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Crew Collective is a podcast dedicated to the art of storytelling. Hosted by Stuart Barefoot, each episode will explore the stories that help shape us—books, movies, songs, video games—nothing is off limits. We’ll talk to creators of all stripes about their process, their craft, and the worlds they build.
Whether you’re a seasoned creator, just starting your journey, or simply a casual observer who likes behind the scenes looks at creative work, Crew Collective will provide an entertaining and informative listening experience. By mixing interview and documentary style storytelling, this show will provide in depth conversations and curated storytelling.
Season One: Space Stories
For season one, we'll explore six stories about outer space. Each episode will feature a creator from a different medium.
Stuart: [00:00:00] I've always found it interesting to see how creators choose to depict outer space. In reality, it's basically a giant vacuum where there's nothing to scatter or reflect light. So it's a dark place and usually that's how it shows up in stories. I recently re-watched Moon with Sam Rockwell, and it's literally a dark film, dark subject matter too.
So I guess for that one, it works out. But the cool thing about fiction is that creators can just make up their own world with their own rules. And if they want to create planets and galaxies, bright and colorful, that support vibrant ecosystems of creatures and wildlife, well, then their planets and galaxies are bright and colorful and support vibrant ecosystems of creatures and wildlife.
And Sloan Liang does exactly that with her graphic novel series, prism Stalker.
Sloane: It's definitely supposed to be for a lot of the more like psychedelic scenes where these, there's like this psychic clash happening between characters and like other characters or [00:01:00] other elements in the world. Um, those are definitely supposed to be jarring, disorienting.
Um, they should look like prismatic prism soccer. Um, and you know, almost like a surreal dream-like space.
Stuart: The story follows a young refugee named EP whose home planet is destroyed, forcing her into a bleak life of indentured servitude until she's offered a way out, which sets up its own conflict. More on that later.
The creator of all of this is an award-winning cartoonist, illustrator, and writer based in Oregon. She's a narrative game designer by day and an all around creative genius at all times as a self-taught artist, Sloan says the color scheme and the world in general for Prism stalker. It's inspired by our multicultural upbringing in Hawaii,
Sloane: growing up in Hawaii.
The world there, like the landscape there, the sky is all incredibly vivid. You cannot get away from these colors. [00:02:00] Um, and that is in stark contrast to like typical depictions of the future.
Stuart: My name is Stewart and this is Crew Collective. A podcast about storytelling. Each episode we explore the stories that help shape us.
Books, movies, songs, graphic novels. Nothing is off limits. We'll talk to creators about their process, their craft, and the worlds they build. In season one, we're exploring space stories. And in this episode, Sloane takes us to a distant world that somehow feels close to home also. It just looks really cool.
That's next.
Matt: Crew Collective is brought to you by Rocket Genius makers of Gravity forms. Gravity Forms was the first premium WordPress contact form plugin launched in the space over 15 years ago. [00:03:00] Since then, brands like NASA Delta and Stanford University have relied on gravity forms for their WordPress form. But so have tens of thousands of freelancers, agencies, and small creators powering payment forms to newsletter signups for small and large alike gravity forms, understands their mission, build amazing software that people trust.
Learn more@gravity.com. And we trust you, enjoy Crew Collective as much as the team at Rocket Genius did making
Stuart: it. And now my conversation with Sloan Leon about our graphic novel Prism Stalker.
Sloane: A lot of my inspiration came from, uh, manga. I didn't get into more American comics until kind of later, a little bit later in my career. But when I was younger, I would go to my local, Barnes and Noble on Maui, and I would just sit in the monga section. Um, I'd read comics like Blame Ba, who's, um, one of my [00:04:00] favorite, um, comic artists, Japanese comic artists.
I love Battle Angel Alita. One American cartoonist I really love is Bill Sincovich. One of his original graphic novels is called Stray Toasters. Uh, that's kind of a surreal abstract, kind of like core mystery thriller. Um, and the art he does for that is just like incredible.
Prism Stalker is my psychedelic sci-fi epic. Um, it explores a multicultural, multi-species kind of utopia, which quote unquote utopia 'cause I don't really believe those necessarily exist. But in, for our purposes, this is as utopic as can get in this world. This kind of galactic governance discovers a high zoic planet and proceeds to attempt to colonize it.
High zoeism. Is, uh, the concept that all matter is alive or animate and has consciousness in some interpretations. And so my story follows a protagonist and several side characters who are [00:05:00] enlisted by this governance, um, to basically help colonize this planet. Which involves a lot of like typical settler actions, removing aggressive species on the planet, among other things, building structures for, uh, immigrants to settle on or colonizers to settle on.
And yeah, the story, uh, it's filtered, I would say, through, uh, my own like indigenous lens. Um, and of course touches on ideas of like imperialism, assimilation, colonization. More spiritual aspects like animism and yeah, there's, uh, it's definitely inspired by growing, being Hawaiian. Growing up in Hawaii, my dad's side of the family is Hawaiian.
My mom's side of the family is Native American and Mexican. Um, and there's a lot of very rich layered history of colonization there, but also like cultural exchange, um, blending of cultures. So all of that kind of inspired me to create [00:06:00] the story that. I wanted to take those elements and explore them in a more fantastic, futuristic way.
Besides vep, who's kind of our lead, we have Tara, who as a student she meets at the academy. Um, VEP joins us, basically military academy where they become scouts and they are, this is kind of like the fantastical element is they are learning. A martial arts that is based on this planet's, uh, ability to animate and to animate matter, but also to, uh, kind of erode the borders between people's psyches So.
Uh, there's a lot of psychic martial arts happening along with, uh, just crazy physical feats that they can now do in this world that allows them to do that. So that's very inspired by like a lot of shown in manga, you know, classic action comics. But yeah, we have Torah who comes from, uh, a small moon, uh, [00:07:00] monastery.
Um, she's more religious. She's a bit mysterious. We don't get a lot of her backstory, but she becomes close to that very quickly. Um, and then our other kind of co-lead is Sian, who comes from a planet of these, uh, kind of like feline people, more of a warrior type, uh, culture. And she's here to kind of.
Become a scout, become a member of this elite, kind of like gain elite status amongst the academy and kind of do her people proud. And for the people that are able to graduate this academy, they are able to be allotted a piece of land so they can also, you know, move other. Other people of their culture there.
Um, for the people that do fail out of this academy, they are stuck there because to be, to be able to live on this planet, you have to incorporate an element. Usually in, in this case it's like a little gemstone and that kind of like grounds them to this planet, but otherwise you are not able to safely leave it because [00:08:00] you could spread.
It's like zoic element to other planets. So if you fail out of the academy, you're stuck on this planet and you basically are going to become like a laborer, which is a real bummer. Um, yeah, we have the chorus, which is like the governance system here. It's like a group of cent beings. We don't only see them, we only hear about them adjacently from other authority figure characters in the story, but they kind of purport to be very like, you know.
What they see as a utopic kind of society that they have created. But it comes with a lot of checks and balances because when you introduce, I feel like in science fiction, there's a lot of, like a lot of utopias are very focused on like mono species. It's like human dominant human needs are getting taken care of.
And I wanted to explore a world where it was like, okay, if you have a hole. Like universe of multiple species, how are we balancing their needs? 'cause some are going to be meat eaters, some are going to feed on plants. And what [00:09:00] if you have sentient plant aliens? And what if you have, you know, uh, basically species with conflicting needs?
How do you balance that? So for this world, uh, they have. Which we, it gets lightly into this, but you can kind of tell by the variety of aliens that you actually see in the comic that there's clearly a lot going on to sustain the, these different types of aliens. There's quadrupeds, there's like millipede, like aliens of all sizes.
Um, so the world, the architecture, it's gotta adapt to people with different, like locomotion. Um, uh. So that's kind of the world we're playing in here and the types of characters we we're exploring.
Stuart: Uh, one thing that I really like in, in science fiction is when, when a creator doesn't spend a whole lot of time.
Necessarily explaining details about the world they've created to the listener or the viewer. They just kind of drop you into [00:10:00] it and you kind of pick up things as you go along, and you, you definitely do that, I think with Prism Stalker, because there's not a lot of narration or, or really any at all. I mean, everything you learn is through the action sequences or dialogue.
With the characters. Yeah, for sure. And yeah, maybe it's, maybe it's being new to the medium. I don't know if that's how common that is, but it jumped out to me as something that wa was pretty interesting. Is that unique, uh, in, in your world?
Sloane: I don't know that it's unique per se. Um, maybe in, um, American comics it's more common to use like narration captions.
Mm-hmm. Um, to explain things. Um, I come from more of a manga background and while there could be, there can totally be captions in manga. Um, I find it to be that it kind of allows the, when there's less narration or more like when there is any sort of narration, it's internal dialogue responding to like the current scene.
Um, I find that allows, at least for me, um, to inhabit [00:11:00] the character and the world more. So being a little bit less like explanatory, kind of, uh, keeping, holding back like info dumps and finding ways to, um, weave the information in a more organic way. Um, you can't always do that in science fiction because it's like you may not have a character that's like.
I call them beginners. So characters that are just like new to everything and that becomes convenient to explain things to them. Mm-hmm. Because it's like, oh, okay, the reader's also new. So they have a perfect little, you know, little, um, in world stand in that is also getting explained to that is, is in a new world so she can.
Rece kind of, I can weave those moments in and it doesn't seem too unnatural, but yeah, that's just my personal technique, but it doesn't mean like other techniques are not good. That's just why I chose to do it. Sure. Mm-hmm. Yeah,
Stuart: it's, it does seem like it does kind of in invite the reader though, to connect some of their own dots, reach some of their own conclusions.
Yeah. Was that, was that your intention?
Sloane: Yeah, absolutely. I kind of err on the [00:12:00] side of not handholding. Um, I prefer to try and approach my work as like. Authentic to me is possible in the sense of like I, well, I have a lot of like background, world building information. I only want to deliver on like what is relevant to the scene and story at hand, and maybe there is no room for delivering that like exposition.
And so I'll just kind of go through my story. Uh, in the way I want to without worrying about the exposition. And then I'll go back and I'll look and maybe edit and be like, okay, I have some room. It seems natural to insert some information about this element here, and it's not going to break like to, because to, I think to me, what's more important is maintaining like an a emotional, a substantial emotional like tension.
Throughout the story, and a lot of times I feel like exposition will break that when it's delivered very like, I don't know, kind of stiffly, which I find mm-hmm. A lot of like [00:13:00] narrative captions feel very stiff to me, so I try and just weed that in as naturally as possible.
Stuart: Yeah. I mean, it's a tense story.
I mean, it's some pretty intense stuff she's dealing with. Yeah. Yeah. And I, and there, I don't even know how, how I would describe it. But there is something I think in, in the color scheme you've used and just everything about it. I mean, it is, I don't wanna use the word disorienting 'cause that's gonna sound like a critique.
I, I don't mean for it to be that way, but it does take you outta your own element, your own world a little bit and Yeah, for sure. So I'm cur I'm curious about your, yeah. Your, your decision with the color schemes. I mean, it's. I, I mean, it's obviously intentional. That's, that's not a very astute observation, but I do feel like you're communicating a, a sense of, I don't know, urgency, discomfort.
I, I don't know what it is, but I mean, it was, that's very uncomfortable in this world and I feel like. The reader is supposed to be too.
Sloane: Yeah. Oh yeah, absolutely. For sure. Um, yeah, [00:14:00] I would say with the color, it's actually a little bit like, it's definitely supposed to be, um, for a lot of the more like psychedelic scenes where these, there's like this psychic clash happening between characters and like other characters or other elements in the world.
Um, those are definitely supposed to be jarring, disorienting. Um, they should look like prismatic. Of course I'm soccer, um, and, you know, almost like a surreal dreamlike space. Um, but generally also a lot of my inspiration comes from like, again, growing up in Hawaii, the world. There, like the landscape there, the sky is all incredibly vivid.
You cannot get away from these colors. And that is in stark contrast to like typical depictions of the future in science fiction, uh, media. Um, you get a lot of. Like typical, when people think of like sci-fi, like science fiction futures, they come up with like a lot of like, it looks like the Apple store.
It's like very hermetic silver, chrome [00:15:00] glass, you know, perfectly like either a lot of right angles or like organic sloping, uh, symmetry. Um, I find it all very like. Just kind of overdone. And so for me, this is a, uh, very much like a biopunk world. Um, they use a lot of like biology to, uh, biological, um, organisms to grow cities instead of str instead of building them with whatever other components.
Um, so everything in this world is kind of alive, and there's of course a lineage of biopunk in a lot of science fiction. Um, Octavia Butler is one of the, you know, like. Proponents of like biopunk elements and style. Um, I love her work, uh, but it's not something you see a lot in mainstream media, I wanna say, like TV and film.
So I think the visuals are jarring again for that reason, because that this type of like biopunk, uh, setting is not totally, uh, common to see. [00:16:00]
Stuart: Are you drawing everything by hand first?
Sloane: Yeah. So my processes, like, I'll go through, I will, I usually go page by page. Um, some people in the sense that I will finish each page.
So I'll sketch out a page. I will go on and ink it by hand, uh, then I'll scan it and then I will color it in Eclipse Studio Paint, which is like a digital. Drawing program specifically for comics. Yeah. And then after that is like the lettering portion, um, of it, and then just like tidying up, getting it ready for like, doing like pre-press stuff basically.
Um, but yeah, most of my drawing is, um, traditionally done.
Stuart: Are you working, I know you worked, you know, with a publisher and everything. What, what's your relationship with them like? Are they giving you a lot of feedback or are they, are they, you know, do you have people sending you notes?
Sloane: So for my, for the first volume, that was through Image Comics.
And Image Comics is like a creator owned publisher, so they don't really provide any editing beyond, like, copy editing for [00:17:00] typos and stuff like that. Um, so there was really no editorial, like, like developmental editing, like editing the story or questioning anything. Um, it was pretty much all up to me.
And then the second volume, I did have an editor at Dark Horse and that was really helpful. They just had a lot of like. Questions their like impressions and like level of confusion for some things that helped me kind of like decide whether I wanted to like, clarify certain, um, things that were happening that were maybe more abstractly depicted.
Um, and all of that was really helpful. I really liked working, uh, with an editor more, more deeply on my story.
Stuart: So coming up with an idea for a story is one thing. But taking that idea, pitching it to publishers and all the rigmarole that comes with navigating this industry is complicated stuff. Oh yeah. And add in the challenge of being a freelancer, but there is power in numbers. And Sloan is a [00:18:00] co-founder of our cartoonist co-op that in their own words, aims to improve and protect the careers of comic workers globally.
Sloane: Basically, all cartoonists and people working in comics that are part of the actual publishing staff are freelancers and pay rate. Uh, which is usually it's a page, uh, it's a rate per page is how we're paid. Um, it's not the best, um, 'cause a graphic novel of somewhere around like maybe 150 to 200 pages that will usually take like a year to two years.
And usually the advance you get for that sort of thing on average is only gonna last you a year or less. Like, I'm gonna say like, I would say like 40 K is the standard for like a. 200 page, 250 page graphic novel. Um, and that's something that will take you like, like I said, like. Up to two years. So yeah.
You most cartoonists, I know the majority have multiple jobs going [00:19:00] on. Um, they'll do comics on the side. Well, they have like the main career. I've been in full-time in comics for like, since I was 21, so that's like 14 years now. And yeah, I've just, I've always have a comic project going. I always have something on submission.
Um, I have freelance. I have my own original work that I do, but I also work freelance for other clients. Um, I've done a lot of work for like Disney and Pixar adapting, um, not adapting, but using their ips and making like children's comics for like Moana, uh, turning red. Um, so yeah, it definitely involves like having a lot of plate spinning, um, which is hard.
It's, it's pretty difficult. Um, I'm really happy that I have my job right now. I'm kind of taking myself out of the comics grind. Um, now that I'm working at Wizards of the Coast and. I wanna do that and then pursue my own comics, just not my own time. But yeah. I've also started back in 2022, I started [00:20:00] a, the cartoonist co-op, several of my other cartoonist friends, and that's like a member driven organization that is working to improve, improve labor rights in the comic industry for comic workers.
And that is coming up on, its, I think it just had its second, its third year now, and it's up to like 1800 members. So that's been really cool. Um, one big thing that we're doing there is basically doing a, uh, comics worker survey. So getting rates yearly so that we can see where. Trending. Um, they're not trending.
Uh, it's actually kind of funny because back in like the eighties, um, a lot of big name comic people tried to form a union and that was like immediately squashed. But their, uh, it's kind of funny, their wages that they wanted to demand from their published from Marvel specifically are still way more than we.
Get paid on average. So we've never reached those numbers that they wanted in. Well,
Stuart: you, it's, it's such, it's such a good time to form a union, right? I [00:21:00] mean the, the federal government loves unions these days, right? Yeah,
Sloane: yeah, for sure. Yeah. So, yeah, like the whole, like the writer strike like, um, the, uh, tag Guild, um, they've all been super active.
We've also had like, um, people from those guilds come and help us and talk to us. About setting up our own, um, like nonprofit and what we can do. 'cause uh, it's interesting 'cause like as freelancers, we can't form unions. Um, it's illegal in the United States, so we're trying to form something as close as we can to, to a union, which will probably be some sort of co-op or a nonprofit.
We're kind of in talks with our lawyers right now to establish our like status. But yeah.
Stuart: It does make me think a little bit, not that I can really relate to vep in, in very many ways, but I think we all have those conflicts, you know, in our daily lives of we're doing sometimes the wrong things for the right reasons, where we're trying to, we're trying to create a living for ourselves, provide for our families, you know, do X, X, Y, and [00:22:00] Z, you know?
Just to survive and then in doing so, is sometimes contributing to a system that can feel really unjust.
Sloane: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, that's a also a huge theme is just like you have to assimilate to survive. You have to become, you become complicit in so many, uh, horrible things. And what does that do to you and how do you, uh, take action to correct or fight back against that?
Um, it's very sticky and there's not always good answers for that, but yeah.
Stuart: Yeah, because I mean, that's sometimes that's just the nature of progress. It's like you, here, they're trying to create a planet that's habitable for some species, but they're, they're killing off others. They're, they're doing things.
And again, that, that seems to be, uh, as best as I can tell, kind of like the, the arc of human existence. Uh, yeah, absolutely. And
Sloane: it's like, you know, there's always this focus, like you said, on progress, but what is, who is defining that progress and. When [00:23:00] you actually take a look at it like what are we progressing?
What is the cost of that progress and is it worth it? A lot of people don't wanna consider that. And in Prism Soccer it's me kind of confronting that and thinking about how we can kind of rewire our imagination and kind of move away from this like and Anthropocene Capitalocene kind of world and move into something that's more of like an ecological symbiosis and view that as progress.
Yeah.
Stuart: Uh, do you see any of that in yourself?
Sloane: Um, I do. Or vice versa? Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I feel like it's hard to kind of separate yourself from any of your art. There's always gonna be some sort of piece of you in it. So yeah, I would see, I would say I see myself in. Most of the characters and in big ways, in little ways, like a sense of duty, a sense of like conflict of the right course of action.
Um, the feeling of being complicit and how there's really no [00:24:00] escaping, um, a lot of the power structures you're in, but you can control how. You act within them. Yeah. And then just also like a conflict of like identity and the self, uh, and struggling with kind of trying to find out who you are, um, within these greater contexts.
Mm-hmm.
Stuart: In the world of audio, the word immersive probably gets used a bit too much. Like obviously you want to be immersed in something you're listening to, but in a flat medium, like a comic book. I think maybe it's okay to use immersive and I'm gonna anyway, because Sloan immerses her readers, not just through the psychedelic, trippy color schemes we talked about earlier, but also through the use of a soundtrack.
Which is unique in comic books. I think
Sloane: an old friend of mine, um, Neo to know me. Yeah, she's like an amazing musician. And I, yeah, I just always wanted like a, [00:25:00] uh, some, like an original score to go with my comic. I had no really other input besides like, I gave her the comic. Um, and I was like, I can pay for, like, I commissioned her for like a four or five tracks, I think, or actually six tracks, but basically something that you could play, read through the comic and it would kind of track with what you're reading.
It was very just like, uh, I was pretty hands off about it because I just loved her work. So I was like, whatever you do, it's probably gonna be awesome. But yeah, it was a really fun, uh, collaboration. I love, I love the music she used for it.
Stuart: Were you surprised by what she came up with?
Sloane: Not in the sense of like, I don't know, I thought it was amazing.
Um, there's a lot of like beautiful like. There's this feeling of like space and like reverberation and like sound moving through like different distances that I really loved because it made it feel so vast. But also interior, there's like, there's a lot of like echoing tones and melodies. [00:26:00] Um, but also was like really cool.
Kind of had like, there's a lot of like organic. Sound moments. It's not just like harsh electronic beats, but there is a beautiful rhythm to it. And I love how she like mapped like the energy of the scenes to the music as well. It's like very heightened and quick during fight scenes and then slower and more like, I don't know, like thoughtful and flowing during the like more.
Downtime, like lower energy scenes where characters are like moving through these alien spaces, discussing things. Yeah. I was just blown away.
Stuart: What were some of your first drawings, like when you were first starting out?
Sloane: Um, I think there were like a lot of like character design, um, sketches. I did a lot of world building sketches, kind of trying to design the environments.
Um, you can probably tell a lot of it is, is inspired by like, um, coral, like. Underwater pictures of coral and enemies types of like plant life [00:27:00] mold patterns. I really love like different organic and animal like ecologies, how they structure their environments. So a lot of it is like looking at the micro world and blowing it up onto a macro scale, a macro scale, and you know, inserting.
Humanoid characters into it, um, and seeing what that would be like.
Stuart: So far, there's two volumes of Prism Stalker and possibly a third on the way.
Sloane: I'm kind of picking away at the third volume. I'm, I'm gonna take my time with that. That's supposed to be the final one. It'll probably be like, uh, twice as long as. It'll probably be a combined length of the first two books because I still have a lot, um, I want to do, so I'm just taking my time with that right now.
Stuart: What's the plan like always to do three volumes?
Sloane: It was always a plan to do, uh, three volumes. Um, I find like, I don't know, a [00:28:00] trilogy is just a nice Sure, you know, collection of books. Um, but actually it's just, it's not from the feedback. It's more like. Uh, I started, the first book came out in, oh my gosh, when did it come out?
Was it
Stuart: 2018? Right?
Sloane: I think it was 2018. So I feel like I've gone through a lot of changes as a person, but also like philosophically, um, there's been a lot of changes in the, in the world. I've done a lot of growing and learning, and so now I'm kind of revisiting. Um, I've always had like a rough idea of how I wanted the story arc for VEP to go.
Um, but now I am kind of retting that and seeing like do I really connect with that ending and resolution or do I have something else I want to redirect that towards and kind of maybe choose something else for the ending. Another way to kind of bring this to a close, so I'm still still mulling that over.[00:29:00]
Stuart: If it wasn't obvious for my questions, I've never really been a comic book guy. They've always seemed cool to me, but as a kid, when we'd go to the local comic store, I usually went straight for the baseball cards or Nintendo games. But after talking with Sloan and reading Prism Stalker, I kind of wish maybe I had spent more time reading comic books, or dare I say, immersed.
Her ability to create bizarre mind bending worlds while still touching on poignant themes that feel close to home. To me, that's what good sci-fi is all about. And when I said Sloan's a creative genius, I meant it. She's done too many cool things to cover in a single episode. She's worked for Pixar, she designs role playing games, and she even edits a really cool horror anthology called Death in the Mouth.
Oh yeah. And like I said earlier, she's also a narrative game designer for a company called Wizards of the Coast. You can see more of her work at our website, sloan sloan.com, or just click on the link [00:30:00] in the show notes.
Crew Collective is presented by Rocket Genius. Our executive producers are Matt Maderis and Travis Tots. This episode was written, edited, and produced by me. I'm Stuart Barefoot. Our website is crew collective podcast.com. And please go check it out. We've got more episodes and with each one kind of a peek behind the curtains, if you'll
Jackson: next time on Crew Collective. It's really a love letter to the space program and the amazing explorations. And if I am able to invest more money into them, I will. Uh, but really they are just one film student's way of saying, you know, I love the space program.