Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
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!
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 imagine waking up in a
prison no memory of who you are how
you got there or what crime you may
have committed around you are thousands of
prisoners living the same existence
watching waiting
surviving at the center of it all stands
a black tower no windows and no answers
no way to know if someone is watching
or if anyone is watching at all but
that's the terrifying part because
eventually you stop needing the guards you
become your own prison and tonight we're
diving into the panopticon
yeah you got it a psychological science
fiction mystery that explores surveillance
memory identity freedom and the systems
that shape the way we live joining us
is writer artist creator matt stevens the
mind behind the panopticon and dark web
comics we're going to be discussing
creator on publishing kickstarter world
building indie comments and why centuries
old idea about observation
may be more relevant today than it ever
was before.
Ladies and gentlemen,
pull up your easy cheers,
get you some popcorn,
because the Council of Nerds is now in
session.
Matt, welcome to the USDM, my friend.
Thank you very much.
Very happy to be here.
I've been looking forward to this.
Same.
I've been telling everybody lately,
I'm like, dude,
every time I get to a certain part
of the month, I'm like,
waiting for this one especially when i
remember who and what what you know
project it was because being booked months
in advance i sometimes don't realize what
project is actually coming up until like
the week prior when i start sending out
the emails just to confirm everything and
then i got to yours and i was
like i'm excited for this one because it's
just such a fun concept
Yeah,
we talked a couple months ago for the
first time, so yeah,
I've been looking forward to it.
But thank you, yeah, the concept,
super pumped about it.
It just felt right.
It is such a unique concept.
Before we jump into the concept of the
book, let's learn about who you are.
So who is Matt Stevens and kind of
what got you into comic books to begin
with?
I live in Connecticut.
I'm a high school art teacher.
I've been doing that for twenty years,
twenty-two years.
My life is talking about art,
teaching kids about art,
getting them excited about art,
and making art.
That's my day.
That's awesome.
Just coming from art from all different
points.
it's really fulfilling i just absolutely
love it um i also get summers off
so i get to draw even more over
the summer which you know bonus do y'all
get paid over the summer or do you
only get paid for half of it and
then you have to find another way to
make ends meet during the rest of the
summer you know uh you get paid you
get paid all year um but yeah we
got paid all year yeah
i mean it it just kind of depends
on how you slice it like my wife's
a teacher too she gets paid ten months
out of the year and then she gets
a big bulk check in actually this week
which is all of her summer money but
it's like one big check yeah the next
three months two months so so this is
all your dinner dates are on her
then yeah, that's on us.
But yeah, so like, that's,
that's kind of my, my day.
I draw every day for, you know,
I think about it like working out,
you know,
the days off are the rare days when
I just,
I just can't fit into my schedule,
but it's,
it's just a discipline that I do every
day.
I try to do
try to do a page a day and
by that i mean i'm either sketching a
page or i'm inking a page or i'm
adding adding color so that in my mind
that's a page um one one pass through
on a page at least a day and
if i do that i just there's a
real nice sense of
there's a sense of comfort in that,
knowing that at the end of the week,
I've got two or three pages done every
week.
And then, you know,
I can kind of plan out my year
like that.
I can say, oh, well,
I'll have this much done by October.
So, you know,
when I'm planning out my year,
I can just be like,
I can kind of figure out
where I'm going to be in October,
when I'm going to have free time,
when I can take on something new,
when I can, you know,
shift gears to something else.
So, yeah.
I mean, that's allowing you to put out,
what, two to three bullets a year?
Four.
If you did it that way?
Four.
Okay, yeah, so one a quarter.
Yep, four-ish.
And it's funny,
that's one of the reasons why I wrote
this story.
I wrote it in twenty-two page issues or
arcs.
I mean,
the graphic novel that's on Kickstarter is
eighty-eight pages,
but I wrote it as for twenty-two page
issues.
And I can do twenty-two pages in three
months.
um including a cover including adding the
text and the speech bubbles and the sfx
and all that stuff so um yeah that's
awesome because it brings us to our next
question as well as when you whether you
discovered you had this talent for art or
what have you were you an artist first
a writer first or did it kind of
for you kind of like fall hand in
hand with each other at that moment yeah
dude that's such a such a good question
uh
I started out as an artist.
I went to school for illustration,
so I got a bachelor's in fine art.
And I was an illustrator for years as
sort of a side hustle.
I still am,
doing just projects for other people,
magazines and books and just all sorts of
odd, weird things.
covers and you know all sorts of things
that that come my restaurants i mean god
the the crazy stuff uh that that's come
along but really fun but it was always
for other people yeah and you know i
just started feeling like i wanted to make
art that
was from my head and i i think
i'm kind of a late bloomer in that
way i like i i always make you
know i've got a studio full of single
image drawings and i loved doing that like
just a single yeah single image that tells
a story but it's up to the viewer
to interpret it i love i love doing
that and i'll always do that um
i think just as i got older i
wanted to tell longer stories and i've
always been a comic reader and always it
just seemed kind of unattainable to me to
like yeah do that you know like they
the the comic book artists always to me
seemed kind of magical and like well what
how how are they doing how how are
they conjuring these pages and
I'm in my forties and I still see
them that way.
Yeah.
They're like my heroes, you know?
Yeah.
And so anytime I get to meet one
or even like some of my favorite writers
out there,
or I have an interaction with them on
social media in my head,
these are my rock stars.
A hundred percent.
Yeah, absolutely.
And like the,
if you really just kind of,
dig down those dudes are sitting in a
room or wherever they make artwork for
hours a day every day like they're you
know it's not like they're I mean and
I include myself in that too you know
not the hero part but the uh just
the the discipline part like to to make
to make long form stuff it's just it's
hundreds of hours uh you know every every
couple months to to get it to get
it out there
yeah i mean even though like the stock
stuff that they make like if we use
transformers for instance like they've
drawn these characters hundreds of times
so they can literally just pull the
character out of the you know the book
and reuse it somewhere else and but at
the same time it's
It's still used,
still spent hours upon hours upon hours to
do all that legwork.
And, you know, hopefully maybe in three,
four or five, six pages from now,
you like, oh,
I need that one pose again.
Let me just go grab it and pull
it over and then work it into the
frames or shrink it down,
whatever it may be.
Yeah.
Even that is still a lot of work.
Oh yeah.
You still have to like, okay,
the sun's coming from the West.
So I have to now change the shade
into that way.
And it's like when I was first dissecting
like what it is to be a comic
artist or a writer, I was like,
they have really have to think these real
world things.
What way is the sun shining?
What way is,
are they facing the other person in front
of them?
How do they see it?
I'm like, all those things go into this.
What's the weather outside in this scene?
And it's just stuff I've read,
and I never put two to two together
to get the five out of that until
the last couple of years of me doing
this and talking to indie writers and
creators and artists and editors and
publishers, where my mind started going,
it's not this big.
It's, it's giant.
Yeah.
And it's a lot of stuff to look
at.
Yeah, so true.
I fluctuate between imposter syndrome and
narcissism, where on my worst days,
who do I think I am,
to full-on narcissism.
I'm a writer, director, cinematographer,
costume designer, set designer.
I do it all, baby.
Speech coordinator, accents.
You know,
like you really as a as a solo
comic creator,
you wear all those hats and the best
guys do it just really, really well.
You know,
we're as podcasters that write this out
solo or the same way.
Yeah,
because as we deal with artists and
writers, at least me,
from my perspective is I deal with like.
everybody within the comic realm to some
degree and there's egos in there there's
all this stuff in there and i'm like
you're competing with my ego too and my
my internal narcissism when it comes to
how i am with my show and how
i want it to be i'm like you're
not going to win that battle against me
on my show yeah like you're not going
to tell me how i'm going to do
business yeah i'm like i will make some
successions with you
But at the end of the day,
if I don't like it,
I ain't going to do it.
Yeah, yeah.
That's for sure.
Yeah.
Why do it if you don't, you know?
Yeah.
So it's just wild that it's like two
separate worlds,
but we're all putting on all these
different hats every single day.
So it's really cool.
Whenever I hear that, I'm just like, God,
I know exactly what you're talking about.
Yeah, yeah.
So what moment,
was there a moment that made you decide
that you're going to create your own
worlds instead of just consuming them
yourself?
Like,
were you reading an amazing Spider-Man one
day and go, I'm going to do this.
Like, I'm going to make my own.
You know what it was?
So I...
We could talk more about this too if
you want,
but I got a call right at the
beginning of COVID from a writer who was
looking for an artist.
He had this great story called Digital
Pools that he wanted an artist for.
So we started collaborating and we're on
issue ten of Digital Pools.
That is such a wonderful experience to
collaborate with somebody.
He handles the writing, I handle the art,
and we each kind of...
It's kind of like a nice...
He's such a good writer that my feedback
to him is...
is there because i think it's important
but it's really minimal you know it's just
like oh you know i didn't write it
so let me give you this take on
this thing and you know he affords me
the same courtesy where he lets me make
the art and he has like that five
ten percent like dude yeah you're not
seeing this or you know this doesn't this
isn't clear or i really need this pose
to be like this so you know we
It's a great collaboration,
but my point is I don't always have
pages from him for digital pools or we're
in between things.
So having a solo project has been perfect
because, like I said,
I like to have a page a day.
I like to have something every day that
I'm drawing and moving a project forward.
And I was on a walk...
couple years ago listening to a podcast
and the guest mentioned a panopticon and
started talking about the definition of it
in in terms of i think they were
talking about simulation theory or
something but um i don't i don't remember
what the podcast was about but i had
never heard this word before yeah i had
to look it up just like you did
yeah and it kind of it's one of
those earworms where it like just kind of
sticks in there and and
By the end of the walk...
I was saying this word all day just
to make sure, A,
I was saying it right, and B,
it's just a fun word to say.
It's a fun word to say, yeah.
It's got a little rhythm to it,
panopticon.
And by the end of that walk,
it was sort of one of those inspiration
moments.
It was, you know,
top of the funnel moment where...
all the idea just kind of came in
and anything was possible.
And that word just kind of like,
you know,
it was an hour walk when I got
home, I had the, the,
the foundation of this story pretty,
pretty, I mean,
it wasn't written by any stretch, but the,
the idea of the single cell chamber,
mysterious prison,
a prisoner comes in and has no memory
of how he got there.
That was there.
This is the perfect segue because we are
the perfect,
we're that's that's where we're at in this
so for those discovering the panopticon
for the very first time what is the
panopticon okay so it's actually i love
that that was yeah it's
It's a real thing.
It's a real prison.
It was invented in the seventeen hundreds
by this philosopher named Jeremy Bentham.
And it was supposed to be a more
humane way to house prisoners.
So the conceit is that it's a central
tower and that central tower houses the
guards and all of the cells are built
in a cylinder around the central tower.
And then the common area is down below.
If you've ever seen Guardians of the
Galaxy, I think it's number two,
there's a Panopticon in that,
that prison scene, that is a Panopticon,
their version of it.
And so the idea is that the guards
can see
into every cell because they're
centralized and all the all the cells are
facing the guard tower so uh it's constant
surveillance there's no privacy and he
thought jeremy bentham thought that this
was going to be a more humane way
of uh because it would take less guards
and
The inmates would police themselves
because there was nowhere to hide.
And it really turned into, I mean,
depending on who you ask,
it's basically torture.
Yeah.
Being under constant surveillance.
And then they added this concept of they
made the guard tower blacked out.
And the cells backlit.
So the tower lit.
So the inmates couldn't even see the
guards.
And they didn't know if they were being
watched or not.
So this idea explained to me in this
podcast just kind of like blew my mind
up.
And so that's what mine is.
Mine is a central tower.
It's blacked out.
It's a single chambered prison.
But there's only seven prisoners.
And that's part of the mystery is that
why are there only seven prisoners in this
big space?
Yeah.
and uh yeah so that's that's the
panopticon i could i could keep going
about the story if you want dude i
love it and we're going to continue but
we're going to ask some more questions
about this yeah why make memory such an
important part of this story i always feel
like um i feel like prison is this
weird
space in our society and then on the
individual level in an individual's life
where it's kind of a it's like for
for you and me as we're moving through
a day there's the morning and then we
go out into the world and you know
there's a there's that freedom that we
take for granted and i feel like in
prison that goes away i mean just your
world becomes very small it's almost like
becoming
old or something where you,
you can't really leave your house.
Like, you know,
you're just constrained by, in this case,
by society.
And, uh, I just, I,
I imagine what that would do to your
memory.
Like things would get very fuzzy and not,
not, not crisp and clear.
It would just be kind of,
so that was part of it.
Like, um,
And there's also a bigger reason,
which I can't...
It gets revealed in the second graphic
novel, which isn't out yet.
But there's a reason why memory plays into
this.
All the prisoners don't remember how they
got there.
And they also don't really...
It's not even really discussed what their
crimes are, which is intentional.
Like, we don't know why they're prisoners.
They don't know why they're prisoners.
And they're...
they're not even questioning why they're
there so there's some questions there and
then we have a new prisoner who comes
in uh he becomes the seventh replacing a
prisoner named named pillory which we we
never actually meet in this first graphic
novel um pillory is gone and this new
uh character comes in itzhak and he um
very quickly recognizes
that there's something going on with
everybody's memory.
Including his.
But his is in a little bit different
way.
He's got maybe a little bit more memory,
but he still doesn't know why he's there.
It almost sounds like a social experiment
to some degree.
with this whole setup and the way this
is being done.
I don't know if that's your intention of
this.
You're feeling like a social experiment.
But that's the vibe it gives.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
Yeah, good.
So that... It is... It is a...
The parallel to that is that it is
a... Without giving too much away,
it is a...
It is a kind of a contrived situation.
And there are... There is a twist...
There's a small twist at the end of
the graphic novel,
and then there's a larger twist at the
very beginning of the next graphic novel.
So we see much more of the world
in the second one.
I like it, man.
Yeah, I'm about to throw you money, dude.
We'll talk about that a little bit later.
But so what challenges came with building
a mystery where readers uncover answers
alongside these characters?
I mean,
you can always flip ahead and like, oh,
but there's no fun in that,
to be fair,
when you're reading a comic book.
But don't don't skip ahead.
Take it page by page.
Right.
Yeah.
But what were some of those challenges in
life?
not putting too much detail in there.
But just, you know,
those bread crumb in it, you know, yeah,
the Hansel and Gretel effect of a comic
book, and I love those effects.
I love the,
the bread crumb and the details and the
finer points of the story.
So this is my first book,
my first solo book.
So I'm learning as I go.
The reason why I made an eighty eight
page graphic novel instead of doing an
issue by issue is because I wanted some
lead so that by the time I got
to page sixty six,
I can go back and change issue one
and add that piece of graffiti on the
wall,
which is an Easter egg that we'll tie
in later on.
I love Easter egg.
Yeah,
like halfway through I made scorch marks
all around the prison on the walls,
like these sort of Star Wars-esque laser
blast scorch marks.
But I didn't... That wasn't their...
early on, it just hadn't occurred to me.
So it was sort of like a safety
net to make a longer story so I
could go back in and add those things
that didn't occur to me.
I think a more experienced comic book
maker probably would do more of that
earlier, but you know,
it's got to be fun for me, so...
that was the way I was going to
have the most fun doing this.
Give myself lots of lead time so that
I can go back in and populate.
Now it's done and kind of set in
stone,
but there were three or four
three or four things only occurred to me
later on in the story that I had
to go back in and redraw.
Not really redraw panels,
but just kind of add.
You add some Easter eggs in, you know?
Add some Easter eggs, yeah.
Add some extra details.
And, dude, that's so cool.
Like, I'm blown away by it.
Like,
the idea and the thought of how you
did it and just getting, like,
I can't imagine getting to page sixty-six
of something that I haven't
know written drawn colored penciled inked
lettered and did all these things too and
then went back and started looking at it
again like you know what i think he
needs this and go all the way back
and start adding these cool little special
effects these little easter heads in yeah
and i i think that's that's the coolest
thing and that's what's great about
being able to do everything yourself and
not relying on another person or a
teammate who does the drawing and then you
doing the writing is you get to do
everything yourself.
You are the man of many hats on
this.
So yeah.
Yeah.
Right on, man.
That's yeah.
If I had the,
the talent to do it myself,
I would a hundred percent do it myself.
yeah there's perks to it you do have
to do everything you do have to do
everything but you can you can um steer
the ship and you know be yourself for
everything you know yeah you gotta worry
about paying somebody else but oh let me
pay that uh other matt stevens you know
for drawing this yeah exactly
But let's talk a little bit about like
the surveillance of this thing in the
surveillance in modern society, really,
because we've seen kind of how this has
been playing out.
This concept of this is like centuries old
with the Panopticon,
but it kind of still feels relevant today.
Why do you think this idea kind of
still resonates today?
So yeah,
the story in a lot of ways,
one of the major themes is surveillance
and the effect that constant surveillance
has on the human psyche and what it
makes people do.
So if you're constantly surveilled and if
there's punishment if you do things that
aren't approved of,
then I think people will start to police
themselves, which I know they do.
They start to police themselves and will
adopt different
ways of being based on the fact that
they're,
they have to police themselves because
they, they think, you know,
don't do that because then we're going to
get punished in this way.
Action A has consequence A. Yeah.
So it's, it's, it's, you know,
it's genius in a really evil way.
The, the, the, the,
panopticon-style surveillance because the
inmates police themselves.
In my story,
they don't even know who the guards are.
They've never seen them.
They have no memory of them.
They don't even know if there are guards
in the tower.
All they know is that they're punished
when they step out of line.
And...
As I started writing the story and I'm
thinking about the surveillance in the
Panopticon,
I'm also thinking about surveillance in
just my life and what effect that has.
The car I got recently has cameras in
it.
It's taking pictures behind me.
It's how we do lane assist and everything.
The Tesla?
i got a uh a hyundai ionic oh
okay the new the the did you get
the hybrid or the all-electric the
electric one yeah okay hey those are so
cool those are yeah it's a freaking
hyundai they're what they get four fifty
something like that to a charge i think
the new ones do yeah mine gets about
three fifty
not still not bad yeah it's a small
little car yep and they're surprisingly
quick too oh my god yeah it's you
know my my neighbor has a tesla you
know i want to race him one day
because i i he may beat me by
a little bit but it's i'll i'll hold
my own but but yeah so surveillance like
uh
I'm an art teacher and I have a
school computer.
The district has software on there that
You know, they wouldn't call it spying.
I mean, I don't call it spying,
but they can monitor you.
And, you know,
there are corporate settings that...
You're not going to the websites you
shouldn't be going on.
Yeah.
And some corporate settings will monitor
your keystrokes for folks that are remote
or, you know, even not remote.
So there's all sorts of surveillance and
all these social media algorithms that
are... It's a form of surveillance.
So, like,
the amount of data that's out there
about us and kind of watching us not
really watching matt stevens but just
watching the behavior of of this is we've
just come to accept it and i'm not
a conspiracy theorist
i think that a lot of surveillance is
actually really good you know like we have
a camera on our house uh for we
just got it like only a couple months
ago but you know for like as a
doorbell um and i was kind of like
i don't love it but i love mine
i got them all the way around my
house and i absolutely love it yeah i
mean it it's it's become so ubiquitous i
mean
Again, as an art teacher, as a teacher,
every kid in my class has a device.
We make them put them on the wall,
but every kid in their class has a
like a camcorder.
They have like a, you know,
the phone with the camera and like high
def, the whole thing.
So it's really become part of our society.
And it's just very interesting to me.
I'm not saying that it's all bad.
I think probably it's more good than bad,
but there are some pretty dark places it
can go.
And, you know,
that idea has just been interesting to me
and kind of fueled some of my like
passion for this story.
Yeah.
You know you're living when you get a
speeding ticket in the mail.
It hasn't happened to me yet,
but it's coming.
I've gotten one through the mail.
What state?
We were passing through Florida.
Wow.
Well, got it in the mail.
That's a brave new world right there.
In Korea, if you speed in Korea,
you can commit a lane infraction or
anything like that.
They just mail it to you.
You don't even know you did it until...
If you accidentally turn down the wrong
way because the sign on the road was
faded and you couldn't see it,
they just send you a ticket in the
mail for going down the street the wrong
way.
Wow.
It's not that much.
It's only like...
or twelve bucks but still yeah if you're
getting like two or three of those a
day because you don't know it it adds
up yeah i mean there's it's it's it's
a it does it
Does it save lives?
Probably.
Does it make the world a little bit
safer?
You know, all these cameras everywhere?
Maybe.
Does it lessen crime?
But what are we giving up?
What sort of privacy and autonomy do we
give up?
Again,
I'm not saying I'm not like burn all
the cameras.
I'm just, you know,
always trying to find the line.
Where is that line where it's it's.
crossed over to just like, you know,
nineteen eighty four.
I mean,
that's you're going to tell me birds are
real.
Good one.
Yeah.
Oh, that one.
Yeah, that one wrote itself.
So do you think there's parallels between
the worlds of the panopticon and the world
we live in today?
A hundred percent.
Yeah.
I mean, you know, the Panopticon is a,
um, is a, is kind of a, uh,
a, uh, a, uh,
a condensed version of it, like a hyper,
a hyper version of it, uh,
hyper stylized version of it.
Um,
You know, I say that in the story,
the prisoners can only do four things.
They can eat, they can sleep,
they can shit, and they can bathe.
That's it.
So there's a place to sleep.
There's a cell.
They all each have a cell.
There's a pool that fills up once every
cycle.
There's a food dispenser that pops food up
every, you know, at mealtime.
And then there's a place to sit.
Oh, and then there's some toilets,
like prison-style toilets in the corner of
the prison.
That's it.
There's no entertainment.
There's nothing.
And, you know,
that was designed on purpose when I was
designing the prison to keep it as
hyper...
hyper stylized form of, uh,
a space that is surveilled, you know,
they can't do anything.
And in there not doing anything, they're,
they're being watched constantly.
So you sound like the life of a
cat, man.
Cause I saw the things my cat stay
right there.
Eat, sleep, beg for treats.
Yeah.
But let's talk about the memory and
identity and freedom within the story.
So these prisoners have very limited
memories of who they are.
Why was this concept so important to the
story?
Well, without giving too much away,
things are not as they seem.
It is a prison story.
You know, I love a good prison story.
You know, one of my favorite,
favorite films growing up was Escape from
Alcatraz.
Cool Hand Luke.
Like, I love these stories.
i don't know they they just they're just
very appealing to me um scare kind of
scare the hell out of me but in
a good way um and you know i
mean not to get too deep but i
lost my mom to dementia and watching her
um
lose her self over the course of a
decade uh really had a pretty profound
effect on me so that's in this story
too not again not to get too deep
or anything but um the idea of memory
and um how fragile it is and how
unreliable it is and um
if you can't even trust your own memory,
that's just a very scary place to be.
So it's kind of twofold.
It adds, hopefully,
it adds to the tension to the story
and the fact that no one can remember.
But it also is a plot device because
Itzhak, who is our main character,
comes in and notices that while he doesn't
remember anything,
who he is and how he got there
and what his crimes are,
he's curious about escape,
where nobody else in the prison is.
The other six prisoners aren't even
talking about it and actually are kind of
punishing if he mentions it.
So his engagement with the idea of escape
upsets the prison in some profound ways,
and there are...
real big consequences to his like being
kind of a fish out of water um
he figured he he figures at least in
part about why they're having some memory
problems and that's part of the story um
and then so the larger it the larger
part of this gets we understand it more
in the second graphic novel uh why they're
having memory problems but that's not
really um
That's not really revealed in this first
one.
But you said social experiment,
it does have some of those parallels to
it.
That's a really good take on it.
There's some parallels to watching what
happens when things are put in place.
Yeah.
no it it's such a fun concept and
what is like what questions do you hope
readers ask themselves while reading this
graphic novel or like i think i think
i asked this question to everybody just
about it's just like from a creator
standpoint and and me as a reader what
would you like some of those things that
you would want me to think about while
reading this book
Yeah, so the value of your memory,
the power of independence,
which is taken away from these folks,
and what I really hope is that
uh hopefully people buy the second graphic
novel as well and as they read the
second graphic novel and the the lens
opens up and they see beyond the walls
of the panopticon and they understand a
little bit more of who these people are
and why they're there they are where they
are that they're like oh I gotta go
back and reread the first ADA pages
because
this thing that just happened is reminding
me of a thing that happened in the
first when i read comic books i love
like sin city you mentioned that earlier
yes
I've gone back so many times and reread
those graphic novels,
and I get so much every single time,
and I see new things,
and I make kind of new connections between
the characters,
and there's a deepening in my appreciation
for it.
It's amazing how deep that actually goes.
Oh, my God.
How things start to really connect to one
another,
and you don't really get that in the
movie the way you get it
from reading the comic book and you can't
read the story one time either.
That's like four or five,
maybe even on the sixth read through where
you can you can literally probably go to
a whiteboard and start actually connecting
the dots that are actually there.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And like I know I know Frank Miller
would would probably say the same thing,
like having people reread your stuff is
really the mark of like
Reading it is great,
but if they are interested enough to
reread and check their own assumptions and
go find the Easter eggs that they think
that might have been there,
that's really the... I mean,
I'm the same way with movies.
Not so much with books, like novels,
but movies I am.
I'll go back and rewatch movies too.
Yeah, I do the same.
And it's funny because I love, like,
obviously, you know,
comic books are my jam and all.
But let's say issue fifteen of a
particular book is getting ready to come
out.
I still have issue fourteen right next to
me.
No way.
I want to go back through and read
fourteen real quick and then jump into
fifteen,
especially if it's one of those books
that's only like a once a month.
Yeah, because so I can go back like,
OK,
and then like you can then just grab
up fifteen and immediately read through it
and start.
OK, all right.
They're connecting dots from over here and
over here now.
Cool, cool.
And that's how I do it.
And it takes me like an hour and
a half to read a twenty two page
comic book.
So, yeah, man.
Yeah, I'll do that.
Saga is one of the ones I read
pretty regularly.
So good.
I was linked to that,
so I got the graphic novels of it.
That's what I do too.
I get the trades.
I'm not much of a single issue dude
lately.
I love my single issues,
but for some of the stuff like Monstrous,
which is a beautiful book.
If people haven't read Monstrous or Saga,
Sweet Tooth is another one.
Get the trade paperbacks or the hardbound
paperbacks, whatever it is.
Actually read those.
Those are so damn good.
Oh, yeah.
But let's talk about Dark Web.
I don't know if you're a Letterkenny guy.
Do you ever watch Letterkenny?
I know.
No.
I mean, no, I've seen clips.
If you get a chance,
go to YouTube and Letterkenny or the
druggies do the Dark Web thing.
And every time the Dark Web was mentioned,
he'd go...
Oh, now I got to look.
I don't know about this.
It was just going to come up again.
It was hilarious.
I'm a diehard Letterkenny guy,
so I used to quote that like it
was going out of style.
It's just a fun show.
What I've seen is very funny,
but I haven't watched episodes.
There's so much out there.
You can literally just go to YouTube and
waste a couple of hours watching the
clips,
and the clips are just as funny as
the actual show itself.
So,
tell us about Dark Web Comics and kind
of how that was born.
Yeah, so Dark Web,
I mentioned earlier my creative partner,
Alex Robnett, and I, you know,
he reached out to me in
he was also new at writing comics.
I was new at drawing comics and,
but I really loved his idea.
Just fire.
I was firing my brain on all cylinders
is talking about simulated worlds and, um,
virtual worlds and, um, uh,
psychology and the id and the ego and
and it's also a procedural crime sci-fi
story so um i you know we started
that in it's kind of our our covid
baby and um you know like
I'm sorry, what was the question?
Tell us about Dark Web.
What inspired that?
Your own path.
I don't know where you lost yourself on
that, but you were answering the question.
Sorry, it's been a long day.
Digital Pools, we're on our tenth issue,
and we needed something to house it under.
We have lots of stories that we're working
on at different places.
points.
And so we just needed a name to
kind of house everything,
like an umbrella.
And Alex came up with Dark Web Comics,
and I thought it was great.
So it's, you know,
not to make ourselves seem bigger than we
are.
It's just an umbrella so that when we
talk to people...
we are,
Alex and I are dark web comics,
you know, with, you know,
dreams of world domination, but you know,
we'll be,
we'll be fine with a thousand readers.
And it's wild to me,
like a thousand readers,
that's a win any day of the week.
I think as, as we, as indie creators,
we get a thousand reads are,
I know for me, like personally,
if I get a hundred views on something,
I'm like,
I just got a hundred views on a
comic book.
that nobody has probably ever heard of
before beside the two people who are
currently talking about it and their
closest friends and family yeah so if i
get fifty a hundred one hundred fifty five
hundred i'm like dude i just won with
that yeah that's i mean that's success i
the the i think people that are shooting
for marvel in dc although i nothing but
great things to say about them and it's
great it's just never really been my my
goal um
it's just sort of a different path but
trying to reach a hundred thousand or a
million five hundred thousand a million
readers I just I don't know if that's
what success looks like in twenty twenty
six in the comic world it's it's a
it's like the NBA and it's great but
you know not everyone's in the NBA so
success to me doesn't that's not really
that's not occupying any space in my mind
to um
It's really pulling what's in here and
putting it right here for people to enjoy
or to discover.
And to me,
that's what this is about too.
Like if somebody finds Matt Stevens
because the USDN introduced him to Matt
Stevens, I fucking won, you know,
at the end of the day,
I take my small doves and I take
some big L's, but trust me,
that small dove I get is going to
mean a whole hell of a lot more
than I took.
Yeah.
so yeah i'm right there with you so
yeah our goal is to is to get
a reader base for dark web comics for
our stories so that when alex and i
put something out under dark web folks um
say oh it's that's matt and alex you
know you know we're we're buds too we're
great friends so um it makes it really
uh
really fun to to i mean listen anybody
out there find someone to collaborate with
it'll be it's the best thing in the
world that you can do if you get
the right partner it's so much fun and
the you know the the output that you
can do with with somebody who you know
where you're thinking you share that brain
share the brain wavelength yeah
yep another another podcaster called it a
a pro man's not a bromance but a
pro man's which I like it if it
works it works I like that yeah yeah
yeah so so yeah that's dark web so
you mentioned that the flagship dark web
Comet story is approaching its conclusion
what can readers expect from that
So Digital Pools,
it's a twelve issue story.
We're just finishing up issue ten and
we're going to release,
we're going to finish up issue eleven.
Alex is writing issue eleven now.
So we're going to work on that through
the summer and into the early fall.
And our goal is to release the entire
series in a couple different ways,
but
um one of those ways will be kickstarter
and making the whole the whole uh twelve
issues available um
So yeah,
we have plans to release it on Macroverse,
which is a really great digital platform
that has an amazing comic reader that
they've created.
It's like a one-click reader.
Yeah,
I know you had mentioned wanting to
discuss that real quick.
So if you want to lay out what
that is to everybody right now,
now's the perfect chance before we jump
into talking about the Kickstarter itself.
yeah sure so so macroverse um we we've
been we've been uh working with those guys
for a bunch of years and they have
an app the macroverse app um really
interesting sort of tap story reader um
but then they've also built on their
website
uh an embeddable a truly embeddable comic
reader so with with the link that i
could post anywhere um i probably sent it
to you if you tap on the link
it, it,
it's one click and you are at the
comic.
It's not,
there's no pathway that you have to
follow.
You click the link,
you're at the comic and it says, read,
you click the read button and there's page
one and you start swiping and reading.
So, um, it's very,
very fluid and seamless.
And, um,
the other thing that they're doing is
building, um,
worlds on their site so like dark web
is gonna have uh within the next couple
weeks their own dark web comics page on
there so you'll be able to read panopticon
and digital pools and our other anthology
story um jimmy palmiati has just put his
whole catalog up there that's a big ass
catalog too yeah jimmy it's so good
yeah so good yep um so his whole
catalog is up there in just beaut it's
so worth it just to go go look
at the the the experience there the the
interface um twelve gauges up there and um
yeah and there's you know
It's not my company,
so I can't say too much more,
but they have some other big names that
are... Put them in touch with us.
We would love to have them on to
kind of walk us through what they do.
Yeah, I will.
I'll mention it to them.
I'll send Evan an email tonight.
Yeah,
he's a lot better at describing the
platform than I am, but it's worth...
The link you sent me to the free
issue, is that on the Macroverse?
That's Macroverse.
Okay,
that's down in the description of this
video.
Oh, perfect.
I included that, yeah.
Oh, great.
So anybody that wants to check it out,
it's a one-click reading,
and you can read the first issue of
Panopticon, the first twenty-two pages.
And yeah,
that'll give you kind of a Macroverse
experience.
They also do some really great
badge rewards.
So the more you participate in their
ecosystem, the more perks you get.
And they've got a pretty cool, you know,
proven track record of doing that.
So the more you participate,
the more kind of like perks they throw
your way.
So if you, you know,
worth the check out.
Oh, that's really cool.
But let's jump in and talk about the
Kickstarter and the crowdfunding of this
book.
It's in late pledges currently.
Thankfully, I can still get in on this.
So how has the whole process been for
you for the launch of this book?
And like, just how did,
how do you think the campaign performed
overall?
I mean, I met my goal.
You know, with any new project,
nobody knows who you are.
And so, like,
you have to get out there.
I said it last week.
You got to make them give a shit.
Yeah.
You have to, like...
get them to know who you are what
your what angle you're coming at from how
passionate you are about the project and
uh i think that the campaign did that
pretty well um i feel like i got
a nice foundation base of readers that are
interested and um
they'll get the book in a month or
so in their hands.
The, the, the book is done.
It's, you know, I've started to, um,
do the final layout for the, the,
the printer.
And, um, yeah,
so that's going to be in their hands
pretty quick and late pledges to,
you know,
if you've jumped on a late pledge tonight,
you'd, you'd be part of that,
that group too.
Um, so yeah,
the Kickstarter was a success.
It, it let,
let me raise enough funds to, uh,
to print the books and you know i've
got some conventions coming up in the in
the late summer and fall um and so
i'll be able to have some physical books
for those nice what cons are you going
to be at this summer so uh we're
going to be at um ic three in
in rhode island uh which is an independent
uh comic book convention um
We're going to New York Comic Con,
but we're not tabling or anything.
We're going to have our books in a
book bag and hopefully do some interviews
with some folks and some live stuff.
Hopefully I'll see you there for that one.
would love that man yeah that would be
great i'll i'll you know we'll make a
beeline for you um aiming for that one
this year a couple local to me i'm
also aiming for there's a um i can't
remember the name of it but it's all
indie creators i want to say it's in
georgia this year
i'm aiming for that one as well because
that one's like an industry for
independent comics like that's the one you
want to be at or the one you
want to go to and i'm aiming for
that one this year as well so ic
three is interesting it's uh it it's it's
independent all independent comics and
they do multiple cons in the in the
year so they were in new haven last
year uh i know they were in florida
and they do a couple
versions of this all around the country um
so that i think their next one is
is rhode island yeah i'm i'm trying to
remember the name of it i have it
right here it's this in my uh my
research that i was just doing s sps
i think is the one it is
That's in Georgia?
Yeah.
Let me just make sure for you.
I don't want to give you bad gouges.
Yeah, Small Press Expo.
It's actually going to be in Maryland.
I was off.
So just down the road from you.
And it's September twelfth and thirteenth.
Oh, okay.
But it's pure indie comics and small
press, creator-owned projects, publishers,
cartoonists, Kickstarter creators.
And it's just going to be like where
the bulk of my guests would be.
They should be at that one.
And whether they've been on the show or
not before or would want to be on
the show later,
this is one of those where it's a
big one.
And then immediately the week after that
is Baltimore Comic Con,
the twenty fifth and twenty seventh.
I want to try to get that one
as well.
You write that down.
I haven't been to that one.
So that's two of the big ones that
I'm planning for this year as well as
New York.
And then there's another one down in
Greenville,
South Carolina called SC Comic Con for the
fall.
And it's a one day,
October the twenty fifth.
Hmm.
like a one day yeah me too those
three days sometimes i need a week i'm
so i'm so worn out like because i
end up having to burn pto to go
to these things if it starts on a
friday and i want to be there for
opening so i have to burn like a
day or a day and a half of
pto and then i'm gonna have to take
at least a day maybe two on the
back side of it just to recover yeah
yep i know and to just wash like
scrub myself because that's a lot of
people to be around and covet messed me
up man i still don't like to be
around like large groups of people like
that and especially ones that are already
notorious for not
Yeah.
You know,
they then themselves and putting on
deodorant very well,
which I hate the misconception.
We're not all like that.
People.
I am like one of the cleanly cleanest
people I know.
And I. Yeah.
But let's continue on about these kit
starters and how this promotion went.
So what kind of surprised you during this
whole process of running this Kickstarter?
So I'm guessing this was your very first
Kickstarter for this book, right?
For this book?
Yeah, yeah, digital pools,
we we I think we did five,
we've done five so far for for that.
So you're not a complete rookie when it
comes to the kids.
no this was this was the first one
that that it was just for my solo
project that alex didn't didn't write so
um you know the lion's share of the
work was on me for this one but
um yeah i mean you know no no
real surprises um yeah it was pretty
smooth uh i
I think for my next one,
I'm going to launch the pre-launch
earlier,
maybe as much as three months before to
build up the pre-launch notifications.
I found that the people that...
signed up to be notified on launch um
the conversion rate for those folks was
really really high so that's good because
usually those are the ones that are really
really low yeah no for at least for
this kickstarter it worked great they
everyone who said that they wanted to be
not everyone but um yeah about seventy
percent of the people that said they
wanted to be notified
uh actually pledged and and jumped on the
campaign so to me that was great that's
fantastic dude i love to to hear that
where it it sold itself right like
You put it out there, it sells itself.
And when they actually go back and once
they get that notification,
and that's what's great about Kickstarter.
If you hit that notify me in a
launch,
you're not just getting one notification
from them.
You're probably going to get that
notification for the next three weeks
every other day.
Yeah.
By the way, this launched.
Hey, by the way, this launched.
You haven't made a pledge yet.
Did you still plan to pledge?
No.
So, yeah.
And if it's if it's a project that
you're you're interested in,
that's a great thing because we're all so
busy sometimes.
You know,
sometimes you need like three reminders.
I have missed them,
even though I know I got the notification,
but I was so busy either editing or
something was going on at the office at
work.
Yeah.
And I just like, oh, damn,
I missed it.
Let me let me shoot them a message
real quick and just see if I can't
get in on it.
you know and just be like hey can
i just like zill it to you or
something you just send it to me my
bad dude yeah who's gonna say no to
that yeah because i mean i want the
book i've been excited for the book but
life you know life yeah so
This being, at this point,
your sixth Kickstarter,
and it's cool that you actually helped out
on the other Kickstarters,
because I know artists who are just like,
hey, the writer's on his own on this.
It's cool that you were right there with
him every step of the way with the
Kickstarter.
So that's kind of cool in that you
have that kind of fifty-fifty mind split
on that other project as well.
You didn't just say,
I just do the art for this.
I don't know what you're talking about.
And I always like hearing that when the
artist and the writer
They hold a hundred percent responsibility
themselves.
It's not just, oh, the writers got that.
I don't do that.
You're like, no, I got you.
I'm there with you.
This is our baby.
So it's really cool to hear that and
see that.
But what mistakes do you think new
creators should avoid when getting ready
to either launch their book while it's
launched?
are on the back side of it.
I know this is kind of an open-ended
question,
but I've seen probably every single thing
underneath the sun on these things at this
point.
But what are some of the big ones
that you think people should avoid?
I can only speak about, like,
I don't know if I would put this
into the advice bucket,
but I can just speak
about how I think about things and maybe
it'll be useful to somebody.
But for me,
the books need to be done before the
Kickstarter starts,
or at least they need to be ninety
percent done.
It shouldn't just be able to show that
it's a real thing about to happen,
because I've talked to creators who,
if the Kickstarter didn't play like
fulfill,
that book wasn't going to get made.
So I've seen both sides of that story.
Yeah.
And I've got the results sitting on my
shelves in places.
Yeah.
But no, I,
I a hundred percent agree with you.
I do wish they would be done before
it went live.
And you're just trying to make that money
to justify, you know,
spending that money that you just spent,
but no, I'm sorry.
I didn't mean to interrupt you on that
one, but no, I, I mean,
it's like it,
but it could work for some people.
I just, uh, for me, um,
I'm going to make the comic.
I'm making the comic because I want to
make the comic.
And then for me,
the next step is to get readers and
get it printed and get it out into
the world and have people read it and
get feedback.
I think a mistake would be...
just as an artist, to say,
once I get enough money,
once people pay me,
then I'll make the comic.
That just doesn't connect with me as a
person.
But again, that's just...
I can only speak about it from my
point of view.
I guess that could work for some people.
I'm also in...
know for panopticon i'm writing i'm doing
all of it so i don't need to
pay myself and for alex and my project
it's fifty fifty so um we're you know
alex it's he's not he's not hiring an
artist to draw his thing it's two friends
working together we're collaborating on a
thing that you know we we live and
die by so that's just how i
That's how I roll.
That's, you know, it solves a lot of,
it stops a lot of problems from starting.
And it lets you have a clean conscience
at the end of the day in case
something doesn't go right.
Yeah.
But I've seen both sides of that coin,
and I understand both sides of the coin.
So I'm neither here nor there on that
particular one.
Yeah, if you've got to hire an artist,
then what I'm saying makes no sense.
If that's where your project's at and
that's how it's going,
then what I'm saying doesn't make sense.
But for how I want to operate and
create stuff,
um that's really the only way i know
how to do it so i'm about to
ask you a very important question and i
think it's one of the biggest things when
you're launching a project to have in
place how important is audience building
before launching a campaign huge yeah huge
but yeah like the biggest thing it's and
it's uh honestly it's the it's the reason
why um um you know
this is probably my eighth podcast in the
past couple of months.
Like it's the reason why, um,
I'm out there talking about it, uh, to,
to just,
there's so many people doing so much cool
stuff.
Yeah.
Uh, and you know,
I like to think that I'm one of
them.
So just getting,
getting it out in front of people and,
um, putting it,
putting it out there in front of people,
but, but it,
I don't think Kickstarter is the place to
get readers.
I think Kickstarter is the place to bring
folks.
Be like, you know,
you bring them with you.
Be like, hey,
I'm going to do this thing.
Come on.
And here's where we're going to do it.
You know,
I'd say maybe twenty five percent of the
people that pledged on this past campaign
are
went you know there's analytics in
kickstarter so you can see about it was
only about twenty five maybe thirty
percent of the people just found me on
kickstarter most of them were from social
media and um
digital pools readers and um my local
comic book shop folks there um so that
that's yeah i think kickstarter is a place
where you look pretty darn good number
that twenty to twenty five percent of
discovering it on kickstarter that's still
uh yeah a really good number to just
be discovered on kickstarter yeah yeah i
think so i think that speaks to the
the quality of the of the story that's
a good kickstarter page
when people discover that there had to be
something on that page that made them go
oh let me check this out whether it
was your description of the book the art
do you have a video like yeah you
know all those things like i always tell
people i'm like you need to have the
following things you may not necessarily
need a a video of your comic book
but it sure in the hell doesn't hurt
it and on top of that it better
be a really damn good uh page
the very top of there to sell that
book because that the art and that
description is going to be like what grabs
people and they're going to go what is
this yeah and i think kickstarter people
are smart they they can they if they
get a whiff of inauthenticity or or just
like you know
Maybe I'll make this if you give me
enough money.
I'll see that sometimes on Kickstarter.
Then I think they...
Those campaigns don't really do much,
I don't think.
And I've seen campaigns fail that I
thought were going to be fantastic.
And I've seen some that surprisingly fund
it.
And I'm like...
I don't know how that funded, but okay,
sure.
It's the audience, right?
Yeah.
I just backed one last week that didn't
get funded.
And I was so disappointed.
I really wanted to read this story.
So I emailed the dude.
I was like,
I'm sorry your thing didn't get funded.
It's not because it wasn't cool, dude.
I'm telling you right now,
it looks really great.
It was the front end stuff that he
probably could have took an extra week or
two before launching to build that
audience beforehand.
Every single one that I've seen fell that
I personally have known and followed
They failed on the social media front.
They either front load really well and
then die off somewhere in the middle.
That's a nonstop.
That's start to finish.
If you're not on social media,
pushing your stuff,
maybe even pay for a campaign.
for a week.
Like, hey,
I'm going to push this hard on Instagram
for a week.
I'm going to take fifty bucks,
a hundred bucks,
and I'm going to promote the shit out
of this.
It's going to be in your face.
You're going to have no choice but to
see it.
I did.
Yeah, I did.
You have to.
I mean, you don't have to.
but it doesn't hurt.
And if you can budget it,
then I always recommend it.
If you can push it, push it.
Boost that post on that comic book,
on that Kickstarter campaign,
and let it ride.
Yeah, especially for a new project.
You know,
when you're just building your reader
base,
getting people kind of jazzed about what
you're doing.
Yeah, it's all hands on deck.
The second book is almost done.
I'm
I'm just, you know,
Pages, I mean,
I got eighty five percent of it done.
So I'm going to finish up the summer.
So that's going to be coming out.
Panopticon, the chasm.
So it's volume two that's coming out at
the end of the summer.
You want to talk about that now?
Because I had that like closer to the
end of this.
Oh, yeah.
Sorry.
We can jump to it,
but I want to get through this like
a like a kind of a state of
indie comics.
And it's something I like to discuss with
everybody who comes on.
And it's kind of, you know,
Like,
what has you excited right now about indie
comics?
You know,
that's one of the cool things about
Kickstarter is that people that are
just...
buying the comics and not behind the
scenes.
There's a lot of behind the scenes
communication between the indie comic book
creators that have campaigns going on at
the same time as you.
So, I had a couple folks,
where in my updates,
I would include their books and in their
updates,
they would include just a kind of a
shout out to my book.
It's an awesome community.
Yeah, it really is.
And like, you know,
everyone's trying to help everyone out.
So people may not realize that we're,
we're,
kind of connecting to each other behind
the scenes and helping each other to get
their to get their books out there and
you know every little bit helps um and
they're all just such great great folks
making such interesting stuff the my only
barrier is is money at this point you
know I back the stuff that um that
really speaks to me but um there's there's
no
There's no shortage of good stuff out
there.
It's hard to draw a line sometimes.
And like, I got bills,
but I also want to back this project
over here that's phenomenal.
It's just like,
you got to make that hard decision.
Like, eh, I better pay my electric bill.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And like, you know,
you got to find the project that speaks,
speaks to you at that time.
So they're not, you know,
I'm perfectly comfortable with that.
I, you know,
I feel like my book is,
there's an audience for it.
There's people who like space, sci-fi,
prison, dark, you know, mystery, you know,
mystery box stuff.
So that's who I'm writing the book for,
you know, it's not for everybody.
Yeah.
It, it,
it was god we would all be rolling
in cash right now but what are some
of those the challenges that you see
creators facing right now outside of money
of course that's it that's the easy button
yeah i mean there's just there's a there's
a um there's a lot of there's a
lot of noise out there a lot of
people um looking for eyes on their on
the thing that they're doing um and so
it's
It's easy to get...
It's hard to get yourself out there.
I mean, not impossible.
It just takes work.
And I think that's the biggest obstacle.
And a lot of it's cool stuff, too.
I'm not saying it's bad.
you know not to go too far down
this rabbit hole but the amount of ai
stuff i see of like these little hyper
polished you know beautiful little clips
of animated things and like commercials
and and it you know it's got that
kind of shininess that ai has yeah and
um
When I'm on social media,
when that stuff comes up,
it leaves me a little cold.
I don't like that it's taking up space.
There's no real...
There's no emotion to it.
There's no...
The human touch is missing from it.
And I'm not anti-AI.
I use it all the time.
I think it's a great tool,
but as far as
image generation and video generation um
you know I'll eat my words in five
years because there's gonna they're gonna
find a way to make it authentic but
um I don't know something about it right
now is just uh I don't think no
I mean I'm quite there and I I
always have seen things if it's a tool
that I can use I'm going to use
it a hundred percent
Yeah.
However,
recently it's just been a pain in my
thorn.
Anytime I generate a thumbnail with AI,
somebody has a issue.
I'm like, you guys,
I am literally a content creator.
I generate a thumbnail for clicks.
Clicks lead to you getting clicks.
But hey, if you don't like it, cool.
I'm going to swear off of this stuff
for now and reassess in a few months,
see what the difference is between my
thumbnail styles.
And that's the phase I'm in right now
is, OK,
I won't generate these these thumbnails
just to see what kind of clicks I'm
getting versus with or without.
So I'm hoping I'm proven wrong.
One hundred percent.
I hope that the thumbnails that I'm
generating
you know, on my own,
making them by hand.
That's why I'm asking for all these extra
things all of a sudden.
I really hope those do better than the
AI generated thumbnails.
So we'll see.
But
For now, I'm not going to do them.
It's a social experiment,
just like the Panopticon.
And we'll see how it goes.
Because I, again,
at the end of the day, content creator,
I want to generate clicks for myself and
for the creators on the podcast.
Yeah.
And if AI generated thumbnails related to
the topic of you and your stuff generates
more clicks,
then why would I not use that tool
to generate more clicks for you,
which could lead to more sales,
more follows,
more everything at the end of the day?
Because that's the point.
I generate clicks for you.
That's a great use of that tool,
I think.
It's because it's not – you're not making
–
you're not making artwork,
you're creating marketing and branding for
the thing that you do.
I think that's a perfectly appropriate use
of AI.
I thought so too,
but here lately I've had just one too
many people go, I don't like this.
I'm like, okay, that's cool.
We're all entitled to our opinion.
I will change for now.
However, I'm not changing permanently.
I'm calling it a social experiment, right?
And by all means, I want, you know,
my regular thumbnail that I created in
Canva to do really well,
I wanted to generate clicks and drive
cells and do all these things that my
other thumbnail was doing because I spend
people don't realize I spent more time
generating a perfect thumbnail that I was
proud of,
versus hopping on Canva and creating a
thumbnail in ten to twenty minutes.
It took me longer to create that other
thumbnail than it did this man-made
thumbnail because I want it to be this
spot-on great thing.
But hey...
My two cents is that that's a totally
valid, appropriate way to use it.
I thought so too.
You're not creating original artwork.
You're marketing and branding.
I think that's
I generate clicks for the person on the
podcast.
I'll drive people to the links,
to their Kickstarters,
to their social medias.
That is my job at the end of
the day as a content creator is to
have you on, ask these great questions,
have these great conversations,
and to generate clicks for you.
And I think I've gotten that down to
a pretty good, you know,
I think I'm really good at it.
not tooting my own horn.
I'm not saying like,
that's the narcissist in me talking my ego
talking.
But I may have done this for a
little bit now.
And I have this,
this thing in place where you know,
so but yeah, we'll see.
It's going to be interesting.
I don't care either way.
You know what I'm saying?
I can take ten minutes,
generate a thumbnail in Canva.
I could take an hour,
hour and a half and generate this great,
what I think is this great, you know,
AI generated thumbnail to generate clips.
Doesn't matter to me either way.
As long as the clips are happening and
books are getting funded and people are
wanting to come back on the podcast to
talk about their projects.
That's all I care about at the end
of the day.
yeah no i'm with you sorry i went
off on a tangent there but yeah but
um one more for you what advice would
you give creators trying to build an
audience right now gosh i'm right in the
middle of it so um uh i i
mean
like reaching out to everybody uh that
that you can that you can find um
and you know get in get in front
of people and talk about your project uh
if you don't care enough to do that,
then it's not going to,
it's not going to really go anywhere.
You know, I'm like,
I'm very proud of Panopticon.
It's a, it's a,
it was a year long project and I
just genuinely really want people to read
it and, you know,
provide some entertainment for folks and,
you know,
get that sort of feedback loop of, of,
people getting invested in your project
and looking interested in the next thing
you create.
Just saying yes,
like saying yes to any sort of opportunity
you want.
Artists sometimes have a hard time
putting themselves out there.
They want to make the thing.
I'm guilty of this too.
They want to make the thing.
And then just the fact that it exists,
people are going to flock to you and
it just not,
that's not how the world works.
Uh, so I made the thing,
I'm really proud of it.
And, um, you know, reader by reader,
I'm going to, I'm going to build,
build a reader base.
You know, I think,
I think if they read it,
they're going to want to read the next
one.
So, um,
That's the whole goal, right,
is if there's a plan for more down
the road,
that first one has to leave that last
impression and make that impact on them to
go, hey, man, when's that next one coming?
And that next one is called Panopticon,
the Chasm.
Yes.
And that is nearing completion,
if I'm not wrong.
You are right.
What can readers expect?
Yes.
Any breadcrumbs there for us?
Yeah, so this Panopticon, the first one,
takes place in a single chamber.
I actually created a three-D model
as i was writing it of the prison
so there's a three d model on my
ipad um and i created the cells i
created the tower i created the um the
the pool the tables everything and that's
how i
uh, composed the scenes.
I just moved this three D model around
and I would use those.
I take a shot and use those as
reference.
So all the spaces and distances in the
comic, if, if you read it with that,
through that lens are accurate,
they're actually like, that's,
it's a hundred feet away in, you know,
yeah, it's like a real, uh,
it's a real space and i hope hopefully
that comes across but but panopticon only
takes place in this single single
chambered prison we don't see outside of
it for the entire um story uh that
was actually a question i was going to
ask you earlier but then i wanted to
see it for myself actually okay yeah
that's the only reason i didn't ask that
question earlier is i had it on here
but then i was like you know what
i'm going to get the book and i
just want to see for myself
Oh, that's cool, yeah.
I kind of envisioned it like a play.
You know how a play just takes place
on a stage?
As I was making this three-D model,
I was like, this is my stage,
and this is where this Eighty-Eight Pages
is going to take place.
Panopticon, The Chasm, the lens opens up,
we see beyond the walls of the prison,
and we understand that the prisoners have
a bigger...
there's a bigger story attached to who
they really are.
So again,
I don't want to give too much away,
but everything is not as it seems.
Everyone is not as they seem.
And there is a larger story.
The lens opens up and we...
we learn more about who they are as
people and then this is a trilogy they're
I'm starting the the third ADA page story
that's going to wrap it all up I'm
going to start that this fall and in
the the tagline that I have for that
is that um you know search out search
search out your gods
and see what comes in their place i'm
still working on it but yeah um where
you're going with it though yeah where
you're going and i'm like i like this
i like this yeah so the lens just
keeps getting bigger and bigger and by the
end of this trilogy we'll see actually
what's going on um dude that's i love
stories like that you know it's like um
did you did you see uh the the
star wars um
And or?
Yeah.
Probably my favorite one.
Me too.
I just couldn't say enough about that.
But you know at the end where we
understand that the prisoners are actually
building...
uh the death star they're building pieces
of the death star am i getting that
right yeah that that twist that had such
an impact on me and there's some of
that in this story that that feeling of
like oh that's there's a whole bigger
world out there that we i was gonna
go with the parfait line from shrek and
donkey talk because parfaits also have
layers oh yeah yeah i'm an onion onions
have layers he's like so do parfaits
So because you're starting in the middle
and you're kind of like you're working
your way out on it.
Yeah.
Yeah, that's right.
So they announced Shrek five.
OK,
so that came to my head all of
a sudden.
I'm going to use that actually.
Yeah,
that's that's the story is like a parfait.
And I love it.
If I contribute anything,
it's the story is like a parfait.
That's it.
Next podcast.
Dude, that's phenomenal.
I love it, dude.
But let everybody know where they can find
the Panopticon Dark Web Comets and Matt
Stevens.
Okay, so I have a great website,
panopticoncomic.com.
It's a cool website.
Yeah, you can... There's some...
Well, you can buy the book.
You can head over to Kickstarter and buy
the book.
You can also make an inmate.
I made an inmate creator.
And so you can pick a race.
You can pick features and build out this
character.
So it'll be kind of a collaboration
between me,
who made all the individual pieces,
and you, who makes this inmate.
And the inmate is going to be...
a previous prisoner from the Panopticon
that has previously been in the prison.
So I'm hoping to build out eventually
hundreds of these former prisoners,
and I think there will be all sorts
of interesting ways to include some of
them in the story moving forward.
That would be so cool.
Yeah.
You know, after you make it,
you can save it down to your computer
as a file.
And in that file,
there's a little token which will let you
redeem certain badges and perks on
Macroverse.
So you'll be able to scan in this
tokenized ID inmate and get all sorts of
kind of cool perks.
um perks and i did some of that
on the kickstarter too where people were
able to make a character um and redeem
it for extra stuff on the on the
kickstarter so um panopticoncomic.com and
then our imprint is the darkwebcomics.com
and there you can find information about
the digital pools and panopticon and our
other story ghost division which is um
just a
idea right now but alex is working on
the story i like the name though yeah
it's like if it's what i'm thinking about
that would be like really cool
So Ghost Division is,
I'll just give you the twenty five cent
version of it.
In World War Two,
there was an actual Ghost Division,
which was an American unit that their job
was to create disinformation.
So they they had
audio things that they would do they had
a big they had big blow up tanks
uh that they would position um and they
were just trying to trick the enemy into
thinking things were happening that
weren't um so it was all sort of
subterfuge and psyops psyops yeah so
alex's story takes that basic idea and
puts that puts it in the in the
far future and imagines what a um
imagined what a ghost vision would be like
in in the far future what sort of
tools they might be using for their their
psyops so super excited to get started on
that that's really cool yeah i was almost
right i was thinking like not necessarily
on the military side but maybe on the
um like cop side of things only instead
of it being normal cops they were like
para military cops you know like ghost
like para oh yeah yeah i'm like but
hey that's cool too listen alex is gonna
watch this so i don't know he might
he might take some of that hey no
cool go for it man go for it
but uh matt
thank you for joining us tonight and i
want to officially welcome you to the
council of nerds uh for everyone watching
be sure to check out panopticon support
late pledges campaign read issue one for
free right now all those links are down
in the description of this video as always
make sure you follow panopticon and dark
web comments
Again,
all links are available in the description
below.
Matt, again,
thank you so much for joining us on
a Thursday evening and sharing the
Panopticon with us.
And ladies and gentlemen, with that,
the council is adjourned.
And as always,
this has been the USDM Podcast,
where indie comments come to life.
Y'all be safe,
and if you're getting a long weekend,
definitely be safe out there.
man.