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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.
I'm sorry.
what is up everybody it's the chairman of
the united states department of nerds
where we are for the people by the
people and of the people and tonight we're
going from the editor's chair to the
creator's desk
We're joined by Michael J. Williams,
a comic writer, editor, screenwriter,
and one of the most quietly influential
figures in indie comics today,
who has credits at Advent Comics,
Grop Comics, Champion Comics,
Alter Ego Arts, Super Serious Comics,
Mozzie Productions,
And as editor-in-chief at Ink Studios,
Michael has helped shape over forty
crowdfunding campaigns contributing to
projects tied to Wesley Snipes, Austin St.
John the Red Ranger,
and justin gray from creator owned worlds
like wild ani and iron jaguar to host
in comics and pop-tarts and it better be
cookies and cream pop-tarts that's the
only pop-tart that ever should be talked
about michael bridges creation curation
and community and tonight we're breaking
it all down michael welcome to the podcast
my dude i appreciate you mr chairman thank
you so much for having me man
Hey, no, welcome on, man.
I know we were talking beforehand about a
lot of stuff and I got a nice
little show planned out for us.
So let's dive into it, man.
Let's dive in.
So you wear a lot of hats.
Yeah.
Writer, editor, screenwriter.
What came first and what pulled you into
comics originally?
So the ideal dream was never comics
initially.
It was the silver screen.
I watched a lot of movies, TV shows,
cartoons growing up.
I was always a vivid storyteller during
playtime.
I wish I would have kept the journal.
It probably would be a book in its
own right.
um every toy in my room had a
role and uh when i noticed that i
could write about fourteen i wrote a small
fantasy series based on a mystical set of
armor called the armor of aldalon and um
i put writing down for a little while
until uh i had kids got married later
in my late twenties i i decided to
go into game design
I know it's a far left from telling
stories.
It's a huge far left.
Yeah.
So I was at a camp.
But you're still telling a story though.
Yeah.
So I thought,
so I thought I would be able to
tell stories up until,
I think it was after assets right before
programming.
We had a class on visual storytelling that
let us play with some of the
physics and unity and in that class one
of the big things highlighted in bold on
one of the notes one of the assignments
was if you plan on telling story in
video games game design is not the program
for you i wish they would have told
me that year one um
So I had a small family tragedy and
my grandma passed away.
I had hurt my shoulder at work and
I was kind of caught in between.
What do I want to keep on telling
stories?
Or what do I want to keep on
doing game design?
Or do I want to tell stories?
So I swapped from game design to creative
writing for entertainment.
And I'm like, cool, new journey.
We'll finish this program,
get my bachelor's.
I moved to California,
my native hometown of Orange County.
San Clemente,
where I was born in eighty eight.
COVID happened, unfortunately, of course,
that that uprooted a lot of things,
including raising a family in California.
And then the economic side of it was
just too expensive.
And I know,
I know from reading lots of articles
through Washington Post and New York
Times,
a lot of the bigger ones that talk
about kind of the movie and entertainment
industry that it's really hard to raise a
family and come up as a starting writer
for screen.
I never gave up on that dream, though.
So I dive right into the master's degree
program the year I graduated with my
bachelor's.
I finished in twenty twenty one during my
bachelor's degree program,
rolling it back.
I had a class with Roland Mann.
Roland Mann is an artist in his own
right.
Worked on Catwoman back in the day.
Did a lot of the Marvel tops.
He runs Silverline Comics now.
But my class with him taught me how
to write comics.
Taught us how to letter and work the
programs.
And I was kind of
kind of starry-eyed,
and then also super mysteriously and
somewhat inspired to know more.
So I kept doing that for a while,
got hooked into a writing group,
and we were trying to make a novel
happen.
That didn't work out.
And then when I finished my master's
degree program,
I was kind of in the earlier stages
of what would become comics and pop darts.
I was interviewing a creator that I'd met
in twenty seventeen that I'd interviewed
for a project.
And then Anthony was my my first client
asked me to edit a book called Thirst,
which is part of Limitless Comics.
That was my first gig.
And this was out of nowhere.
I didn't seek him.
I wasn't applying for comics jobs.
I did the editing work on the book.
Funny enough,
that book actually coincided with Karen's
Lady Doorbell as one of the prize covers.
She's also the co-creator of Blade's
Daughter.
marvel okay i thought that was really cool
that didn't happen until years later but
it's it's a nice it's a nice go
back and look that your name is stacked
next to someone of that caliber i will
say that run was really good though i
don't read a lot of marvel but blade's
daughter and also the um what was it
the um
red band additional blade what that
featured his daughter yeah was top-notch
stuff the bloodline series was probably
one of blade's best series since probably
like like if he'll just keep slaying
vampires i'd read blade all day long
It's when they like throw, I mean,
some of his Defenders stuff and cameo
appearances and Midnight Suns and all
that.
Yeah, Midnight Suns.
That wasn't too bad,
but anything outside of Blade's normal
atmosphere,
aside from the Deadpool and Wolverine
movie, it's just,
he gets B-rated so bad compared to like
Spider-Man or Iron Man or anything like
that.
Yeah.
But after that first initial comic,
we worked together for a long time and
I was trying to figure out ways to
to kind of help his comic studio get
get a little bit more renowned.
And that's when I dived into like the
podcast setting.
And then after that, man,
I just started talking to creators.
And Comics of Pop Tarts was born.
And from that,
I ended up getting approached by the
gentleman at Ink Studios.
And then he asked me to be a
copy editor.
I did some work for him.
Then he asked me to be editor-in-chief.
And then that's when the crowdfunding
stuff.
And once that came into play,
I had access to...
Indie people all the time and I just
pick their brain invite them on shows.
We do interviews and from that I got
a few jobs here and there I answered
a few submissions like at grok for some
of the shorter stories Like one last year
published with meltdown press It was a
fairy story in the house of haunts.
Um I'd have to get you his name
Uh,
he's running for office in his hometown
right now.
But yeah, man.
Um, so when the wild ain't it?
Yeah,
it's like one thing went from another
thing to another thing all because of...
In Grok Comets,
the reason why you're sitting here now is
because we have a mutual friend that works
also on Grok Comets.
Oh, yeah, Matthew just so.
He did editing for Bill for a long
time.
It's not working for him right now,
but he did do some fantastic things with
Black Cobra on his way out before he
did the episode with you on his new
book.
I'm about to have him back on.
Him and Raymond will be on here soon
to discuss their newest Kickstarter that
will be starting here soon as well.
Awesome.
So he's becoming a repeat offender over
here at the USDN.
And we're not mad at him.
We love having him on.
He's a great brain to pick for anybody
out there.
Yeah.
He's very knowledgeable about early comic
year stuff.
I loved working with him.
We worked great together.
He gave me lots of great notes.
He learned some stuff from me.
He actually got me a job.
Someone had approached him from WKTJ
Collectibles,
and they wanted him to write, well,
they pitched him to write a comic series,
a parody about Sesame Street versus the
Muppets.
And he's like, I don't I don't know,
Mike.
So he reached out to me and he's
like, I really want to,
but I don't know if I'm equipped to
write this.
But I know you love to write stuff.
And so I ended up writing this.
It's called The Muppets Got Talent.
This is the best.
You can go to WKTJ on Facebook and
order any one of these.
Yeah.
Hard to see.
I'll send you a picture of it.
But yeah.
Yeah.
But that was just wild how things pinball
from one event to another and you meet
someone and they tell someone else and all
these things happen.
The Ink Studios ride was kind of a
really cool thing because it gave me some
professional credits.
We got to work on Bigfoot Moonshine and
that was through Image Comics.
And that was a what,
an early two thousands thing there?
Oh, the Bigfoot moonshine.
Or is that more recent?
No, it sounds familiar.
I just can't place the year on it.
Yeah.
So I think I think it started in
twenty twenty two and it was coming.
It's either twenty twenty two or twenty
twenty three.
And it finally came together at the end
of twenty twenty five.
To his credit, though,
Howard was releasing digital files like
Exile did with Lawson up until they got
to the point where they can print and
send it off.
But it was a great series.
It also led me to have a real
good friendship with Austin St.
John, who's coming to Biloxi in February,
the fourteenth and fifteenth.
We talked off and on.
I loved his comic Redemption.
I've been trying to get me.
I've been trying to talk him into hiring
me on helping him finish it.
We'll see.
That's the I thought Boom Studios was
working on that one.
Yeah, yeah.
I'm not sure.
I haven't gotten any updates.
I think I went about six months without
talking to him.
He's got really busy with...
He's been having...
His con schedule has been out of the
world.
Yeah, it's his con schedule,
and he's been working really hard with
FanWord to build that platform.
It's a subscription-based platform where
you get to interact with him and the
original Black Ranger and a few other
actors.
Yeah,
I did see the big announcement they did
for that, and also seeing the...
It was like a forty or forty-five minute
show...
they did on youtube that just kind of
explained their experience and what they
went through while working on power
rangers which i thought was a really
really great thing they did to kind of
tell people how it was working in those
in that time frame so
Oh, yeah, yeah.
But a lot of that stuff happened the
way it did,
so other cool things could happen,
like Jason coming back as the Gold Ranger
I thought was a really great homage.
And then the other episode he did with
Ultimate Red where all the Red Rangers
came back.
which is one of my favorites because they
had the old, damn, what was the name?
The Kamen Rider costumes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That were actually the evil ones in the
Beetleborgs series that had nothing to do
with Power Rangers at all.
Hey,
you gotta cut corners and save money where
you can, man.
Yeah, no,
it was cool to see them all there,
though.
It was a great episode.
Yeah,
just flashback to the nineties there, man.
I love it.
But yeah, I got sucked in.
I didn't ask.
Comics is a profession I didn't ask for,
but
Once I got asked to come into it,
it became an inspirational thing.
I got to meet so many people with
so many ideas, concepts, stories,
and everybody was working so diligently
and putting their all in on it that...
that i just kind of fell in love
with the concept and it's still remotely
similar to screenwriting if not even more
visually and impactful than screenwriting
based on some of the uh the techniques
to the comic script style if you study
into it like i got really deep into
the way that brian michael bendis writes
his stuff so much so that i bought
a lot of the comics that have
the screenplays that they made the artwork
with in the back.
And I've studied that.
That's kind of helped format my technique
and improve upon that.
But that also allowed me to help others
as an editor from the editor's chair on
conceptualizing story,
understanding your characters so that you
can progress with them,
how to come up with obstacles and
conflicts that make sense and actually
challenge your characters.
I think a lot of indie comics that
I've come across, not too many,
but some of the more amateurish ones that
we all still support,
where they fall flat is the obstacles just
aren't realistic.
and they don't really challenge your
characters enough.
So being able to write, edit,
and then the background on my degree side,
along with the marketing that I got to
experience,
allows me to do a lot from the
editor's chair when I'm in that position.
That's been an absolute joy because I get
to help people grow
And they get paid to read comics while
helping them improve their product.
Dude, that's my favorite part of this,
man,
is getting to read comic books and meeting
creators and sometimes getting to put my
eyes on comics before they hit the
Kickstarter or before
you know they get to come to life
elsewhere and whether they're completed or
halfway completed or you know like i have
a bruno catarina on tomorrow one of his
best-selling covers that he did was uh i
did i threw at him while we were
like in the middle of a show and
then like you know what this cover right
here would be great as a virgin
strip it down just give us the art
underneath it and i'm like i'll personally
buy one that's for sure it was like
yep done and sure enough that was he's
like dude i've sold so many copies of
that cover
Jeff gave me a really good cover for
mine that actually influenced the story of
Wild Oni just a tad bit because he
did such a great job.
I was like,
there's no way I'm not putting this in
the book.
It's awesome how just the little ideas can
turn out to be so great.
But you mentioned Summer Surfer as your
first comic book you ever read.
What about that character has stuck with
you?
Silver Surfer.
So this was the reprint.
I think it was like a ninety three
or four that I found at a treasure
hut in Vegas.
And it had a it had a silver
copy and I had a gold copy.
And I just remember from the Pokemon TCG
collector's brain side of me, I was like,
I got to have both of these.
And this is back when comics at Treasure
Hut were at seventy five cents.
That's how old we are.
We were actually.
But I actually got to reading it and
it was an interesting story.
It's a guy who can't go home and
he sacrificed himself to.
be the usher of this galactic entity that
consumed planets and I just remember
relating to him being trapped in between
an unnatural force and this ability to
pick and choose who dies as a kid
who grew up with lots of childhood trauma
because I was raised by an alcoholic for
the majority of my
younger that that that was very relatable
quality in characters.
And I just man, he was pure silver.
He flew the space time continuum on a
board.
I was born in California.
So even though I didn't get to live
there most of my life,
I was still I was still kind of
like a surfer.
Yeah.
And infatuated with dude, bro.
And the whole surfer lifestyle.
I grew up like my whole life was
a dude.
bro now I can't stand it like that's
what everybody says to each other now even
women I'm like do not call him bro
and you two ladies shouldn't be calling
each other bro you're not bros you're
you're bros
The kids would say,
you are reaching unk status, man.
I know, right?
It's a shame, but I still look good,
if not better than I did before.
Hey, just a little grayer, that's all.
Yeah, just a few in the beard.
That's why I got it braided.
Mine was red for about
a month after I retired.
And then I woke up one morning and
it was just like, great.
I was like, all right,
I will accept this.
At least it's not patchy.
It only grows in here and here,
you know?
Yeah,
you got a good deal going on there.
I earned all mine,
so I'm going to keep them in there
regardless.
Oh, yeah.
Even if I wanted to dye it,
I couldn't do it.
I tried.
I tried to dye my hair once.
And the gray shone out like brighter than
the dye did.
So I was just like, all right,
I'm done.
I won't ever try that again.
I'm a fan of all naturals,
so I'm just going to leave it there.
But yeah, man,
that's why I just kind of stuck to
Silver Surfer.
Now,
I didn't read too much up after that
because I was a big Pokemon nerd and
took up a lot of my time.
Let me ask you this.
Being a Silver Surfer fan,
how did you feel about the female Silver
Surfer being in...
the new Fantastic Four.
Because I mean, she is a thing.
It's not like they just pulled it out
of a hat.
She is real.
She is actually in the comic books.
Not necessarily this storyline they're
telling, but she is...
You know, an actual thing.
Yeah,
I think I recall later on Silver Surfer's
journey.
It was I think it was in a
what if I can't remember or recall or
recant the exact issue or, you know,
run from what year or age.
that it was done,
but his wife ends up taking over.
So I'm a guy who appreciates when they
do adaptations,
they actually pull from source material
and that's actually fact and it's not some
socioeconomic residual or redundancy that
they're trying to push now.
I did have a problem at first until
I watched the movie during the trailer
about being more of like a, you know,
the mother thing and how, you know,
she needs to get everybody on board to
save the world.
But it wasn't until I saw that they
were having a baby that it really got
to me because then I got excited because
Stephen Richards and an Invisible Girls
kid.
one of the most powerful characters um it
is also a protege of dr doom himself
which which you know if you think about
end game or you know if you think
about doomsday coming up says a lot about
what's to come in the mcu so i
wasn't mad one bit um i liked i
liked the the kind of
I don't know.
It still felt like Silver Surfer.
It just wasn't my Silver Surfer because
they're pulling from different storylines.
I'm still a fan of the Silver Surfer
so much.
Like when the covers used to be the
actual pressed silver, you know?
Yeah.
They did Silver Stable the same way.
Almost every issue of Silver Stable had
that pressed silver cover.
That was a new technique back then for
printing.
Everything was getting one of those.
They abused the crap out of that.
Image did it too.
I got a few images of full-on shiny
covers all around.
I got a slab of Purgatory
up there with the uh the red foil
oh nice the nice red like pressed foil
too it's in a nine six i don't
know how it ended up a nine six
but i'll take a nine six and a
pressed foil any day of the week because
i know how hard it is yeah to
do that because you can't press it you
can clean it but you cannot press it
because then you press out the uh the
stamp in the foil yep so but to
pull a nine six i'll take that nine
six any day
Yeah,
but I was a fan of the original
Fox Fantastic Four.
I thought they did a great job.
I didn't like the remake in between the
original Fox ones and that one.
I thought the Doctor Doom and that one
was kind of silly.
I was about to ask you.
You got to be specific because there was
one in there that was like...
And I didn't even have an issue with
the gender-bending original Flame guy.
I just...
The emotions didn't make any sense.
The romance part was kind of goofy.
Doctor Doom was goofy.
They did a pretty good job on the
SFX thing,
but it just didn't feel the same, man.
Anytime Doctor Doom is seen as anything
other than
like a hard dude and just like one
of the smartest men in the world yeah
then i have i take you know offense
to that because you know it's freaking dr
doom like some respect on that shit when
you say it you know but uh let's
let's press man because we can sit here
and talk fantastic for it oh
moving on how important is it for indie
creators today to understand maybe not all
sides of the business but multitudes of
like facets of the business it is
imperative kickstarter type stuff because
they're their own marketers they're their
own managers when it comes to it you
know making sure that timelines are being
hit and communicating with people
One thing I will say about being a
traditional graduate from a degree program
that I have over some of the Indies
is that you get told early on that
you have so many paths to publishing,
there's no wrong or right answer.
However, you do have to choose a path.
um it is important for indies to know
that if they are going to independently
from the pocket publish create produce
every aspect of design whether it be
marketing pre-writing uh pre-writing as in
like story bibles so your continuity for
your product you're not just writing
stories you're making product you have to
look at it
Look at it like this,
and I'll use this analogy.
In the morning times,
I run a gas station.
That's my job outside of comics.
That's what pays the bills.
In the morning, I count money,
but I don't count money as value.
I count them as individual bills.
So I have sixty seven twenties going into
my deposit.
When you're looking at comics,
you have to look at the creative side
and then you have to you have to
do the business side.
So you have to look at your comic
as a product,
not a story that you created.
Therefore,
you have to detach from the overall
creative bias and stop treating it like
your baby and think about it in a
way is how can that baby make me
money?
I know that's a horrible way to put
it because slavery is dead and gone,
but that's a product.
It's not.
It's your story.
Yes.
If you drew it, great writer, writer,
artists are hard to come by,
but they're out there and they're doing
great.
There's a lot of them out there doing
a lot of great things right now.
One of the greatest right now, I think,
in indie is Mr. Fish.
Mr. Fish Lee.
If you ever had a chance to get
him on your show, you ought to.
He's a gem.
He's a great dude.
Loves to help people.
He's just slamming out there on social
media, especially with his video content.
His video content has just gotten
extraordinarily funny over the years.
But it's imperative to know the business
side.
You have to know what's marketable.
When you're thinking about writing your
next story,
you have to see what's out there selling.
If you have a universe you're trying to
build, unfortunately,
universe buys are kind of dying,
even though I'm the guilty one trying to
build my own.
But that doesn't mean that your stories
can't sell in that market.
That just means universe stories,
especially in the superhero genre,
are finally becoming niche.
And it's just not something everybody
wants.
Once you know,
every there's something's killing the
children came out.
I mean, you could write a hell.
Harriet Tubman was a vampire slayer.
That's that's already been out there.
That was a good story, though.
It was a great story.
Winnie the Pooh stuff is some of that
Winnie the Pooh stuff.
Although beneath the trees where nobody
sees is fantastic.
That one, that one.
Yeah.
So I actually wrote,
so that one came across the desk when
I was working with a geek nation.
I was,
I was writing like articles and analysis
comics.
And that one actually came across the
pool.
I picked it out.
I read it, and I was like, oh,
my God.
This is so not appropriate for children.
But, damn, this story hits different.
So good.
So different.
The twists in there, top-notch writing.
Dude,
I don't want to spoil that one because
I really would like people to go read
that one, but...
that so you get the one twist and
then i if it's the twist i think
you're talking about yeah i didn't see
that one coming because she comes out for
some major vengeance oh yeah nobody sees
that coming nobody sees that coming at all
it's just like that's the one that's the
twist that ends the first issue and i'm
just like oh my god my head just
like exploded with i have to know that's
just yours his too oh yeah
Go read it, kids.
You got to find out in what context
we're talking about exploding.
But yeah.
But yeah,
going back to the creators needing to know
the business night is absolutely
imperative.
It used to be hard,
but it's really not.
So you can go to places like Comics
Experience.
I'm a graduate of there.
I took the college writing class.
So that one's really good,
and there's also an artist one that's very
similar to it.
Okay.
It's called, I think, Sabe.
He's an Italian artist.
He does... Shit,
I can't think of the name of the
title right now,
but he was on the podcast recently,
and he's a graduate from that art school
in Italy where they literally teach you to
draw comics.
Yeah.
italian artists are some of the most dude
insanely talented artists out there was my
year of discovery when it comes to just
not not just italian but you know
canadians and oh yeah you know the uk
as a whole italian artists um just there's
so much talent out there in this world
even so
Ani Press does a horror series.
One of their featured writers in one of
their very first ones.
That series is done now.
The next series has taken over.
But one of their writers in there was
a Korean kid who wrote this Korean horror
story for their comic book.
And I was like, dude, that's amazing.
Like,
this young Korean kid just got published
in an American comic book for just this
amazing horror story that he wrote that he
never thought would see the light of day.
That's awesome.
And that's really cool because Koreans
actually have some of the best horror.
I've been trying to get him on the
podcast too.
He's like, oh, my English.
I'm like, dude,
you speak English just fine.
Come on the podcast.
Let's talk about horror.
Korean comic books and that kind of stuff.
Korean cryptids are top notch when it
comes.
I put the next Ireland's cryptids.
Oh, yeah.
Some of the most gnarly, noxious,
ghastly beings you'd never want to run
into.
Like,
make Slenderman look like Poppy Playtime.
Oh, yeah.
With a balloon, you know,
and it's not Cousin It.
He's turning into a little pansy and
running away from them.
Yeah.
Well,
there's Pokemon based off the Ireland
version of it.
Drifloon is actually based off the Irish,
you know, Fotel.
Oh, nice.
Because he steals kids.
Oh, wow.
Another.
Yeah, there's a lot of those cryptids.
There's a lot of creepy Pokemon out there
based on real life cryptids from
countries.
And Drifloon is one of those.
He's based off the Irish one that you
actually just mentioned because he steals
children.
You know, Biloxi,
Mississippi has its own cryptids called
Lantern Head.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah,
apparently people see like a being just
walking around with like a head shaped
lantern and they're not very nice.
that's crazy people there ain't very nice
either i'm working at a gas station i
could tell you that first uh i could
get it firsthand exactly exactly so what's
the biggest mistake you see creators
making before they launch a project
because i mean you have forty crowdfunding
campaigns underneath your belt i know
you've seen a few
Out of the out of the forty that
successfully funded,
we did have over a dozen that failed.
A lot of it came down to not
being ready to launch.
A lot of it came down to and
and there are a lot of people out
there,
including the comics launch creator.
or the indie comics tribe folk,
they talk about, you know,
you got to pre-launch three months out.
Like if you're not,
you're not collecting pre-notifications
and looking at it as a,
if you get a hundred and thirty people
to hit launch and notify me at launch,
then you can't look forward to that thirty
percent of a hundred and thirty people
back in your campaign.
and you only need less than a thousand
depending on what route you take to
crowdfund so you're either you're doing
this one of two ways which is where
i messed up as well if you want
to talk about failings look no further
than wild only i i spent about fifty
five hundred dollars out of pocket to
create that first issue had a lot of
issues uh one my artist uh only got
internet five days a week because he lives
on an island
Um, and then there was a, there was,
there was a language barrier.
I ended up having to outsource the rest
of the book to a company in Texas.
Uh, that,
that was a lengthy process that didn't
lead to a whole lot.
I wasn't, I wasn't mad about the issue.
The issue looked great.
Uh, at the outside of it was, uh,
I could have just took those initial six
pages and I could have crowdfunded to make
the comic book,
which I didn't know existed at the time.
because I didn't have the experience under
my belt.
But a lot of crowdfundings that were
successful were those who were prepared.
They did the three months out.
They had all their assets in place.
They did really well at defining what
their story is and who their characters
were.
They had really good stretch goals and
they didn't have confusing tiers.
One of the biggest thing with people who
choose the crowdfunding route are some
that have just been like,
I don't know what I'm exactly I'm back
in.
So I have to be very specific when
I'm looking because I want
the book i don't want the extra stuff
i'm just looking for this book this cover
in this thing and sometimes the only way
to get that book that cover in this
thing is to get a higher tier of
something i'm like i don't want the higher
tier of that i just want
the book with this cover,
you know what I'm saying?
And it's like,
how do I pick that out?
Cause everything is so confusing.
I think, I think a lot of people,
uh, now that Kickstarter is more mature,
they've,
they've added more features and stuff.
A lot of people get hung up thinking
that they need,
like they need stickers and prints and
they need plushies and key chains.
I know people who do books and only
books only in that they will never do
anything extra, just books.
And I love that.
Because it goes back to the kiss, right?
Keep it simple, sleep it.
Yeah, keep it simple.
And some people could.
They could keep it simple.
That's kind of where I messed up too
in my campaign.
I did more covers than I needed to,
so my expenses were kind of blown.
So my recoup budget,
even though I only raided a little over
twelve hundred,
wasn't enough to put everything back into
perspective.
And then the economy,
the economic side of it,
the people where creators mess up the most
is they're so...
They're so focused on the product in
crowdfunding that they're not keeping
their eye on what's happening outside of
comics.
So I don't care if you don't like
politics.
I don't care if you don't like finances.
I don't care if you don't know what's
going on in the entertainment business.
You need to keep up with that stuff
so you can keep up with...
Well,
how much is it going to cost to
print?
Who's still in business?
If I'm going to outsource overseas,
we need to be looking at things like
international and foreign policies that
are placing holds on imported cargo
carriers coming into port.
Because if you have a...
And I've heard this...
from other podcast sources and other
creators before,
if you ordered one hundred and fifty books
from a Chinese printing press and they
didn't I mean,
they didn't listen to the U.S.
and they put a QA.
Yeah,
they're going to sit in port for ninety
days until they release it.
And then it's going to it's going to
hold you back.
And you have to explain that.
And there's still no guarantee on the QA
of that.
You're going to you order one hundred
fifty books.
You may get one hundred and twenty,
one hundred twenty five books that are
actually usable.
Yeah,
the rest of the twenty five or the
other.
What what is that?
Twenty percent are probably going to be
hot garbage, misplaced staples,
bad prints.
So you got to take that into account
as well.
And I think it was what,
twenty twenty two,
because I forgot a lot of the companies
import paper from India.
Yeah.
India was having a shortage of paper.
So that's why we've seen such a huge
jump in prices starting in twenty twenty
two as well.
Yeah.
And oddly enough,
the company that does Wallace and Gromit.
The clay they used also, I think,
comes from India.
So the new Wallace and Gromit movie that
come out, what, in what,
like a three-year delay because they
couldn't get the clay from India to make
the movie, which is wild.
And if they do their due diligence in
post-production, they could have...
could have made sure that they had a
third source or a second source or a
fourth source so that only comes from one
place in one country which is wild that's
super wild yeah because there's other
countries across the across the the world
that have clay that they could buy they
may not have like established like i don't
know if you call them clay mines but
uh clay corrals or clay businesses i don't
know i just know wallace and that movie
was good too i'm a huge wallace and
gromit guy
And but yeah,
but a while something simple like that and
like paper, the quality of paper,
the card stock,
you use the weight of the paper.
Well, you help make the point.
You help make the point, though.
It's it's that factor right there that led
to the delay.
And if you can.
if you can put off any delays in
post-production when you're designing your
campaign you have to be able to make
a list of those variables like when you
get done i if you use the comics
launch crowdfunder planner the one thing i
didn't see in there is make a list
of things that could like blot out your
campaign
and, and,
and write solutions on what you could do
for all those mishaps that could happen
and see if you have the resources already
to prevent those.
If it's,
if it's your work schedule that gets in
the way,
wake up early in the morning before you
go to work and post that one's knocked
off the list.
But if it comes down,
that's what I do.
I literally schedule posts for Instagram
and Facebook.
If it comes down,
I got to show you.
Yeah.
Yeah.
yeah money is a whole nother yeah it
comes down to money though that's that's
where you should have planned before you
even started which i would i would suggest
you delay until you have the adequate
money available because that was also a
problem for me i didn't look outside of
comics to see what was going on
politically and that ended up leading to
raised prices in shipping,
which blew my budget completely after I
finished.
And then the printing became an issue
because printers were not only charging
more money for proofs before you printed a
run, like Kablam did,
they charged forty dollars for a physical
proof before you actually pay for the run,
which I thought was outrageous.
And then so I've seen that go from
anywhere between
know eight bucks to like yeah fifty bucks
here lately and it's i mean that's wild
that there's such a huge price difference
between companies like that that's okay i
ended up finding a local source on the
east coast that does independent printing
so i thought that was actually kind of
cool that an independent comic book
creator found an independent program
Yeah.
I know which one you're talking about.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I don't know if he wants me to
name his company.
So I just want to talk about it.
But but you know,
I didn't talk about because I know
somebody else who uses them to print up
there.
Yeah.
So and they're and they're actually really
decent in price.
It's like less than one hundred for a
run of twenty five.
So which is really good.
It's really great.
It's actually what helped me get a lot
of the copies that I have ready to
fulfill.
um so i had to take that into
account but it's because i didn't look
outside of comics that i wasn't able to
see those types of things um it's hard
to do because it's not really something
because you're writing a comic book what
does today's world have to do with that
and it actually has everything to do with
it and how price inflations and everything
plays into everything and i think people
it would behoove people to open their eyes
to the world around them a little bit
more
So they're not blinded as much by what's
in front of their face.
Cause yeah,
you want to produce this great comic book.
But where's materials coming from?
Where's colors coming from?
Where's your artists live?
Because there's a lot of really good
foreign artists doing a lot of really
great work out there.
But sometimes political unrest in their
country or internet blackouts could stop
them from producing what you're looking
for from them.
So, no,
that makes a whole lot of sense.
But let's talk about Wild Ani real quick.
This was your first creator-owned title.
What made you decide this was your story
that you needed to tell?
Man, look.
I'm not going to lie.
The covers and everything I've seen from
this book are so fucking cool.
So I pitched this as a ghostwriter meets
Hulk in the sixteenth century Japan.
The reason I say that is because it's
a story of duality.
I don't really have a good answer as
to why that was the first.
I remember working with Anthony on one of
his Kickstarters.
I believe it was for the first one.
And he was like, hey,
you want to put anything up here?
I'm like, really?
He's like, yeah.
I'm like, oh, man.
So I sat down one night and I
thought about it.
I'm like, hmm, I really dig sci-fi.
I really wanted to tell a sci-fi.
But at the same time, I was like,
I really love Samurais.
And then I got back into like,
I'm a really big fan of history.
I've written several short historical
fiction stories.
Two of them were published.
One of them is yet to find a
home.
But I'm a huge fan of The Last
Samurai.
I was a huge fan.
Huge fan of Ghost of Tsushima.
I'm still playing through Ghost of Yotai
right now.
Same.
Did Assassin's Creed, the samurai one.
I just love the culture.
And then it was being a fan of
Power Rangers growing up,
getting to meet Austin and working with
him personally on his project that really
got me into the Bushido,
the way of the samurai,
the way of the martial artists.
I don't know.
I just wanted to tell something.
I just wanted to tell a story that
was about duality that was really tragic
so I I went and looked into the
history in sixteen hundreds around the
time that um,
I
Things were rapidly changing in Japan.
Toyotomi was becoming a sort of emperor.
He was a lord regent.
He was raised up
from one of the greatest generals who
unified Japan,
and then he kind of built a cascading
member of five or six,
and they gave him a different name,
and then he became Lord Regent up until
he expired.
But I found a really cool story about
a rebellious samurai
in Tsushima that raised a small rebellion
against the samurai from a fishing
village.
His name was Mori Chika and he's a
real character in time.
And I thought that was a really cool
story.
So I kind of wanted to embellish upon
that.
It's historical fiction.
I chose not to be as accurate with
the historical elements as possible as to
reduce the pressure or backlash of anybody
trying to scream the ires of
misappropriation of culture.
It happens so often.
I just want to tell a story.
A story is a story to me unless
you go in saying, oh, this is...
know what really happened and then you try
to say oh it's you know non-fiction and
you're like come on dude you wonder why
people are yelling at you if you go
insane it's a historical fiction yeah
then yeah but yeah there's a lot of
people yelling about a lot of things here
lately that if you just take it as
it is as a form of entertainment yeah
and there's no reason to yell you wrote
something to entertain people be
entertained if it's not your cup of tea
it's not your cup of tea don't read
it so so with the historical fiction and
the background and the writing and all
that i was like i can i want
to tell a story of duality uh the
story is really about a guy
who wants to avenge his family,
but also has to learn how to become
comfortable with who he has now become.
Just like Spider-Man,
who didn't ask for an incredible power,
he took on a credible role of
responsibility, which he has now done.
His is a little different, though.
He made a pact with an Oni demon
from the land of demons in the culture
of Japan.
They call it the Realm of Shinkai.
The Shinkai is where all the Oni spirits
come from.
different from the spirits that were made
into pokemon long time ago those those are
more of like animagi spirits the original
animagi or the elemental gods they used to
worship post-sixteenth century where a lot
of the native american culture gets their
gods from because they were living gods
you know the water was alive the grass
was alive the tree was alive uh the
air was alive the rocks talk to you
you know stuff like that uh so he
makes a pact with the demon
But this first issue is really just kind
of stating the fact and the theme.
And then in the issues to come,
we're going to talk about how he rejects
this.
There's a force of samurai that exists to
expire demons.
If we're playing off...
What was that movie that came out on
Netflix not too long ago?
K-Pop Demon Hunters?
Yeah, so it's kind of like that.
We're like...
They are charged with the power to keep
these like portals closed.
Yeah.
And that's something that I discuss and
the issues come.
Now, this is a long series.
I've got, I think, six issues mapped out.
I'm still working on the outline for seven
and eight.
And then it turns into kind of like
a demon hunter type thing.
But one of the covers that Jeff Muth
did,
it was a human Oni in samurai armor
at human level.
Because, you know, Onis,
the lore says they're about six to ten
feet tall or nine to ten feet tall.
They glow.
They kind of look like giant red apes.
They feed on destruction and death and all
that other stuff.
which is basically what it is but it
ties into a legend that i created within
the lore of it which which makes him
the perfect person but not so perfect and
it's it's got a really banging twist i
can't wait to tell about his family that
involves his family and the emperor of
japan that kind of comes to a close
and i kind of want the end to
be like an epic or like this huge
war kind of
Yeah.
It's gnarly.
It's kind of like the end of Lord
of the Rings III,
The Return of the King at the end.
I was going to go Lord of the
Gods when you see the gods fighting in
the sky and the heavens.
It gets pretty wild.
It's wild, don't it?
It gets pretty wild, man.
And it's really cool, too,
because I've been working on...
This kind of ties into Iron Jaguar just
a little bit, where I have a...
I'm glad you brought that up,
because I was going to ask you about
that one next.
So let me just give them a little
background real quick.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Iron Jaguar is rooted in mystical Mayan
power described as your version of the
Punisher.
what draws you to legacy style characters
with cultural depth that's where my
question was going and you were going
there but i wanted to get that question
out of the way now you can go
into fire jaguar
so iron jaguar is a really cool character
um i think that's about six years in
the making now he does not have his
own series but he has made cameo
appearances in champions comics he is he
is part of the g-men now um i
got that i finally got that in last
year and then um
From his Pantheon,
he's got a few cool characters.
You mentioned the Punisher thing.
That's actually American Lion.
I'm not sure where the info came from,
but he's part of the pantheon of Iron
Jaguar.
But Iron Jaguar gets his power from
whatever I got from the data you sent
me.
You see how important continuity is?
And writers aren't perfect, man.
You know how hard it is to be
a writer and an editor?
You have to both edit yourself and edit
other people because you're also the
writer.
So when you're writing, you're like, no,
you can't do that, man.
Go put this in your document over there.
Shut up.
Look, I got this.
I'll do it later.
No, you'll do it now.
It's an interesting conversation.
I mean,
you heard me talking to myself about this
stuff.
I have a folder earlier.
Let me pull that from this folder real
quick.
So in the back of Wild Oni,
I do have a coming soon.
It's a cover.
It's an amazing cover done by Clovis
Baitabola.
I've worked with him in the past.
He did a lot of work for Tony
and them.
He worked on Miss Vengeance,
which is a comic that was put out
by Limitless Comics.
The creator of that, Jerry Jones,
really good friend of mine.
We did a few podcasts together.
Not to be confused with the Dallas Cowboy
owner.
No, no, not at all.
He's also from the East Coast area.
Really great guy.
Super talented.
He does a lot of the technical stuff
too.
but he did amazing artwork.
That cover is actually for a novel,
but I'm going to use it for some
type of comic.
I don't know.
I'd like to do a one-shot soon.
I don't really have a series for him
planned.
His was to be sort of kind of
the character,
the legacy character that kind of ties all
these other characters in.
So I have an anthology I started a
year and a half ago that's got a
bunch of the characters that I've been
working on for the last five years inside.
It's
It's not a comic book.
It's just a novel based,
but it's enough to publish a cast of
characters to get people interested in
wanting to see a comic of them.
I do have like a little mini series
for our Jaguar plan,
but I got to wait for funds to
catch up.
tax season's coming and all that.
But Iron Jaguar is a really interesting
character that was inspired by the death
of my grandma.
So this Miguel Fiorello,
which is a play on my name,
Michael Florio,
which is my family Italian surname.
So Miguel Fiorello experiences the tragic
death of his grandma,
and his grandma sends him this shard,
She worked for a biotech company that was
developing a cure for cancer.
My grandma died of cancer.
For the fourth time,
she went into remission.
It came back super aggressive, brain,
lungs, all this other stuff.
It was really tragic.
The conversation I had with her is
actually highlighted in the graphic novel
outline I have for it.
Okay.
I hate to hear that, man.
Sorry about that.
It's one of those things that I got
into writing for when I switched out of
game design.
I wanted to give people a voice to
talk about the thing.
Because I felt like my grandma died
without many options.
And a lot of that has to do
with the politics and healthcare that
drastically and hopefully changes for the
good here shortly.
But there was the access to a lot
of treatments around the world that you
can't get if you don't move.
My grandma was in her sixties.
So, I mean, on a fixed income, retirement,
couldn't do much.
So it's just a tragic story.
But the grandmother in the book sends
Miguel this shard,
gives him access to a divine power source
that I can kind of,
compare it to like the World Emerald and
Sonic.
Okay, yeah.
But it's buried in Mayan tradition.
So there is a city called Tikal that
was taken over by the Spaniards during the
hunt for El Dorado's fool's gold way,
way back in the late histories.
I think it was like the back story
there is the Jaguar goddess of death comes
to this ruler of Tikal and says that
if you follow me,
I have this underground
Underground city that I will protect all
your people because they were warring with
other nations around them for land and and
all that Resources and all that one just
the threat of Spaniards.
It was the threat of of other clans
around them So they go into this
subterranean city and there's this huge
power source You could probably compare it
to you know, Black Panthers, you know,
Wakanda forever.
Yeah, and
Um, but it, but it gave him,
it gave him incredible power.
Um, he learns,
he learns about this and goes on the
hunt to reclaim this because once you're
in the city, you're not supposed to leave.
Unfortunately,
he did fell in love with his grandma
and gave her a shard as protection.
And with this shard,
she unlocked the secrets to cure cancer.
This inevitably leads to her death and
with it, a note for her grandson.
And so in the graphic novel series that
I'm getting edited soon is him running
from this tyrannical corporation that
wants this shard so that they can hide
the cure for cancer,
but really sell it on to the highest
bidder before they put it out in market.
And that's kind of what the story is
about.
It's giving power back to the people,
but also understanding that with power,
I know it's a cliche,
comes great responsibility.
And so he ends up becoming the superhero
in what is now New Coast City,
which is my idea of a futuristic southern
Gulf Coast where Gulfport, Biloxi,
and a lot of these southern coastal towns
come together to create a larger city.
It's a little bit of futuristic,
but it's a little bit more militarized
because the coast is more developed,
but it very much has the same elements
like the casino and the crime and the
street level crime,
but also like
the mutagenic and the aliens and all the
weird stuff that, you know,
the people don't see in Batman, you,
you get to see, uh, and,
and that one characters.
And, and then he, he discovers others.
Um,
I go back and forth on the Jade
Jaguar,
which is the one that fell in love
with his grandmother comes into the
picture and he becomes a mentor and you
get to, you get to see inside the,
the subterranean city of new to call.
You get to explore the Mayan background
and all that.
My boy Mac says condolences to your
family.
Thank you.
He's had a busy day.
They were live this morning with Eat the
Cake Anime,
which I got to watch a few minutes
of before having to dive in and do
some house cleaning and start preparing
for this interview.
I'm hitting another interview tomorrow,
so...
I end up days where it's like back
to back.
Then I got a mess week.
I got two.
It might be three back to back now
for next week.
I can't remember, but yeah, pretty wild.
But yeah, that's,
that's iron Jaguar in a box.
I'm super happy for all the crazy
crossovers.
The biggest one is yet to come.
I don't know if you know who Brian
J Lambert is.
I have not heard of him.
Okay.
So he is the CEO and creator of
Wingless Comics.
They did a really great book called Air
Force Ones last year.
And one of the tiers was if you
bought the highest one,
you got to put your character and you
got to see your character as a kind
of mech character.
Okay.
That's really dope.
Air Force Ones is basically Brian
Jammert's version of
of uh pacific rim meets gundam wing it's
a fantastic book oh that's really cool i
cannot wait for iron jaguar to be in
like full cosplay gundam mech suit it's
gonna be fantastic um that that's probably
the biggest thing i have um coming up
as far as iron jaguar goes but uh
Wild Oni, too.
The issue is almost done.
It's almost done being written.
I hope to get that out somewhere between
summer and fall of this year.
And Wild Oni actually ties into,
going back to what I was trying to
say earlier,
ties into the future that connects with
Iron Jaguar.
I have an Australian shade.
There's a...
there's a wild samurai in the Iron Jaguar
universe modern day that is trying to
prevent the shard of
Morichika's sword in the old Wild Oni
series from being reforged and awakening
the Wild Oni.
And there's kind of like a force behind
that that's kind of mirrors the Foot Clan
or the Hand that's led by a really
just huge kingpin style Japanese corporate
tycoon.
I hope to do some shorts with that
because I want there to be some
really genuine martial arts,
but also ground and pound level fight
scenes that kind of mirror, you know,
Keanu Reeves.
Uh, yeah, yeah.
There's berserker, but, but also the,
the John wick stuff too.
Um,
just because the visual aesthetics of that
leads to more of a cinematic feel.
And I would love for something like that
to be picked up cinematically for
adaptation.
Um,
um that would be really cool in in
going back to like the business side of
it regardless of what you want your indie
comics to be my original dream was
screenwriting was getting something on the
screen so there's so many that i get
a chance to talk to that their their
dream was uh the silver screen yeah and
uh
it comic books ends up being like their,
their fail safe or their,
where their path ends up landing them,
I guess you could say.
Yeah.
And, um,
I know Jess Silvetti and E.B.
Coogan, they actually work in Hollywood.
They have movies being produced,
and they produce.
It's possible.
It's possible, absolutely,
a hundred percent.
And they're great, great writers.
And their comic book, Shockhead at Peter,
that's the name I was thinking of earlier.
That's the one that Sabe does with E.B.
Coogan and Jess Silvetti.
okay it's a brilliant brilliant comic book
i know they just funded issue number two
which issue number one i have it was
a brilliant read issue two from why i've
got the sampler that i've gotten so good
and then at the same time he announced
when he was on the podcast that he
had a movie that he was helping to
or he was producing on i believe yeah
So it's kind of cool.
And then that movie came out.
I'm just like, oh,
that's so cool that I kind of got
the, not the breaking news on there,
but he, I was like,
I got kind of the scoop on it
before it actually hit the silver screen.
So that was kind of cool.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
That's, that's,
that's one thing I keep in mind when
I write, I always write for the visual.
And sometimes I want it to be cinematic
for a reason.
And it's for that very reason because
Hollywood doesn't do originals very much
anymore.
I don't know if you've been watching a
lot of movies.
Very,
very few times I've been impressed by what
comes out of Hollywood,
the traditional Hollywood.
And it's not been much.
A lot of it's either echoes of old
school action movies or it's dramedies
with a bit of action now.
Kevin James did one with the lead actor,
a reacher I watched on Amazon,
which was really funny.
Yeah.
That was like kindergarten cop and
something else had a, yeah.
I had a baby in that other movie
with, um,
triple H with the bus or whatever.
Oh yeah.
That's kind of what it reminded me of,
but they were both really funny though.
Oh yeah.
They were, well, it was an interesting,
it was an interesting dynamic.
It was like, it's like, it's like, uh,
it's like the white version of
intelligence, uh,
central intelligence with,
with the rock and Kevin, Kevin, uh, yeah,
Kevin Hart.
That was, that was a great movie.
Uh,
but it's just not a lot of originality.
And I know like a lot of my
stories are set kind of in the hero
genre or any genre,
but a lot of them,
they go into things like American line
goes into very much the punisher vibe of
clearing out,
organized crime the samurai goes into the
wild samurai goes into very much the
street level crime of Tokyo and it also
deals with international and foreign
foreign crime as well Iron Jaguar deals
with street level and then eventually you
know supernatural threats there's another
character that I have Red Nebula is
a man who is created by a billion
consciences and he comes to earth hoping
to do the same thing that Superman and
Green Lantern do.
for DC and that's to protect his world
from being, you know, taken over by this,
uh, reptilian alien race,
which is a mirror of some of the
conspiracy theory stuff that goes.
So it gets, it gets pretty,
it gets pretty delts in,
in sci-fi and mysticism organized crime.
So you've got drama, you've got action,
you've got, uh, emotional tyranny.
You've got vigilantism.
You,
you have all these different aspects of
duality.
do you come up with all the origins
yes um so this this is this is
this is really cool cool question i'm i
appreciate that mac aka your boy uh let
me break it down for you the the
way i came up and i described this
earlier with wild oni was i looked into
history and i was looking for a character
to inspire me to create the story of
wild oni like i knew
I knew I wanted this character to make
a pact with a demon.
I knew I wanted this demon to be
stuck in a meteoric prison.
And I knew that he was going to
have a family that tragically died that
motivated him to just see nothing but red
in his vengeance when he drew his sword.
And so I discovered Morichika.
And from that, I read his story.
There's very little information because
there's not a lot of international servers
that share
I was unsuccessful in my attempt to reach
out to anybody with professional wisdom on
Japanese history.
I've had to buy many books to try
and piece together cultural things.
Video games kind of help fill in the
gaps with some of the cultural stuff,
like the way they do tea and their
mannerisms and how respects works and
roles of men and women and husbands and
wives and regents and how land policy
works and all that.
the iron jaguar stuff i just really wanted
to do something in mayan culture i love
the jaguar funny funny story though no
drugs included i was uh i had a
dream and this dream was kind of like
you ever play cubert the old school game
on sega
yeah so you jump on the little thingies
they kind of look like the octagon uh
blocks that you set up tabletop games with
yeah so i was in a dream i
was standing on those and there were like
lights all around this huge just
multi-columned cubert style game board and
um i kept hearing growling and from that
i came face to face with the jaguar
uh when i woke up don't ask me
i just iron jaguar was born
Yeah, the little orange dude.
Yeah, the little orange dude.
And that kind of inspired me.
And I was a huge fan of the
movie El Dorado.
As everybody should be.
Yeah, from our past.
And the guy that worshipped the jaguar
goddess of death was kind of the
inspiration of that war.
And so when I looked into the history
of Mayans,
I got really infatuated by the Klan War's
of the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
So while you had England over here and
Iraq trying to take Israel in the Middle
East during the eleventh century,
in the South American peninsula,
you had all these clans of Native
Americans,
South Americans warring for who's going to
conquer culture and territory and land.
in south american culture they take slaves
when they take over clans women usually
become their new wives and they make more
kids and that's how they conquer the land
over there but newt to call stuck out
to me because there was this prince who
rose up from uh from nothing and saved
his clan by
basically being smarter tactically than
all the other chiefs or upcoming chiefs.
He ended up getting a lot of land
for his clan up until the time where
Spaniards were landing in South America.
And they were kind of forcing clans out
of territory.
And so the resolution for them was to
go into other unexplored territory and
take over and start anew.
And so I was like, well, what if,
what if they weren't going to survive
this?
What if he had to make a hard
decision?
And it was a hard decision because with
the acceptance of this new to call
subterranean home,
they could never leave came immortality.
surrounded by the energy of this ultimate
universal power um and that was the gem
and that's what gave him the powers of
jay jaguar he was able to you know
strength and speed and jaguar-like
abilities from you know the anime guy
spirit that i was kind of drawing
inspiration from
um other origins though like american lion
i just wanted to write a punisher story
uh it couldn't be punisher of course i'm
a huge lion i'm a leo so the
lion is like i don't care if people
talk bad about lions they make women go
get the food like in a traditional
marriage your wife is cooking you dinner
like you do all the other important stuff
security and all that that's not why i
made that character i just the lion draws
in strength he's not afraid of anybody on
the savannah
He doesn't ask anybody for questions for
help.
He doesn't ask for permission to go.
know into a diner and kill whoever he
thinks is bad i know that makes him
a vigilantism and but there are some areas
of story to explore there that have to
do with the morality and and some of
the more finer points of humanity that are
a little darker more grim kind of like
in the some of the batman some of
the batman stuff from later on especially
like during the hush years
that I kind of draw inspiration from.
The Hush here is like my favorite stuff
in the current ongoing Hush too as well.
Such a good read.
This is my little lion right here.
This is Evie.
She's adorable.
And Matt says that's dope and there's no
way I could think of such a creative
story like that.
Matt, I know you better than that dude,
and I know you came in.
I've known you for twenty years, bro.
That's not even true,
and it really doesn't have to be about
heroes, too.
There's been a lot of great characters in
comics that weren't heroes.
I mean, look at Scott Pilgrim.
He wasn't a hero.
He was just a guy who wanted a
girlfriend,
and he ended up having to conquer all
these different obstacles.
I'm laughing because that's literally his
favorite fucking story.
Is it?
Is it?
He's a huge Scott Pilgrim fan.
I love the series so much.
I was tickled when they made it a
movie, and then when I watched the movie,
I was like, ah, the books are better.
The animated story was really good, too.
I hated the fact they canceled it early.
See, that's fucking hilarious.
Hang on.
I told you, that's his guy.
The moment you said Scott Pilgrim,
I was like, dude,
that's so funny because I love Scott
Pilgrim.
I mean, look at Ready Player One.
Dude, so good.
Not a hero,
but he became a hero for everybody else
when he saw the thing that he loved
was threatened.
Hey, Commissioner Gordon, not a superhero,
but he even stood up to Batman sometimes
when he got out the rails.
I watched him put the gun to Batman's
face and I was like, no, dude,
you're going home tonight.
That was one of the wildest issues I've
ever seen.
Gordon was like, nah,
I'll take you home myself and held the
gun to him.
I was like, jeez,
Commissioner Gordon ain't playing with
Batman right now.
Look,
I read a lot of Oni Press stuff,
but only because they publish Rick and
Morty.
Not Heroes, but a lot of people.
Not no more.
Oni Press' contract ended with...
Rick and Morty in December of twenty
twenty five.
So no said it's I don't know if
another company is picking up Rick and
Morty, but as of right now,
nobody has Rick and Morty.
Oh, man, that's a tragedy.
But, you know, Jerry, not a hero,
but he's done some heroic things.
It's really all about.
So I tell people when I'm in writing
stuff, writing classes,
because I was this year,
I stepped down to media and communication
for the Writing Guild.
I was VP,
but we did a lot of workshops.
I've given a few speeches.
I've talked at a few conventions on
writing and how to publish comic books.
The thing about writing should be the play
of creating characters.
And one of the coolest things I ever
did in a workshop,
which I was still learning at the time,
my good friend put that workshop on,
and it was interviewing a character that
you wanted to create.
So think about a character that you wanted
to create and then create a list of
questions, no more than five,
no less than four,
on what you would ask them about
themselves.
It could be as simple as what do
you want?
Where were you born?
What favorite music do you like?
What's your favorite food?
Do you have any family members?
That line of questioning right there
starts this entire kind of like character
monologue.
That's the way to go about doing that.
I actually like that a lot.
And from that,
you can create more questions.
And if it becomes fun, sky's the limit.
I mean,
you can fill up a whole notebook like
that.
And by the time you're at the end
of that notebook,
you can extract those answers.
They have almost a story.
Brother,
I have a whole rack of notebooks that
would make Michaels look
like they don't even have enough that's
funny because you know i got i know
exactly what you're talking about because
as i've been like writing ideas because
i'm developing some stuff as well and
congrats um like you know you get you
get to that third notebook and you're like
i want to need more notebooks and more
shelf space because all of a sudden you
know
I guess even a lot of it makes
zero sense.
It makes zero sense, you know,
but at the same time,
it makes a hundred percent sense to me
because I know what each one of those
little sentences and little ideas and this
little concept here.
I know what that, that is like,
I know what, when I wrote color splash,
I know what I'm talking about, you know?
Yeah.
I get to do this from the editor's
chair sometimes,
and I definitely do this from the writer's
chair.
If I could give a nugget to your
audience.
Yeah, no, please.
That's actually like quite literally.
It's one of the last questions I ask
each time is what advice would you give
creators trying to balance creativity,
family, sustainability, just like.
What do you have for other creatives out
there?
So much.
We can do a whole other podcast on
it, but I'll keep it brief.
I'll keep it brief.
You don't need a master's degree to be
a writer, to be a great author.
You don't need a bachelor's degree to be
a great editor.
I do say that as you study and
you learn,
you do create a vacuum in skills.
Those have led me to be just a
detailed person who catches things that
makes me a great editor.
A lot of that, though,
is my people skills,
which helps me become a good teacher to
those who don't know.
And you don't know what you don't know
until you know it.
And then once you know it,
you can get better from it.
With that led me into the study of
amalgamation of different writing
techniques, everything from Save the Cat,
to Dan Harmon's story circles,
to the classic hero's journey,
and then into the four-act structure,
which is what animes are written in.
But the most unique and effective quick
way to create an entire story,
six questions.
It's the six essential questions.
The first one is, who is it about?
Okay,
this is going to give you your main
character.
And that's a big thing because if you're
a character writer like I am,
don't focus so much on plot.
You're diving into the internal and
external workings of one character that
the reader follows throughout the entire
progression of the story.
What do they want?
What does the character want as far as
the current standing of this character?
At the beginning of the character and the
opening image of your story where we get
the inciting incident,
your character wants something.
They either failed at something and they
want to get better.
They lost something and they want to find
it.
They want something that's really hard to
get and they'll do nothing.
They'll do absolutely anything and stop at
nothing to get it.
What do they want?
Super simple.
Why can't they get it?
So this is where the obstacles come into
play.
Well,
why can't they get that thing that they
really want?
Why is it so hard?
If they lost it,
how come they lost it?
What happened?
That type of thing.
What can they do about it?
This is the action that solves the
obstacles that gets them through.
How can they find what they lost?
Where do they need to go?
It also opens the door to other questions.
Why doesn't that work?
Towards the end, after the break into two,
break into three,
which I'm quoting Save the Cat Beats
there, where...
what your hero, what your character does,
your protagonist,
however you want to define them in your
story, what they try doesn't work.
There's a cataclysmic event that happens.
They try to save it.
It doesn't work.
Superman tries to catch a rocket.
It blows up.
People die.
He should have cut it higher.
He should have used a spree's breath.
Whatever he didn't do, it didn't work.
And because of that, consequences happen.
And that's something to notate in that
spot.
So once you get done with why doesn't
that work,
here's the most important question.
And this might mess with some people
because not everybody can come up with
this right away.
How does it end?
How does the story end?
How does it end?
And the reason that's so hard is because
there are writers out there who can see
where they want to go but don't know
how to start it or how to pad
in the middle.
Second act of every story is hard.
But that's where you have your fun and
games.
That's where you can talk about your
characters.
That's where you get to play with the
obstacles.
That's where you get to play with your
villain or your antagonistic force,
whether it's man versus nature or man
versus man or man versus machine.
You get to do lots of things in
Act II.
You just got to know how to finesse
it and when to do what and how
you want your story progression to go.
But these six questions...
Who is it about?
What do they want?
Why can't they get it?
What do they do about it?
Why doesn't it work?
How does it end?
Are so essential to the beginning of your
story that it creates enough beats that
you can take that to the Dan Harmon
Story Circle, the Save the Cat,
or the Hero's Journey,
and you can plug in these elements,
and then you can fill in the gaps.
That'll help unlock the story,
and as you...
As you become more familiar with the
content,
get another notebook and start writing
down questions and just start answering
them.
If you've got to interview your character,
do that.
Maybe interview the narrator,
which is the perspective you're going to
write your story in,
whether you use caption for comics or
whether you use third person or first
person for novels.
It's going to be important because they're
going to have to know everything that's
going on because they're the person who's
going to tell the reader what's happening.
Do that.
That's a quick way.
I did this for an idea I had
called A Toy Store at the End of
the Universe just last night.
It took me an hour and a half.
I have four pages of information,
one of questions,
and I'm ready to move on to Save
the Cat Beats.
I already have the prologue written,
and then chapter one and two are going
to be so easy that I'm hoping to
pitch by the end of next month.
It's...
It's super surreal.
So I know you said you can't do
it, your boy, but you can.
You can.
Everybody can.
Everybody can.
I think we just lost the host.
The chairman, where did you go?
Oh, man.
It is.
Yeah, no, damn.
I'll be doing some editing later.
Thank you, internet service.
I was sitting here listening.
I was like, I started getting the spins.
I was like, that was my internet.
I was about to take off my hat,
put the house on.
All right, everybody at the USDN,
I'm Inevitable Mike.
This is not my podcast,
but I'm filling in for my buddy,
the chairman.
Oh, man.
It's funny because it's been so long since
something like that has happened that I
was just like, you know what?
Let me give it a minute.
Once the spinning stopped, I was like,
refresh.
And it was like, boom, popped back in.
I was like, all right.
Like, geez, that's but that's again,
that's like the third time today my
Internet has gave me the middle finger and
was like, no.
Earlier,
he did it when I was working on
stuff for Bruno for in the morning.
So I was just like, come on.
I'm like,
please tell me it saved that part of
it.
And it didn't.
So I ended up rewriting his whole entire
interview again because nothing saved on
it.
The six essential questions that I spoke
about, that's not my system.
That's a system that I got from watching
a dedicated YouTube channel on
screenwriting.
That system came from an interviewee.
I've forgotten his name,
but I'll send you a link to the
video if you want to put it in
the show notes.
Aside from you said to me that you
want to include it,
just shoot it over and all it.
I'll put it into the description of the
actual YouTube description.
So we give credit to the right creator
for the right thing.
It helped me out a lot.
And I've studied story structure at
length.
Just don't get lost in the structure.
The best way to really write down your
story idea is to tell it to yourself
on paper.
This is how I wrote the thirty five
page outline.
for Iron Jaguar's graphic novel.
When I when I come out with him,
I'm going to go all in and I
just want to do a graphic novel
And if nobody wants it,
I'll independently backtrack and create
separate issues.
But if somebody will pick it up,
I'll let them carry the weight of breaking
it down into issues and distributing it
out.
I just want his whole origin story out
there because it drops so many characters,
including the assassin Moccasin,
which I'm super excited about because he
debuted in The Black Dahlia,
which was another Champions Comics recent
Kickstarter that finally...
nailed out towards the end of Tony twenty
five.
And he's he's got a he's got a
plethora of backstory that's super unique.
And that's what I tried to do.
I try to craft and create unique
characters.
I would also tell your audience that, too,
on top of the six essential questions for
just getting your idea on paper,
try to create characters that are unique
and relatable.
Don't
don't give in to the trope the tropes
happen you can't help some of those tropes
a lot of story ideas they run into
each other but every message is somewhat
different that's okay but what i mean is
don't don't make an echo that is exactly
like your favorite character
without it being some type of, you know,
spin on the character itself,
whether it be, you know, uh,
the character inside the suit or the
helmet,
if you're working in the superhero genre
or whether it's like,
if you create your own version of K-pop
demon hunters, that's fine.
Just, I don't know, make them dudes.
Maybe they don't sing.
They just love K-pop and they get together
as a group and listen to K-pop,
but they're also demon hunters.
it's it's mildly different and each one of
those people would have different
personalities from the characters that you
know inspired you to write this story mori
chika was inspired by the ghosts of
tsushima uh video game just because i love
the landscape but but not just because of
it but just samurai culture in general
yeah um a lot of the discipline is
something that i envy in my own life
my own personal life that i wish i
had that i've been working on for years
It's super hard.
I just, I respect the culture.
I wanted to tell a story in it.
I wanted it to have supernatural
characteristics and I wanted it to be a
story of duality.
So there's contrast to give the character
that also gives something back to the
reader, which is really hard to do,
but it's that milestone where fun writing
becomes professional writing and
professional writing is something that
gives you something that
that you remember long after you've read
or watched whatever product you just
experienced,
which is a lot of the reason why
we have nostalgia and, and, and, um,
and sentiment towards a lot of our
favorite things being a part of, you know,
the department of nerds, star Wars, early,
early days of, uh, uh,
Gallic damn Battlestar Galactica, uh,
Stargate SG one, Star Trek,
a lot of the sci-fis out there, early,
early superheroes, um, jaws.
If you're a horror fan was initially one
of the most scariest movies that they ever
made.
Cause yeah,
It was all in the music.
Not a lot of people knew that their
jump scares were a thing.
Then you had Jason.
You had my favorite, Leprechaun,
Pumpkinhead, the Toy Master.
I think it was called something different.
Puppet Master, my bad.
Puppet Master, yeah.
Puppet Master is one of my favorite.
You make toys that murder people.
That's cool.
Dude,
there's going to be rumors that that's
getting remade.
You might get to get a new one
of those.
Imagine though with modern day CGI and all
that stuff for that.
It's going to be amazing.
Yeah.
Forget that, man.
Like, look,
let's jump to the AI thing real quick.
I just want to make this known somewhere
online.
So I have a vision of the future
for movies.
There's going to be a machine one day.
Someone's going to make one.
It's going to have AI technology in it.
I don't care how you feel about the
copyright stuff.
Just hear me out.
Let's have a fun,
quick note about my vision right here.
There's going to be a machine that looks
like the machine that you get in and
take photos of for like five bucks.
You're going to sit in there.
It's going to close.
It's going to lock.
You're going to be able to create a
movie in less than five minutes with a
few key notes, a few keystrokes.
It's going to ask you,
would you like to watch it?
You're going to watch it.
You're going to be in that box for
at least a few hours.
At the end, it's going to ask you,
would you like to buy the rights to
this movie?
And then in two hours,
you can walk away with something that
makes you however much money the economy
will allow you to at the time of
this invention.
I see that going all kinds of wrongs
in so many different ways and none of
them are PG-XIII.
So there would be some content
restrictions on those, I'm sure.
At least I hope the future creators of
this device would be that fortuitous to
think.
Oh, they won't.
That's what's going to maximize their
money at the end of the day because
that's what sells.
Uh, maybe, maybe, you know,
I hadn't considered that up until you said
that, but, but it could be,
could be one day that someone can create
their own movie.
I mean,
they're kind of already doing this in the
India space.
Have you seen some of their like Pixar,
like films, maybe an AI, like,
I know there's a big conversation about it
and there's.
somewhat a subjective conversation to have
on how it gets its content but eventually
your copyright dies like if winnie the
pooh coming out as a demon hunter has
anything to say about it or a winnie
the pooh was a demon yeah so and
then like uh i forgot what they're calling
that universe
but yeah oh the ones about the movies
yeah the baby boom just hit the uh
oh did it within a day they announced
they were making it so people are
literally these companies are tracking
when things are coming up and if they're
not being renewed they're immediately
getting the ip and making the horror movie
based off of that ip like it's already
made because they're dropping it almost
immediately so you could tell
that like the papa one that just they
just did yeah he hit the market and
within a week that movie was dropping so
there's no way you could have made that
movie in a week unless you know you're
working on it you're working on it before
again yeah everybody be quiet be quiet if
we play this just right it'll come out
right before so nobody else can touch us
yeah no no i understand though but but
consider this in the conversation ai man
like people die
then what happens to it your family
inheritance it let's be honest my kids
aren't going to want all my comic they're
going to want to sell that they're going
to want to sell that those ips like
that maybe not my son because in his
own right for a thirteen-year-old amazing
artist taught himself to animate and color
and work in art programs super excited for
his future uh but my daughter's not gonna
want all my comic she's gonna sell she's
gonna sell it and keep some of it
that she might have had a part of
Yeah,
Steamboat Willie was one of the first ones
that come out.
It went from Winnie the Pooh to Steamboat
Willie, Popeye.
I'm being honest, though.
The Steamboat Willie one wasn't that
great.
I haven't seen none of them.
I just I don't have the time for
it.
It wasn't like my time is spent,
you know,
writing and researching and getting ready
for the next person who comes on after
you, you know.
So let's talk about that.
What happens next?
So like I said, Wild Only Two,
the issue for it,
the script is almost done.
I hope to put that in the bake
before the end of the year.
I hope to get that at least finished,
not maybe fulfilled,
given the track record Wild Only has.
I got a lot of trust earned back
from the people that are already back.
But I've been staying busy with work here
and there on specific projects.
What's coming up immediately next is,
is uh sweet pea issue three my buddy
alem johnson uh it's a it's an amazing
story about a young fourteen-year-old girl
who inherits power after a weird after a
weird energy takes over the planet and now
the hue the human race has to deal
with an omicron invasion that's these
aliens that come down they're kind of
draconian based uh this issue is called
the wild wind or deadly winds uh
This is the issue that's going to sell
the other two and the rest of the
series.
It is Jeff's kiss, man.
It's super wild.
If you guys get a chance,
click the notification on it.
Get notified when you're ready.
I'm the editor on this book.
Me and Alim met during my time and
tenure at Ink Studios.
We hit it off.
We've been great friends ever since.
I'm super proud at the progress he's made
with this.
It's not been an easy journey for him.
Uh, we,
we all as creators go through personal
stuff, me included with wild only, but we,
we all,
we all support each other and our
endeavors regardless,
even if you're part of the community,
that's wildly, wildly, uh,
disciplined about getting the product out
and the stuff you can't stop the setbacks
to happen.
Uh, but,
but sweet peas coming out real soon.
I'm super excited about that.
Um,
Hopefully, if he wants to in the future,
we can get a limb on and we
can talk about it all together.
No, I was going to say, dude,
that looks like a very fun project.
And I will include that link in the
description of this video when it goes
live,
both on YouTube again and on all the
podcasts and platforms that we do through
Transistor.
along with any other link that you would
like to share.
Just shoot them over to me and they'll
be included.
Dude, that one was a lot of fun.
And this is what I love about indie
comics is...
You can do anything.
There's no restriction.
You don't have Marvel or DC with their
thumb on you telling you to tell this
story.
You're telling a story that you want to
tell the way you want to tell it.
And that is what is so great about
it.
And if you come across a Kickstarter or
indie comic that isn't your flavor, cool.
i guarantee you five more minutes later
you're going to find one that is up
your alley and you're going to want to
read that one and you're going to want
to support that one and that's what i
love it's like what draws me to
independent comments is yeah is that
There's been a few.
Warbound by a company.
I don't think they make any books anymore.
I haven't heard from them in a long
time,
but Warbound was a series I was following.
Cicada Samurai that came out last year was
a good one.
All the stuff that Travis Gibbs does with
Cthulhu.
oh yeah the the one in alice in
wonderland i'm about to sit down forever
after yeah by boom studios the the third
of the trilogy i think this is the
final of that trilogy and the first if
it's anything like the first two it's
going to be amazing because this is about
alice's daughter and them trying to push
alice's daughter to restart the cycle into
the uh okay
Is there a Cthulhu book by boom?
Yeah, there is.
Okay.
So, so Travis Gibbs, uh, he's,
he runs the orange cone and he's got
a separate series on Cthulhu invades.
Um, this last, this last one,
I think he did a Alice in Wonderland.
That one was really good.
It's either boom or dark horses doing this
Cthulhu series ended.
Okay.
Cause there's a one called, uh,
the death of HP Lovecraft, I think.
Hmm.
And it's been like top notch.
I just can't remember if it was Boom
or Dark Horse doing it.
I just know that it's been just like
a top notch read.
And he seems really cool.
I'm hoping one day I get to that
professional level.
I've met some people at publishers,
but not enough to get into a conversation
or a room to be like, hey,
my name is such and such.
These are my credits.
This is what I do.
I'd love to provide that to any of
your properties if I could on anything.
At this point,
I would love for anybody to give me
a shot at a major publishing with no
money down, no money at all, actually,
on my first book.
So if you're out there and you're
listening, you need an editor or writer,
I'll do it for free the first time
just to get my name in the door.
But it led to things like my buddy
Daniel Garcia,
and he hit me up one day.
He's like, hey, Mike,
I'm doing this crazy thing,
and I want you to be a part
of it.
I'm not really sure how to do it,
but I built it up.
It's called Shark Force.
He doesn't know I'm talking about it,
but I'm going to throw it out there
because I know he appreciates when I do
stuff for him.
But it's a really cool take on kick-ass
shark people just kicking ass and taking
names, man.
It's kind of like mutagenic storylines.
It's in the ire of nineties action
cartoons.
Really fun, really light.
It's
It's got some kid tones, probably PG-XIV.
Nothing over the top.
It does exist in like a superhero kind
of universe.
There's a few characters in there.
It's set in a place called Meteor City.
And man, the characters on there,
essentially the artwork,
if you want to pop it up later
in the edit,
It's really cool.
It really inspired me because I was a
big fan of what was that shark cartoon
back in the day?
Street Sharks.
Street Sharks.
Super cool.
So it's about a couple of scientists go
up into space.
They get hit with this array.
And they were studying sharks in space for
some reason.
And the DNA collides.
They got this kind of Fantastic Four
origin story.
They crash back down to Earth.
And Hammerhead comes out.
And a big, big,
big walking tiger shark comes out.
And they're like, oh.
And they get picked up by this secret
organization that hires them to kind of
fight.
Which one did you say it was?
Shark Force.
Ah, there it is.
Yeah.
Really cool story, man.
This one is in production right now.
I think we're on like.
Twelve or thirteen pages.
I got to do some stuff for him.
But as soon as we get it done,
we're going to we're going to run the
crowdfunding on it.
He's he's he's going all in on this
title, man.
He's also the creator of Zyberon and did
Fast Girls Atomic Vamp last year.
So he's put out some really good stuff.
Really good stuff.
with the logo on it.
Yeah, Shark Force, man.
Yeah, it sent me a lot of stuff,
and I was just like...
I tried to label the files.
You know,
you did a really good job of labeling
it.
It's just my computer didn't want to help
me extract files, so I was just like,
come on, work with me.
I used to use WeTransfer,
but I hear on the wire they've changed
their policy.
So yeah, man,
that's been blasted all over Facebook.
This is really dope.
I like it.
I love concepts like this, dude.
It's really fun, man.
We're just a bunch of dudes just loving
cartoons,
wanting to create something of the same
genre.
This is one of those where you'd be
sitting down Saturday morning to watch
cartoons and eat some Cocoa Puffs.
I'm so glad you said that, man.
He's going to be so excited.
That's exactly how he wants it to hit
when it comes out.
He definitely nailed that one.
Yeah,
you're getting me out the blue with that
idea.
It's Indie Comics, man.
Indie Comics for sure.
Did you freeze?
I think he froze.
Anybody out there who's listening or
watching live, you got any questions?
I'm all about the questions.
We got questions asked now.
We'll wait for Mr. Chairman to come back.
Stay tuned as USDN works out its technical
difficulties.
Until then,
you get to stare at my somewhat
attractive, yet not so attractive mug.
It's actually good for comics,
just maybe not for television.
So acting was out of the question.
Anybody out there still listening?
I'm sorry, Mr. Chair,
and I'll be back shortly.
Sorry about that.
And there he is.
Welcome back.
If it's telling me anything,
it's telling me that we need to be
wrapping it up.
Gotcha.
So let's hit some rapid fire questions and
we'll close it out real quick.
Sure.
Favorite superhero.
Daredevil.
Superpower.
Flying.
I like it.
What is your writing soundtrack or do you
just prefer the quiet?
Writing soundtrack?
Yeah.
Cyber lo-fi.
Good one.
I've been known to dip my toes into
that one as well when I'm writing.
Coffee or late night snacks?
I know for me, I'm a coffee guy.
as you've seen when we were definitely a
coffee guy one word to describe indie
comics right now inevitable god damn
that's a good answer holy shit that's a
good one I love that one alright Michael
where can people find you and your work
you can find me really mainly on Facebook
on Facebook.
I haven't really gotten too heavy into the
Instagram posts.
I'm testing the waters on TikTok.
You are a hard man to keep in
touch with.
I got so much to do, man.
It's really hard to put social media down.
Facebook,
you can go check out any of my
later podcasts for comics and Pop-Tarts on
any one of the major listening streams.
Amazon,
all the other ones that I forgot since
it's been so long since I've done any
of that.
I'm still out there.
I've still got my hyperlinks in there.
So my Facebook, my Instagram.
Hopefully we'll have a sub stack soon
where I put out shorter stories,
visual stories,
even some like Webtoon comic stuff.
Working on that for twenty twenty six.
Hopefully this will be a good year.
But yeah, come check me out on Facebook.
Perfect, dude.
Mike,
I want to thank you for coming on
tonight and dealing with me and my
internet issues.
That's all right, man.
Again,
I'm going to have some editing to do,
but that's what we sign up for.
The USDM will be live again tomorrow
morning with Bruno Caterino at ten a.m.
Eastern Standard Time, which is three p.m.
UK time to talk about his new Kickstarter
flame vote,
which is live
Now,
I just dropped the links to that out
on social media.
If you want to go have a look
at that one and check out that
Kickstarter.
And with that,
it brings us to the end of tonight's
conversation.
joining us and sharing his journey through
writing, editing, crowdfunding,
building meaningful stories,
and indie comics.
Make sure you follow his work,
support creator-owned projects,
and keep an eye out for what he's
bringing next.
As we've seen,
Sweet Pea is looking to be a phenomenal
book.
If you enjoyed this episode,
don't forget to like, share,
and subscribe.
It's the best way to help us continue
spotlighting indie comic creators and
keeping this industry moving forward.
forward until next time this has been the
chairman in the united states department
of nerds where indie comics come to life