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USDN Podcast is a cinematic indie comics interview series hosted by the USDN_Chairman and the Council of Nerds — spotlighting the creators, storytellers, and worldbuilders shaping the future of independent comics.
Each episode dives beyond headlines into the real journeys behind the books — from Kickstarter launches and creative struggles to the philosophies driving today’s indie storytelling movement.
This isn’t about rumors or recycled news.
It’s about the people creating the worlds.
Through in-depth conversations, creator spotlights, and crowdfunding discussions, USDN explores:
• The rise of indie comics
• The business of crowdfunding
• The art of worldbuilding
• The realities of independent storytelling
USDN is where indie comics come to life — for the fans, by the creators, and powered by the community.
You are listening to the USDN on the DFPN.
Thanks for watching!
All right.
What is up, everybody?
And welcome to the United
States Department of Nerds,
where we are for the people,
by the people, and of the people.
And today I am joined with
my special guest, Mike Scrase.
I'm saying that correct?
Yes.
Perfect.
Some people are like,
that's really funny when...
this is the thing that always comes up.
First of all,
we're talking behind the camera.
Yeah.
We're live.
And I was just like, you know what?
I'm just going to wing it.
Cause I forgot to ask and I nailed it.
So I'll take that W in the morning.
So everybody,
Mike is the writer of a
phenomenal comic book called zip.
It is a, Mike is based in the UK and,
And this comic is all about
flawed superhumans.
And it kind of has the
undertones of in a
commentary of being of disability.
And it's a brilliantly written way.
Mike has he doesn't present
these disabilities as as that.
He has wrapped them in
superhumans and it is
phenomenally written.
The art by San is absolutely phenomenal.
I love San's artwork.
The black and white and the
black and gray is not
something you see these days.
But San has absolutely
nailed the art on this.
And it is amazing to see, you know,
a beautiful full color
cover and a black and white book.
Absolutely brilliant.
So, Mike,
give us your origin story and how
did comics grab you and
what led you into writing Zip?
Well,
the thing that inspired Zip was
actually a Cracked.com
article called Seven
Awesome Superpowers Ruined by Science.
And it basically, I mean, if you read that,
it talks about super speed.
Our main character has super speed.
But it's just going through
a bunch of different
superpowers and explaining like,
for example, OK, well,
if you had super speed,
you would also need to have
extremely fast reflexes or
essentially extremely fast
mental chronometry,
which means that that's the
speed at which you experience time.
So if you were going to be
endowed with super speed,
the world around you would
need to be perceiving it super slow.
So everyone would talk like this.
And, you know, conversely,
you have to slow yourself
down to be understood by
anyone because otherwise
you sound like a charring chipmunk.
And you couldn't just turn
that off because that's not the way that,
you know,
reflexes and your mental state works.
So that's just one of the examples.
And I read this article and
I kind of thought, you know,
it's funny and it's entertaining, but
Also, you know,
they're writing it as this
is just like a cherry pick
about superhero fiction,
but it's actually a good
idea for a story in its own right.
And I kind of immediately,
having been born visually impaired myself,
I immediately sort of saw
it as an analogy for disability,
which is why I ended up
wanting to tell the story I did.
No, I really enjoyed it.
And what you were talking
about with the really slow talking,
you see that in the first
issue when she's doing the speed dating.
Yeah,
we had to show off how that affects
Zip in social situations
and just her daily life.
I mean,
you can see she's falling asleep on
the job because her life
goes twice as fast as everyone else.
So she needs to sleep twice
as often but for half as long.
So for her,
a an eight hour shift feels
like being awake for six, sixteen hours.
So she would often kind of like nod off or,
you know,
and every pretty much every job
now is customer facing, unfortunately,
or any every job that's
easy to get or accessible
to get is customer facing.
So, you know,
you're going to have to be
talking to people.
You know,
imagine having to talk to
customers in customer
service or retail all day
when they sound like that, you know,
talking a word a minute or something,
you know?
Yep, yep.
Can you... So what inspired
the concept of imperfect superhumans?
And did you set out to make
the disability a central
part of the story?
Or was that just kind of
something that you wanted
to bring into the picture
of it when you were writing it?
No,
the disabilities were essential from
the start.
I mean,
Zip is the main character and the
story kind of follows
things from her perspective,
but there is an entire
community of superhumans in this world.
Basically,
the ethos that I made the comic
behind was that the way
that you can explain it is
basically if you're a
superhero or just any
superpower person in this world,
you're going to have some
kind of disability-esque thing that
comes with your superpowers,
because the balance of a
human body is very delicate.
You know, we've,
we developed over a very long series of,
you know,
small changes in the evolution and
You change a little thing
about that and the balance
gets tipped and the chances
of it being totally beneficial are very,
very slim.
So, for example,
I mentioned I was visually impaired,
but I actually was born
without any irises at all.
Do you know what irises are?
That's the central part of the eye, right?
No, it's the opposite.
It's the outer part.
So the colored part, yeah.
And what the iris does is it
contracts and expands to
allow light to get in,
like an aperture on a camera.
So in the dark, your eyes become smaller,
and your pupil dilates to
allow more light to get in
to make it easier to see.
And when it's bright,
it will contract and let less light in.
But I have no irises at all.
So I don't even have the
part that you always have
when it gets small.
So my eyes are letting in
more light than anyone
you've ever met in your entire life,
and probably anyone your
audience has ever met in
their entire life.
I'm not joking.
It's rare enough that that's
probably true.
So I've got very,
very good low light vision,
like literally better low
light vision than anyone you've ever met.
But also,
it does mean that I never leave
the house without sunglasses.
And also,
the absence of an iris makes my
eye a different shape,
so the lenses in my eyes
aren't aligned with the...
curvature of my eyeball
correct I believe that's
how it works um yeah I mean
I'm just regurgitating what
doctors told me I don't
know like the deep you know
medicine type you know
medical type things but I
just know what I've been
told but um so it creates
like very much uh
short-sightedness um okay
uh and there's other things
with it because it's a
genetic mutation as well so
I've got first-hand
experience of how yeah
genetic mutation can be
beneficial but you're very
rarely gonna have
you know,
experience that without some kind
of consequence.
I think I've completely
forgotten what the original
point I was gonna make was,
but that's essentially- No, no.
I think you, the question was,
what inspired the concept
of imperfect superhumans in
your story with Zip?
Yeah.
How did disability kind of
become that central part of the story?
Yeah, well,
I think the other thing I was
going to say is what I
wanted to say with the
comic is that we have a
sort of like society has a
certain way of thinking
about disabled people.
where you know we're either
like props to inspire
people or we're totally
helpless or something like
that and I kind of wanted
to take a look at a um
genre that's uh you know
typically sees a type of
human being that is um
quote unquote you know
above a regular human a
superhuman um and you know
show that even if they are super
The mere fact that they're
abnormal and so that it's
harder for them to fit into
society means that they will struggle.
And so kind of the point is
that it's not necessarily
even that disabled people are, you know,
like helpless.
It's just that because we
don't fit into that mold,
that's the difficulty.
And if we could just accept
a greater diversity of
experiences for all people,
then disabled people
wouldn't have such a big issue.
OK.
So you remember when you
first emailed me that you were like, hey,
you noticed it because I
had interviewed Bruno Caterino?
with Bereavement and how we
both backed that project.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember.
So Bruno, like,
legit just replied on Blue Sky.
He was like, oh, I have Zip.
A couple of issues that he
picked up a few months ago
when y'all were both at a con together.
Oh, yeah, wow.
And y'all had a lovely chat together,
so that's really dope.
I didn't know that he was local.
I just backed Bereavement on Kickstarter.
I had no idea he was local.
Maybe I did and I forgot, but yeah.
That must have been Bristol
Con at Ashton Gate.
It might have been, yeah.
Yeah.
He was telling me that he was there.
Yeah.
yeah that's cool well um it
was just one of those weird
things that popped up he
was like oh I have this I
was like oh well that's a
full circle for me because
you literally emailed me
because of bereavement with
Bruno yeah and now here we
are having a conversation
and Bruno hops in and says hey
I just got to meet him.
Great dude.
We had a great chat and I
picked up a couple of issues.
So I know he's got a new
Kickstarter starting up soon here too.
So hopefully he'll hit me up
and I can have him back on
for the third time.
Yeah.
He's always a delight to have on.
I mean,
if he's now I'm starting to think
maybe he's I mean,
I don't even know because I
don't even know if
technically Kickstarter allows this,
but he's local.
Maybe we can do like a comic
swap and do like a bundle
thing on our campaign.
I'm going to have to.
This is not this is not for this.
I'm going to have to look
down the road from you.
Possibly, possibly.
I'm not going to say where
we're down the road from you, but.
I don't want y'all to burn yourselves here,
but so did you base any of
the characters or moments
in your book on real people or events?
I don't know why people do that.
They were like, oh,
because I had just had Nick
on who does Videlirium.
Yeah,
I know he bases a lot of characters
and like they're
their appearances and their
personalities on characters that he knows,
like people that he knows.
So people in his book, in his comic book,
some of them are based on
real people that he knows in his life.
So did you do that as well?
I think that I would have to
say that basically every
character I've ever written
is at least somewhat based
on a real person I've met in real life.
um I mean it's not like
you're gonna go and open
the book and go oh that's
you've just you know that's
literally just someone that
you've copied and pasted
from your real life that's
not gonna happen I mean
it's not you know obviously
I couldn't say that anyway
because I'd be open to
deformation if I did but I
mean I I haven't um but uh
there are definitely people
that I've based characters
I mean um you know it's
just like you kind of have
to uh the only other option is to base um
things on characters from other fiction,
which is fine, but, you know,
it kind of becomes like a
snake eating its own tail
type of thing with that.
Yeah,
you don't want to get hit for
plagiarism either.
Well, yeah, but also,
you know... People are able to, like,
point that out.
I mean,
you can get away with that if you
can take from enough
sources and composite, but also, you know,
I mean,
there are a lot of tropes that in...
fiction that have developed
just because they they've
gotten away like artists
being inspired by other
artists and then we've
invented things that
everybody agrees oh yeah
that happens doesn't it but
it doesn't happen it's just
like for example orphanages
as I understand it
orphanages as we see them
in movies barely exist in
real life but so many
people have been inspired
by other people with
stories where they exist
it's just like we've just
invented a fake thing I
mean I don't know anything
about it myself but like
I've heard that that's the case
But for me, I mean,
the only place where I've
seen an actual orphanage
similar to what we see in
movies was in Asia.
Right.
And that's been the only
place where I've seen like
an actual full building.
Well, like I say,
I don't really know much
about it to be honest,
but I just heard that that's the case.
But I mean, for example,
like the main character Zip,
she is very insecure and my
partner is very insecure
and I've got a lot of insecurities too.
So when she's responding to something or,
or reacting to something in
an insecure way,
and I need to think of what
dialogue to write or what
words to use to express the
idiosyncrasies of her own
lexicon of speech, I will say to myself,
how would my partner,
How would my partner react to that?
And then there's more specific examples.
So, for example, in the second issue,
Zip comes across or clashes
with a martial artist
called Mr. Untouchable.
who is someone who's had
brittle bone disease,
and in order to get revenge
on a bunch of people who, you know,
tormented him in his youth,
he's trained in martial arts so well,
he's gotten so good at it,
that if he sees a cat attack coming,
he can dodge or just
counter every single one.
And the comic kind of deals
with his origin in his youth.
There's a bit where he's taken into,
because he's dealing with
bullies in his school,
and he's taken into his
head teacher's office.
And the head teacher,
there's a moment where he says,
look at me when you're talking to me.
And I don't even know if I
necessarily made it explicit enough,
but the thing is the reason
that I had him say that
specific thing was because
when you're disabled and
you're with somebody and
you're asking for
accessibility in a place or
something like that,
you'll be surprised how often
the second that you tell
somebody you're disabled
they find out they'll start
talking to your partner or
your friend or whoever
you're with instead of you
and asking them what you
need or asking you know or
telling them important
information instead of you
as if they're like your
carer and you can't
understand you know what
the information or
understand the question.
So, uh,
the reason I had him say that is
because I'm like, well, this,
in this scene, the,
that his head teacher is
talking to his mother rather than him,
even though he's the one being discussed,
he's right there in the
room and they're just, you know,
he's avoiding him.
Yeah.
Well, not even just avoid,
it's just acting like his
mother is the only one who
can understand what
know it's being talked about
I mean like they've got
there's so many examples I
don't know if you could
necessarily necessarily sit
here and list them all
because it would take
forever but like yeah I
mean writing organic
dialogue I all the time I
have to think um what who
have I met in real life
that can be applied to you
know think about when I decide
how this person would react
and what words they would
use to express the, you know,
that thing all the time.
Okay.
So we are, so we're getting,
you're getting ready to drop issue four.
Do you have a date yet when
you're going to be launching that on?
No, I think everybody's,
pretty much in agreement in
that Kickstarter has been
rough for a while.
So what I am doing at the
moment is building up
pre-launch followers to get
a gauge of how many backers
I can actually expect.
So at the moment I don't have a set date.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean, I'm hoping around about August,
September,
but I'm looking at that
follower account and using
that to figure out when we
are actually going to go live.
I mean,
you sent me the... I'm guessing
it's the draft?
Or the almost finished copy of four?
Yeah, that was a draft.
There's a few things we need to tie it up.
So, how did... No spoilers.
How did you set the stage
from issues one through
three going into four?
Because I know in the first three,
Zip is kind of...
She's got a lot of self-doubt,
but I noticed in four,
she's really kind of
starting to come along with that.
She's starting to find a
little bit more confidence
and that kind of stuff.
So how did you set that
stage in the first three to
get to where you're at right now in four?
Yeah, well, I mean,
obviously that's the
journey that a character goes on,
you know, the character arc.
So in the first one, I mean,
I really wanted to make the first one
as typically a day in life
and then zip's life as
possible I mean the story
is called a day in the life
um so I was like you know
she's not gonna she's not
gonna go up against any
like super villains she's
not gonna clash against
anything big or you know
spectacular I mean she's
they're still gonna be big
and spectacular things that
happen in the story
But it's going to be more
down to earth for this one,
just to kind of establish a baseline.
Yeah.
But we're also going to meet
Pinstripe and Dog's Body,
two of my favorite characters who... Yeah,
they were...
They're your basic goons,
the way I've seen them.
Yeah, a little bit.
Goon squad, basically.
Yeah.
I love their dynamic and
their interactions with each other.
It's very like two bros just
hanging out and working.
Well, what do you mean?
barbed back and forth.
When you say, I mean, like,
when you think of a pair of goons,
you think of, like,
two people who are
explicitly criminal and are explicitly,
you know, evil.
They aren't really.
They are working for a big
corporation that is
definitely not... are
definitely not the good guys.
I wouldn't call them the good guys,
but I also wouldn't call
them bad guys because they are...
They're just two people who
are caught up in something
much bigger than themselves.
Pinstripe, particularly,
I wouldn't call a good guy
because Pinstripe is, you know,
he's maybe been raised a
certain way and he could
probably do with some growing.
And there are certainly people, you know,
especially, you know, women, you know,
who,
may not have the best
experience with pinched
right um but I mean he's
not a cackling mustache
twirling no no he's really
he's just he's he's someone
that you could feasibly
meet and that doesn't
necessarily mean that you
know that person that you
could meet is you know just
absolved of everything but
he's not you know he's not
like a force of evil.
He's just kind of a guy who's, like I say,
caught up in something
bigger than himself.
But yeah, I think we were talking about,
so the second issue,
we move on and we learn
more about Zip's childhood.
And we introduced Mr. Untouchable,
as I said before.
And their pasts kind of
intertwine and we see the
parallels between them.
And then the third issue,
Pinch Drive and Dog's Body Come Back,
because we see a little bit
more about the corporation
they're working for.
And that corporation is
developing a collective of
basically artificial
intelligence called the
hive which manifests itself
through nanobots that break
down consumer products uh
atomize those consumer
products and then analyze
what they've atomized uh to
scrub it for training data
and then um basically take
all of the training data
they've ever accumulated
and rebuild hybrid products
like new quote unquote products
for sale on the market.
However,
the hive is programmed to seek out
the most complex objects it can find,
and it quickly determines
that the most complex
objects it can find are human beings.
So this corporation goes, oh,
it's too dangerous.
We're going to have to keep
this confined for a bit,
try and sell it to
investors anyway so that we
can get some money to work
on this problem.
However, Pinstripe,
now looking for Zip and
trying to track her down so
that he can get himself in
good with his superiors and
find himself a promotion,
accidentally hacks into a
server that the Hive is
contained into and unleashes it.
So Zip and the Hive clash.
And so issue four begins
with the aftermath of Zip's
battle with the Hive.
That was a really good issue.
I really liked that issue.
The concept of the Hive, yeah.
The concept of the Hive was really good.
Oh, thank you.
I really enjoyed them too, yeah.
I mean,
we can talk about Hive more in a
bit if you want, but... Yeah,
we can do that in a bit.
Issue four,
basically in the aftermath of
all that stuff,
Zip connects with the wider
superhuman community that
she's been kind of
separated from for a long time.
Pinstripe and Dog's Body are
back again because they are
important and they are this
time mucking about with the
fabric of the universe.
Their new experiment that
they've been assigned to do
is one that is the aim of
it is to unlock one of the
elusive technologies out of
all history and that is time travel.
That was
I really like that concept
that you have going in issue four.
Especially because this guy
was just trying to,
for lack of a better term,
and I don't want to give too much away.
He was not having a good day
when he was on top of that bridge.
Yeah.
And then the way it almost
felt like a little bit of a
time jump a little bit.
but I definitely had to go
back a couple of pages and I was like, oh,
it did work.
That's where we're at right now.
Cause my brain wasn't
bringing this morning.
I don't think I had enough
coffee at that point.
I went back and I reread it again.
I was just like, ah, I see where it,
why it did work.
I think time travel, um,
can be a bit that way,
especially with some people.
I think I'm such a big fan
of time travel fiction.
I've seen enough of time
travel stories where I can just go, ah,
yes, right away.
But for some people,
time travel can be a kind of, I mean,
it is a difficult thing to
wrap your head around, really.
It really is.
And I'm not really obeying
the rules that other
fiction really obeys with time travel.
in the great thing about
that is you don't have to Yeah, well,
I mean, I've had so many people,
I've had people read time travel stories,
and I've read in the past, and say, Oh,
but that's not how time travel works.
And I've always responded, well,
please present your working time machine,
so that you can show me that actually,
exactly, exactly.
I thought Bruno
We were talking about Bruno
earlier in that previous
anthology that he did.
He's got a time travel story
in there that is really good.
It's more of a...
about a hard-headed dude who
wanted to do something his own way.
Right.
But he always makes kind of
like the same mistake when he does it.
Yeah.
And there's always like
another person going behind
him and correcting it and
reminding him like, hey, dude,
you have to do this to make this work.
Right.
Well,
he thought he would be smart and try
to jump into the future, learn something,
and then jump back because
it would be instantaneous.
And he, again,
didn't listen to the person
and did it wrong.
So when he made the jump,
he didn't include the one
number that he needed to include.
So when he jumped, he messed himself up.
It's a really –
really good story but all
the time travel is like
everybody's got a little
different twist to it but
nobody's wrong and it and
it's like it can be done
really really good or
really really just bad and
you nailed it yeah it's a
great concept the way you
did it and the story that
you brought with it was
really cool too I thought
yeah thank you um because I
mean the guy is just he
wants to help himself you
know yeah so he took his
that chance that he had
just been given to fits it
so it was good heart and
good intentions even though
he was having a very bad day that day
If you're talking about
basing characters on real people,
the guy in that comic was
based on a real person.
I read a news story about an
ex-con who had murdered somebody,
and they
after getting out of prison
for a life sentence,
that they were basically,
it was almost kind of like
an opinion piece,
but it was more like sort
of a personal experience
type article where they
were talking to a
journalist and expressing their views.
And they were talking about,
your friends are gonna
forget about you pretty
quickly when you're in prison.
So it's really not worth it
to just act like a tough guy.
So what is something that
readers often miss on the
first read through that you
wish they would catch in your books?
I think that like,
I think everybody who's
expressed opinions about it,
like out loud has been pretty good.
I mean, like I've had,
We've had Amazon reviews
that have pointed out
things about the book that
I didn't intend, and I've gone, oh,
that's a really good point.
I'm going to just write that
down in my notebook for later.
Hey, that's what's great about it, right?
Yeah.
You can do that.
Yeah, I mean, like, you know, I mean,
I've had – I think the thing that was –
Really, really.
Because I was doing Zip as a
webcomic before.
It was in the form it currently is.
So the idea has been around
for a really long time.
And before I was estranged from my mother,
she read the story.
uh and she kind of said to
me well mike don't forget
there are real heroes uh
who existed in real life
who is like your
grandfather who fought in
world war ii and I just
completely couldn't believe
that she said that because
it's like do you who do you
think that the character
who do you think eternity
takes inspiration from
that's really dope like I
was she was like she
literally brought up the per like
the person who inspired one
of the main characters in the book,
and then didn't even notice
that they were in the book.
So I think probably that.
Yeah, and you do mention that,
the work he did in World
War II in the book itself.
Yeah, I mean,
it's not like... But that's
really cool that I know that,
that you based him off your grandpa,
and he fought in World War II,
and you even base the character.
You say that his character
did great work in World War II.
So that's really cool that
you gave those flowers to him that way.
Well,
you will see more about what happened
and why that's important.
It's not just something
we're dropping in there as
a random fact as, oh, that's interesting.
So then that's going to
become very important.
later on.
There are a lot of little
details that you will see
in our issues so far that
will become very important later on.
I didn't want to make them
too in your face because it
would just distract from
the story that we're telling right now.
But there are a lot of seeds
and a lot of little teeny
mysteries that I'm sprinkling in there.
You're going with the George Lucas effect.
Yeah, I mean,
I know that there's a kind of like,
I mean,
there's that JJ Abrams mystery box thing.
But the trouble with the
mystery box is oftentimes
they don't have a plan for
what exactly it's going to be.
I mean,
I'm not talking about things I'm
sprinkling in there that I don't know.
what's going to happen at all.
Sometimes there might be
things that I readjust and rework,
but I do have a plan.
It's not that that plan is
completely inflexible, but I have a plan.
So when something gets
mentioned and it doesn't
really appear to do, you know,
further the story or have
anything to do with the issue at all,
I hope that doesn't happen too often.
But when it does happen,
you might just have in the
back of your mind that
that's not necessarily irrelevant.
That's probably, I mean,
definitely coming back.
OK.
Yeah, no, you can,
I like it because you can,
like when she met,
I think it was issue three
with the nanobots, when she met,
I think his name was Flame.
His name was Sunflare.
It's very difficult to come
up with a superhero name
that hasn't been done before.
Where was I going with that?
She met him and we were
talking about sprinkling in details.
Yes,
because he was the one that was
talking about her grandfather,
I believe it was,
and the stuff that he did
during World War II.
And so I thought that was like,
and then he gets absorbed.
I don't want to talk about it too much,
because I do want people to
go and read these books
because they were really good.
Thank you.
But I thought that was,
it was one of those moments like,
These guys live a lot longer
than us normal humans are.
I'm not sure what year is
your comic actually in.
It's supposed to be like if
Zip is a young adult now, then...
it's in the modern day.
So, okay.
Okay.
I mean,
I don't want to be like putting in
a bunch of, you know,
exact up to date references
because then five years old, but,
but yeah,
it is supposed to just be current day.
Uh, but eternity explicitly is immortal.
So that's why, uh,
the super humans in general
do not live any longer than, um,
most people.
And some live shorter lives.
I mean,
zip's heart beats over a thousand
times per minute.
Um,
So she's her life expectancy is around.
Fifty forty.
She's she's actually going
to live a much shorter life
than the average woman
because of her tachycardia.
So, you know, for some of them,
they'll live a length of
time is pretty average for some of them,
although actually live
shorter lives because their
powers just wear their
bodies out faster or what have you.
OK.
No, I like that.
Let me ask this.
How far have you planned out Zip to go?
Do you have that idea about
I want to get twelve issues
out of this or I just want
to run it until I can run it?
Yeah, I mean,
that's a question I almost
feel like I'm going to jinx
myself by answering that.
Then don't answer it.
Don't answer it.
No, no, I will answer it.
I will answer it.
I mean,
I want people to know what the
future plans anywhere are
because people want to know that.
you know as part of like if
they're considering buying
the book then they that's
kind of something they want
to know which is fair and I
personally I mean like you
know I envision it as an
ongoing series but like
okay there's a difference
between what I envision and
what our publisher
envisions so you know I mean I
I'm planning to do a trade
paperback that consists of six issues.
I've got the next issue written,
but I'm just taking one
issue at a time because
I've got to fund each one.
So I'm envisioning kind of
an arc for six issues,
but it's kind of like
will build to a larger story.
I would like,
I think to do at least free trades.
But if I can do more than that,
then I probably would.
I mean,
I like to think of it as like an
indefinite thing.
It might be something that I
would do and then take a
break from and then return to as well,
because, you know,
as an independent comics writer, you know,
it takes longer than, you know,
one of the big two can just
kind of put a bunch of
artists on one book and
just throw a bunch of money
at it so that it gets done monthly.
I don't know if you've noticed lately,
Marvel and DC both have
been counseling books left
and right because they're
throwing a lot of money at
stuff and then the stories
just ain't been story the
way they want it to.
There's been a lot of stuff
canceled over the last few months.
I don't really get a lot of
mainstream books,
not because I'm like snobby and like,
but just because like,
like I like a lot of like
mainstream stuff but some
of these store at least
some of these characters
and stories have been being
told for you know I mean
yeah spider-man's like what
is it seventy-ish years old
now and yeah I think so
yeah yeah and then like
something even older than
that like spider-man is one
of the younger superheroes
as far as superheroes go
and so and it's just like
You know,
no matter how good your stories are,
if you're doing, like,
just one a month running
for that long is going to
be difficult to.
But, like, Spider-Man,
I don't know if he still is,
but at one point there was, like,
three Spider-Man comics per month.
And it's just, like, I love Spider-Man.
There's more than that.
There's more.
Well, yeah, I think, like, mainline ones,
though, right?
there's more oh wow jesus
they just canceled two of
them they canceled uh I
think a spider boy and
spider girl after like well
I was I was talking just
just amazing spider-man
just amazing but just oh
nothing besides that I
think it's a issue a month
maybe two it might be
bi-monthly but I'm not sure
I remember a time when there
were free Amazing Spider-Man's per month.
When you're going for seventy years,
you're just going to run
out of stories to tell.
I know it seems like kind of
just a commercially... Well,
that's why so many now are
kind of being circled back
to and it's the same basic story.
But it's fresh art and a fresh concept.
But it's basically the same story.
And I, like you,
I'm very much an independent guy.
I love the indie comics.
I love Image and Boom
Studios and Dark Horse.
Yeah.
Mad Cave, Zen Scope.
Those will always be my
go-tos when it comes to
comic books because they're
especially Image,
because they are very much creator-based.
And a lot of people get
their breakouts in Image.
And they go on to do maybe a
DC book or a Marvel book.
But they started it with
their own comic book that Image did.
So I will always have a lot
of respect for Image and
what that team over there has done.
know you can't really see
the the stack over here but
that was my new comic book
day for this week and
ninety percent of that is
all in indie maybe ninety
five yeah percent of it is
not indie books it's
getting that way with just
being kickstarter books now
yeah I I so it's it's I
don't say no to a lot of um
interviews because a I like
to bring on people who are
doing their own thing and
doing something different
than the mainstream.
And so far, I'm on a good streak.
And my streak continues with
you as far as Kickstarters go.
And I'm always happy to have guys on.
who are doing their own
thing marching to the beat
of their own drum so to
speak and even now like
mark spears completely
funded uh his monsters
through kickstarter before
keen spot picked it up um
So I think that's really
cool that like we're talking Mark Spears,
like he started funding his
own comic book through
Kickstarter before it got a publisher.
Yeah.
So I mean,
it's not just for the small guys,
but the big guys will also
use it when people aren't.
And I can appreciate that
they will go back to their
roots and be like, well,
I want to fund my book,
so I'm going to Kickstarter.
Just to be clear about Zip,
for anyone who wasn't sure,
we do have a publisher,
but we're still funding books.
I was going to ask you about that.
You are one of the few
Kickstarters that I've seen
that actually has a
publisher with Marcosia.
Is that how you say it?
Marcosia, yeah.
How does that work for you in that...
with having a publisher in Kickstarter?
Because normally a publisher
just fronts the money and then the sell.
They make the money back on that.
I mean, that'd be nice, but I mean,
I suppose it's just that, you know,
there's so many books out
there these days that...
you know, it's very competitive and,
you know, I mean, funding the,
getting the art made,
getting the art done costs
money because you've got, you know,
you said it yourself that
San is a great artist.
Uh, so it's not, you know,
that's not kind of thing isn't free.
Uh, so we fund, um, our books, um, uh,
so that, you know,
we can basically get them
made and then they'll go off to Marcosia.
Um, once we get, um, I mean,
Marcosia only does, um, digital, uh,
comics.
So any digital single issues, at least, um,
they do trades,
but they don't do single issues in print.
Okay.
um when you're talking about
um if you're if you want to
get a single issue in print
the only way to do that is
through our kickstarter um
at the moment or if you're
you know local enough to
come to a convention um but
you know those aren't going
to be on all the time and
you might not be local
enough to do that so if
you'd like digital uh print
versions of our comics you know
back that Kickstarter,
and even in the case of the
digital editions,
Marcosia picks one cover
that they want for their
e-reader version.
So if there's,
we have alt covers for every issue.
So when you back a
Kickstarter and you get a
digital version of Zip,
you will be able to select
a exclusive cover that
Marcosia hasn't used.
And some of these covers,
if you've only come to us from
amazon or drive-through
comics um you may never
have seen some of these
covers before um other than
that the content of the
comic like the actual story
and stuff you know you're
not going to be missing out
uh on story if you're
reading via e-readers but
um you know it was issue
two that had the uh I think
it was a francesco sabatini
cover uh so uh issue three
is our francesco tomaselli
tomaselli yeah uh let me just quickly
I just recently learned who
he is because he's done some covers for,
I think, The Keen Spot, I believe,
on one of their books.
Right.
I can't remember off the top of my head,
but when I seen the name, I was like, oh,
nice.
I'm like,
that's dope that he got a cover from him.
Yeah, that was pretty great.
I mean, that's one of our best covers,
I think.
It's hard to pick, really.
But the other thing you get
if you back our Kickstarter
as well is you get your name in the book.
So I noticed that when I was
reading through again this morning,
because normally when I do
my first initial read-throughs,
I just read the story.
I don't read the beginnings
or the bottom parts of it.
But today I was like – I was up early,
so I just went –
I always try to do this.
I'll reread everything the morning of.
So everything is fresh in my head.
And as I was reading through to the end,
I was like, oh,
this is really cool because
he does put that in the book,
like a big thank you to this, you know,
these people for backing us.
So I thought that was really
dope that you did that.
You don't see a lot of people doing that.
Well, it's just like, I mean, you know,
it's a cost-effective thing
that you can offer people
that's unique and personalized.
And I think that's a good
draw because you can just, you know,
you can offer that essentially no cost.
But, you know, people will have...
like a personalized memento
of the time that because
you know the other reason
that you would want to back
our kickstarter is just to
be on the ground floor of
getting an independent
comic made and being part
of that you know yeah so I
always feel really cool and
really good when I have
somebody on for a new
kickstarter and when I see
it pop up that it's been
funded I'm always like
Yeah.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, yeah.
Well, I mean,
especially if something
explodes and you're like, oh,
I backed that when it was, you know.
Yeah, exactly.
And I just love having that
Like, it feels good to me that, hey,
I was one of the first ones
to bring this person on and discuss,
you know,
their Kickstarter and their
passion of their project.
And to see it get funded for me, it's like,
it's not even my work, you know,
it's your work.
But I have like that pride to that, like.
maybe just maybe somebody
seen my interview with him
and decided to back that book.
So I have that sense of like,
I did my little piece to
get this done because it
was such a cool book, you know?
Well, if you want,
I'll generate your own referral link.
So you can actually
metrically figure out if that's happened.
No, I don't want to do that.
I just like the thought.
Okay, fair enough.
Because I got a big
announcement I got to make here soon.
And once I make that announcement,
probably tomorrow,
my world's going to be like busier.
And I still got a lot to think about too.
So it's definitely like I
have a hard time of like I get off work,
I come home,
and I basically start this
and preparing for what's
next and whatever.
It's just like sometimes I
feel like I'm working two jobs,
but I don't want it to ever
feel that way.
So I basically like kind of
took I don't want to say I
took a month off because I
was still doing stuff,
but I definitely got myself
behind the power curve.
So now we got to play catch
up this weekend, too.
But that's all good.
I enjoy that part of it
because what I'm getting
ready to do is going to be
fun for everybody, I hope so.
But so
Let's touch on, so I noticed,
I think it was book three
is when I noticed it.
I think it was book three or
two that you have somebody
actually reading your book
who is basically sensitivity check-in.
Oh, that's the fourth one.
We started that in the fourth one.
Okay, the fourth one.
Okay, yeah.
I knew I had just seen it.
It was one of the books that
somebody is actually
reading it for sensitivity issues,
which is really cool.
I've never seen that before.
yeah I mean um prior to free
I just didn't know where I
would even hire a
sensitivity reader I was
like aware of their
existence but I didn't
wouldn't it wasn't even I
didn't even know where you
would go to to hire
somebody like that so once
I just put I think it was
just like blue sky well I
just on all my socials I
just put like um can
anybody tell me where you
would hire a sensitivity reader uh
because I don't know.
And on the back of that,
someone called Michelle
Swinney emailed me
on my website, info.zipcomic.co.uk.
So, yeah,
she emailed me and asked about
the sensitivity thing.
So we talked a little bit
about her experience and everything.
Because the reason I wanted
to hire a sensitivity
reader primarily is the
fact that I'm just one disabled person,
but I try and pull from a
bunch of different disabled
people's experiences to...
because we're not a monolith, you know,
everybody's got their own
like opinions and ways they
like to identify and things like that.
So yeah, I thought, you know,
a sensitivity reader could maybe, um,
you know,
kind of pull that in a little bit,
maybe when I've
misrepresented somebody
else's experience or something.
So that's what she was
primarily hired to do,
but then she's also been
useful in other areas too.
Cause there, you know, I mean,
sometimes you just,
you're so used to a trope
that you maybe put in
something that's harmful
that you don't realize,
or for me sometimes as well,
I'll just get into my like
sci-fi brain where I'm like, oh,
that's an interesting fact about like,
how this like thing in
biology works or how this, you know,
thing works and I'll just get into it.
And I'll just kind of have a
bunch of different separate
ideas that I end up putting together.
But then when you put them together,
they end up saying
something really weird that
you didn't mean to say.
And I didn't catch, you know,
sometimes I just don't
catch these things because
I'm just so in the weeds of
like the process of it that,
like I don't catch things
that seem like they should
be really obvious yeah no
yeah no that's pretty yeah
because like I was saying
you you're the first person
I had seen you know
somebody give credit to
them for doing that I'm
sure there's other like
bigger comic books that do
that but you were the first
one I've seen that where
you really you gave credit
to the person and basically
gave them their things and
their flowers for doing this for you so
So have you heard from other
readers from the disabled community?
And how has that response
been from them to your book?
Well, yeah.
I mean,
I basically put it on everything now.
There's been an Amazon
review that we've had.
uh I believe the name of the
guy was apparition rare and
I think I'll just read it
out uh because it's a
really great review so I
mean this is on amazon I'm
literally just pulling it
up and reading it now so um
zip uh number one was a
kickstarter I missed the
chance to get in on and I'm
so excited to see it uh it
come to comicology the tale
is a gritty british
superhero comic but it's
really about disabilities
And having read it,
I think it uses its metaphor as well.
The mutant metaphor over in
Marvel often falls short in my eyes,
but Zip genuinely resonates.
I am autistic, and gosh,
I could feel for Allison's
alienation for society.
The story is a bit dark.
There's a suicide attempt,
but it hit hard.
It's one of my favorite new comics.
I am excited for issue two
to arrive here soon,
and I hope I can catch
whenever the Kickstarter
for issue three begins.
So that's a five-star review,
and I just want to
highlight that it's one of
his favorite new comics.
I assume that it's here.
I apologize if he is not, or they are not.
So that's, you know, I mean,
there's a lot of new comics out there.
And this is one of
Apparition Writers' favorites.
That's really cool that
you're getting those types
of responses to the book.
And that's a feel good right there.
That's one of those where
you're having a shitty day
and you can be like, you know what?
I know what cheers me up.
That's one of those reviews
where you can go and read
it and it immediately kind
of just like a little bit
of ray of sunshine on the day.
Hmm.
Yeah.
Well, I mean, now that I,
now that that review has been given,
I put one of my favorite comics,
five stars on like so much stuff,
you know,
it's like the other thing I
won't shut up about is the
time that Gail Simone said
that she loved the art and the comic.
The art is special, man.
Like it's,
I know the amount of work that
goes into doing just the,
no color color can cover up
imperfections in art,
but this book has no color
in it whatsoever.
And I thought that was really cool.
And, um, San is like nailing it, dude.
Like you,
you have the artist for this book.
Yeah.
Well, I mean,
I considered having it colored, um,
but there were a few reasons why.
uh we didn't uh and I for me
personally one is that um
you know it's kind of like
a british thing like a
tradition because if you
look at two thousand a.d
you know that's for a long
time black and white but
for me personally um I am a
huge fan and I've just
talked about this on my podcast um
I'm a huge fan of the
original Mirage Comics run
of Kevin and Eastman's
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Yeah.
And its original incarnation
that was black and white.
For those who don't know,
it's very different to the
cartoons because it was a
parody of Daredevil and it
was very violent.
But it was, yeah, I mean...
I mean,
those guys basically just lived the
dream because they just made a comment.
I want to encourage everybody,
if you have a chance,
go online or do what you've got to do.
Find the original Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtle run
with Kevin Eastman and Laird from Mirage.
It is a totally different
concept than the Teenage
Mutant Ninja Turtles we have today.
It's still for maybe the
last Ronin is a little bit more greedier.
and similar to what the
original Teenage Mutant
Ninja Turtles were.
And I think that's really cool.
I think people assume that
TMNT was always some kind
of market-researched,
engineered to be a huge hit
thing because of the
juggernaut it became.
But it really wasn't.
It was just two guys.
It was just one of them
trying to cheer up the other.
I can't remember which was which, but...
One of them tried to cheer
up the other by just
drawing a turtle with nunchucks.
I think it was Laird who did
it for Eastman.
And then Eastman was kind of like, oh,
I think we have something here,
how that went down.
So they just made a single
comic that was supposed to be a one-shot,
but then it got a huge response,
and comic shops were asking
them when they were going
to do number two,
and they never even considered that.
And you can tell that
because their main villain
gets killed off in the first issue.
So...
you know um yeah and it just
kind of snowballs and then
they became you know maybe
like in the late eighties
early nineties the biggest
thing ever I think it
wasn't until they really
landed with idw later is
when it became the more kid
friendly thing is when they
pitched it I think it was
like in the mid-eighties
when the teenage mutant
ninja turtles the cartoon
the animated series really
hit yeah so that's when
they kind of toned everything down
Well, basically,
the story is that they had the comics,
and so they were going to
get action figures made.
But the action figures,
they were basically told,
if you're going to do action figures,
you've got to have a cartoon,
because you've got to sell them somehow.
So the cartoon was literally
made to sell action figures,
but it was a comic first.
And you can get the original
Ninja Turtles in the black
with the red eye band.
You can find those.
They make those.
I can't remember which company does it,
but...
Like I'm very much of the
thought of if I'm going to get them,
I want them all at once.
That way I don't have to be
searching for them.
And I've never been able to
find all four at once or
like a multi-pack with all of them.
But if I ever come across it,
I'll definitely, that's one of my.
I mean,
you can just get Michelangelo and
just call it the last Ronin.
No, I have a last Ronin.
No, I know, but I'm just kidding.
If you just got Michelangelo
and somebody asks you why
you don't have the full set,
you'd just be like, well,
he's the last Ronin.
That's true.
That's true.
And like I said,
I have the entire run of the last Ronin.
That's probably been one of
my favorite comments of the
original last Ronin.
The re-evolution was good,
but that original last
Ronin just hit completely different.
Yeah.
I think oh, sorry.
Go ahead No, no,
you go ahead and make your
point because we're gonna
jump into the actual
Kickstarter after your your statement.
Yeah Well,
I mean the thing about I like
about Ninja Turtles that
kind of influence if as
well is the fact that the
Ninja Turtles aren't
necessarily heroes They're
not really bad guys,
but they are just kind of
trying to survive in their
own world and in this world
superhumans some of them
Don't do anything with
their powers and they just
kind of live their lives
but like the ones who
do take up heroing are doing
it not because they've got some, you know,
altruistic vendetta against
crime or something like that,
but also just because they want a way to,
they can kind of have a
place for them to have a purpose.
And so they've got like a whole community.
And the reason that they've
got like outlandish
costumes and names and all
that stuff is that's all a
community thing.
You know,
like it's marginalized groups
build up kind of
like cultural things that they,
you associate with them.
And that's just kind of a
way that they celebrate
their own identity in a
world that doesn't
necessarily always celebrate them.
So it's almost as if, you know,
they're not really doing it
to improve the world,
although that's kind of like they don't,
you know,
they wouldn't mind improving the world,
but it's also just kind of
for them as much as it is anybody else.
And I kind of,
had the Ninja Turtles in
mind when I was thinking
about that because the Ninja Turtles,
they might save the world,
but that's not their life's
mission or anything.
It's just that they're kind
of cast adrift in a world
that doesn't care about them.
Yeah, you nailed that one.
So let's jump into the
actual Kickstarter for issue number four.
Why can't fans expect in
issue four that they
haven't seen previously
from Zilp or any of the other characters?
Well, this issue is our longest one so far,
at thirty-one pages.
We've got several stories
going on at the same time,
so there's going to be
you know,
some good Pinch Drive from Dog's
Body stuff.
You're also going to see
somebody they're working with,
one of the scientists from
the classified research team.
So we'll meet somebody new
from the classified
research team and the
classified research is the
department that Pinch Drive
from Dog's Body work for.
They're kind of a mysterious
um sort of well science team
but even the people who are
working for them don't
really know what they're
doing they're just told to
go here and press this
button on this machine and
record this data but
they're not entirely certain what
is there even really doing
um so it's all quite
mysterious so you know kind
of um we'll learn a little
bit more about them and
some more pieces of the
puzzle will fall into place
um like I said before as
well zip's going to meet
more of the superhuman
community uh and the reason
I mean one of the big
reasons that I'd like that
to happen is so that we can see kind of
you know,
more different attitudes to
superheroing and, you know, what the,
you know,
the etiquette of all that is and
what their culture is and stuff.
But, you know,
it's also just going to have
more characters for Zip to play off.
And, you know,
the other thing I will say as well,
and I don't want to give away too much,
but the thing is,
Zip needs to gain something
in order to lose something.
So you're going to start to
see the start of something.
I think this issue...
could be where you really
start to see like a wider
story coming in.
I mean,
I like to write each of our issues
where you can kind of read
them on their own and not
have to read the rest.
But if you have read the
rest and you read them all,
then you get like a bigger
picture than you would have
if you just read the one.
I will say the first three
did feel very much standalone.
But the first one built for the second one,
built for the third one.
And then in the fourth,
you kind of left us with a
little bit of a,
I don't want to say a cliffhanger,
but it was a cliffhanger
compared to the other three.
I mean,
there are little cliffhangers here
and there, I'd say.
But, you know, I mean,
I just don't want it to be
like you pick up, you know,
if you've only been able to pick up,
issue three or whatever you
read it and it's like it's
just mentioning a bunch of
stuff that you need for
context to understand the
story and you just
completely lost um you know
I mean I think at a certain
point uh that might be
necessary but I'm gonna try
and avoid it um you know
I'm gonna try and make them
um you know kind of a happy
medium between them being
stand enough that you can
enjoy them and learn but
also you know you're kind
of rewarded for reading them all too
um I can't remember what oh
yeah so the so what we're
seeing in issue four um and
obviously we've got the
other time travel element
um there will be kind of
like um this issue kind of
makes a point about you
know knife crime um and not
necessarily even just knife
crime but just being kind
of young and you know being
kind of like a young
you know, maybe too boisterous,
like young man,
and getting yourself into
kind of trouble over masculine, you know,
bullshit, macho bullshit.
Yeah, so there's that too.
So there's, I mean,
there's a lot of stories
coming together in this one.
And I mean,
it's the start of getting some
wider context for who Zip
is and why she does things
the way she does too.
No, I've enjoyed it, man.
And so this is a question I
ask almost everybody who
comes on with a Kickstarter
and they've done multiples.
So from your first
Kickstarter that you did to
where you're at now,
like what's some of your
biggest lessons or
takeaways for anybody who
may be thinking about, you know, like,
hey,
I want to do a Kickstarter for my next,
you know,
or I want to do a comic book or
whatever it may be.
but I want to use
Kickstarter as kind of like
that launching point for this.
What are some of your
biggest lessons learned or
takeaways from doing that?
Because, I mean,
you're on your fourth book.
What's your biggest
takeaways on that and your
lessons learned?
I mean, there's so many,
but I think you got to –
Well,
one thing is you actually want to use
Kickstarter before you make
your own campaign for several reasons.
Kickstarter is a community,
and you have to engage with
that community earnestly.
Otherwise, people are going to notice.
You can't be all take and no give.
But the other reason that
you want to be using
Kickstarter as a backer is
just you will learn what
you like personally,
and you'll form opinions
about Kickstarter
And it'll make it much
easier for you to design
rewards and design a story
and design everything like
that because you'll have seen it,
you know,
and you'll know what the
experience is like on the back or side.
So that's really important.
Oh, the other thing I'd say, one big,
I think the first tip I'd
tell anyone who's ever thinking like, oh,
maybe I'll do a Kickstarter
in the future.
If you've ever thought, oh,
maybe I'll do a Kickstarter
in the future.
kick cut the in the future
out right now because the
thing is you can create a
campaign you can create a
project and then just not
launch it and just keep
that indefinitely so if
even if you have you don't
have us anything specific
to create just create your
project and you can see the
interface and learn what
it's like and you'll see
all of this different stuff
that you have to do to get
kickstarter ready and you can just
kind of get that ready in
your own time and you don't
have to launch it.
I mean, obviously if you launch it,
then you're under a time
constraint and that's a lot more stress,
but you can just create a project,
no stress, just to learn how to do it.
So you might as well,
even if you've got nothing specific to do,
you might as well just
create a project just to
test it out and learn.
And as long as you don't get your
you know, send it off for, you know,
validation or whatever,
moderation or anything,
you should be fine.
The other thing is you got to do some math,
unfortunately.
So... Everybody wants to do math.
Yeah, I know.
And in the immortal words of Jason Pargin,
numbers are stupid and we
shouldn't have them.
Anyway... Three words.
Yeah.
So, I mean...
Yeah, so basically,
there is this concept
called price anchoring,
where people will not want
to necessarily go for the
cheapest option because they'll want to,
you know, they're like, oh,
I've been spending some money, I want to,
you know, at least get myself something,
you know.
But they'll also not want to
get the most expensive
option because they want to
be a little bit frugal.
So people tend to go for
like a median average of your prices.
And this is something you
can work out mathematically, okay?
So when you're doing a
Kickstarter for your first time,
what you need to do is you
have to try and think how
many backers am I actually
realistically gonna get?
Because when you get that number,
you can do some maths and
figure out what your
average pledge needs to be
for you to hit your goal.
And then you can set your
goal based on that.
So say, for example,
you are a creator with, I don't know,
I mean,
a social media with I don't know
how many followers.
And then you get you get you
need you need to find a way that you can
ballpark how many people
you're going to get back in
your thing so you probably
want to just write write
down a list of your friends
and family you can send a
link to you want to send uh
you write down a list of
like news sources you can
send your link to to press
release with on the down
the tubes uh website
there's a great article by
uh john freeman talking
about how you can get a
press release for your
comics so google that um so
you want to you want a list
of who am I going to send
this to and how likely do I
think these people are going to
and try and empirically
figure out as much as you can,
how many backers you might get.
Then think about what does
my goal need to be?
And then take that goal,
divide it by the number of
your projected backers,
and you have the average
pledge amount that you need
to make that comic successful.
So then you're unfortunately
going to have to do yet
more maths because...
Because take the rewards
that you currently have
made and then work out the
median average of those.
Okay?
If the median average of
those is lower than the
average pledge amount that you need,
that's not good.
You need to rectify that.
So your median...
rewards needs to be around
about the average pledge or
higher for your campaign to
be successful.
And there are, you know,
you can Google work out
median average into Google.
So you don't even
necessarily have to do it yourself.
You can just put the number array in there,
but yeah, you've got to do that.
You've got to do that mass
because I've seen people who are like,
why isn't my campaign, you know,
doing well.
And I looked at their
campaign and they're asking
for so much money.
And I looked at the, you know,
amount of backers they have
and they've got like, twelve hours left.
and you divide the the goal
that they were asking for
via the the backers and
they've they've done you
know I've seen people who
do multiple campaigns who
consistently get the same
number of backers so they
don't it's not even like
they don't know how many
backers they're going to
get you can clearly see how
many backers you're going
to get yeah because you've
done this multiple times
right and you're setting a
goal where your average
pledge would have to be
like sixty dollars or
something but you're
clearly getting an average
pledge of like twenty dollars okay so
you I mean you either have
to get more backers or you
have to set realistic
expectations of yourself
yeah or you have to get
into price anchoring and
figure out how to get your
average pledge higher um
and that involves price
anchoring which if you
don't know what price
anchoring is google it
because it's a whole thing
it's like a psychological
tactic in sales uh so yeah
understand price anchoring
that's important too um and
do all the math I said unfortunately
It's funny you brought that
up because as a consumer
who will back Kickstarters,
when I go on their Kickstarter campaign,
one of the first things I do is I'm like,
where am I getting the most
bang for my buck?
And I'm going to look at that.
And I'm going to base my
pledge on where I'm getting
the most bang for my buck.
Yeah.
And there's some out there they'll have a,
like a,
let's say like a sissy dollar tier
where I'm getting basically
that person's whole catalog of books.
And if I'm getting five
books plus their new stuff,
I'm immediately going to
want to support that tier
because I'm getting more
bang for my buck on what
that average book would cost.
I mean that's definitely –
But I'm also getting it
digitally as well as some
additional digital artwork
or something like that.
I always want to get the
most bang for my buck
because a I'm not I don't
want to say I'm frugal.
but I'm going to look to
where I'm getting the most
for my money that I've
worked hard to earn.
Yeah,
and there is definitely a type of
backer who will behave that way.
However, I should say as well,
it's important to know that
not every backer behaves the same way.
And when you are setting
your prices for price anchoring,
you do have to think about
when somebody looks at this
and actually thinks about
whether they want to buy it
or not like it has to make
it has to make sense you
can't just set your prices
based on maths and not you
know there's a real person
going to be looking at this
and deciding whether to buy
it so it also has to make
sense you have to set
prices that are worth it
but that just means maybe
you're going to have to
think of some more rewards
or maybe you're going to
have to think about you
know you're going to have
to think practically about
it I mean there's a lot
to think about um so if
you're not getting the the
the median average you need
out of your um rewards you
could lower the the reward
goal that is true the the
the campaign goal that is
true however if you def
definitely need that campaign goal then
what you might need to do is think about,
OK, well,
what are the rewards that I can
offer that are very, very cheap or free?
For example,
my whole thing with giving the
names in the back of the comic,
that's free, but people like it.
And you can use that to
increase the value of a tier
You know, you think about that.
That's a really cool one.
You're you're the well,
I don't want to say you're the first.
I've seen others do it, too.
But I've also seen others
who do that charge
astronomical prices to do that.
Well, that's not I mean, it does cost.
I mean, you know,
it's it doesn't really cost
you anything to do it.
The thing is,
I was inspired by I was inspired by like.
a lot of game Kickstarter
because I'm a huge point
and click adventure effect
game fan and it's kind of a lost art.
And there was this one,
Thimbleweed Park by, you know,
vet Ron Gilbert.
They had a section where
there's a library and you
have to go and find a
specific library book to solve a puzzle.
But the thing is,
they've got like a bunch of
books in this library and
They aren't just like generic, oh,
I didn't find the right
book and just put the book back.
All of those books have
something written in them.
And they're all stuff that
the backers were like,
basically the backers for
their Kickstarter got to
write all of these library
books in the library.
And they're all kind of like
jokey in their own way.
So even if you don't get the right book,
you're reading something
funny that a backer wrote.
And so, I mean,
I'd love to do something
kind of like that where you
can actually even have the
backer names in a script or
something or something like that.
It's really tough.
I've seen some where like,
you send them your image and
they will write you in the comic book.
Yeah, but I mean,
that's a really nice idea,
but it's like a logistical
nightmare there because it
means that you have to...
The prices I see people
charging for stuff like that, like, oh,
you know,
if you back it at this right
here and you email me this,
you're one of the first
murder victims in this book,
which I think is a cool concept,
but they're charging an
astronomical price for that.
I mean,
you're going to have to have that
be like...
If you're going to charge a lot,
you're going to have to
maybe have the artist be
somebody who's like a name or something.
Exactly.
And the other big thing on Kickstarter is,
I think you mentioned it briefly,
but communicate.
Oh, yeah.
Communicate with your
backers because it
absolutely drives me crazy
when I back something that
we're passionate about
because obviously we're
working real money for this.
I mean,
I have to say sometimes it is
difficult to even know what
to say because when you're
in a live campaign,
like you're pretty much, I mean,
it feels like you're, you know,
you're working really long
hours and everything, but it's just like,
you know,
it's essentially just like today I just,
you know,
sent a link to a bunch of people
pretty much and then just kind of,
you know,
crop some images for social
media and racked my brain
about what new thing I
could say about this book.
So, you know, like, I mean,
it's sometimes updates are
hard to come up with because it's like,
well, more of the same, but you know,
you kind of still have to do it anyway.
You know,
you just have to think of something,
you know, I mean,
Kickstarter has suggestions to like,
because there's one in
particular that I've backed
like months and months ago
and they kind of just been radio silent.
The book is backed.
Yeah.
Like they've reached their goal twice over,
but I'm just like, um,
are you going to release us
an update and let us know
what's going on?
I will withdraw my funds
very quickly if I don't
hear something that soon.
yeah well I mean like and if
you're not even if you're
not even sure what to say
you know the kickstarter
does have um articles that
tell you uh you know can
give you some ideas about
what kind of updates you
can even uh write and how
to write them so there's
that too um and you know I
mean it's just like
Sometimes it could just be a
case of waiting for
freelancers to be available.
So sometimes the situation
is I'm just still waiting.
And it doesn't sound good,
but it's just kind of the
reality sometimes.
But I mean, yeah,
when you're not updating
people about that kind of thing, I mean,
I mean,
I can't say that I've always
remembered what date I said
for what thing totally, but, you know,
people, you know, I mean, it's, you know,
dates are numbers and we
don't need those.
Yeah, exactly.
But yeah, I mean,
Kickstarter as well has
like a ton of like how-to
articles and advice.
It really does.
It's a very good website.
I think very well put together.
and they make it very user
friendly for anybody not
just you know yeah people
who are you know on there
to buy but also the people
using it to sell their
products so and they link
to those they link to those
how to's when you're making
your campaign as well so
that's the reason another
reason that you should just
go and make a a kickstarter campaign
the kickstarter fit store
you know like because as
you're doing it they will
just say here's information
like they'll just link to
it like an information
about how to do this thing
that you're trying to do
right now or this thing
that you're just like
clippy or something from
word back in the nineties
um so I'll just give you
links to relevant articles
that will help you to do
what you're currently doing
uh and so you can just
learn by doing and it's great
So we're talking about Kickstarter.
Now it's your turn.
What rewards or stretch
goals are you most excited
about for issue four?
Well,
we're definitely doing essentially
everything we did last time.
I love these stickers, actually.
These are cool.
Stickers are one of my favorite things,
or pins.
Yeah, I was thinking about it.
When it comes to rewards,
I typically try and stick
to flat stuff because flat
stuff is easier to ship.
And I've worked in jobs
where the bulk of our time
would be handling delivery
problems from customers.
So I know how many things
can go wrong with delivery.
Yeah, I mean, so I was like, well,
we'll keep it as simple as
we possibly can for delivery.
It also means that, you know,
if you're worried about, you know,
me not fulfilling well, I mean,
I've had so much experience
dealing with delivery
problems that I can kind of just,
you know,
I've got a whole flow chart for
how to approach a problem
if something arises in the campaign.
Behind me,
there is a poster that's also available.
That's a really dope poster.
I've seen that.
Yeah.
that's one of my favorite
covers that's so it can
sans cover for issue two uh
on a poster uh and um you
know we've got smartphone
wallpapers I mean this is
just all the extra stuff
that you can get those are
always really cool and
they're there's nothing to
them you don't have to send
them it's just literally
downloading and stick it on
your phone yeah I mean the
thing about it is I tend to
find that people go for the comic
um above anything else I'm a
comic guy I like physical
medium and I've said this
probably a hundred times I
love the smell of a comic
book yeah I mean it's like
the smell of an old book
yeah yeah you know it's
just one of those unique
smells that's all to itself
and it's like the fill of
the page the smell like for
me that's one of the best things ever
yeah well I mean so I tend
to find when we look at the
stats after a campaign that
people will usually go for
the the comics themselves
like much over any anything
else that we offer so I
mean I I would love to
offer like so much
different merch stuff but
the thing is that like yeah
realistically I know that
somebody's just not gonna
sell but like I mean I've had people
who expressed some interest
in certain other things
that I haven't offered in the past.
I don't want to be explicit
about that just now because I'm still,
you know, thinking about that.
But like, you know,
you kind of want to offer
something new for your new campaigns.
So I'm thinking about how to do that.
But yeah,
we got the stickers and the poster.
I mean, if anybody wants, you know,
I welcome people to comment and say like,
you know,
I'd love this kind of thing because,
you know,
it's good to know what people
will actually buy.
But, yeah, I mean, you've got, like,
the thing about it is for the campaign,
you can get covers in print
or in digital that you can't get.
I mean, that's the official cover.
You can get covers that you
won't get in the e-reader version.
That cover is really cool.
I like that one.
Oh, yeah.
I will always love a good
black and gray scale.
Yeah, well, that's Sans one for issue one.
And then we've got this.
I'll just skip the main covers.
So this is the same drawing
as on the poster.
This is the Sans cover for issue two.
And then we also have
Vanessa Cardinale's cover for issue two.
Oh, that's so cool.
She's the same artist as the
main cover of our first one.
Was that a purple and black?
Yeah, purple.
It's like a purple and black monochrome.
Oh, dude, that is...
That's money.
That's clean.
And it's got the Clifton
Suspension Bridge from
Bristol in the background.
Bristol is the city that Zip is based in,
so am I. This is Sans cover
for issue three.
You can see Zip being
assimilated into the hive here.
And then this is Matt
Schofield's cover for issue three.
That's some awesome covers, man.
Yeah.
To me, those are big sellers.
When you have a cover that
just screams at you,
you want that cover because
it's different and it's unique.
I say you don't see a lot of
black and gray covers, but shit.
What's the name of the book?
It just come out.
news from the fallout from
chris condon it has a black
and gray cover that is just
really close very basic but
it just says like you want
it you know what I'm saying
yeah you know it's a really
good story too chris condon
I think is one of those
really good writers out
there who who's finally
getting his proper flowers
Um,
so what's your like kind of creative
process,
like when it comes to doing your books,
like how far out do you get
ahead or do you kind of
just take it one issue at a time?
Well,
I think it's pretty clear from what
I've said already that, uh, I think head,
um,
You know, I mean,
I've already begun writing issue six,
although issue five does
need to be redrafted at some point.
I mean, and I've got a rough story idea.
I mean, essentially,
I've got a rough story idea
in my head for another, like, I mean,
I don't even want to say how many issues,
because, like, you know,
if I say how many issues...
We're not going to do that.
We're not going to do that.
Because I know, like,
I had brought up Nick
earlier with a vidalirium.
who has a, you know,
he's got his book deal,
and he's turning the book
into a comic book.
And he already knows how he
plans to end book seven.
So I just didn't know, like,
have you thought that far ahead?
Like,
he knows exactly how the book will
end at book seven.
I just, I was wondering, like, how, like,
are you that far ahead?
Like, you know,
how you want to end this
story eventually?
Are you just, like, living in the moment,
you know, one or two issues ahead?
Well, I'm in two minds about it.
Yeah, I have.
The only definitive ending
I've ever thought of for
this story is the most
depressing thing ever.
So I'm in two minds about using it,
because on the one hand,
I'm just an edgy boy,
and sometimes I just like a dark,
depressing ending.
But on the other hand, I'm like,
I really like these characters,
and I kind of don't want to
do that to them.
they're your characters it's
your prerogative you know
yeah I know but like I
don't want to do I mean but
I know how you feel
sometimes a good like just
depressive ending like that
it's kind of like you can
kind of feel it going there
but you don't like the vibe
of the book's like it's not
going to go there the book
has kind of been like a
little bit more of this but
then when you get that
ending and it's just like
well shit I didn't see that
coming that's kind of like
depressive almost and then
you're like but damn it was
good the way they did it
you know yeah I mean I
don't even know if this is
necessarily a good idea I
just maybe it's just
something I thought of and
it's the most depressing
thing ever just because I
was just like oh I'm just
edgy and it's just yeah I
mean but that doesn't you
know it itself you know
yeah maybe I mean I don't know I but like
I I kind of envision this as
an ongoing series that
doesn't really have a set
end but like that might be
a little bit too uh wishful
thinking really when you
think about it from like a
practical like business
perspective but I mean like I have I mean
I know what's coming up in the story.
There is a grander story
that we're building to.
There's kind of a grand arc.
Well, issue four,
you kind of start to get
that feel that you're
building it to something big in that.
Because Allison, or Zip,
is getting her confidence.
She's starting to find
herself a little bit.
And you can kind of tell
that's building into something more.
Yeah.
I mean,
I could see there being multiple
story arcs for this,
but there's kind of a point
where I can see,
for the foreseeable future,
I can kind of tell you, oh yeah,
this story would roughly
work in X amount of issues.
However, after that,
there is more story that I can think of,
but I couldn't tell you how
many issues that would last for,
and I wouldn't even
necessarily be able to tell
you the whole story structure.
I could sit down and tell
you the whole story structure, but
what we're doing right now
but after that arc I have
ideas for future arcs but
how long could they be I
mean not I don't really know
So how's your relationship
with San when it comes to, like,
you've wrote your story,
you're passing it off to San for art.
Like, how does that work for y'all?
Like,
are y'all always in contact with each
other?
Or is he like,
does he do a page and send it to you?
How's your relationship with
San when it comes to
creating the artwork of Zip?
Yeah, Sam pencils in a page,
and then he sends that over to us.
And we comment and take a look.
And it's almost never
anything that really needs changing,
especially not majorly.
That's the sign of a good artist.
Yeah.
There was one funny little
thing where in issue three,
Kassan confused Pinstripe and Dog's Body.
So there's an original draft
where you actually see
Dog's Body in the place of
Pinstripe and vice versa,
which is kind of funny.
But we corrected that.
But most of the time,
not really a whole big deal for us.
you know, sans stuff.
And then he'll just go and send us,
you know, a picture of the inks.
When he's just work,
because he works so fast.
So he wouldn't have time to
scan it all in.
I think he goes to a print
shop or something to scan,
but he takes photos of just
the pages he's drawn and sends to us.
I think last week, no, two weeks ago,
I had Francisco Nilo on who
is the artist for Videlirium,
which is one of those cool
things where I got to
interview the writer and
the artist of it.
And that's what he does as well is.
He does a page and he'll
take a picture of it and
send it to Nick to give the thumbs up.
And then they send it off to
their colorist.
Yeah.
So it's really cool when I
get to when I'm
interviewing and talking to
people about their work,
the kind of relationships
they have with their
artists and how it just
comes like this fluid
relationship where the
artist already knows kind
of what you're looking for
and what you want.
And then you get to a certain point where
You're almost like the hive
mind and you're kind of
just like on the same page.
Yeah.
So that's really cool that
y'all were at that point
now in this where he's just kind of like,
I know what you're looking for.
I got you.
So that's really cool to hear.
Yeah, I mean,
it's kind of a little bit
funny to be described as a
hive mind because the hive.
I had to circle back to it, man.
I had to circle back.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
Well,
I was going to say because we were
talking about that earlier
and you said you might want
to talk about it.
Yeah,
we said we were going to circle back.
Let's circle back to it
right now before we get to
one of my favorite parts of
my interviews.
Okay.
Is the hive still alive?
That's my biggest thing,
because they kind of are going with, like,
it's dead, but can it really die?
You can't kill... I mean...
No, the Hive is still alive.
I mean, the Hive is software,
so it replicates itself.
It can replicate itself.
So even if we were like, oh,
we've just destroyed all of
the servers that the Hive
are on and they're gone forever.
Well,
as long as a single computer remains
in the world that's
powerful enough to contain the Hive,
it's always possible that
they replicated themselves.
So we're going to see the
Hive come back at some point.
Yeah, I mean,
like the corporation who owns
the hive aren't just going
to let the hive go because
the corporation
that created them,
they might not have
released the hive in its current state,
but that's only because
they didn't want the PR
disaster it was going to create.
They want the money.
They really want that money.
So they're going to be,
they've got that squirreled
away somewhere.
And, you know, I mean,
there's a bunch of
engineers at that
corporation who were
telling them that this
thing is too dangerous.
You can't, you know, because...
uh and that but then you
know the big wigs are just
like well yeah but we want
the money though so uh as
long as there is profit in
it that that yeah you know
the highway's gonna
continue to exist I thought
that was a really really
dope one and from the story
you kind of pick up like
this thing can't just die
it's gonna have to take
something big to kind of like really
end it so I think it's cool
that you're kind of going
to circle back to that and
you have that ability to
circle back to it whenever
you feel like yeah so
before we start our doing
our close up and wrap up
here let's do a quick
lightning round of
questions so favorite
british comic of all time
uh sonic the comic no
question um that was going
to be the answer because
you did mention it in issue one
Oh, yeah.
In issue one,
there's a making of zip
little article at the end
for anybody who doesn't know that.
So that's something else you
can get when you back the thing.
But yeah, so there were
In the UK,
there was an entirely different
comic about Sonic the Hedgehog.
But the creators just kind
of went wild with it
because there wasn't so
much oversight back then.
So it was still a comic that
took inspiration from the games and had,
you know.
So that was going to be my question is,
is it like Sonic the Hedgehog?
Because it just says Sonic the comic.
And I'm like, well,
I wonder if that's the same
thing or if it's something different.
Okay, that's really cool.
That's really cool.
it's very different to the
american comics um although
there are characters from
the american comics where
you kind of look at them
you go oh wonder where you
got the idea from that that
from you know it's funny is
mad cave just released
vanishing point issue to a
vanishing point is a
knockoff of the jetsons okay
So it's really cool.
Like there's like this,
this evil Jetsons family on
the cover of issue two cover.
But I thought that was
really cool that there's a
story in because it's an anthology book.
But in that way,
the main story is about a
disheveled like Jetsons.
Yeah.
Maybe not so polished, you might say.
It's the first time that
anybody's ever referred to
Hanna-Barbera as published, I think.
Although I do love him anyway.
As much as it can be.
Yeah.
All right.
Most underrated disabled
character in fiction,
and it doesn't have to be comic book.
Oh, well, that's a good question.
I feel like, I mean,
just the first thing that
comes to my mind was,
so people may not even
really remember that this was a thing,
but there was almost like a Star Trek,
the next generation style thing
But, you know, with Ghostbusters.
So in the nineties there,
there was a show called the
Extreme Ghostbusters.
And it was kind of like the
new generation of Ghostbusters.
And in that they had like
this kind of daredevil
character who was always
the first to rush into a
situation because he just
liked to kind of prove how
brave he was and stuff.
And he was in a wheelchair.
And I went back and watched an episode of
that show in my adulthood
and I kind of forgot he was
even in a wheelchair
because they didn't make
his character about that.
So I know, you know, for a long time,
I mean, for a lot of,
they still do in a lot of
ways kind of just make
disabled characters all about, you know,
their disability and kind
of make that their entire personality.
And, you know,
like shows have kind of like
a very irritating way of
just kind of taking pity on
disabled characters.
But the extreme Ghostbusters
just let this guy be part of the action,
and he just happened to be
in a wheelchair.
I remember that.
That was a really fun cartoon.
It's very underrated.
Yeah.
I don't think it got the
proper love that the
original Ghostbusters cartoon did.
I mean,
it'd be hard to live up to the
iconic original Ghostbusters, but yeah.
No, I really liked that show.
For me, I would have to go.
I can't remember the name of the show,
but it's about an FBI agent.
They're all FBI agents or
something like that.
But one of the main guys, he's a doctor,
but he's autistic.
He gives the autistic vibe.
But he's got multiple doctorates,
and he's very- So is he
explicitly autistic,
or is he just kind of autistic coded?
It's never actually said, I think.
Okay.
But you kind of just know.
It's not spoken of.
But you know.
And I can't remember his
name or the exact name of the show,
but I always thought that
was really cool that he's
part of this elite team
that solves crime and weird
murder cases and stuff like that.
But it's really cool that
yes it's never mentioned but
you know and the good
doctor as well was like
that as well I thought that
was a really good one I
think that's the name of
the show about the doctor
yeah I'm unfortunately I
haven't seen these tv shows
uh I know y'all get very
like y'all's programming
y'all's doctor who I think
is better than ours y'all's
office is better than ours
That's a bit controversial at the office,
isn't it?
It very much is,
but I still prefer the UK
version of the office.
Yeah.
And then y'all had a TV series.
I think it was similar to
like the Inhumans or
something like that about a
group of teens that ended
up with superpowers.
You may be thinking of Misfits.
Misfits, yes.
Yeah.
Top tier television, in my opinion.
I thoroughly enjoyed that
show and felt it never got
the proper love it deserved.
yeah I mean it was a shame
when um I forgot the
character's name but he was
like the almost the
wolverine character where
he was immortal like he was
you know regenerative
powers the guy with the
curly hair who was uh yeah
that guy left he was kind
of like this the breakout
character of that show but
then he left and after that
it was a little bit
difficult for them to
recapture the magic of that
I think he took a different
show though or he had to
cast in a movie as the
reason why he actually had
left that thing right
yeah something like that I
mean it's obviously they
can't help it but yes it's
just yeah I just felt it
was one of those severely
slept on shows that
deserved more attention
than what it got so what's
up kelvin welcome to the
show mike here is from the
uk I that's why we had an
early start today I don't
like to keep these guys up
too long so from the uk
Yeah, specifically I'm from Bristol,
where every day is talked
like a pirate day.
So the Bristol accent sounds a bit like,
ear, cheers, drave, that kind of thing.
Basically,
the reason that pirate accents
are even pirate accents is
because pirates were from everywhere,
because they were sailors, obviously.
But Disney made a Treasure Island movie
decades and decades and
decades ago and the actor
who played Long John Silver
took on a Bristolian accent
for the role which would
make sense because that
would have been where Long
John would have been from
in the book because the guy
who wrote Treasure Island
did so from a pub that
stands to this day in
Bristol called the Long Dogger Trowel
He based that on the
Bristolian accent and
everybody just copied that
and that ended up becoming
the pirate accent.
So, you know, people say, oh,
Bristolians sound like pirates.
No, man.
Pirates sound like Bristolians.
Yeah, I mean, like,
so that's another thing you
might know Bristol from is
Treasure Island.
I love that show.
That was underrated.
Treasure Island?
Yeah.
I really enjoy it.
Well, yeah, I mean,
that's also a Robert Louis
Stevenson book from like
the eighteenth century or something.
I'm pretty sure we have it
on a shelf somewhere in my
daughter's library.
Well,
and the real life pirate Edward Teach,
better name was Blackbeard,
was from here.
I mean,
things you might know Bristol also
from are from, like, Chicken Run,
Orson Gromit.
New movie coming out soon.
Yeah, well,
it's kind of out of the loop
since my dad stopped
working for Hardman's.
And, I mean, Banksy, Massive Attack,
all kinds of stuff.
Okay.
All right.
Next one from our lightning round here.
If any publisher could pick up Zilp,
who would you want it to be?
Mark Herzia.
Good answer.
What am I going to do?
Good answer.
Imagine if I said anything besides that.
Like when I did the questions,
I didn't even,
I completely forgot Marcosio was there.
So that's my bad, Marcosio.
That's on me.
That's not on him.
I swear, that's on me.
Imagine if I said, look,
I'd get such an angry email.
Well, I don't know if anybody saw it.
What did you say this for?
So are you a music guy?
Do you listen to music while you write?
And if you do, what's on your playlist?
Well, that depends on what I'm writing.
I...
tend to you nailed it
replace the banksy yep
replace the banksy uh yeah
yeah that yeah and a lot of
banksy artwork is here as
well because as he does a
lot of his graffiti art
here so um music yeah so I
that depends on what I'm
writing because I kind of
tend to make playlists of um
like the soundtrack of
whatever it is I'm writing,
because I'm a screenwriter as well,
so I do like to think about, you know,
what would this... I even
like to imagine what the
original score of it would be like.
I mean, Zip has an original score,
because I hired a composer
to make one for our first
Kickstarter video.
Oh, that's pretty cool.
That's really cool.
Yeah.
But I like to think about
what popular music would be
in a Zip movie or whatever as well,
and I listen to that while I'm writing.
So, for example,
the theme for Pinstripe and
Dog's Body is the Deltron
instrumental version of Virus.
I like to think about maybe Zip...
being associated with like
Superman by Goldfinger or, you know,
there's a lot of music that
I listened to and it's all
kind of appropriate.
And I'll even have like, okay,
well this is just the music
that plays in this moment of the story.
And this is the music that
is associated with this
place or this character.
So it's all kind of fits in
with the tone of it.
But like for, like, I mean,
Because the setting is in Bristol,
and Bristol's kind of like
an industrial place, I like to think,
I like to listen to kind of like sort of,
you know,
when I was talking about like
how should we make the sci-fi look,
you know,
I was like maybe we should go
for a little bit of
steampunk sci-fi because
it's kind of like all, got a lot of like,
you know, Georgian architecture and stuff,
which Georgian is
technically earlier than Victorian times,
but you know.
close enough.
So, you know,
I'd like to think of I'd like
to listen to a lot of like,
kind of electronic music
for the sci fi stuff.
And, you know, maybe just like energetic,
fast paced music for like zip herself.
You know,
it all fits into whatever the story is,
you know, okay.
That's a perfectly acceptable answer.
Last one up from our lightning round.
If Zip became a TV series,
who plays Allison, a.k.a.
Zip?
That's tricky.
It would have to be a British person,
and they'd have to be in
their early twenties.
So I'd have to pick someone who was that.
mean I don't it's the hard
question you know I'm just
sort of kind of like kind
of tapped out of broadcast
tv a little bit okay
because yeah um I don't
know I mean I almost kind
of think that you might
want to do an unknown
person in a way just to I
mean it may be cool to to
give somebody their first um
know I mean I can appreciate
that that that's I love
when unknown breaks out and
all of a sudden you're like
damn where'd they find this
person I could see that
If we were going with animation,
we've already had somebody
act as if actually, because again,
I hired a voice actor for
some of the promotional
videos for our Kickstarters.
Okay, cool.
By the name of Brittany Glash.
So she has been the official
voice of Zip a few times.
That's really cool.
That's really cool.
Shout out to her.
Yeah, totally.
Okay, let's start wrapping this up.
So where can people
listening or watching from
home find you in your work online?
uh so all of our socials are
zip comic uh uk um so
you'll find us on facebook
instagram twitter blue sky
fred's and tick tock um and
our website is
zipcomic.co.uk um so you
know you can sign yourself
up for our newsletter there
um and also of course
kickstarter so if you want
to find our current
kickstarter you just
basically want to just type zip for
and you will find the
Kickstarter pretty easily from there.
So please give us a follow
because I'm keeping an eye
on that follower account.
And, yeah, I mean,
that would be how you find us.
And when this video goes
live on all the podcasts
and platforms and when I
re-release it on YouTube,
I'll have all those links
down in the description as well.
So I'll make sure I get all
those in there for you.
Yeah, thank you.
Okay,
so we discussed it a little bit earlier.
Issue four will go live on Kickstarter,
we're thinking, August,
September time frame.
Okay.
Yeah.
I mean,
I can't keep it in pre-launch forever.
I am keeping an eye on those
follower accounts,
but I'm not just going to
keep it in pre-launch forever.
So, yeah, I mean, you know,
I'm sure that the follower
account will go up.
It always does.
Yeah, absolutely.
As a matter of fact, when we're done,
I'm going to do the same
thing because I don't think
I've done it yet either,
and that's a shame on me.
That's all right.
Well, it's good to know that, you know,
it could have been higher than that.
Yeah.
Sometimes, you know,
that's a little simple things.
You know, you might get, as a creative,
you might get disheartened to learn,
to look at your numbers or something.
But then sometimes it's not even, you know,
sometimes you're just like,
I just forgot.
And it's just like, oh, okay.
When I get ready to do the release,
I'll do the release with
the big emboldened zip, you know, logo.
And then I include all the
links and stuff when I go
live with the...
with the podcast and whatever.
I make sure I include all that stuff.
We're going to get you there.
I'm going to do my part to get you there.
Thank you.
Finish this sentence and
we'll close it out.
Zip is the kind of comic
that... It's the kind of
comic that... I mean...
I think it's the kind of
comic that tells a very
personal story to me,
but I hope resonates with a
lot of people like me and
possibly unlike me too.
I want it to kind of appeal
to people who would like to
see a story about disability,
but also just like,
the wider idea of
discrimination and marginalized groups.
It kind of takes a look at
how discrimination is
affected by apathy and ignorance,
as opposed to the more
traditional motivator of fear and hate.
But it's also got actions and explosions.
You can't really... Yeah, it's a good one.
Thank you.
All right.
Well, with that, Mike,
I want to take a second and
say thank you for coming on
USDN and asking to come on.
That means the world to me
that you've seen the
interview that I did with Bruno.
You're actually the second
person who's seen my
interview with Bruno and was like, hey,
can I come on and promote
my new Kickstarter?
And I love that kind of stuff.
That means I'm doing my job okay.
I'm going to get to great someday,
but I'm okay with okay.
but with that mike I want to
welcome you now as an
official member of the
council of nerds here at
the united states
department of nerds and I
want to say you know thanks
for bringing zip to life it
is one of those unique
comics and I look for the
unique comments when I read
comic books so if you're
listening you can check out
issues one through three right now
On Amazon or drive-thru comments,
they are terrific reads.
You will enjoy them greatly.
And keep your eyes peeled on
Kickstarter for issue four
that is currently in
pre-launch and launching soon.
And I'll make sure all the
links are in the show notes.
But with that, Mike,
you and Zip are now USDN approved.
Thank you.