Hello there,
It's the Chairman of the United
States Department of Nerds,
where we are for the people,
by the people, and of the people.
And today is Free Comic Book Day,
but before y'all rush out that door,
I have Ben Lacey of Biting
Comics here with me to
discuss his upcoming Kickstarter, Samson,
issue number two.
You are listening to the USDN on the DFPN.
Thanks for watching!
all right sorry about that
my computer started looping
itself on the uh on the
share there but all right
everybody welcome ben hello
the usdn podcast he doesn't
know it yet but by coming
on the podcast he is now an
honorary council member of
the united states
department of nerds it's
just a perk that comes with
coming on the podcast ben awesome
But let's jump into it.
Ben, how did you get into comic books,
or what made you decide to, like, hey,
I think I'm going to do a
comic book today?
I guess I'd been, you know, I casually,
you know,
write stories every now and then,
you know, prose stories, you know,
fantasy, sci-fi, and things like that.
and I'd always wanted to do
a comic book and I'd come
up with the comic we're
going to talk about today
samson that was actually my
first big idea but it had
been sitting around for
twenty or thirty years but
I had another idea more
recently called uh about a
shark um the meg movie had
come out you know not long
before and you know I
thought to myself you know
it's just another shark movie um
where the monster shark goes
and tries to kill people
and they have to kill the shark.
And I was like,
what if he did something different?
So I had this idea where the
shark is a good guy.
He's a modified cyborg
military experiment.
So he's actually has
heightened intelligence and
can fly short distances.
And that's where I came up
with the idea of Shark of War.
At first, I was thinking, you know,
maybe writing it as a short story.
But I said, you know,
I want to do a comic book
that was different.
That would be a pretty good comic book.
That would be different.
And, you know, I'm not a great artist,
and I didn't know any artists,
so I was going to do the art myself.
And I, you know,
I knew enough computer
graphics to do art that way,
and it worked out pretty well for that.
So my first comic book was Shark of War,
which you can kind of see
on the wall behind me,
some issues of that.
And I've done now eight
issues of Shark of War.
You know, I funded it on Kickstarter, but
and you know I've done a
couple other comic books
vicious vixens and the
cthulhu man as well but I
always came back to this
idea of samson that I had
um you know as a jewish
person not a lot of jewish
superheroes even though you
know a lot of the creators
were were jewish I always
thought you know this idea
I had it for samson you know
I thought I really liked it
and I wanted to do it.
And now that I was more integrated into,
you know, crowdfunding comic books,
I knew artists and stuff
like that and how to print
and publish the comic book.
I was like,
maybe this is the time to do Samson.
So no, I, I really like it.
You sent me over the first
one to read and the mixture
of reality and
inside of that book and you
actually showing us who
these characters are
actually based off of
really hit that book home
and but we'll get into that
I don't want to get too far
ahead of ourselves here on
that one but I will say
issue one was was amazing
like oh thank you it it was
like I don't know if you've
seen the review I did on it
I gave you um I had not I'd
love to see the review
actually um I can always
see some good pull lines
for my kickstarter for for
people the whole blurb I
gave you on on um blue sky
is perfect for that I wrote
I intentionally write
smaller reviews like that so
you can copy and paste them
over to kickstarter as a
review right and um it's
just something that the
very first one I did I
didn't know what I was doing but um
I was like, hey,
here's a blurb I wrote for
Blue Sky because I'm only
allowed so many characters.
The guy who I wrote it for was like, oh,
dude, that's perfect.
I can just copy and paste
the whole thing and use it
on Kickstarter.
I'm like, perfect, cool.
I try to keep those short and sweet,
but I do usually go back
and write an article as well on it,
on the interview, and on the book itself.
I post that up to our DFPN website,
which I can send you a link
when I get done writing that.
Normally, I do the interview.
I've read the book.
I kind of take the two,
smash them together,
and I do a quick little article on it.
I keep it short and sweet.
It's like two or three
paragraphs about the artist, the book,
what I thought about it,
and then I'll post it to the website.
I try to give as much as I
can back to the person for
coming on the podcast.
That's great.
I appreciate it.
It's really hard to get reviews of
know from from media on you
know on indie comic books
and I think it really helps
you know establish
credibility which is crazy
to me so many of these out
there I'm an indie guy I
love books like you see
this is new comic book day
for this week that I
haven't recorded yet yeah
I'm always late on getting
stuff recorded but this
week was a hell of a week
and but that's going to get
recorded today in of that pile
every,
there's probably three comic books
in there from Marvel and DC.
Everything else is Image, Dark Horse,
and everybody else.
Everybody that everybody considers indie.
Even though I'm like,
Image is like probably the
second largest producer of comic books.
I'm like... Image.
Most people working at Image
are not indie.
I mean, it's like, okay, yeah,
Todd McFarlane, those guys, and
Man, I mean, I remember when, what was it?
Ninety-two or ninety-three
when Rob Liefeld and Todd
McFarlane started Damage Comets.
And they're like, oh, this indie company.
And I'm like,
and all of a sudden this
indie company was like booming.
Yeah,
they were selling a million copy issues.
Youngblood.
Yeah, for a million copies at the time.
They were setting records for print runs.
Like ten times what a comic
book today would
come close to you know even
you know probably more than
even you know something
like absolute batman is
sold nowadays is I think
absolute batman just broke
that record actually oh
really yeah I think issue
one did just break the
record if it didn't break
the record it's pretty darn
close to breaking the
record that's pretty good
for that I mean especially
nowadays when you know a
lot of comic books sell you
know twenty thousand issues
even at marvel or dc probably
when I when I was in the uh
you know we're probably the
similar error in the
seventies I would uh marvel
comics used to have to
print these these
statements on how much
their monthly publishing
numbers every now and then
if you you know if you're
the old the old comics
you'd see like this print
and every now and then I'd
look at it and I you know
spider-man would have like
five hundred thousand
copies a month printed out
on average or something and you know
lesser comic books might
have two hundred thousand or something.
But yeah,
most comic books come anywhere
close to that today.
No, they really don't.
And what I appreciate
nowadays is they do keep the run smaller,
which also adds to the
rarity of the book and
which helps the industry a
lot by keeping a low print more.
value later yeah I mean back
at that time I thought of
indie comics as is eclipse
I don't know if you
remember eclipse I don't
they they mainly didn't
their big claim to fame was
probably they were they
were the us publishers for
miracle man at the time you
know okay yeah I didn't
remember miracle man
And then Comico,
which I like because they did, uh,
elementals and, uh, and justice machine,
you know, elementals was, uh,
Bill Willingham before he
did fables and stuff like that.
So those were, those were,
those were underrated book.
If you can find it, what fables.
Yeah.
Elementals was pretty good too.
I liked that, that it was,
it was a few like, uh, you know,
a superhero team where the team is,
you know,
very strange and they're you
know they're kind of it's
kind of all tried to be
more real world too weekly
fighting super villains you
know I had some real world
realism and you know the
characters were kind of like
not all that nice people,
but they weren't bad guys.
They just, they just weren't, you know,
Superman type archetypes.
I've always enjoyed those
characters more though.
Yeah.
And that's why I like the Indies so much.
Indie comics,
you get more freedom of what
you want to do.
So that's why I've always
found myself more intrigued
by those types of
characters and more of the
Indie type of books.
But yeah,
So let's jump into, tell us about Samson.
That's kind of a loaded
title because it does have
biblical references to it.
But what is Samson exactly?
Yeah, Samson,
the name for the character is
going to come more from the
fact that they set him up
to be a superhero to
represent Jewish people.
And at this point in the story,
it goes from,
the story kind of cover is an epic story.
going from World War II when
he's created as a child to
the end of the Cold War.
In World War II,
the Nazis were
experimenting on young children.
This part is true.
The Nazis experimented on
young children with an emphasis on twins.
So he and his brother, who is his twin,
wind up in Auschwitz.
They are Ukrainian-Polish Jews,
much like my own ancestry.
And his first name happens to be Samuel.
So, you know,
obviously the idea of being
called Samson would make a lot of sense.
But he and his brother are
taken to this camp.
And there are two scientists
there who start
experimenting on them to find
as a prototype effort to try and, you know,
they want to test these,
these drugs they have to
give you superpowers,
which they're eventually
going to try and create a
line of Nazi super soldiers.
So that's what's going on in World War II.
Meantime, in the, in, you know,
the Berlin Wall,
the adult Samson learns
that there may be one of
these Nazi super soldiers
who survived the war and he
may have escaped to the United States.
Also something which has happened,
Nazis famously,
some of them escaped to Argentina,
a few of them actually
escaped and hid out in the
United States and were
eventually found and
brought to Israel for trial.
So the first issue focuses
on the Nazis experimenting
on him as a young child and
him trying to hunt down
this possible Nazi super
criminal and bring him back to justice.
So that covers most of the first issue.
And the second issue,
which I think really gets
into the heart of the story,
he has to return to Israel,
and we actually see the
efforts to give him
superpowers as a child kick
into high gear.
You saw the cliffhanger
ending at the end of the issue.
Yeah, yeah, that's right.
The Nazis are frustrated
that they haven't seen the
results they've hoped for.
They're hoping to kick
things into higher gear
with a more sharp effort to kick off,
give him superpowers.
Of course,
it's not going to go quite the
way they hope it does.
That's why the title of the
story is Escape from Auschwitz,
because he's going to try
and finally get free.
Yeah, no,
that was a really cool
cliffhanger at the end of issue one.
Yeah, thank you.
And it was one of those where I'm like,
this came.
Obviously,
I knew you had issue two coming out,
but the way that one ended, I was like,
man, that's...
I'm like,
issue two is either going to
start off with a big bang
or we're going to get a big
bang at the middle of the book.
I'm like,
we're going to get a good issue
two out of this.
I know that.
Oh, yeah.
You're going to get a payoff
on that story.
The other story, like I said,
extends through many years.
You're going to get to find
out what happened to his brother.
Yeah, yeah.
See what's happened to him
in Israel because at some
point he does wind up in Israel.
which is where he got his
uniform and his name
because the Israelis
government at the time of
independence wanted somebody to, you know,
symbolize what they were themselves.
So if you looked at the
digital back of the book stuff,
there's some stories on.
No,
I didn't see the concept of art that
you sent over as well when
you were picking out the –
his super suit and everything.
I thought those were really cool.
I thought you made the good
choice on that one.
Yeah.
I actually,
my audience preferred that one.
I might've gone a different way from them.
So I put it up for my readership.
You know, I was like,
these are the three choices.
What do you like?
And they liked that one.
And I'm like, okay, we're going with you.
Yeah.
I mean, they're going,
they're the ones who are buying it.
So yeah.
But, um,
No, I really.
So actually,
we we already talked about the character.
So you did say that because
his brother did disappear, I think,
probably about three
quarters of the way through
the book or halfway through there.
You know, he's he's they they they,
you know,
they originally experiment on
him and it doesn't go the
way that nothing happens.
And then they switch characters.
They changed what their medicines,
their drugs,
and starts experimenting on Sam.
And, you know, and the brother basically,
you know, is still there.
But, you know, we don't.
We are going to see that the
drugs have had an effect on him, too.
And we'll see what happens to him.
Okay.
something to look forward to
in issue two and give those readers like,
Oh, you want to come back for issue two?
Yeah.
Oh yeah.
I think issue two and then issue three,
I think is going to be, you know,
I wish I could get these
out every two or three months, you know,
obviously that is an indie
comic guy doing it all yourself.
You're kind of, you know,
If I was if I was doing this
for a publisher, you know,
and all I had to worry
about is writing a story
and checking the art,
I could probably do it, you know,
get it out like almost like a regular,
you know, Marvel book.
But I can't.
Yeah, that would be, yeah,
sort of buy in your own
publishing company.
Yeah, the logistics are very hard,
you know, getting things moving.
All right.
So tell us about how your
creative process works for this.
Did you storyboard like the
entire series out or are
you just kind of like, all right,
here's issue one, here's issue two,
now let me start
brainstorming issue three
or do you already have your whole...
story storyboarded out
written out on on a notepad
somewhere going okay now
we're here now we're here I
kind of uh you know a rough
synopsis of the first four
or five issues and then in
my head I probably have you
know the first seven or
eight actually issues you know
And then what I normally
prefer to do is I have an idea of it.
And then I just start, you know,
what I want.
I have an idea of what I
want this issue to cover.
And then I start writing the
comic script and try to see
how it lays out on the page for me,
page by page.
I usually write page by page.
panel by panel so I kind of
give okay you know I see
this this page is having
six panels here's panel one
I see in panel one two
three and four and I I kind
of write it out and you
know usually I follow what
what my original idea is
but then I sometimes have
while I'm writing it also
you know maybe this would
be better this would be
better and the idea kind of
go and you know as I think
about it on each page by
page I can imagine try to
imagine you know
how big the panel might be,
whether I'm trying to cram,
I have a tendency to try
and cram a lot into a page.
So there are panels where I've gone six,
seven, eight, eight panels a page,
you know,
and I'm always- That's a lot of
panels when you look at it.
Average is,
sits is usually that good
number for panels on a page.
Unless it's a small panel
depicting like a POW or a
ZAP or something.
Yeah, well,
part of the reason I do that is
practical because, you know,
You know,
I try to do a twenty four page
book and I want to cover
certain things in twenty four pages.
So if I you know,
if I can't if I can't do that,
I start I start upping the
panel count a bit.
And then, you know,
because if I can't do it in
twenty four pages,
I have to go to twenty eight pages.
which obviously increases,
starts to increase the expense of price.
There's a practical, you know, again,
it's an indie comic thing.
There's a practical limit.
If I was funding, you know,
at a hundred thousand dollars an issue or,
you know, well,
even a thousand dollars an issue,
I'd be like, yeah,
let's make this a twenty
eight page book of a couple
more big splash pages.
I always have a couple of
splash pages in the book no matter what.
So I'm always planning to
have one or two big full pages as well.
So you get that big artistic moment,
which we're going to see in
the fight with Uber Kong in issue two.
Yeah, I did see the concept for that.
That concept was really dope, yeah.
You really get a good picture.
And I think I sent you one
of the... This was just, I mean,
it gives you an idea,
but there was a picture of
the fight where my artist
Nico Turan was drawing it.
And you can kind of see what's coming.
That was one of those where I was like,
do I want to show these?
And I kind of do.
And I kind of was like, no,
I kind of want to steer
people to the Kickstarter.
Yeah.
I will say this.
There is a fight with a
giant enhanced gorilla, which is...
you know,
one of those things where you look at it,
like I've seen the concept art for it.
It's really dope.
And then all of a sudden in real life,
people are talking about
could a hundred dudes fight
a gorilla all of a sudden.
And I'm like, Oh,
I've seen concept art for this,
for a comic book.
Yeah.
Well,
there's going to be some of that as well.
Cause you know, things, things on that,
that fight don't go totally
the way you might think they would.
You know,
Let's just say that you
should have some sympathy
for the gorilla in the storyline, too.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Most definitely.
But yeah.
Yeah.
So that fight's going to be exciting,
hopefully.
And, you know,
I think the other part of
the story is also inspired
by real events is what
happens between him and the
Nazi super criminal he finds.
Yeah.
let's bring this up and we
can see that right there
yeah I didn't realize it
was on the splash page but
yeah they let you add more
art now nowadays so so to
your to your preview page
you used to only just be
able to show like one one
image um so what you're
seeing there at the top is
is some of the the like I said the
The story concerns that
after the fall of the Berlin Wall,
more information about
these super soldier
projects from World War II
is being found.
And there's an effort by
somebody to start creating
more super soldiers.
And you're seeing in the top panel there,
some of the results of that
effort and some of the
super creations are rather
freakish there.
You've got the guy on the
left has got your obvious super strength,
but the one guy is what
I've called the last decide
is basically has like Mr.
Fantastic type powers.
And then,
then there's a woman called
Sprite who's hanging on him on the right,
who, who kind of has your, your Wolverine,
you know, feral, feral powers, who I call,
who I dubbed Spite.
And then below you see a
little bit of the Uber Kong
fight with our young Sam, who,
like I said,
during World War II is a child.
The other, the second,
that image there is cover
art for issue one,
which will be available to, you know,
that cover is available as
part of the issue two Kickstarter.
For issue one Kickstarter covers,
I did several different variants.
And this is actually an
artist whose parents survived Auschwitz,
and she specializes in Holocaust art.
And this is an oil painting
that I licensed from her to
use as a cover.
so so she sells you know oil
paintings that for private
collectors and also gallery
galleries and and museums
and and she let me license
this to this picture image
to use as a cover of course
it works really well
because it's two brothers
in auschwitz and it's
inspired by some famous
photos of of children at
auschwitz where you see the
photos of them behind the
uh the uh the barbed wire
And it really sends a
message to you in that painting too.
This cover is done by
current artist Nico Turan,
who's going to be the issue
two interior artist as well.
He also does Vicious Vixens for me,
one of my other comic books.
But this obviously is
inspired by one of the Alex
Ross Superman covers.
Yeah, I have that cover somewhere.
It's one of my favorite...
Superman.
I said, can you,
you think you can do
something with that photo
realistic style?
And he said, I'll try.
And he,
I think he really hit it out of the park.
I think it's not a direct copy, but,
but it's still got that
photo realistic look.
Um,
This is also probably my
most controversial cover
because of current
political issues via Israel
and things like that.
So when I published it,
put this on Facebook,
there was some backlash to it.
I'm sure, I'm sure.
And then you,
you get an article on the
real life villains, both the, uh, the,
the scientists who are
experimenting on him are
based on actual Nazi scientists who,
who experimented on people in, in the, uh,
in concentration camps.
Um, the first one there, you know,
he actually, you know,
was found guilty at the
Nuremberg trials and he was sent,
you know, he was executed.
The second one, um,
was not.
He, you know,
he went to prison for a while.
He got his license back.
He lived till be ninety.
It's crazy.
Kind of a very life is
unfair kind of thing, you know.
Yeah, no kidding.
There was no,
the justice for him was not
what it should have been, but, uh,
yeah and then you can see
that the you know I do like
this picture because the
way they protrude the
artists and you decided to
portray these two doctors
or these two people doing
the experimentations like
yeah how you can like the
pictures look like them or
resemble them to some
degree I I thought that was
like perfect for the story
and kind of really hit this
this home that you are
basing this off of real
people who did evil things
Yeah, they also, I mean,
if you look at them, they also, you know,
the pictures,
they also have a very evil
kind of creepy look in
their real pictures.
They do.
You know, Mengele is obviously the most,
Joseph Mengele is obviously
the most famous of these scientists,
you know,
since he was at Auschwitz and
was deciding who lived and
who died as people got off the ship.
trains um but but he's kind
of like you know blandly
handsome whereas you know
these guys look they look
the part of you know yeah
of villains if you saw them
you would be like oh man
those guys are scary that's
where you go like who hurt
them as a child to make
them yeah this way all
right we'll stop sharing this
No, that's, yeah.
To me, that was,
once I seen that part of the splash page,
I was like, oh damn, this really, for me,
it really hit it home.
on like yeah you're telling
a fictional story but you
have some historical facts
mixed into it as well and
I've always appreciated
that and from a
storytelling perspective
when you can you know I'm
telling you a non-fiction
or fictional story but I'm
also going to mix it in
with some non-fiction as
well in historical facts to
back some of what I'm saying up
Well, that was important to me.
I mean, there's a, you know,
this is obviously not a true story, but,
you know, the there's, you know,
most of the people who were
directly involved in this are dead.
And, you know,
the only ones that are left
are probably were probably young,
very young at the time.
And, you know,
there's obviously a group of, you know,
what they call Holocaust
deniers and stuff like that
who are out there.
So, you know, I wanted to you know,
I wanted to have the actual
reality there as well, because, you know,
a lot of people,
they aren't going to watch
documentaries about the Holocaust,
but they consume, you know,
pop culture stuff.
And they would you know,
they they see about it, you know,
through through mediums like this.
I see my very first one on YouTube,
actually,
and it was about the guy who
saved all the children
during the Holocaust.
I think he saved like eight
hundred kids or something like that.
Is that the one in Belgium
or Denmark or somebody?
Yeah.
And like,
he's in the audience and they're
talking about the Holocaust
and all the survivors and
then they recognize him.
So he stands up and
everybody's clapping and he's like,
and the host is like, Hey,
I want to introduce you to, uh,
some of the people that you
saved in the entire audience,
like stood up and the
emotion that that man felt
like that one hits you like
that one hits you in the feels hard.
Wow.
and I was like somebody's
cutting onions you know
yeah yeah because it does I
don't care what kind of
human being you are you see
something emotionally
charged like that it's
going to hit you as well
right and that one that one
definitely hit me and
definitely really hit it
home that this is a very
real thing and a very real
thing to happen and was
caused by really evil people but
Ben,
tell us about your Kickstarter
campaign and what people
can expect from your campaign.
OK, so we're going to have, like I said,
I'm hoping to launch
probably in a week and a
half to two weeks, depending.
I want to make sure the art,
I at least need to have the covers ready.
We're going to have at least three covers,
and I think they're going
to be very cool.
So people are going to have
several cover options.
I always do a very low cost
digital tier for five dollars.
I try to keep my base books
as reasonably priced as possible,
given that I'm printing
them and having to ship them.
individually.
So I think my prices on the
Kickstarter side are relatively low.
But the big thing is you can
read the digital issue of
the first issue on the Kickstarter page.
It will be there at the very top.
You can read issue one for
free and see if you like it.
I will tell everybody, read that.
As soon as it goes live in, Ben,
if you will send me a notification,
I will post that
notification across my
social media platforms as well.
And I encourage everybody
who is going to listen to this later,
this will go live next
Wednesday as that's my day.
I kind of push out all my
products to the worldwide
webs through my...
and um yeah read that first
issue when it comes out I
thought it was really good
um it was one of those
where it you get to see
kind of firsthand some of
the evil that was done to
these people and the
product that it produced is
now like their greatest enemy
And I thought that was just a really,
really cool concept to put
into comic book format.
It does tell a good story.
So when it comes out live, I'll post it.
I encourage everybody to
read that first issue and
then support the second
issue because it is a good story.
I always try to give out a
lot of my first issues free
because I have some faith
in my work and I'm hoping
that people read it.
They'll be inspired to want
to back the project.
You won't have to sign up
for anything or anything like that.
You just click the link and
it'll pop up in Google Docs
and you can read it and
download it and share it if you want.
I don't really mind people
sharing my digital copies
all over the place if they want.
But yeah,
so I'm hopeful that that will
bring a lot of people in
and that they'll at least
back at some level.
So yeah,
issue three is going to have some
cool stuff.
We're going to get to meet
some of the extended Samson family,
including the Omega Girl, who will be...
we'll be making an
appearance that will
hopefully shock people.
And there'll be some cover
art inspired by Supergirl,
a Supergirl comic.
Yeah, that one was one of the,
that was a really dope concept too.
I do have a question about
that here in a few minutes.
So as for the Kickstarter,
what kind of rewards can
people back in the book expect?
I know you said you had
several different tiers.
Oh, yeah, I have, you know,
not only do I have tiers
where you can get get different covers,
you can get all also get my other books,
you know, I have, you know,
three other comic books I've done.
Shark of War, in fact,
goes all the way to issue
eight is available.
And it's also got a hardcover compilation.
The Vicious Vixens now has
three issues out.
Well, the third issue just came out.
It's at the printers,
but the digital copies
already gone out to people.
And then I have a horror one
shot called the Cthulhu Man
for people who like horror.
My podcast is littered.
with hundreds of people that
are in love with horror boats.
So that's probably something
they'd definitely be interested in.
So, so, so they can, they, people can,
there are tiers where
people and add ons where
people can get all my other books too.
And I,
I try to set those at really
reasonable prices.
I mean, if you look at my,
my per copy price, once you, for,
for those,
I think I'm competitive
actually with Marvel.
If you'd like buy the whole
bundle simply because I
want people to get all my books.
So I, I,
I kind of priced them as low as I
think I possibly can.
Yeah.
Um, then, uh, then, uh,
other thing is there will be
a back you know normally my
biggest tears are these be
in the book tears where
people get to be thugs or
you know you know that's
kind of dope I've seen
other starters do that as
well and and and uh and
vicious vixens you know my
my best-selling tears are
this you get to be a thug
in the book you know who's you know
gets killed off or something
like that in a violent way.
And those sell well,
but the problem with Samson
is I'm not going to make anybody a Nazi.
So I only have a couple of D
in the book tiers here,
and they're more like cameo appearances,
like the one who's a
reporter for a television reporter.
And then there's a couple
other minor cameos,
like a judge at the trial.
um, who, who can be in the book.
So unlike, you know, I don't,
I won't have any of those
really high value tiers where I could,
you know, make,
that's why I need to get a
lot of people to back.
Um,
cause I'm going to be having to make it
more on, on volume than, than, you know,
having, you know,
a few angel backers paying
five hundred bucks to,
to be in the book for an
extended appearance in the book.
You know, last, you know,
for last issue of Shark of War, you know,
um,
We had one backer who backed
at a high amount so she
could be a lab assistant to
the evil scientist and get
killed by the monstrous
creatures the evil scientist is creating.
But that's an over-the-top evil scientist,
and these are Nazis,
so I'm not going to make anybody a Nazi.
I don't think that would be right at all.
anybody a holocaust victim
in the book so you know
yeah the tears yeah limited
choices on this one yeah so
it's really going to rely
on you know on people just
wanting to read the story
and and be part of it I I
think you know that story
to a point where
I don't think that's going
to really be an issue,
especially if they take the
ten minutes out of their
day to read issue one.
I think that's.
Oh, thank you.
That's a good selling point on it.
So.
So how many volumes do you
envision or how many issues
do you envision Samson
being before you decide, OK,
I think I've run my course
with Samson because this is
really a character that
could keep going if you wanted it to.
Yeah, my storyline currently has, you know,
six or seven issues.
And then I was considering, you know,
doing, you know, something,
a spinoff book that would
be a team book set in that universe.
The team he's on is mentioned in issue two,
or he was on is mentioned in issue two.
And I want to kind of, you know,
As part of that,
we would time jump more to
a closer to the present day.
Because, you know, like I said,
this story is kind of an
epic that runs from World
War II to the end of the
Cold War in the early early nineties.
And I kind of, you know,
at some point you got to get,
I'd want to get up more to
a more closer to the current day,
you know.
obviously the universe
doesn't have to align
perfectly between these
things and they'll probably
yeah playing around time
that's a great thing about
a comic book right you can
play with time but but I
you know I kind of view
this this world is not
totally a mirror of our own
but you know you want to
have it you know I'm always
the believer that that you
know comic book universe
should be exact duplicate
of of our world once the
superheroes start really
taking off because you know
That's one of the things I
always thought interesting about Marvel.
You know,
if we lived in the Marvel universe,
presumably the technology level would be,
you know,
way above what we're living with now.
And it'd be a much different world.
You know,
when you kind of see some of that with,
you know, the Watchmen and...
books like that where they
actually look at that.
Um,
whereas DC and we got all the different
earths in DC and there's a
new earth popping up.
Jeez.
Like once or twice a year, I guess,
you know?
Yeah.
I think planetary also,
but I don't know if you
read Warren Ellis's planetary,
he kind of looked at that.
Well, the, the irony there was the, the,
you know,
he had a fantastic four knockoff
in planetary and,
And they were bad guys, though.
And the point he was making
was they were hogging all
this technology they had
and not sharing it with the rest of us.
And you can kind of see he's
making a similar critique
of the actual Marvel
Fantastic Four because they
have all this fantastic technology.
And the rest of us don't
have fantastic cars and
unlimited energy and stuff like that.
they kind of always you know
hand wave it off by saying
oh it's it's really
expensive or you can we can
only make it yeah tiny
quantities but you know
that's what we need you
know that is I've I've
thought about that before
I'm like we don't have
enough like bad guy comic
books where the villain is
kind of like the star of
the book now we get one
shots here and there of a
book about a villain I
think batman is one though
dc is getting ready to do
a series on the bad guys
where they're getting their
own little individual runs
of books just about them,
which I think is a really dope concept.
But there's just no comic
book out there that I can
think of off the top of my
head that's just a book about a bad guy.
Now we got some anti-heroes
like Deadpool and Lobo and
that kind of stuff,
but nothing that's like the
villain causing chaos.
Yeah.
There's nothing like that.
To me,
that would be something that would
be really cool.
The ones I can think of,
if you've read some of Mark
Waid's non-Marvel work,
I think it was Mark Waid,
he did Irredeemable about a
Superman kind of guy who
went nuts and started wiping people out.
um that that was kind of one
though a lot of the focus
on that one was on the
people trying to stop him
but he was still the the
probably the main character
um you know if you've seen
read in just I guess the
biggest thing would be injustice yeah
which I thought was really
good for like the first two seasons.
And then I kind of went off
the rails when he became too evil.
He was like the right amount
of evil at the start.
And then he just kind of went and became,
you know.
I enjoyed the – I didn't
enjoy the comic book so much,
but I did enjoy the fact
that the video games they
made based off of Injustice
were really – it was the
comic books and video game format.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
I did play the video games.
I loved them.
I played both of them when they came out,
and I enjoyed the hell out
of those because the story
was just so good in –
And they were able to play
with the story a little bit
from the comic book,
but I really enjoyed the
way they did the games more
so than the comic books themselves.
But no, you're right about Injustice.
That's a good one.
But so let's talk about the covers.
Like I did put you sent me
you sent me the like, hey, the covers.
But let's talk about it.
So you got a Supergirl homage coming.
And then you got two other
covers inspired by both
Jack Kirby and Frank Quietly.
Right.
So who come up with the
concepts to kind of use
those three particular ones?
Or was that something like
your cover artist said, hey,
what do you think about these homages?
The artist wanted to really
do a Kirby style cover.
And I really wanted to have
a cover showing, you know, the Uber Kong,
you know,
throw up.
So that kind of, that's kind of where,
where it came there.
So that, that's kind of what the,
that cover came, how that cover came out.
For the other cover,
I basically went and looked
at some different covers
with Supergirl on them.
There's plenty of them out there.
Well,
I wanted ones with both Supergirl and
Superman,
and I wanted ones that looked good.
There's some that look better than others,
and I came up with three or four.
and, and he kind of liked that.
The one I, we chose as being the, the,
the best one to, to,
to do a cover homage on.
And then for the quietly cover,
I wanted one that focused on,
on her and he's, you know,
he suggested kind of
something inspired by that,
that cut by that, that cover with, uh,
and it's actually the quietly covers from,
uh, from that, um,
what's the name of the series now,
the Superman series that he did with, uh,
was it Grant Morrison?
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
I know.
Yeah.
And it's actually him and
it's Superman and
Superwoman when Lois gets powers here.
I know exactly what Ren
you're talking about.
The relationship between
Samson and the Omega Girl
is not like either Supergirl or
His relationship with either
Supergirl or Lois Lane,
it's something quite
different that will be
explained in issue two.
But, you know,
I think it's very it'll be a
very interesting and
poignant part of the story.
You know,
while we're talking about the art
of this book,
go ahead and who's doing
your covers and who's doing
your interiors?
Right now, Nico Turan's doing everything.
He's been my vicious vixens artist.
So he's probably the artist
I've worked with the most.
And I really liked his work.
And we have the artists I've worked with,
you know, him and my Shark of War artist,
Heartstroke, you know,
you know,
that I've had the best
interaction with in terms
of working together and
which is why I wanted to
have used him for this issue.
He's very easy to work with.
He's also, you know, to be honest,
affordable.
I think he gives me a much
better rate than he should actually,
cause he, I hope he doesn't watch this.
Fortunately, he's in England.
Probably won't see it,
but- I got friends in
England that watches though.
Who knows?
he gives me a much better
rate than he probably should,
which helps cover my costs.
And he's fast too,
which gets these projects done in time.
I'd say he's probably my
quickest artist as well in
terms of turnaround.
So that, you know,
I pride myself on always
getting my books out ahead of schedule.
You know, it's my fourteenth book.
So I've
plan on getting that's a lot
of books for somebody who
runs kit starter campaigns
yeah yeah and you know so I
I do you know every year I
try and do I I hope to do
four or five I wind up
doing three or so and hey
that's still a book a
quarter almost yeah you
know so that's still really
really good considering
that it's I've seen some
campaigns you know take a
year to produce right
Yeah, I understand that people, you know,
people have been burned on
Kickstarters before.
And I, you know,
I really want people not to
feel that way about any of mine.
I was proud to get a creator
we love kind of badge.
from Kickstarter because
enough people were, I guess,
thumbing thumbs up on my campaign.
Yeah.
And people don't realize
that those little small
things like that really
impact what you do on Kickstarter.
Because I've seen artists
also kicked off a
Kickstarter for not meeting.
Right.
You know what they promised.
So getting that little badge is like.
Yeah.
yeah it's an easy thing to
get but if the people
aren't saying like hey I
love this book and giving
you that thumbs up on there
it really does impact you
yeah yeah it helps to have
to have that you know a
good reputation because you know like
You know, you're relying on, you know,
as a percent of backers,
the people who backed me
before backing me this time
are probably fifty to sixty,
maybe seventy percent of
the people that are backers
who backed me in the past, you know,
not new backers,
which is what I'm always trying.
That's what you're here to do, though.
Bringing in new backers.
It's really hard, though.
I mean, it's gotten harder, I think.
I don't know if there's
something changing about
the overall economy or just
I think that's the biggest play in it.
And right now is what's
going on with the economy
and less suspendable income
for people who would
normally be buying comic books.
Right.
Which I hate to see that, you know,
I do too.
And, and, and I think, you know,
So, so you always got to try.
So I always lose some people
who backed in the past and, you know,
I don't get a hundred
percent return by any,
by any stretch of the imagination, but.
No, but if you're getting a good, you know,
if you're getting like a
fifty to sixty to seventy
percent return from backers, that,
that says a lot about you
and what you put out to the public.
So.
Well, I, I hope so.
You know, I, I hope people will, you know,
new people check it out.
And that, that's always, like I said,
the hard thing too is, you know,
the hard thing about being
an indie creator is your
reach you know you know
it's always so it's so
limited you've got a very
small view you know where
you know when somebody you
know with a name like you
know keanu reeves or uh
brandon sanderson puts out
a book on kickstarter you
know they they're gonna go
I think that's how bizarre
actually started huh
that's how berserker started
yeah yeah that's what that
was my that's what again I
was referring to berserker
um he uh you know you know
obviously yeah once he put
puts that book out on
kickstarter you know it's
gonna everybody's gonna
hear about it you know
people who aren't in the
kickstarter ecosystem are
gonna hear about it and
they're gonna go and that's
the thing you gotta
like for me I've had to go
into kickstarter and the
way I've done it is I kind
of like when you select
your selecting interest and
stuff like that you really
have to be on top of it and
you really have to be
following the social medias
to really know when
kickstarters are coming up
and what I've kind of
like you reached out to me to say, Hey,
can I come on the podcast
and talk about my new book?
And that's what I want.
That's what I'm trying to do
here for comic book
creators for Kickstarter or
just comic book creators in
general is like, Hey,
this is a place where you
can come on and we can talk
about how you got into this
and what you're trying to
achieve with what you're
trying to do on Kickstarter.
And to me,
I feel like I'm doing
something right when
artists are reaching out to me and going,
hey,
can I come on the USDM podcast and
talk about my new Kickstarter campaign?
The answer is almost always yes.
The only thing I ever ask is
communicate with me.
Let me know what's going on.
I've had several people
reach out and just like, hey,
I would love to come on and
talk about a project I got.
I'm like, cool.
What's your dates look like?
I'm open.
My daughter's in college.
And literally that's, I have no holdups.
I can do this at any point
at any given day, you know,
unless I'm outside mowing the lawn,
you know?
So I literally just say, Hey,
tell me when you want to
come on and I can make that
happen because I haven't,
my nine to five I come home
and I work on podcast stuff
so for me it's like just
say when and we can make
this happen at any time and
I try to tell people that
when they initially email
me it's like and I think I
did the same for you I'm
like hey what's your
availability let's let's
knock it out yeah I'm
retired from my day jobs
now so I've retired from
one day job already I'm on
number two this is this I
I'm mostly focused on this
and you know you know others you know
wife.
My kids are out of college
and they're on their own
for the most part.
I can do this.
I'm available.
Anybody ever wants to talk
to me about my comics,
I'm available probably twenty-four seven.
I've got an Australian
podcast I'm going on in a couple of weeks,
I think.
We're working out the time
difference about when I
would be on and when he would be on.
Bruno Caterina is in England.
Yeah.
And I've interviewed him
twice for both his last two programs.
Cinematic Figments and
Bereavement were the two
that I've interviewed him for.
And like anytime he gets
ready to launch a new book,
like the first thing he does is like,
Hey, chairman,
when can I come on and talk
about this book?
I'm like, Bruno, you know,
the rules do just give me a
time and a day and we'll
make it happen for us.
That's why I usually I like this ten a.m.
on a Saturday time spot
because it worked out for him.
I'm like, well,
it can probably work out
for guys in America, too,
because we're waking up.
We've had our breakfast.
We're drinking our coffee,
our second cup of coffee in my case.
And that pets are fed and, you know, we're
to me it's a good time we
may not get viewers but we
will get the listeners
later on when he goes live
next week and um I just
really like that time frame
of ten a.m on a saturday
for me and it usually works
out for other guests too
yeah I'm not in a rush to
leave the house on a
saturday morning so I gotta
move I'm mowing lawn today
so I mean for me it's kind of like
I'm just delaying what I got
to do in a good way, you know,
because this is something
that I really enjoy doing
is I'm glad I'm with
artists and creators.
And see, that helps me out, you know,
because I know Bruno,
he loves like after he's came on,
he goes and it's like, hey,
if you guys have a project
and you want to talk about it,
this guy is your guy to go to.
And that makes me happy.
It puts a smile on my face that.
I'm that guy for him,
and I want to be that guy
for others as well.
Yeah, that's great.
When I started, you know,
I did Shark of War five years ago,
I found, you know,
a number of people to do some reviews.
Well, not a number,
but a few people to do some reviews.
And most of those,
a lot of those websites are
gone now and they're not
they're not doing it still.
So, you know,
having somebody who's blasting and,
you know,
doing this regularly and still
doing this is very helpful.
If this could be my full
time job to where I just
get to sit around and
review comic books and
interview comic creators
man I would my day job
would be done yesterday but
that I do I still this my
passion lies with
Knowing that people trust me
enough to send me their
hard work for an honest review.
And I had to tell somebody
that the other day as well.
I'm like, hey, you know, I'm like,
I'm not sure what you're
trying to ask me.
But usually if you message me,
you either have a book
ready to be reviewed and
you want me to review it
for you and have you on the
podcast to talk about it.
Or you're asking me for some
type of input like, hey,
check out this book.
What do you think about it?
What can I tweak to make it?
And that's what I like to do.
Honestly,
the first time that ever happened for me,
I cried because that to me
was I'm doing something right.
You know what I'm saying?
People are trusting me
enough and I've put myself
out there enough to where
people are trusting me to do
this for them.
And that's like the highest form of, of,
you know,
that you can receive is that
people are trusting you to
provide them inputs for
something that they
honestly care about too.
And when other people care about it,
you care about it just as
much as they do.
And you want to see it succeed.
Right.
So it's like pouring love
into your child and hoping
that they come out good because of it.
So,
But no, Ben, honestly,
anytime you want to come on
and talk about a new book,
the door is always open and
we can do this anytime you want.
Now, before I let you go,
if anybody is on the fence
about supporting your Kickstarter,
what can you say to them
now to really drive that
point home on it?
Well, I, I think the,
the biggest sailing point is, is that,
you know, I'm, I'm offering to, you know,
if you're all a fan of comic books,
I'm letting you read issue one for free,
um, with no obligation.
So, so you can,
you don't have to sign up for my emails.
You don't have to do anything.
You just click the link on
the Kickstarter page.
If you like the book,
I hope it sells itself.
If you like issue one,
I think issue two is going
to be even better because
we're really getting into
the heart of the story.
We've introduced the main
characters and now we're getting to some
the real action and we're
gonna gonna get to some of
the most exciting parts and
for those of you who want
to see some nazi punching
which some people have been
been like oh I'm excited to
see some nazis
yeah issue one because we're
we're you know you know
he's he's being
experimented on and and
stuff like that um but
we're going to get to see
some of that initial you
know a fair amount of that
in issue two and in issue
three is this as the story
evolves along in his
involvement in world war ii
I mean we get a brief
moment where in issue one
where you see him with the
french resistance you know
because there's some you
know time skip there where he's telling
telling a story of his time
with the french resistance
when he first met really
well thank you thank you I
really enjoyed the way you
did it in issue one with
the time jumps you did they
were smooth like it and they made sense
That's something that I
think is hard for some
people to really do is do a
time jump backwards and
then back to forwards.
That's a concept to me that
you really have to put a
lot of brain cells into to
get that just right.
You did that in issue one.
I will say if anybody out
there is listening later on,
guy knows how to do a time
jump the proper way in his
book so prepare yourself
because they are a really
great thing he does them
very well and they make
sense the way he does them
so up to be free what's
that no no no no you're
good for a second no okay
yeah that was on your end then
Which, it happens.
My whole thing's frozen before.
I've had to drop out of a
live podcast and then bring
myself back into it.
but Ben, that's all I have for you.
Why don't you go ahead and
plug your social medias and
tell everybody where they
can find biting comics.
Sure.
You can find, uh,
find me at biting comics.com.
Just all one word biting comics.com.
It'll take you up to the, uh,
to the website where you
can sign up and you can get,
not only can you get free issue of Samson,
you'll get free issue of
shark of war and a free
issue of vicious vixen.
So you basically try, uh,
try a range of my product
product you know from shark
of the war is is is really
uh you know high concept
sci-fi actions uh vicious
vixens is is is is genre a
team meets charlie's angels
action um with some
attractive women if you
like attractive women um in
everybody involved as well
as you're following their exploits.
And of course,
you'll get to read Samson as well.
If you'd like to sign up for my email,
I'd appreciate it.
I'm on Facebook.
You know, I am on Blue Sky and on Twitter.
Well, X. But I have to admit,
most of my posting is on my
focus is more on Facebook, which is,
you know, I'm at...
shark of war on Facebook.
So if you go to facebook.com
slash shark of war, uh, you know how I,
I always have trouble
knowing how you find stuff on Facebook,
but yeah, it's,
it's shark of war on Facebook.
Um, that's probably where I post, you know,
most of the stuff on,
on my Kickstarter and, you know,
other things that I'm doing though.
I, I do post, you know,
on Twitter and blue sky,
but I don't cultivate as much there.
I think most of the people I, I,
I associate her more on Facebook, but yeah,
so that's, that's, and,
and Ben Lacey one on
Instagram be Lacey one on, on,
I think and blue sky.
Yeah.
Actually I'm trying to look at what I am.
Yeah.
Be Lacey one on blue sky.
That's B L A C Y one.
I don't have an E in my, uh, my last name.
Everybody, a lot of people misspell it.
L A C E Y L A C Y. Yeah.
That's, that's, that's my main things.
All right.
Well, Ben,
that's all I have for you today.
And as always, everybody,
you can find me at Blue Sky
as USDN Chairman and on all
the other social media
platforms as the USDN Podcast.
So on behalf of myself, the chairman.
the new council member, Ben,
and the Council of Nerds.
Everybody,
this USDN interview has been
USDN approved.
With that,
everybody enjoy a free comic book date.
Go out and enjoy it.
It's a beautiful weekend.