story. He is actually IN the horror story that we are going to be talking about in the camp.

NG: Cool. Now when you guys do this, is it a collaborative process - with the two of you working together? Or is it more like Bill goes to write and then Pepper draws?

Bill: It kind of starts as a collaborative process. We agree on what story we want to do, we have a rough idea of what the story is and then it drops into what I do. I outline it and then I show him the outline. If he likes it, and we agree that we both like what’s going on, then I go ahead and completely detail it out into a script.

NG: And how long is it taking you guys to do a whole issue? From your scripting (Bill) to your finished art (Pepper)?

Pepper: The first one took us about a year if I’m being honest. It was about six months of talking about everything, and then it took another six months to get everything complete. For the second issue, he completed everything in time for me to draw it but I also had two other things on my plate, so I had to push back the release from DINK. I’m really super bummed about it but I do have the first 3 pages penciled so I am showing those to people that come by the table. It’s been nice once I realized I didn’t need to draw everything for this event. I’m just going to try to - in the next two months - get everything done as fast as I can.

NG: So then would you be looking at like Denver Comic Con as a release?

Pepper: I would but we are not tabling at Denver Comic Con.

NG: You’re local and indie so why would they have you. (laughs)

Pepper & Bill DeLuca behind their table at DINK 2018.

Pepper: I know. Sometimes I wonder if we are too indie but then I realize I come to events like DINK! and nope, these are my people. These are the people I like being around and these are the people I like catering to and talking to.

NG: You had said that you will probably go into more Side Stories as you go along. If this series goes to a collected edition, would the side stories be integrated into the main series? Or would they be a separate volume?

Pepper: So, it’s meant to be read as a chapter of the Campfire Stories followed by a book of the Side Stories and then you read the next chapter. If we went ahead and published it in a collected volume, it would probably be 10 books together in one perfect bound anthology type deal.

Bill: The way it’s written, you don’t need to read the Side Stories. The Campfire Stories comics can stand by themselves, but sometimes you’ll see characters just appear and they are already being talked about and are known. It’s not going to take away from anything, but if you have already read the Side Stories then you are going to have that inside knowledge.

NG: It is good to have an outlet for the side character's stories. Some authors feel the need to shove everyone’s backstory into every issue, but occasionally it is ok for people to just show up.

Books & art from Peppercopia Publishing at DINK 2018.

Pepper: Yeah and it’s good for that respect. You are in a small camp. It’s not like this huge sprawling 200-300 kid camp with several counselors. Lake Kikipapi is more like a few camp counselors, four adults and about 40 some odd children. So, it’s like you have to pick and choose your battles on which stories can be told. It is still a lot of fun, and we get to do 2 different types of comics.

NG: Using a summer camp as a setting, there are a lot of different genres that could be utilized. With the campfire story setting you always have an undercurrent of horror - but the camp setting offers so much more, like romantic experimentation or a first kiss. Are those stories that could find their way in?

Bill: I think that there’s room for it. In what we have currently planned there will be three main stories - three chapters. Then we have one prequel, which will cover the topic of someone we introduce and want a backstory on. Then there’s going to be a story about the town which is right next to the camp, which is also mysterious in its own way. And in there you might find other genres, specifically in the prequel or in the town story. Then we will also have one long format story to kind of endcap it. So, at the very end of this, we will have a full set: we’ll have those three stories, the two caps, the long format and all the in between stories. That will be one set.

NG: That will be a heck of a book!

Side Stories of Camp Lake Kikipapi by Bill & Pepper DeLuca.

Bill: Well, it won’t be one book. It will be like a set you can buy.

Pepper: Or just one large graphic novel.

Bill: Gosh I don’t want to think about what that would look like.

NG: A monster of a book.

Pepper: Encyclopedia Kikipapi. We kind of have a different genre with Ant Gal. We show the nervousness of the possibility of first love but if you read the outcome of that, it wasn’t really love it was revenge.

Bill: We do have an eventual story about familials that end up in relationships and spawn other characters that are in here.

Pepper: After this chapter is actually where that takes place. We have a little girl named Olive and she is connected to the camp in a very significant way. Then we have in the Side Stories a character who is affectionately called Little Duck by his grandfather - who is the chieftain of a fictitious native American tribe that is part of the town. Oh, by the way the town is called Twin Ferns. So, there is a place similar that sells pie and has coffee-

Bill: On the topic of other kinds of subjects, in the Side Stories is the interaction of the Penderwalls - so that in and of itself is not a horror but it does cover other themes that are going on.

Pepper: Let’s just put it this way: if you had to reference it Twin Ferns is like Twin Peaks. We know this we are not being abashed or shy about it. The Penderwalls are semi based off the attitude people had towards the Horns. So, they’re the most hated people in the town.

Bill: They own half the town, and half the town hates them.

Archie walks with Mother Nature. An interior page from Side Stories of Camp Lake Kikipapi by Bill & Pepper DeLuca.

Pepper: Yeah, they own half the town. We kind of modeled it, instead of having the two children of the Horn family - it’s actually four children. There are two daughters, two sons – well you don’t know if one son is a girl or a boy so I don’t know yet. His name is Estes and he goes by him, his and he, so...

NG: That hasn’t been defined yet?

Pepper: It hasn’t really been defined and it will be explained later on. I don’t want to give away too much.

NG: Or else the writer is going to harm you later.

Pepper: Yeah, I know the writer is going to harm me later. But you have Pudge, who is also going to be introduced with Olive and Little Duck as well - because he is actually integral to those two and they become friends.

NG: Moving forward, is this a series you see a defined endcap on? Or is this something you could keep doing forever?

Pepper: Well summer has to end at some point.

NG: Sure, but the town has to keep running during the winter.

Bill: Yeah, we have actually talked about that. We’ve really planned out this whole world and all the characters in it. We have a nuclear ending, which just ends it - and we have an ending that finishes the story, but the next generation could take it on and your imagination could just imagine. It keeps going. So, we haven’t decided if we want to nuclear "kill it all" at the end or let the imagination go instead.

Pepper: I think that the consensus is that the nuclear will only be pulled out if we really feel like we need to stop. I think that is pretty much how we have decided that.

Archie gets teased by his bunkmates. An interior page from Side Stories of Camp Lake Kikipapi by Bill & Pepper DeLuca.

Bill: But right now, the only commitment is to the set that we have talked about - to see if there is a real audience for it and how they engage with it. If they really like it we will do another one, and another one - until we reach one of those two conclusions.

Pepper: There are other stories that Bill has thought of that he wants to try and do as well.

NG: Would those be in this universe or in a separate series?

Pepper: In this universe.

Bill: That’s kind of where the long format story comes in. I do want to do something longer and more engaging. When you’re writing for a comic, you’re really trying to fit a really short and intense arc into so many pages. So, I would really like to do something a little more involved. We have committed to doing at least one manga, where it’s just more involved and more detailed than the rest of the arc is.

Pepper: Let me clarify, he meant graphic novel.

Bill: Graphic novel, sure.

NG: I was just about to ask would you alter your style to look Japanese?

Pepper: No.

Bill: That was just my ignorance of the vocabulary.

Pepper: I already have a lot people who are like, "So you draw anime, like old anime?" It drives me crazy! My influences are 1920’s cartoons, Tex Avery, the Looney Tunes, Peyo (who is the creator of the Smurfs). There’s a lot of American artists where you can see the foundations of anime and manga.

More books & art from Peppercopia Publishing at DINK 2018.

NG: I think that honestly wraps up the questions I had but there is one more in closing for you. If the people reading want to see more, if they want to find you online, where would they look?

Pepper: You can go to LakeKikipapi.com and we sell the first chapter of Campfire Stories which is Ant Gal. That’s up on the website and soon we are going to have the Side Stories up. We are also going to start putting the artbooks that I created up there as well. Fairly soon, so you can support us and help us grow.

NG: Awesome. Thank you guys both for your time.

Campfire Stories of Lake Kikipapi & Side Stories of Camp Lake Kikipapi - both by Bill & Pepper DeLuca.

Battle Mermaids & Zebra Centaurs! Talking About "Amelia" With Thea J. Hunt (DINK 2018)

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Written by Neil Greenaway

Thea J. Hunt at DINK 2018.

Thea J. Hunt at DINK 2018.

Thea J. Hunt is a Denver-based painter, illustrator, and author who has spent the last few years world-building a new fantasy realm - a place for her stories to live. It is not out of place at all to find her tucked into the back corner of a downtown coffee shop, forgetting the world around her to concentrate on the sketchpad in front of her. And her dedication has paid off. Amelia #1 (the first issue of a 3-part mini-series) debuted in April at the 2018 Denver Independent Comic & Art Expo. I was able to sit and talk with Thea at the show, and she told me about a world filled with Gods, mortals, and new interpretations of ancient mythological creatures.

Amelia (2018) #1 by Thea J. Hunt. (front cover)

Neil Greenaway:  Today I am speaking with Thea Hunt about the debut of her very first comic, Amelia #1. So, can you start us off by telling us a little bit about the story?

Thea Hunt:  Amelia is about a little girl who goes through an intriguing drama when she is very young, and it is about how she deals with that while also being raised by gods who don't really know how humans work.

NG:  Is this going to be a standalone story or is this the beginning of a series?

Thea:  Oh, this is a series. This is the first of a three-part story, set in a world I will make more mini-comics in.

NG:  Do you have a definitive endpoint in mind for the story - where it might run for 3 or 4 mini-series? Or could you tell stories in this world forever?

Thea:  Well, for now I have the three issues planned. After that maybe some one-shots, but we will just have to see. I am aiming at having all the issues be around 22 or 25 pages.

NG:  I was told this book may include battle mermaids.

Thea:  This book will definitely include a battle mermaid, and they are based off of orcas. I am really excited for them.

NG:  Okay, so why battle mermaids?

Thea:  Because I have always felt that if there was a creature like that, that was partially humanoid and lived in the sea - specifically the sea - we would be done. If these guys are part human they are definitely going to attack us at least once. So why not? We already have mermaids in our fantasy, why not make them cooler and scarier?

Amelia (2018) #1 by Thea J. Hunt. (back cover)

NG:  Are there any other traditional fantasy characters that you will be giving a facelift to in this series?

Thea:  Yeah, centaurs. There are going to be some zebra centaurs that will be really fun. I am going to have some ice elves that will be a little different. (laughs) I am playing around with lots of different things. Ogres, giants, this is basically a whole fantasy realm. There is a fairy slave trade that is really scary - but the fairies will get their revenge. (I guess)

NG:  You said that this story will be about a human girl being raised by gods. How does she feel about them? Does she know that she is different?

Thea:  She is very much aware. By the time she comes to the gods, she is already 8 or 9. She has already had those years of relationship with her family before losing them, and trying to explain that to the gods is very hard for her. So she is very aware of the differences.

NG:  Are these Eternal gods? Are these beings who have been around for a long time already?

Thea:  Yes, they have been around forever - as far as Amelia knows.

NG:  Will these Gods be taken from mythologies we already know?

Thea:  No, but I am taking inspiration from the mythologies for a lot of their methods. I have basically gone with the Greek method of godding - where a God can say, "Hey that girl is hot, I know she has a husband but I'm going to throw this coin at her and we'll be good. Oh, you had a son? Well I know he's a half God, but he can probably just stay on Earth. It's cool."

NG:  This God didn't need another baby.

Thea:  Yes, exactly! So these are those kind of Gods. I mean, they are trying but they are not human. They do not understand how humans think and so they mess up a lot.

An interior page from Amelia #1 (color edition) by Thea J. Hunt.

NG:  All right, so they are imperfect Gods. I dig it. Are there any other humans floating around or is she the last?

Thea:  There are actually a bunch of other humans. So right now, Amelia lives in a semi-natural but also semi-God world. She is sort of in the middle and she does not know where she fits exactly. When she is in the human world, she interacts with lots of other humans and experiences a lot of different types of people - who have all been through a lot of stuff, too. So she will need to learn how to deal with them and how they have dealt with their stuff. So that will be fun.

NG:  Now I know that for this first issue you had two versions printed up: a color version and a black and white version. Is there one that you feel speaks better to the story?

Thea:  I really love the colored edition. It really makes the backgrounds come out better, but the black and white version is beautiful too. It just makes things a little bit less obvious.

NG:  Are you doing all of this by yourself?

Thea:  Basically, yes - but I have had some excellent friends along the way who have helped me out a lot. I have been really lucky, but yes this book is mostly me.

Thea J. Hunt at DINK 2018. (2)

Thea J. Hunt at DINK 2018. (2)

NG:  Awesome. It always feels good to know that you have help if you need it. After you finish Amelia, whose story from this world would you tell next?

Thea:  There are a ton of great stories to tell in this universe, but I feel like her friend group is really fun. I can't wait until I am able to tell stories about their backgrounds. I can't wait till we get there and I am excited to bring other people there with me.

NG:  Then you do have stories in this universe that don't include Amelia at all?

Thea:  Of course! That has been the plan the whole time, actually. The plan has always been that she was the setup for the myth. There are other people involved in the story, she is the setup. Just at the beginning we are going to focus on this girl for a minute.

NG:  How long have you been working on this project?

Thea:  I have been working on my art since I was 5 years old. I came up with Amelia the character in probably 2010, and I have been working on the pages for this comic since maybe 2016.

NG:  Now I wonder. Did you fall victim to the classic artist blunder when you have a book in development for that long: Did you find yourself needing to go back and redo the art from the beginning?

Thea:  I may have redrawn it three or four times, so probably. But the book is out now and I am not doing that anymore. (laughs)

NG:  Finished, not perfect. That is a fine method.

Thea:  Finished, not perfect! As long as it is looked at as a whole, and you don't dissect it into tiny pieces - because no one page will ever be perfect for you. But if you can step back and see it as a whole and that looks okay that is what you were aiming for.

Amelia #1 by Thea J. Hunt, displayed at DINK 2018.

NG:  In the independent market today, there is an awful lot of collaboration. Are you looking to bring any other artists into this world now that you have created it?

Thea:  I am not actually working with anyone else at the moment, but I have spoken to several different artists about collaborating on some pieces. That is all kind of up in the air right now. I'm still just starting.

NG:  Since this is your first book, are you nervous? Do you worry about what the feedback will be?

Thea:  I am extremely nervous, but even just the reactions from people who have stopped to read it here at the table have helped me out a lot.

NG:  What have people been saying?

Thea:  Cool things like, "This is beautiful, I really love this!" Things like that, and it has been really nice. It makes me want to make a better story for them. Hopefully it will only keep getting better.

Prints by Thea J. Hunt. 

NG:  I know that you were recently accepting commissions. Are you still taking on new commissions?

Thea:  I am always accepting commissions! Please contact me at my email: TheaHunt@ gmail.com.

NG:  I personally am happy to speak to the quality of those commissions, as you just did two for me. They were gorgeous! I think that about wraps up our interview today, but one last question: If people want to follow you or see more of your work online where would they look to do that?

Thea:  Thea J Hunt Illustrations - that is my main website. Also my handle is JoviLikesInks on basically every social media website except Facebook. That is where you can find my work.

*I checked in again with Thea after the show, and her entire first print sold out. Personally, I loved it & I can't wait to see what what comes next!*

Dawn - a recent commission from Thea J. Hunt.

Hellboy - a recent commission from Thea J. Hunt.

Be Kind, Rewind With Ron Ruelle - An Interview About A Book About A VHS Tape Of A Movie About Dachshunds (DINK 2018)

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Written by Neil Greenaway

Ron Ruelle at DINK! 2018.

Ron Ruelle at DINK! 2018.

Tapey McTaperson, the VHS mascot for Be Kind, Rewind.

Ron Ruelle began his lifelong journey into cartooning as a child, growing up with a grandmother who worked for a comic publisher. He spent his formative years practicing his art, getting one teacher to remark on a report card, "Ron needs to spend more time on math and less time drawing cartoons." While he was attending the University of Texas he was also drawing his first strip, Stoner's Aquarium, for the UT Daily Beacon. In 1990, Ron created a new strip called Stoopid Zü which ran for three years at the Knoxville News-Sentinel before being picked up by a syndicate - who requested a name change. Now called At the Zü (a name Ron has never liked), the strip ran in syndication for three years - at one point reaching an audience of nearly 100 newspapers. In 1998, facing the end of it's syndicated run, Ruelle decided to rename the strip again and keep it going on his own website as Darwin & Co. Wanting to try his hand at a more mature strip, Ron created the weekly Food, Shelter, Cable under the pseudonym Rex Silo.

These days, Mr. Ruelle has stepped into the world of graphic novels. When I caught up with him at the 2018 Denver Independent Comic & Art Expo, his table was covered in different books - including stacks of his newest work, Be Kind, Rewind. I sat down at the table with Ron and we talked about the bygone days of the video rental store, why his Awful Activities are okay for kids, and what he would do with a How To book. 

The whole time that we spoke, Ron's new VHS mascot - Tapey McTaperson - sat nearby. Quietly judging us. 

Neil Greenaway:  Today I am at DINK 2018 speaking with the statuesque and deeply voiced Ron Ruelle. Can I get you to introduce yourself and your new book?

Ron Ruelle:  (laughs) Thank you! Well, as you said, my name is Ron Ruelle. I am a cartoonist, illustrator, and ad guy. My new book is called Be Kind, Rewind. It is a graphic novel about a VHS tape of a movie about dachshunds. This is a book that I started in 2001, back when rental video cassettes were still a thing, but a bunch of stuff happened. Life got in my way and I sort of set the book aside, even though I had about 65 pages done already. Then, in the last few years, I decided that I needed to find a way to make this book happen one way or the other. So I came up with a new framing device and here we are.

Be Kind, Rewind (2018) by Ron Ruelle.

NG:  You have told me that this is a graphic novel about a VHS tape of a movie about dachshunds, but you have also told me that the dachshunds themselves are fairly tangential to the story.

RR:  Yeah, there is not a lot of dachshund action in here. If you are a fan of wiener dogs, they are peripheral to this story.

NG:  That is a shame, as I am a fan of hot wiener on wiener action.

RR:  Yes, wiener action is pretty good. There are still some fun bits in here - like there is an ad for Sea Wieners (which it turns out are just brine shrimp). This book, by the way, has a very cuddly cover with cute cartoon dachshunds chewing on a videotape - but this is a very R rated book. There is profanity, nudity, violence, casual racism and general dickishness.

NG:  It does say Rated R right on the cover.

RR:  Yeah, it says R on here a few times and it says For Mature Readers on the back.

NG:  If the book is not about the movie about dachshunds, what is the book about?

RR:  The book is about the video cassette itself. Imagine that you are shopping at a grocery store and you are returning your cart, like all good people do. And there, in another cart, you see a rental video cassette that somebody left behind. What would you do? Would you take it to the video store right away? Would you keep it? Would you take it home and watch it and return it 3 weeks late, incurring late fees? Would you murder someone with it and implicate the person who had originally rented it? There are so many different shades of gray & beyond. That's what we explore in this book, and so we live through all these different scenarios. We see the video tape destroyed several times over - so these stories can be seen as mutually exclusive or in alternate universes.

At the Zü from 5-28-98 by Ron Ruelle.

At the Zü from 5-28-98 by Ron Ruelle.

NG:  Before working on this book you had a daily comic strip called At the Zü. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

RR:  Right, so At the Zü was a comic strip I had many moons ago. It ran from 1995 to 1998. It was running in almost a hundred papers at one point. Which is getting to the place where you can start to make a living at this, but not quite, and it sort of faded from there. The thing about doing a syndicated comic strip is that it is the same amount of work whether you are in one paper or a thousand. But even for one paper, you still have to do the work. So after a few years I decided to move on to other things. I have 3 collected volumes of At the Zü now: 2 books of the dailies and one book of the collected Sunday strips.

Ron Ruelle at DINK 2018!

NG:  You have another book here at the table called Awful Activities, which you told me earlier was your best selling book. Could you tell me a little more about that?

RR:  Yes, Awful Activities is my best-selling book. It is an activity book for immature adults. It has pages like 'What horrible anxieties keep mommy awake at night?' and then you fill in her dream balloon. Or 'That's the most offensive cereal mascot ever!' and then you draw in the cereal box. 'What is Betsy burying in the shallow grave?' There are all sorts of fun possibilities. It says not for kids right on the cover, but I have been told that kids love this book. It is really only as raunchy as you make it. I do set people up for some pretty good jokes in here, though. I set them up, you knock them down.

NG:  Now that you have finished Be Kind, Rewind, what comes next? What is on the horizon?

RR:  Going around and selling books. (laughs) I have to plug this thing for a while, so I'm not really sure right now.

NG:  Aside from cartooning, the appearances at conventions, the selling of your books, I know that you also do a little bit of teaching. How has that been going for you?

RR:  Yes! I used to teach college classes at the Community College of Aurora, but I don't do that anymore. Right now I do teach at summer camps for different grades (usually late elementary school, middle school, some high school) in Denver and Boulder. At the Boulder Valley School District, I teach for them. So I will do a five-day, half-day summer camp. I work with the JCC in Denver, the Art Students League, various gigs downtown. It's a lot of fun because I never took art classes at all when I was a kid. I learned to draw cartoons just naturally. When I got hired to teach I had to ask myself, "How do I do those things? I don't know how to explain this other than to just do it." I had to sit down and think through my own process, and the decisions that I make to see how I do things and help me create lessons. I had to relearn cartooning so that I could teach cartooning. So, one of my next books will be a How To book, but I don't want it to say things like "...this character is 3 heads tall..." I wanted to talk about how to compose a panel that makes sense. Or how do I know what to draw versus what to write, and how do I flip back and forth between the two? How do I develop characters that are useful and that matter? Again, this is stuff that I never really thought about until I started teaching, and I had to figure out how to tell other people how to do it. Basically, I am going to distill my lessons into book form.

All the books from Ron Ruelle at DINK 2018!

NG:  That sounds great, and it would address questions that I hear asked a lot. I have one more question for you: if my readers wanted to see more of your books or follow your work online, where would they look?

RR:  They could go to my website which is RonRuelle.com. Right there you will find links to all of my books, my graphic design, other comics, and all sorts of fun stuff!

NG:  Thank you very much for your time!

RR:  Thank you and Party On!

Pilla, Kaui, & áyA Studios - An Interview With Rafael & Kristina Maldonado-Bad Hand (DINK 2018)

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Written by Neil Greenaway

KEVIN BUTCHER (editor of Pilla) WITH KRISTINA, KODA, AND RAFAEL MALDONADO-BAD HAND AT DINK 2018. it had been a long day...

KEVIN BUTCHER (editor of Pilla) WITH KRISTINA, KODA, AND RAFAEL MALDONADO-BAD HAND AT DINK 2018. it had been a long day...

Kristina & Rafael Maldonado-Bad Hand have had a busy year. The pair of artists were married in fall of 2017. A few months later they had welcomed a new addition to their family, Koda Maldonado-Bad Hand. As if a new baby was not enough, they both have new comic series launching 2018 - the bi-monthly series Pilla from Rafael and the graphic novel Kaui from Kristina. At the Denver Independent Comic & Art Expo in April I had the opportunity to ask the two a few questions about their new books, their new áyA Studios publishing house, and how parentage and heritage play into both of their works.

The Pilla Ashcan, premiering at DINK 2018.

Neil Greenaway:  Now, just to start us off: you two are both artists, and you are a married couple. Do you ever work on the same projects?

Rafael Maldonado-Bad Hand:  Kind of. Kristina is actually helping me with the colors on Pilla. And she did the colors on the ashcan for the cover, and then for the banner. She did the colors on that as well.

NG:  But as a rule you both do your own art and writing?

Both:  Yes.

NG:  All right then, can you tell me a little bit about Pilla?

Rafael:  Yeah. It's about a seven year old girl, and she is surviving in the post-apocalyptic world. Humans are now at the bottom of the food chain. There are mutated creatures that eat us, and just about anything else. She gets separated from her dad, and she's on her own - trying to remember the lessons that he taught her. Like every child, when he was trying to teach her she was thinking, "I know better than you, I don't need to listen," but now she is finding that she really should have listened. She is figuring out these lessons on her own - she is finding out how strong of a person she really is. Meanwhile there will be little flashbacks to show her father and what he is dealing with in his hunt for her. He will also see her growth and see what kind of person she really is. The whole point of the series will be that it's not really the parents who should be seen as superheroes, it's the kids. Her father will see that in her inner strength.

NG:  You have the ashcan issue of Pilla ready to premiere at DINK and the first full issue will premiere at Denver Comic Con, is that correct?

Pilla (2018) #1, cover by Rafael Maldonado-Bad Hand.

Rafael:  That is the plan.

NG:  What are your plans in terms of this becoming an ongoing series?

Rafael:  We are already planning it as a series. I plan to release an issue every other month, so we are going to hit 6 issues a year.

NG:  Do you have a defined endpoint for the series? Do you know if this story is 6 or 12 or 18 issues?

Rafael:  No, not really. We're just going to let it keep going. What I do know is that her journey will take years, and every year she will age with us in real time. This won't be like Spider-Man or Batman where the character is permanently trapped in their twenties. We are actually going to watch her grow. I really took inspiration from The Savage Dragon. You got to witness him going through the years. His marriage, his children, his death, and then his son took over the book and we're getting to see his children and his career. It is no longer the original Savage Dragon. Now it is Malcolm, and that is what I would like to do with Pilla. I really like that concept.

NG:  That is a really cool thing for any indie book to achieve, just the longevity it takes to tell that story. Now to switch gears a little bit. Kristina, can you tell me about the new book that you have coming out?

Kristina Maldonado-Bad Hand:  Sure. The book is called Kaui, and it is basically a Polynesian twist on Beauty and the Beast. This will be part of a series as well, one that I've been working on for a while. The series is called Indigenous Fairy Tales. Basically I take traditional fairy tales and themes from traditional stories of different indigenous tribes, and I try to mix them into a modern fairytale that deals with problems indigenous people have in their lives today. So while the stories take place in modern times, there are themes from the traditional stories as well as themes from the classic fairy tales.

Kaui: Beyond the Pages (2018) #1, cover by Kristina Maldonado-Bad Hand.

NG:  Does this series deal only with the different Polynesian tribes, or will you bring in stories from mainland tribes as well?

Kristina:  The series will be dealing with tribes from all over. I just sort of started with Kaui because that was the first concept I had sketched out, and Beauty and the Beast made its way in because it is my favorite fairy tale. I got a lot of support for this idea and my sister actually lives in Oahu now, so that was a really big help. She was able to put together a focus group who could tell me if I was doing everything correctly on a cultural level. I've had people collaborating with me on this. It has become a larger project than what it was originally. The original release of this story I actually put out in 2013. That was the first issue. The funny thing is, when I was working with the Indigenous Narratives Collective, we needed to release something for Comic-Con. We wanted to premier something. Originally we were going to premiere Tales of the Mighty Code Talkers but that did not go through. The artists did not finish what they were doing, and it just was not happening. They asked me if I could get Kaui done, so I put together that first release in two weeks. It was kind of crazy. My lovely husband here helped me with the inks because I had to write, draw, and color a 27 page comic - in two weeks.

NG:  Wow! That schedule must have been killer!

Kristina:  It actually came out pretty good, but it was not what I had been picturing and it was not the big project that I wanted it to be. I ended up revisiting it, and now it is going to be... 100 pages?

Rafael:  Yeah. It was 64 before the additions.

Kristina:  Yeah, it started at 64 pages but then after I had done my cultural revisions and added new inks and colors... now it is 100 pages. (laughs)

Pilla (2018) #1, variant cover by Kristina Maldonado-Bad Hand.

NG:  And you said this was going to be a series as well?

Kristina:  Yes, but the stories stand alone. So Kaui is a stand-alone story, and the next one will be called Kupu and it will be an Inuit version of The Little Mermaid. Then on the issue after that I have plans to collaborate with my lovely husband here.

Rafael:  I'm lovely.

Kristina:  we are going to do a Lakota Pinocchio - because I am Sicangu Lakota and Cherokee. We have a lot of stories about a spider trickster spirit named Iktomi. There are a lot of lessons about Iktomi taking the form of a real boy. Rafael actually brought up the idea of combining it with Pinocchio because for a long time I had been looking for a fairy tale that fit in somewhere with Lakota culture. I just could not figure it out, which had put that issue on the back burner. I have so many ideas for this series. I had almost every tribe matched up with a fairytale but I could not figure that one out until he suggested Pinocchio. Now I am excited for this one. It may jump up ahead of the Kupu story.

NG:  I know that you have Lakota in your lineage. Do you also have any Hawaiian lineage that is informing your need to do the Kaui story?

Kristina:  I actually do not. What happened was my sister married someone from Hawaii, and it is a culture I have always found very beautiful. I have had a lot of connections to people from that area throughout my life and it was just something I wanted to explore more of.

NG:  And then if I could go back to your Lakota heritage for just one moment, I know that you also have a set of Lakota themed playing cards that you have done the art for. Could you tell us a little bit about that?

Kristina:  Yes, that was a Kickstarter project. That one originally came about because I was going to the Art Institute and one of our assignments was to create a deck of playing cards. I had designed just three cards for the class, but when my teacher saw them he said, "You should make a whole deck!" I kind of liked the idea but I wasn't sold on it. My mother, however, was like, "Yes you have to do this!" So I drew up the rest of the deck and we had the Kickstarter campaign. It was successfully funded. We are actually still getting cards out to people. Fulfillment is a whole monster that I wish I had researched before we started the campaign.

Card illustrations from the Lakota card deck by Kristina Maldonado-Bad Hand.

NG:  I have heard from many people that the shipping on Kickstarter projects is the part that always gets people in trouble.

Kristina:  Oh yes! I have learned a whole bunch of lessons by running that Kickstarter. In my after-school program now, with my students I really try to hammer down both the negative and the positive sides of creative entrepreneurship. Creating art is great, but there is a business side to it - and that is something I wish I had understood more of before I ran a Kickstarter. I feel like with the production of the cards and then the shipping, I really should have had a financial manager for my first project. There are all these little check marks that I didn't realize I should be hitting until after the project had finished. Now it is 5 years down the road and this is still a monster we are dealing with.

NG:  You two both have new books coming out. Now that you have a little bit of experience with Kickstarter, have you considered crowdfunding for either of these books? Or is they going to be entirely self-published?

Rafael:  Actually, yes. Crowdfunding is something that we have been really looking at for Pilla, but because this was my first book I didn't think I would be able to raise the funding I would need. Luckily I have a friend who has just opened up his own comic store and he is helping us out with the first print run. Then I will be doing crowdfunding for the second issue. That way I have a point to jump off from instead of just nothing.

Kristina:  And Kaui is actually grant-funded.

NG:  Really? Where did the grant come from?

Kristina:  I actually can't remember the name of the grant right now... We are still in the process of getting that all worked out. (laughs)

NG:  ....but you were incredibly flattered to get the offer. (laughs)

Kristina:  Yes! We are still in the process of it, but we got it through the Indigenous Film Festival here in Denver. Jeanne Rubin does a lot of the Polynesian films, so she is helping us out by seeing what can be done with different indigenous fairy tales.

NG:  These projects are both coming out of the independent comics community. Do you both feel that the world of independent comics is a strong place to be telling your stories right now?

Character design for the Kaui graphic novel by Kristina Maldonado-Bad Hand.

Rafael:  I am totally behind it, and I feel it is the best place for us to be telling our stories right now. I listen to Todd McFarlane a lot, and I know that a lot of people don't care for his attitude, but I think he is actually very brilliant. He has stated that we needed as an industry to go towards the independent. He said we needed more original characters. That people needed to stop drawing other people's stuff, and start drawing their own. His reason for that was that the two biggest comic companies are now owned by two of the biggest movie studios in the world. So if one of the smaller movie studios wants to make a comic book movie, they can't go to Marvel - because Disney wouldn't let that happen. And they can't go to DC and Warner Brothers for the same reason. So they are going to start going to the independents, and we have already started seeing that. The independent comic creators are still writing for originality. We still love the Marvel Cinematic Universe, we love to see the continuing stories of the characters we all know. At the same time, we also crave original stories. I like DINK for that. I like the whole independent market for that. We are completely behind it.

NG:  And then for you Kristina, there has been a lot of talk lately about the hardship of being a woman in the comics industry. Have you personally experienced any setbacks?

Kristina:  I have. There have definitely been setbacks.

NG:  Do you think that being Native American had an effect? Do you think it made things better or worse?

Kristina:  I have faced hardships, but I wouldn't say they were any worse then what other people have gone through. In terms of getting ideas funded or books published, I might almost say being Lakota was a good thing - because it is such a popular tribe. We do have to deal with a fair amount of cultural appropriation, but it gets my foot in the door. A lot of the time as soon as I mention that I am Lakota, because there is still that Romanticism about it, people want to know more. People seem to hope that there will be something mystical about me, but that does allow me to talk more. Hopefully they actually listen to me.

Independent comics have been very kind to me and I do prefer it over the mainstream pop-culture fan-art conventions. I went through a period as an artist where I was doing prints of famous comic characters, but it was a very short time in my life because when I had started I was doing all original stuff and it sold really well. Then I started doing fan art and my sales went down. I did not do very well when I was selling prints of other people's characters, but when I do my own stuff it always sells really well. My playing cards, for instance are my best selling item.

NG:  Well those cards are awesome!

Character design for the Kaui graphic novel by Kristina Maldonado-Bad Hand.

Rafael:  I actually have the opposite problem. I had started with prints and fan art, and it sold really well. Then my sales dipped when I started doing independent stuff, but it is picking back up now that I am getting close to publishing Pilla. I have run into that. I don't really miss the fan art. There were characters that I enjoyed drawing ,and if some studio came to me and said, "Hey we would love for you to draw The Crow," *hint hint* - I would totally jump on that. But I do love my independent stuff way more. It is a lot more personal and there is a lot more heart in it.

NG:  With that in mind, do either of you pitch to publishers? Or are you happy to get your books out as self-published?

Rafael:  We do pitch to publishers everyday. It's just that we are the publishers. We have a company called áyA Studios, and we are striving to make that a publishing house.

NG:  So you actually want to be publishing other people's stories?

Rafael:  Yes, that is one of our main focuses. Let's say that you have a story that needs to be told. You would have to pitch it to us and explain to us why it needs to be told. You would have to show us it is not just another Walking Dead spinoff or a retelling of the Spider-Man story. It would need to be an original story that held some relevance in the world today. Then we can help with making that, or we can help connect writers and artists if they need that. Or if you do it all on your own we can just help you get it out there. We go the independent publishing route, we just charge a small fee for printing. That has been a primary focus for us.

Kristina:  And then we also make motion comics in a workshop with Tomorrow Maker Films. They are also going to be at DINK. They are a non-profit that is mostly made up of kids - it's about 25 kids. They write, storyboard, and film their own stories. The story they are working on is a post-apocalyptic world where basically anyone over the age of 14 is gone and so it is only children. It's got sort of a Star Wars feel to it. It is a really interesting story that they have got going on. They started this nonprofit 5 years ago with just a few kids, and it was supposed to be just one quick project. Now they have 25 kids and it is sort of an ongoing project. At any rate, we started working with them and sort of teaching them how to do comic books. They wanted their prequel to be told in a comic book format, and we are animating it as a motion comic so that it can be spliced into their film as flashbacks. Hopefully we will have a preview of all that soon.

NG:  How would you release these motion comics? Would they be available on a website?

Pilla: Issue #1, Ashcan, issue #1 variant, & prismatic print (in back).

Kristina:  Yes, on our website we have a place called Storyteller's Port - which is an online portfolio essentially. That's one of the things we wanted to do - particularly for people who have ideas for independent stories that were not as fleshed out. They could do a one-page comic and then we could animate it - almost like an animatic or an elevator pitch for their comic idea. Then they can elaborate on that, or they can come back to our website and refer to it when they are going into schools or things like that. It will always be there. That is one section of our website we are working on. The very first motion comics to go up - our premiers - would be the ones with Tomorrow Maker Films. We also want to start having motion comic classes that maybe don't have an age limit on them - but still geared towards middle school age, because I think for young kids these concepts might still be hard to understand. That said, we are definitely not against younger kids learning this stuff.

NG:  Awesome! I think that about wraps it up for us today, but I have one more question for both of you. If the people reading this want to see more of your work or follow you online, where can they look to do that?

Rafael:  We are on Facebook under createaya we are also on Instagram as well and Pinterest.

Kristina:  On Pinterest I do reading recommendations for different ages of school kids. Our content is kind of heavy on the education side of comics, so on our Pinterest there are resources for teachers. If they wanted to integrate things like pop culture or comics or games into their classrooms. Then I have my reading recommendations, and we have a couple different art lesson boards. It is worth saying that our Pinterest is not necessarily all stuff that we put out, it is just a resource center for us. Facebook is probably the best place to see our work.

Rafael:  Yeah, Facebook is the big one for us. On a personal note, I also have a Patreon under RafaelMaldonadoBadHand (all one big word). There you will see sneak peeks of things like Pilla and another book I am working on with a buddy of mine. Also there are options that will get you original art.

Kristina:  And of course our website is áyAStudios.com. That is still under construction because we are adding the whole motion comics thing, but you can still go there.

An Interview With Indie Comics Icon James O'Barr (DINK! 2018)

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Written by Neil Greenaway

James O'Barr at the 2018 Denver Independent Comic & Art Expo.

James O'Barr at the 2018 Denver Independent Comic & Art Expo.

The Crow (1989) #1 by James O'Barr.

James O'Barr is known the world over as the creator of The Crow. Everyone knows that his 1989 comic series led to a successful movie in 1994, and both versions of the story have become mainstays of the goth/emo scene. (O'Barr jokes himself that the goth "starter pack" comes with a pair of Doc Martens, a Cure album, and a copy of The Crow tpb.) The aesthetic created through James' books and art has influenced the clothing and make-up worn by decades of disaffected teens - but his impact on the world at large has been far greater than that. Through his popularity while maintaining a strictly independent publishing routine, O'Barr inspired scores of young artists to try their own hand at graphic storytelling - and with these new creators came an understanding that there was a place for tragedy and loss in their work. Not every story has to be grandly inspirational or super heroic.

I had the chance to sit down and speak with James in April when he came to Colorado for the 2018 Denver Independent Comic & Art Expo (or DINK!). We spoke about his comics, his time with Spin Magazine, and his ideal Batman story. What I found was a man who holds his satirical edge, speaks with humor & wit, and is still unapologetically doing things his own way.

Neil Greenaway: Today I am speaking with James O’Barr in cooperation with the DINK 2018 convention.

James O’Barr: What does that stand for?

Promotional poster for DINK! 2018.

NG: Not D-I-N-K (laughs). It’s the Denver Independent Comic and Art Expo.

JO: You know that’s a racial slur against Vietnamese, right?

NG: You know I have had 2 people in my life point out that it wasn’t a conventional name; you just now and when I interviewed Kevin Sorbo (in a DINK t-shirt) he said, “that’s a word I like to call people.”

JO: Yeah that’s what the soldiers liked to call the Vietnamese during the war.

NG: I did not know that.                                                                                                                                        

JO: I think it has to do with- there is a saying "dinky dow" (Dien-Cai-Dao ).

NG: I have heard that.

JO: So, they would call them dinks. So, there’s a small history lesson. It’s not nearly as bad as the ill-named SAC-Con, the Sacramento Convention.

NG: It depends on what they are celebrating there. I worked in the fetish world for a while and can tell you, there could be a Sack-Con.

JO: Scrotal-Con

The Crow: Inertia from Caliber Presents (1989) #1.

NG: We’ll avoid that one. So just to give us a quick layout, what are you doing these days in the comic book world? What have you got in the works?

JO: I have 3 books I am working on, that I have been working on for a couple of years now. I switch off between them depending on what mood I am in. One of them is very research heavy. I am doing a book on the Korean War, and you know that’s all fact based so there is a lot of in-depth research not just on the people but the weapons and the uniforms. Then I have a western that I have been working on and I thought, "Oh great I get to draw horses". But then it’s like, oh you get to draw saddles and era specific weapons. So there is a lot research in that one too. Then the third one is a new Crow book I’ve been working on with a woman this time. As well as writing stuff for other people.

NG: Would those 3 books be your writing and your art?

JO: Yeah. Actually, Jim Terry is going to work with me on the Korea book. The idea being that it’s a story about a company of Marines called Fox Company. I was in the Marines and they make you learn the whole history of the Marines in your training. So, we were told about the real 300. A time when 300 soldiers actually held off an army.  Actually, it was 289 Marines that held a mountain pass over the Chosin Reservoir in 40 degrees below zero weather against 20,000 Chinese. They had to hold it for 5 days, because there were more Marines on the other side of the mountain but there was only one way out. So, if they were to lose that position those Marines would have been trapped and probably killed. And it’s an amazing story, but unlike the Spartans, 82 of the Marines lived. I mean they were all shot to pieces but it was so cold that when they were shot their wounds froze over. It’s one of the most amazing and heroic stories I have ever read about. And Korea is the forgotten war. There are no movies on it, only a few books, no documentaries to speak of.

NG: My wife and I have spoken often of the times that M*A*S*H, while it is supposed to take place in Korea, was really more about what was happening with the Vietnam war.

Leathernecks from the 7th Marine Regiment are able to catch a few moments rest during their heroic breakout from the Chosin Reservoir on December 6, 1950. 

JO: Yeah it has nothing to do with Korea. Korea was the first Jet war. It was the first war with the M*A*S*H units, portable hospitals. And the first integrated war where blacks were allowed to fight alongside the whites. It was a very interesting time, but it was just largely forgotten. Those kids and young men were as brave as any of the men who fought in WWII. So, I thought this was an opportunity to tell one of their stories.

NG: Just to pick you brain on that briefly, I know that there was an enormous amount of heroism awarded to the men who came back from WWII and quite a bit or derision from the guys that came back from Vietnam. Do you think that Korea just got caught in the swing of that emotional shift?

JO: I think a large part of it was that it was never declared a war. It was declared a police action through the UN, and it was troops from all over the world that were part of the UN that came to fight too. But largely it fell on the Marines’ shoulders to do the grunt work, the dirty work. So, it was never declared a war and it didn’t last long. I mean, there were a lot of casualties and I think more Medals of Honor were given out in Korea than WWII. But it lasted 3 years and it was caught up in this – it seemed to the American public to be more about the UN than an actual war. Still to this day it hasn’t been declared a war, it’s a police action.

NG: So that’s where that is. Can we talk about the movie? I know when The Crow came out it was a seminal film. Each of the sequels seemed to lose something along the way.

JO: Progressively they lost more and more.

NG: Were you involved with the sequels at all? I know that you were quite vocally unhappy with them.

JO: Yeah, I had nothing to do with any of the sequels - and was against them being made even. I mean the first film had a definitive ending. There was no reason to make another film other than greed. But that’s Hollywood. Anytime something’s successful, they want more of the same. But I don’t think the people involved understood what made the first one work, or the book for that matter. That it’s a love story at heart and the violence is just ancillary. So, they just made some really misguided choices on everything.

A movie poster for the 1994 movie, The Crow.

NG: Do you think that Alex Proyas was just the right man at the right time? Because that first movie struck lightening. It seemed so perfect.

JO: Stylistically he was perfect for it. And there is something to be said... it came out at just the right time too. When America was ready to accept - it wasn’t even called ‘goth’ back then - the alternative youth kind of movement. It was a post punk, post Reagan era so there was a little bit of – like after WWII, that’s when all the film noirs happened. There was this very depressed movement in the US and it’s kind of ill defined. It wasn’t just one thing. It just came out at the right time and it’s very much of that period.

NG: Are you involved at all with the new one coming out?

JO: I am. I’m working with the director and Jason Momoa on everything and this one is not a remake of the Brandon Lee one. It’s going back to the book and it’s going to be as faithful and adaptation of the book as we can do. Obviously, it is going to be expanded some because if you just shot the book it would be an 80-minute film so we have to expand some of the characters back stories and stuff like that. But overall, it’s just going to be a really faithful adaptation of the book. Closer to Taxi Driver than the kind of John Woo violence that was in the Brandon Lee movie, that hyper stylized violence. So, I’m pretty excited about it. It starts filming in the fall. Sony’s been – it’s with Sony now, Sony Pictures – and they have been very supportive of everything.

NG: Do they understand where things went poorly the first time?

JO: I think it’s licensed jointly through Ed Pressman who made the other Crow films and Sony and I think Ed Pressman understands that the reason the other films failed is that they didn’t have my involvement. That was the one key element that for some reason they thought they could do without. Like they thought that they had the formula down for what makes a good alternative goth-dark-romance film, and it was all 60-year-old men so of course they were clueless. A bunch of gray haired old men with Maalox caked around their lips trying to decide what kids are going to like next summer and their finger not on pulse of America let’s say. So yeah Ed Pressman approached me and was very generous with everything, like what would it take to get me involved in this. It’s very favorable. Essentially, they are doing the same thing this time that they did on the first film, like here’s the money just go make your movie. So, I’m pretty excited about it.

Jason Momoa as The Crow.

NG: Perhaps you answered this, did I hear Jason Momoa is attached?

JO: Yeah Jason is the lead. He’s wanted it forever, like 2 or 3 years now.

(*Note - It was announced in May that both Jason Momoa & director Corin Hardy had left the project)

NG: I had heard some criticism that he might me too big but then I saw the makeup tests that were posted, and man - he looked great.

JO: He just finished doing all his Aquaman stuff and he is going to try to lose like 50 lbs.

NG: So, he is going to come down a little for this role?

Corin Hardy with Jason Momoa as The Crow.

JO: Yeah, he is going to slim down a little for it. And actually, I spoke to him just a couple weeks ago, I was supposed to meet him at a convention in Cleveland but he had got called back to do Aquaman reshoots and he has already lost like 25 lbs. and Warner Brothers was not happy because nothing fit anymore, and there was talk of CGI-ing his muscles back in…

NG: Did we learn nothing from the mustache?

JO: It’s Warner Brothers. If they want to piss away their money, let them.

NG: It seems to be what makes them happy. Now going back to comics just a little, I know that you have always had an affinity for Batman and - my God, you have certainly made your name in the industry - so how has that never happened? How is it that we don’t have James O’Barr’s Batman?

JO: It was supposed to happen back in the 90’s. After I did The Crow I went to DC and I met with Denny O’Neil who oversaw all the Batman books and I showed him some samples and gave him my story pitch and he said, ‘I love it, when can you start on it?’ And I told him I had this film coming out this fall, and I have agreed to do promotional stuff on it but when that’s done I can start on it in earnest. I mean I would be working on it the whole time, but after that’s done I can devote myself fully to it. So, we agreed to that. I did 30 pages of artwork. I wrote a whole script out. In the meantime, Denny O’Neil stepped down from his position as the Batman series editor and there was a new editor there. I sent my stuff in and he’s like ‘No, no, no. You can’t do this with Batman.’ You know it’s all the stuff they have done subsequently, but they were like "You know the Tim Burton movie came out and we are making Batman family friendly again", which was kind of the antithesis of what I was doing. I was making it crazy and scary and frightening and violent.

A 2016 Batman commission by James O'Barr.

NG: I have seen the pictures of your punk rock Batman, would that have been the Batman in your story?

JO: Yeah. And the idea was that it was going to be the original Batman in the 1940’s, and the thing that DC likes to forget about is that in the first 3 issues Batman used guns. He was essentially The Shadow in a different costume. He had two .45’s. So, I wrote this whole James Ellroy kind of scenario. And he handmakes his costume out of leather and wire and nails and stitches, carpet thread. So, it’s a really terrifying look. All his teeth have been knocked out from fighting so he puts in these monster dentures when he’s the Batman. I really wanted to do it. I put a lot of time and effort into it and suddenly it wasn’t what they wanted anymore. So, I abandoned it. It just sat around on the shelf for years. Then they approached me again not that long ago, maybe 10 years ago, about it because I guess somebody had found some sample pages I had done. Some copies of sample pages were in the files, and they were super interested in me doing this book now because it was different times as well. So, this time I didn’t just go in and do all this work for free. I got my agent to contact them and draw up a contract so that I wasn’t just throwing my time and energy and artwork into a blackhole, like the first time. So, we got about 4 paragraphs away from getting the thing signed when the editors at DC decided you know what, instead of taking batman in a new adult direction I think we will just kill Bruce Wayne. I was ok. That’s it, I am done with this. I will not invest anymore time or effort into this thing because it just felt like a no-win scenario. And all the things they objected to in my story have been done since. In fact, when Paul Pope was doing his Batman: Year 100, he had seen some of my pages and I’m like use whatever you want, Paul. They won’t let me do it, maybe they will let you get away with it. He ended up using stylistically some of the stuff I had come up with and that’s fine, Paul was a good friend back then. I haven’t seen him ages but he was a good friend back then. But now I see the Batman with a thousand faces thing and I’m like they took exception to what I was doing? It’s like they are letting Clive Barker write this shit and I couldn’t do James Ellroy?

NG: Do you ever see yourself working for the big 2 or are you past that in your time?

A panel from an unpublished X-Men story by James O'Barr.

JO: My issue is that I’m not going to work on anything I don’t own. Financially it just isn’t worth it to me. I’m too old to dig ditches for other people. I’ve been approached by Marvel and DC and Dark Horse to work on some of their projects, but if I’m going write it and draw it - I pencil it, ink it, letter it, I do everything by hand - and if I’m going to invest that much time and effort into it, it has to be personal and unfortunately in comics the character has to be the same on the first and last page. It has to be the same character from issue to issue. So, I don’t know that there is a lot I could bring to those characters.

NG: I have heard a lot of thoughts on stagnation taking place there because people can’t create new characters without relinquishing all ownership - so why bother?

JO: Yeah. I’ve done well with my working methods and I just don’t see anything out there that I could contribute to that would be fulfilling to me and worth the time I would have to invest in it. The Batman thing was kind of the last straw on that.

NG: Well that’s too bad. I think that would have been an awesome story. To shift gears again just a little, we spoke briefly a while ago about you getting to meet several famous bands in your time. How do those relationships come up? I know you have at least had meetings with Joy Division or members of it.

JO: New Order, yeah.

NG: And you were friends with Iggy Pop if I recall. How do those opportunities open for you?

JO: I was very fortunate, and actually it was about the time I was working on The Crow as well - that I started doing record reviews for Spin Magazine, which I don’t even know if that exists anymore. They were like the hot new music magazine. They were like what Rolling Stone used to be. I had a great editor over there, Dave Eggers who went on to bigger and better things, Pulitzer Prize winner. Michael Chabon worked there as well. But you know it didn’t really pay. It was like $30 to review a record. But you know the bonus was I would get boxes full of records for free. One of the perks of that was that if I wrote a review of a record, I would get to go interview the band when they played in Detroit. Most of these were not well-known bands, very underground or alternative bands at the time. So, they would play in a small club at the time called Saint Andrews which has a capacity of maybe 500 people. So yeah, I would go to the show and of course everything I wrote a review of I was a fan of, because I had no interest in trashing someone’s career just because the music on the record wasn’t recorded for me. And in fact, here’s an example. I got My Chemical Romance their first record deal because I guess my name got around that I was the guy to send shit to. They sent me a bunch of demo cassettes and I listened to it and it wasn’t for me. It didn’t speak to me. There wasn’t anything in it for me, but I knew there was probably an audience out there for it - so I passed it along to the people at an independent label called Eyeball Records and that was their first record contract and Gerard [Way] remembers that. He asked me to do a cover for one of his comics recently as like a thank you. I didn’t know what a nightmare it was going to be working for DC but-

Doom Patrol (2016) #8 variant cover by James O'Barr.

NG: Oh, on his new Young Animal line then.

JO: Yeah, they have switched. They moved and are now Warner Brothers Entertainment. It’s not Warner Brothers Publishing anymore and so everything is done by computers and you must be in their system. No checks are sent out, let’s say. It has to be wired to an account and so it was just like a ton of paperwork that has to be done and then someone has to enter it all into the system. It literally took me six months to get paid for a cover. I got paid for it the day it came out.

NG: Well that’s timely I guess.

JO: Yeah and I have artist friends that DC has called and asked them "Oh are you interested in working on this?" And the artist said sure, but then DC is says "Oh never mind you aren’t in the system". I can’t go through that. Hopefully they will get that streamlined in the future and make that a little easier.

NG: Yeah. I had heard not too long ago that before he got started with My Chemical Romance, Gerard was writing comics for Hart Fisher at Boneyard Press.

JO: Yeah Hart was quite the fisherman. He tried to drag everyone into his little cesspool, including me. I didn’t want to have anything to do with him.

NG: You do seem like a name that would crop up on Boneyard.

JO: Yeah. Hart was just there to outrage people and there was no point to it other than for the sake of outrage. I found pretty much everything they did easily dismissed. And worse it was poorly done. It’s like the kid who farts in class because it’s forbidden. So yeah, Gerard probably did write there.

NG: The context of my hearing that was Hart was pissed that Gerard wasn’t giving him his credit as the first publisher.

JO: I’m surprised Hart is still alive. He lured me to his house - me, Mark Bodé, and someone else - and he was literally living in an abandoned house with holes punched in the walls. And he’s watching this weird fecal porn stuff on VHS and it’s like... I wanted a shower the second I stepped out of there. But yeah, I didn’t even know he was still around.

NG: Yeah, he does a TV channel on Roku called American Horrors that runs horror movies 24/7 I believe.

JO: Well I guess he felt that his mission in life was to shock and outrage. Because there was never any substance to anything he did. So, there’s my critique of Boneyard Press. Anyhow like I was saying I got to interview all these bands like Nine Inch Nails, New Order, all these bands would play this little club and I got to hang out with them afterwards and I would give them copies of The Crow for them to read on their tour bus. I was in bands before and I know how boring it is driving from city to city to city. And so, they were all fans. I was really fortunate because none of them were famous yet.

Skinny Puppy - Cleanse Fold and Manipulate

NG: Did I hear that you had designed the logo for a Skinny Puppy album?

JO: I did! I never got paid or credit for it but it was just for one album - Cleanse Fold and Manipulate. They used my font but they were friends, so it was fine. They didn’t have a lot of money at the time and I always did favors for people that I liked or bands that I liked. Especially bands from around the Chicago scene. I was from Detroit and there was a really good music scene happening in Chicago in the 90’s. I would take the train down there every weekend and see all kinds of great - now legendary - bands that of course no one cared about at the time. So, it was a good time. I look back on it with a lot of fondness. And Dave Eggers was a great editor to work for at Spin. He would say, ‘I want you to review this album but I want you to tell me what it feels like, I don’t want you to mention the album once.’ And that’s a big challenge you know? To get across the emotional state this album can put you in without actually mentioning a single track on the record. So, they were good writing exercises.

NG: The next question that I have for you is, I know that in the past you’ve spoken about being mentored by Vaughn Bodé (you just mentioned his son Mark) and I know that you knew Jeff Jones. How did you get to be in that group? I ask because that group seems kind of freewheeling and hippie as opposed to your own style.

Berni Wrightson, WM Kaluta, Jeff Jones, and Barry Windsor-Smith (back)

JO: Now they are like The Beatles. Everyone looks at them as like these young gods but back then I was 15/16 years old and in reality they were struggling artists just like everyone else. I got to be friends with Bernie Wrightson, Mike Kaluta, and... I would like to say I was friends with Jeff Jones but there was something unknowable about him. I mean you could spend hours with him but you couldn’t dissect what he was thinking or his thought process. The only one I didn’t get along with was Barry Windsor-Smith but he was going through his own issues at the time. But yeah, Vaughn took a personal interest in me. And even though our styles are polar opposite, I learned a lot from him about staging, foreground elements, pacing and he told me about a lot of other artists to look at that were before my time. I owe Vaughn a lot. But I think thematically what I do is closer to what Jeff Jones does. There is this striving for beauty even in ugly circumstance. There can be something beautiful. Actually, I think I was like 13 the first time I met Bernie Wrightson, and it was great that for the last 15 years he was a dear friend and he considered me a peer. I could walk in the room and he would say, ‘Hi James!’ And I was just still like holy shit, Bernie Wrightson remembers me. But the thing is all of people who work in comics and musicians, we are all just regular people. We have this totally false image from what we see on TV, especially with Hollywood. I mean we all have to eat and shit and change the litter box and take the garbage out. We are all just people. For the most part any given artist that is confident in his work is happy to share, because there is nothing magic about it. They can teach you a few tricks and what tools to use and things like that but it’s not magic it’s just having a person to show you how to do it or explain how to do it.

NG: I think a lot of that goes into discipline speaking of Bernie. I probably heard him explain his cross hatching technique a million times, I’ve never seen anybody else do it. But if you want to hear the man say the words, he will say them.

A page from Bernie Wrightson's Frankenstein.

JO: Yeah. Actually, I don’t think Bernie even understood how he did that afterwards. I just looked on that stuff in awe because there’s no mistakes. I saw some of the Frankenstein originals and I was like, "Where’s the white out? Where’s the place where he made a mistake? Where the ink dripped or the quill skipped?" So that was a monumental achievement. And I really admire his dedication to that project. I think it took him a span of 7 years to do all the art on that project, and he wasn’t getting paid for it. He did it in his spare time. So yeah, I envy his passion for that book. I wish I could find a book that I was that passionate about. There are books that I am passionate about but I don’t think I could add illustrations that could bring it to another level like he did. Maybe that’s just me being humble though.

NG: You know I see often online that you will post a piece and then critique it yourself before anyone has had a chance to tell you how beautiful it is. And I have to say that it’s heartening, because I know so many small-time creators - artists who are just starting who have not earned any amount of recognition yet - who will do the same thing. They put up a perfectly feasible piece of art and say, "It’s horrible because the elbow is pointed in the wrong direction or the head is an inch form the top of the page".

JO: Without a doubt we are our own worst critics. Every single drawing is a failure to some degree. That’s how we learn, that’s how we get better. And just by noticing what you are unhappy with or what you could have done better, now you know what to do the next time. There’s never been anything – you can get close, you can get 60% or 70% but you are never going to be 100% happy with anything if you are true to yourself, if you are being honest with yourself. Because you are limited by your abilities at the time. Or maybe my grandeur and imagination are bigger than my skills. But you know, I practice all the time. I get up at 8am and by 9am I am at the drawing board whether I feel like it or not because that is my job. And inevitably I start having fun. Even if it is a total failure and a mess and it goes in the trash, I have fun with it and I try to learn something from it.

NG: I think that is a fine note for us to stop on. Thank you very much for your time sir.

JO: You are very welcome!

Hellboy commission done in 2015 by James O'Barr.

Galactus/Silver Surfer commission done in 2018 by James O'Barr.

Galactus/Silver Surfer commission done in 2018 by James O'Barr.

Dawn commission done in 2016 by James O'Barr.

DiNKy Awards host R. Alan Brooks & James O'Barr, 2018.

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

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Written by Neil Greenaway

Mister V at DINK 2017.

Mister V at DINK 2017.

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.

Them There Hills (151) by Mister V.

Them There Hills (151) by Mister V.

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?

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

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)

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

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

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Written by Neil Greenaway

Adrienne Norris

Adrienne Norris

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.

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.

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

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

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.

Adrienne Norris

Adrienne Norris

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.

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

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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.

Buy Indie Comics Day 2017 banner.

Buy Indie Comics Day 2017 banner.

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.

Phil Buck at DINK 2017.

Phil Buck at DINK 2017.

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.

Buy Indie Comics Day Twitter page.

Buy Indie Comics Day Twitter page.

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.

Buy Indie Comics Day graphic.

Buy Indie Comics Day graphic.

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.

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

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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 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.

LeyLines vol.1 from Robin Childs.

LeyLines vol.1 from Robin Childs.

Wavemen vol.1 from Moko Press.

Wavemen vol.1 from Moko Press.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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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 at Denver Comic Con 2017. (1)

Jake Roth at Denver Comic Con 2017. (1)

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.

Art and Home Life #1 by Jake Roth.

Art and Home Life #1 by Jake Roth.

Art and Home Life #2 by Jake Roth.

Art and Home Life #2 by Jake Roth.

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.

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

Jake Roth at Denver Comic Con 2017. (1)

Jake Roth at Denver Comic Con 2017. (1)

The Turbo Collins Interview 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.

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.

Books from Jake Roth at Denver Comic Con 2017.

Jake Roth at Denver Comic Con 2017. (1)

Jake Roth at Denver Comic Con 2017. (1)

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.