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USDN Podcast is a cinematic indie comics interview series hosted by the USDN_Chairman and the Council of Nerds spotlighting the creators, storytellers, and worldbuilders shaping the future of independent comics.
Each episode dives beyond headlines into the real journeys behind the books from Kickstarter launches and creative struggles to the philosophies driving today’s indie storytelling movement.
This isn’t about rumors or recycled news.
It’s about the people creating the worlds.
Through in-depth conversations, creator spotlights, and crowdfunding discussions, USDN explores:
• The rise of indie comics
• The business of crowdfunding
• The art of worldbuilding
• The realities of independent storytelling
USDN is where indie comics come to life for the fans, by the creators, and powered by the community.
You are listening to the USDN on the
DFPN.
Thanks for watching!
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 what does it actually take
to build an entire fantasy universe as an
indie comic creator not just one issue but
Not just one arc, a full world.
Characters, mythology, magic systems,
emotional arcs, visual identity,
all built from the ground up without a
major publisher pushing you.
Tonight, we're sitting down with David,
creator of Narita,
a creator-owned fantasy comic series
blended folklore, survival, adventure,
and world building into a long-form
series.
indie comic epic.
From Kickstarter to building a planned
nine-part fantasy saga,
we're diving deep into the realities of
creating indie fantasy comics in today's
industry.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the Council of Nerds is now in session.
David, welcome to the USDN.
Hey, how's it going?
I'm stoked to be here.
I was going to attempt to pronounce your
last name,
but I did not want to embarrass myself.
My last name is pronounced Lujan.
Lujan.
Yeah.
Just like how we have Jamie,
they have Jaime in South America.
Gotcha.
I should have realized that because I got
a friend named Jamie and I got a
friend named Jaime.
Yeah.
So I'll say Jamie.
He'll go, it's Jaime.
I'm like, I'm talking to the other guy.
Yeah.
He's like, oh, yeah, that's right.
I forget.
I'm like, yeah, you forget.
But David,
for everybody meeting you for the first
time,
How did you get into storytelling?
And just give us a little bit more
of your background.
Well, let's see.
I went to art school for printmaking way
back in the day.
And I was always getting chastised by my
art professors and teachers for saying
that
looked like i was just drawing comic books
it didn't look like i was really working
on real art highbrow art or whatever yeah
uh and so like the lady that is
highbrow art okay um yeah exactly you know
but i'd be like uh you know in
lithography class doing a five color print
printing off a giant stone with the
printing press and whole thing but it's a
picture of weapon x ripping through a
bunch of bad guys and there's just blood
everywhere
And my professor's like,
that looks like Wolverine.
I was like, that's Weapon X.
Please get it straight.
And so I've always been interested in
comic books and illustration.
The idea of telling stories kind of came
a little bit later, I guess,
around twenty nineteen, twenty twenty.
I decided to really delve into writing
stories and from that.
A lot of my friends who read my
stories were like, hey,
these read like comic books and you can
draw better than you can write.
So you should probably draw these and try
to sell them to anyone.
Hey,
there's a good reason why comic books only
have twenty eight pages, right?
Exactly.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, yeah,
that's kind of how that's how I came
to it.
And I just kind of dove in and
figured, hey, we'll give it a shot.
So the books you sent me were are
very fantasy heavy.
Were you always more drawn toward that
genre of storytelling?
no not really actually um i think it's
it's more uh for me it's it's kind
of a uh a meditation on on educating
myself because i don't know a lot about
i didn't know anything about mermaids or
fairies or yeah anything like that and a
friend gave me a book that by thomas
keitley called uh fairies elves and other
little people and it's like an
encyclopedia yeah yeah i don't know if
you've read part of it or
Yeah.
Brothers Grimm fairytale kind of stuff,
but it reads like nonfiction.
And so it was excellent,
excellent to read on the toilet when
you're just hanging out.
Yeah.
A lot of those reading material.
Absolutely.
So a lot of those stories really,
you know,
caught my attention and were like, wow,
this is an amazing,
just the short little story arc.
I could,
I was starting to visualize it in my
mind.
Like, what would it look like?
What's you know,
And so I took a whole bunch of
that and I said, well,
I want to make a story out of
this.
I don't know anything about it.
So I did a little bit of research
and kind of made my own thing out
of it.
turned out really well.
I've gotten to read the first three issues
of Yuriko and Narita,
and I absolutely love both.
You were giving me some BTS,
if you will,
some behind the scenes of Yuriko because I
love the story,
but I had some confusion on it.
I know you're going to be releasing a
novella of that one later on.
I'm really looking forward to that because
that would be a phenomenal read for that
story.
But were there any creators,
comics or films or games that kind of
shaped your imagination early on that kind
of led you down this path?
Oh, yeah, for sure.
So Saga with Fiona Staples and Brian K.
Vaughn, the art style, when I saw that,
I was like, this is really awesome.
And I instantly started picking and
choosing things that I really liked from
the way it was put together to the
way the pacing of the story to the
episodic nature of it.
The cliffhangers that are created and all
of that stuff.
Before that, Why the Last Man,
I read a little bit of,
but I never got super heavy into it.
That one was really good, too.
I don't think the TV series really did
it justice.
No, it didn't.
I wanted it to so bad.
I was like,
I'm going to watch it no matter what.
And then they canceled it halfway through.
I'm like, what?
This is crazy.
But that is what it is.
I've always been a big fan of Mark
Miller's stuff, Frank Miller's stuff.
I think my kind of Holy Grail,
I have this...
trifecta.
That's my top three of all time comic
book.
Yeah.
Uh,
Batman year one with David Mazzucchelli
and Frank Miller.
Um, uh, Akira by Katsuhiro Otomo and, uh,
um,
Nashka and the Valley of the Wind by
Miyazaki.
And those, those three, I can.
Amazing.
Yeah.
I can always go back to them and
find different ways to pace a story,
how to set up a page, how to,
all that kind of you know what i
mean so yeah no saga is really good
and if you want another one's very
episodic like that like the really good
story arts is monstrous is oh yeah really
good and fantastic writer and art team on
that one as well and i i do
tend to like those i didn't get into
saga right away i wasn't collecting when
it first started so i've been going back
and getting the um the trade paper best
for that one
And just whenever I'm like,
it's on the shelf.
He's having a sale.
Let me go ahead and grab the next
volume of that.
Yeah.
They're on what?
Issue.
I don't know where something like that.
I don't know where they are now.
Yeah.
They put out a compendium not that long
ago.
And I was like, whoa,
I didn't realize it made it that far.
You know?
Yeah.
Well, I mean,
now they're dropping trade paperbacks
after like four or five issues.
Yeah.
It just depends on the publisher and the
writer and when they want to do it.
You begin your journey as an artist first,
correct?
Then the storytelling came after the fact.
Which one of those aspects do you really
find yourself drawn more to?
I actually really, really enjoy writing.
I enjoy setting things up and pacing
things and
I feel like a puppet master when I'm
doing that.
It's fun when I'm drawing the thing that
I wrote because then I get to manipulate
myself, if that makes any sense at all.
I really actually enjoy the writing aspect
of it.
It also goes really fast for me because
I have all the cheat codes.
I know exactly what it's going to look
like.
I know exactly what it's going to
how to illustrate the thing that I'm
writing so I don't have to spend a
ton of time trying to expound on what
the imagery is that I'm writing on the
page for myself.
I've never written a script for somebody
else to draw.
So I don't know what that would be
like.
And for anybody out there wondering,
he does do the art and the story,
correct?
Yes, for both of these theories.
I've done artwork for other people,
a bunch of other comic books.
And that's a whole different beast.
But for these two, Yuriko and Narita,
yeah, I wrote them and illustrated them.
Yeah.
So, I mean,
you have that luxury of not having to
pay anybody but yourself.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, exactly.
All us normal writers are always jealous
of the writers who can do both.
My wife likes it when I'm drawing for
other people instead of drawing for myself
because my comics don't sell as well as
other people's comics do.
It's wild, right?
Yeah.
Was there something in particular that
pushed you toward indie comics
specifically?
Man,
I didn't really know anything about indie
comics.
Again,
it was this whole process of discovering
something new and learning about it.
I came across a
sort of consortium, you could say,
of indie comic creators called Lesser
Known Comics.
Real nice guys.
And I said, hey,
you guys say that you're a publisher.
Would you publish my comic book?
And they're like, sure.
I mean,
it turns out it's a bunch of knuckleheads
just like me.
And we were all kind of bouncing ideas
off each other.
It's always a bunch of knuckleheads, man.
Exactly.
And that was kind of me cutting my
teeth on what the indie comic world is.
And it's great because it's so much freer
than working with publishers,
which I've worked with some publishers
before.
And that's a thing.
But it's not the same thing as the
community of working with or just being
involved in the indie comic.
So did you ever think you would chase
the mainstream?
Or were you like,
once you learned about indie comics,
were you like, this is for me?
And you were like,
I'm just not going to chase the
mainstream?
Honestly, I just haven't had.
time to chase the mainstream because i've
been so busy um like as soon as
i put out yuriko uh i got asked
to draw comic books by other people and
i was like whoa people want to pay
me to draw time traveling ninjas yeah oh
okay so yeah i started working on stuff
can you say no to time traveling ninjas
you just can't say no to that yeah
exactly yeah i'm like that sounds pretty
cool you know
uh, interdimensional, like, uh, uh,
witches living in new Orleans,
just like fun stuff.
I'm like, ah, how can I say no?
And these people are willing to pay me
to do it.
Uh, so I,
I think that I actually do want to,
at some point in time,
submit some of my pages to whatever the
big two or image comments to say, Hey,
yeah.
I don't know.
I don't know what that's like.
I'd like that experience.
Their website will tell you exactly what
it is that they want.
They want to see press kits.
That's the biggest reason why I remember
before we went live,
we were talking about press kits.
Press kits, written pages, colored pages,
your ink stage.
They want to see a little bit of
everything depending on the publisher.
If you go to...
any of the big places,
there's a link on their site that will
walk you through the process.
Yeah, and like I said,
I really haven't had time because I've
been so busy working on stuff.
That's never a bad thing, right?
Exactly, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I don't know if it can get any
better than this.
The only thing that I could see is
in lieu of playing the game, right,
If I somehow ended up being able to
work on a portion of a part of
Absolute Batman,
and that was in my credit,
all of a sudden when you go to
Comic-Con,
then suddenly people want to come to your
table.
They're like, oh,
you also draw naked vampires?
That's cool.
You know what I mean?
Everybody wants a piece of Absolute Batman
in the Absolute Universe,
and I'm just over here like, meh.
Yeah, I haven't read any of it actually.
There's been certain covers from artists
that I like in particularly that I'm like,
yeah,
I'm going to grab that cover and that's
it.
Yeah.
I'll put it like this.
Issue twenty of absolute Batman just came
out.
They've already released, I think,
one or two trade paperbacks for it.
And I'm just like.
I love the concept of what they're doing
with the absolute universe.
So more power to them.
It's probably.
made DC more money than any of their
other properties has over the last five
years.
So more power to them.
But let's dive in and talk about Narita.
That's the latest book that you just
released.
Can you tell everybody what that book is
about?
Because I really enjoyed this book.
Narita centers around a young mermaid who
gets trapped on land.
She loses her mermaid's cloak or silk,
if you will.
I use all of the mermaid kind of
lore and mythology very loosely in this
story.
She loses her mermaid's cloak,
which means she cannot return home unto
the sea.
So she's searching for it,
and she ends up getting embroiled with the
warring kingdoms of Ned very, very fast,
and things go pear-shaped,
out of control pretty quickly.
Really freaking quickly.
I was, like,
blown away by issue one because everything
was, like, boom, boom,
and she was in the shit.
I was like, oh, wow, that was really,
really fast.
And then it paced out really well after
that.
I was like, all right, yeah,
I like this.
Because it's one of those where...
It felt like it was too much,
too fast in the beginning,
but then it works itself out so well.
I'm like, I like that.
Yeah, that's kind of why I wanted to.
I'm aiming for nine issues,
and I hope that everything lines up.
It's kind of like when you're writing a
script for a floppy,
and you want it to be twenty-two pages
long.
But it ends up being twenty three pages.
And you're like, oh,
that's because I'm a crappy writer.
I could have if I had just trimmed
the fat just enough.
It should be able to get it down
to twenty two.
You know what I mean?
So even now,
like twenty two pages doesn't feel like
like most books today feel like they're
either twenty eight or thirty two.
And I'm just like and they're charging you
for it.
That's for sure.
Five ninety nine issue for most books
today,
even the ones with only twenty two pages.
So.
Yeah, it's getting to be a hard business.
But where did this original concept for
Narita come from?
It came from that, well,
it partly came from those fairy tales that
I was telling you about with Thomas and
Kylie and all those collected stories from
all over the mermaid diaspora.
Partly the concept kind of came from that.
But then at some point in time,
I was hanging out with my kid.
She was like,
she had to have been like eight, maybe.
She's seven, she's seventeen now.
Hanging out with my kid and we were
drawing at the kitchen table and I just
drew this tiny little woman and she was
hanging out with this big, huge cat.
And I was like,
is the cat big or is the lady
just small?
And so I just asked my kid.
She was like, the lady's small.
And I was like, okay, cool.
And then I had to kind of say,
well, how and why?
Like what, how did this person,
and who is this person?
And then I said, oh,
what if she's a mermaid?
That'd be cool.
You know,
like so I started writing to this concept
that I just kind of it plopped out
of my head as that imagery.
Yeah.
And then I tried to make the puzzle
fit the image that I had created.
Now, that's really cool.
And that actually answered the next
question.
It's like kind of how did she end
up being trapped on land?
And you've already discussed that.
Is there any particular theme that you
were aiming for at the core of this
story when you, I mean,
I know you just said you started with,
you know,
just an idea with your daughter at the
time.
But is there like a common core there
that you, or theme rather,
that you wanted to hit at the core
of the story?
Yeah.
I think that what I really want to
do is to tell a story about self-discovery
and a story about a person who starts
in one place and ends up completely
different.
Because when I started writing it,
I was reading, you know,
a lot of comic books that I had
from the nineties in my collection or
whatever.
And you got Wildcats and you got Wolverine
and you got, you know,
even like Hellboy and stuff like that.
And a lot of times the characters,
not so much with Hellboy,
but with the other comic books,
the characters are kind of already
completely defined.
You know what I mean?
Spartan, the leader of the Wildcats,
is Spartan, the leader of the Wildcats.
You don't get to see him develop as
a person or as a character and then
change for better or worse, right?
Or be affected by everything that's around
him.
So I really wanted to write a story
centering around a character that starts
maybe sort of naive and then changes as
she goes, learns things about the world,
but also learns things about herself as
she moves through.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
No, I'm digging it, man.
I really enjoy just that folklore of it
and kind of how she is like a
normal human being, or not human being,
but mermaid.
And then she gets shrunken down.
a really cool way of like I know
you read the the fantasy like the the
monsters and the fairies and the mermaids
like the basically it's a encyclopedia of
that stuff right and it's written like
it's non-fiction but written as I'm sorry
it's fiction but it's written as it's
non-fiction and
And you really are hitting the themes of
that book so well with like,
there's this whole other tiny universe in
our universe.
And I thought that was just like the
coolest concept with,
and then you had the Falcon and the
cat and the native American tribe.
That was also a small,
you had a goblin.
I think it was a goblin, right?
Yeah,
the little nod who lives in the farmer's
shack.
Yeah,
I thought all those things were just these
cool little epic fantasy thing,
but it's set into our world.
Yeah.
I was like, this is so cool.
Do you find...
We're sitting here talking about all these
really cool themes,
but
How did you balance like, like,
how did you come to it?
Like,
as we mentioned that it was a very
action packed in issue one,
not to a point where it was overwhelming,
but just like it starts with the bang
and it kind of then it gets to
this really nice pace and are like,
how did you find like the balance between
the fantasy of it and the emotional
storytelling of it?
Because there is a very emotional story
being told here with the mermaid.
Uh, that's a good question.
Um, I, I think, uh,
I'm a really big fan of films like,
uh,
pulp fiction is the first thing that comes
to mind where you kind of get dropped
into this world and you don't really know
what's going on.
Um, it's disorienting.
It's, uh,
but then you start to discover things and
you start realizing that there are max
backstories to all these characters and
they behave the way they behave.
because x y and z happened to them
at some point yeah and those slow burn
reveals or non-reveals where you have no
idea why so-and-so acted the way he did
or she did um and those things kind
of keep you guessing and keep you
interested in the story i i think that
uh i don't know i've just been in
my mind working on these characters that
just live in my head
What their backstory is,
why they're there,
how they ended up there,
what their reactions are to stuff or why
their reactions would be that way.
And then don't tell you any of that.
They just do the thing that they do.
And they have a backstory,
but you don't know why.
But you do it in a way where
you can do the context clues and kind
of see where the character is coming from.
Because there's a witch and there's these
other characters that are starting to show
up in issue three.
And you're like, oh,
that's kind of interesting.
Who's he talking about and what's he
talking about?
Yeah, with the cat and his sister.
And that hints at,
I was telling my friend,
I showed that comic book to my friend,
and he was like,
what's the deal with the whole cat?
Why do cats hate fairies?
I was like, oh,
it's because of the great cat fairy wars,
duh.
he's like are we gonna see the great
cat fairy wars i was like no but
they're gonna be alluded to he's like is
that gonna be like another series that you
do i was like man if i could
get this one done yeah you know i'm
gonna be like yeah but yeah it's very
well put together very well paced the way
you're introducing the characters as you
get into later issues is very well done
and you're like
You can introduce characters and just not
do anything with them or you know they're
going to become a factor later.
But the way you introduced those
characters,
you gave us enough context there to
understand what this character is going to
be to the story.
And I think a lot of writers in
general,
they will do that and you lose the
reader if you don't give us a little...
at least with a comic book you know
you can give the contest clues through the
art of the story and i thought you
did a very good job of of doing
that so i i applaud because again i
was captivated like the entire story that
i've gotten to read so far but um
so nine parts man that's a very very
ambitious storytelling there what yeah
how'd you get to the nine
Uh, I flipped a coin.
No.
Yeah.
Somebody was asking me,
this was before I really knew what the
heck was going on.
And I like had this whole,
the whole thing plot,
the whole thing's plotted out basically.
Like I have the whole arc ready to
go.
Um, and I was like, Oh,
I think I can do this in like
nine issues probably after I had written
the first issue.
Cause I said, okay,
the first issue took this much of the
story.
And then from there,
if I do that much per issue,
it'll take about nine issues.
And a friend later was like, you know,
publishers really want to just see a
three-issue story arc.
And anything beyond that,
they're going to be like,
maybe it won't sell,
so we're not going to do that.
Maybe a four-issue story arc.
Five is definitely pushing it.
They have to have a lot of trust
in you and your writing and your art.
I didn't know that at the time.
There's a lot of things I didn't know
about writing comics when I first started.
So I've learned...
so much since then i'm still kind of
stuck on the nine number because it's to
this round number uh i don't know it
just feels good yeah i mean i i
know i understand where he was coming from
on that they like in my head a
good trade paperback is four to five
issues and then when you land on a
nine i'm like
There's going to be an odd TPB out
there at some point.
I think I wanted to select it as
a... Five stories and four stories.
Yeah, well, you know,
the first issue was like thirty-two pages
or thirty-six pages.
Yeah, it was... It was a tricky boy.
I spared no expense.
I was using... There was a lot of
silent panels and a lot of big panels
on the page.
Yeah.
And you don't have to, if the,
and they, you know, and I,
I go back to this almost every episode
of the show that I do here is
the art should tell your story in the
words should amplify your art.
And that's how it is.
That's how a good comic book works.
The art will tell your story.
Words just help it along.
They fill in the parts where the art
can't tell the story, right?
Yeah, yeah.
So it's done very well.
Like, you did it very well,
and it's one of those where you don't
need the words.
Like, you really don't.
You can follow this story without the
words and kind of figure out what is
going on, especially issue one.
Definitely issue one, you could do that.
But, yeah, nine – fuck it.
Let's roll with nine, man.
I'm with you.
I'm with you on it.
Well, it's also – it's a weird size,
too.
It's kind of a square shape.
So I'm thinking if I do a whole
collected graphic novel of it where it's
just a chunky donkey,
it's going to be like this weird square
little block,
and I'm really excited about that for some
reason, like a weird-shaped book.
Yeah, like –
collected edition of vampire hunter d the
manga is that way yeah and to me
it works i like it like that like
yeah i don't know like there's something
about weird shaped books like that that
are kind of like
You're like, I'm not going to like that.
But then you get it and you really
like it for some reason.
It's just like,
it's something cool and unique to sit on
the shelf or on your desk.
It makes people ask questions.
It doesn't fit in your normal,
like all my comic books,
the rest of my comic books are normal
comic book size.
And then I have these two comics that
are smaller.
And I'm like, hey,
why did I do that to myself?
I mean,
there is a reason why I did it,
but you know.
So did you already know, like,
I know you said you had it mapped
out,
but did you have the ending already
planned?
Like,
do you have an ending already before you
really started writing this story down?
Yeah, absolutely.
Okay.
Okay.
Yeah, so I have the ending,
and I have certain plot points.
And so I write to those plot points.
I'm like, OK,
this and this need to happen here.
This needs to happen by here.
This needs to happen by here.
And then I'll whittle it down and refine
it.
And that's how I get the mini arcs
of each issue
all of that stuff but yeah i definitely
have an ending for that and for yuriko
so okay no that that that's we could
really spend like a lot of time talking
about yuriko if we wanted to but we're
going to focus on the reader because
honestly you come back later and we can
talk about yuriko if you want to because
i really like we hashed out some like
some some good like plot holes earlier and
it was fun like yeah yeah but
much planning did you put into it going
into it you know because this is really
long form storytelling at its best like
you talking about for narita yeah yeah for
narita uh i've i did a did a
uh like a ten page mini comic of
this first uh that focused on her being
tiny and the cat being big and they're
cruising around hunting
like hunting birds,
trying to get her mermaid's cloak back.
And it was my first attempt at like
turning it into a comic book format.
And man, I just,
I was just winging it.
I had my big old pieces of bristleboard
and I was like, okay,
this page is going to look like blah,
blah, blah, blah.
And I didn't plot it out.
I didn't script it.
I didn't do anything.
And it was just not that good.
And so from there, I backtracked.
And I started doing a lot of research.
What do other people's scripts look like?
How do you translate that from this script
for Daredevil to the page?
How did it get from the script to
the page?
What did he do?
Okay, interesting.
And so then I decided...
okay let me redo this so i re
i basically rebooted the series and i've
got like five or six issues completely
finished yeah that uh no one's ever seen
or one person has seen because he hit
me up before i ever did a kickstarter
before i ever printed anything and he was
like if you just send me xerox copy
copies of this i'll pay you for them
and i was like oh uh okay
So some dude just Venmo'd me some money
and I just sent him some copies of
these books and they were tiny.
They were like itty bitty, you know?
Yeah.
And he's the only person that has them.
I don't even think I have copies of
those original books anymore.
That's actually kind of cool that there's
that one, that one out there like that.
But no,
it like when I first started writing down,
like actually putting pin to actual paper
on the comic book that I plan to
write later,
It was like,
I have no idea what I'm doing.
I'm just jotting down all my ideas and
kind of things I want to do in
the story.
I still don't have a whole lot of
the names plotted out yet of what I
want to name certain characters.
I know what the characters are.
I just don't know names for those
characters yet.
And it's one of those where I had
no real idea like you.
I don't know what to do for it.
I don't know how scripts work.
I don't know any of that.
So I was like,
I finally got my hands on one.
You know,
you can Google anything or you can go
to Reddit and get anything.
And as I'm reading it, I'm like,
it's basically almost like a movie script,
right?
Yeah, like a screenplay.
Yeah, like a screenplay.
And I was like, oh, shit.
I'm like, all right, cool.
I just got to be as descriptive as
possible and give all the details I want
and just basically word for word
regurgitate what's in my head into a paper
in a chronological order that makes sense.
then give it to my artist who can
then like hey dude we're doing too much
let's start you know hammering out certain
things
And, but no,
it is really cool learning about all that.
So I know exactly how you feel when
it felt like when you figure it out
for the first time, like, oh shit,
that's what this actually looks like.
That's how it goes from here to here
to the shelf.
And it's like this really cool process.
Like some people skip some steps in
between.
And I think that's kind of cool too.
Like everybody does something a little bit
differently and everybody's going to give
you almost a different,
the a different answer that's exactly the
same they just do it a little differently
you know yeah and i still think that's
one of the coolest things out there and
um so we were just talking about the
evolution of the story like how much has
actually changed from when you first sit
down with the idea of this story to
where it is now uh
Because the concept still sounds like it's
the same,
but the story has probably kind of morphed
itself.
Yeah, I had no clear villain, really.
I had no clear reason for the villain
to be behaving the way he did.
I had no reason for her mermaid's cloak
to get stolen.
I had nothing to go on.
None of it made any sense.
So it's morphed a lot.
I came up with all those reasons.
yeah right i came up with all of
that stuff and all the impetus for people
and all the backstory and all the drama
and all that kind of stuff how much
of that i'm going to put into the
story that you the viewer gets to read
is to be determined right yeah because i
feel like sometimes people don't need
an explanation you know then you end up
in the star wars episode three type
situation and you're like dude you're just
telling me what you did why did you
do that just do the thing you know
so i'm that's what i'm avoiding right i'm
avoiding current lucas films and trying to
be more uh more along the lines of
a curacao yeah people have motivations and
impetus that are maybe beyond the viewer
and never really explained
Yeah.
And it's got multiple antagonists in this
story and some die off really quickly.
Some you can tell are going to be
there for a while.
And that's what I really enjoyed when I
read those three issues is you can kind
of be like like when you when you
first meet the first antagonist.
who originally stole the cloak, right?
You're like,
this little fucking weasel is going to get
killed.
Like, you just kind of know, like,
this dude is going to get killed,
and sure as shit, right?
Yeah, yeah.
But then there's the other ones that kind
of come up, where they're meant to be,
they're not the actual antagonists,
but they're the antagonists of the moment,
right?
And you kind of get that feeling like,
Yeah, this is, like, this may become,
like, antagonist, you know,
rather than being the antagonist right
now.
So you can kind of see how characters
are going to, like, do their thing,
but you don't really, like,
it's not as obvious.
Yeah.
So you actually have to use some reasoning
and some actual thinking to kind of be
like, oh, okay,
I can kind of see where this is
going.
I really like the idea in writing to
be able to manipulate characters where
some characters are not just all good and
characters are not all bad.
So there might be something unexpected,
something that is a really terrible idea
to do.
It's like, no, please don't do that.
Oh, God.
But that's something that adds tension to
the story.
Or
somebody that you think is is you know
altruistic and a good person or a good
character you know like their
personalities heroic and all that stuff
they might not they might have their own
self-interests that maybe they're that are
out of their control or they've got
hang-ups from the past or something like i
said the cat fairy war like you think
this cat is helping her out
But is he really helping her out?
Is he her friend or is he just
trying to trade her for something that he
wants and then he's just going to eat
her later?
You don't really know because nobody
really understands cats, dude.
Cats will...
If I died right now and my cat
was here, he'd fucking eat my face.
All three of them.
Would not hesitate.
Would not hesitate.
No.
I know exactly how you feel about cats
because I got three of them and yeah.
I fall down and they run over to
freaking laugh at you.
Yeah.
They're like, is he dead yet?
Can we eat his face yet?
Leave me alone.
Stop.
They intentionally run under my feet as
I'm trying to walk down the stairs.
I'm like, oh,
you're just trying to expedite this
process.
I see what we're doing here.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But what do you think, like,
what's the hardest part of maintaining
that continuity and the momentum of the
story?
Um...
it is actually a little bit difficult when
you're dealing with something that's just
large right it's not just the one shot
it's not a three three issue arc um
and it's kind of a lot to take
on you know it's not akira right it's
not thousands of pages but yeah it's gonna
be quite quite a hundred maybe two hundred
pages right when it's done that's a lot
of pages containing the continuity
the way that I try and trying to
do it is to make everything connect.
Like it's a spider's web and everything
that happens happens for a reason.
And every character who does something is
going to mean something later on.
It's going to be an important thing later
on, either for your emotion,
the emotional impact is something that
happens or, uh, it,
it's going to affect the outcome.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
So what's up part-time comments.
Thanks for stopping through.
We appreciate you stopping through and
giving this a listen.
So I know I just asked you what
the hardest part about maintaining
continuity and momentum is,
but let's turn it the other way.
How difficult it is on you to emotionally
to stay committed to such a massive
project.
And damn, I hope you do trust me.
I need that next issue, man.
Yeah.
I mean, so Narita is like my flagship.
This is my baby, right?
I mean,
that's what I named my Instagram after.
All of my handles on social media are
based on this.
So I'm really invested in making it as
awesome as I can and sticking with it
to the end.
And who knows, maybe doing
other sub stories based out of it right
you know so there's a lot of things
you could pull out to have individual
stories in this book and i think that's
really cool yeah so what's going on mark
glad you could stop through mark ladies
and gentlemen good people right there him
and his brother both great people um
So let's turn the attention to some of
it's like to you the art and how
you do both your books are actually like
if they were put in front of me
with no names on them, I'd be like,
Oh, those are the same artist.
You have a very distinct art style.
When you look at the covers of both
your books,
you can tell in the art of the
books, you're like, that's David's.
It was very distinctive.
How would you describe your art style?
It's funny that you asked about that
because my daughter, who's also an artist,
she refers to me as the scribble master.
She's like, you just scribble stuff,
and then it ends up being a thing,
and then it ends up being another thing.
You just scribble until you scribble,
scribble, and scribble, scribble,
and then it's a thing.
I'm like, no, I'm just working.
I got an idea in my head,
but it looks weird when I put it
on paper, so then I'll scribble some more,
and then it starts to look more like
the thing.
Oh, yeah, that makes sense.
Yeah, I don't know.
I try and keep my art as loose-looking
as possible,
and I also really want it to be
I want it to look organic, right?
Because I illustrated it on an iPad.
I illustrated it on an iPad,
but I want it to look like ink
on paper.
You know what I mean?
And that's what I liked about it is
it feels like the time was taken to
do the art
But it was almost like,
I don't want to say the artist was
in a rush or kind of just like
trying to push it out fast.
But it kind of had that carefree,
you know, attitude about it.
It just kind of flows.
And you can tell where, like,
where you started making a line and then
you just kind of went with the line.
And then it ended up being like this
shape or this object or whatever it was.
And you're like...
that's cool i kind of like that and
like it just it's very carefree and that's
what i liked about it was kind of
something very refreshing you know because
you see all these like i love inkers
i love what they do and um like
the inks weren't heavy in this like you
know and you can tell it's just very
carefree artwork that it it works for the
kind of stories you're telling
yeah yeah you know well with with narita
it's been real interesting because i
really wanted the so when i work when
i'm making a page i got my lines
my inks right and then for something
that's going to be in color i'll drop
in uh another layer that's just the
shadows
And those are going to be like a
transparent,
like kind of purple or something like
that.
Or there'll be a guide for me to
do a color fade of some sort that's
going to be in the shadows.
So I let that intermediary layer do a
lot of the heavy lifting.
So if you look at just,
if you were to ever see the black
and white pages, just the inks,
quote unquote,
you'd see the line work that comes out
as actual black lines in the comic.
And then you'd see the shadows that
happen.
And then you'd see the light part.
white of the paper, right?
And it's different from if I'm doing
something like Yuriko or I did another one
called Big Chief for a writer here in
Austin.
And he wanted it to just be black
and white.
And I was like,
you want black and white like grayscale
and washes and stuff?
Or are you talking about black and white
just straight up?
And he was like,
I don't know, man,
whatever you feel like doing.
So I was like,
I'm going to go straight up inks.
I'm not going to do any halftones.
I'm not going to do any of the
thumbprint stuff.
I'm just going to,
what does it look like?
Ink on paper.
And it was really, really,
really fun to go super heavy and like
really crazy shadows just in ink.
And how much is too much and how
much is not enough and all of that
kind of stuff.
So with Narita, it's a different beast,
right?
Because-
I'm intentionally not going super heavy
with the inks in order to give it
more of a vibrant, colorful palette.
But Yuriko is the opposite of that.
Yes, absolutely.
The inks are heavy,
but it works for the story.
They're both fantasy-esque stories,
but very different stories.
And the heavier inks on Yuriko work so
well.
Without the depth of the lines,
the depths of the inks,
I don't think you would get the same
feel of the story.
It would feel different.
It wouldn't feel like the right tone for
the story.
No, exactly.
The way that I'm putting together and
doing the art and imagery and the color
and everything for Narita is I feel like
hopefully fits the
the vibe of the story that i'm telling
right you know you got fairies and
mermaids and you know but at the same
time you throw in like really colorful
scenes of people getting their guts ripped
out you know yeah it feels the abstract
is the word i'm thinking in my head
when i think of narita it's like you
got those abstract parts where she's in
the water in the beginning and like
there's certain scenes that are very
abstract feeling and you're like damn this
works man
I don't know if it's because it's a
fantasy epic that it works so well that
way, but it just works for the story.
Thanks.
Thank you.
Big ups, David, because I'm loving it,
man.
It is one of those where you never
know.
I get sent a lot of stuff,
and you never know.
yeah and then you get to into this
like you may not care too much for
some artwork or something but then you get
to the story and then the story makes
the art work and then you fall in
love with the art because the story makes
the art work yeah yeah yeah yeah that's
what i'm talking about make me like it
yeah that's the hardest part right is how
do you make the reader like it
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I think it's much harder to get the
reader interested in a story that's great
that doesn't have artwork that catches you
right away.
It's so much harder to do that.
Like I said,
I lean on my strengths because I can
draw better than I can write.
So I'm like, hey.
It works, hey.
If it works, it works, right?
If it works, it works.
Yeah, exactly.
It's crazy that you say it because, yes,
that is the case in this,
but it just works.
It's not overly done.
It's not intended to be perverse or
anything like that.
It just works for the story.
So it's kind of cool in that regards.
Were there any artists in particular that
kind of inspired the way you visually tell
stories?
Oh, man.
Yeah, like David Mazzucchelli,
definitely Mike Mignola.
His paneling
Just blows my mind.
Anytime I'm working on a page and I'm
what?
And we'll get a script and somebody sends
me, they're like,
this is going to have nine panels.
I'm like nine panels on one page.
Come on.
And then I'll open up, you know,
a BPRD or I'll open up a voice,
something or other.
And I'll just find a page that flows
really well.
That's not overcrowded.
And I'll be like, one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten,
eleven panels on one page.
He did it.
He made it work.
And it just,
so stuff like that is very, very, yeah.
uh inspiring to me and i like i
like the challenge now of that kind of
stuff oh that's definitely a challenge
yeah because that's at that point there's
no gutters yeah there's no gutters there's
no nothing you're just using that entire
page for what it was meant to be
yeah yes exactly and i i'm a fan
of that i could care less if there's
gutters or any of that other just there's
a whole page there you can use it
for what it was intended to be used
for
So gutters and page pacing, too,
those are two things that are very,
very intentional for both of my comic
books.
Like Yuriko is on a six-panel grid,
and I can combine the panels into sections
if I want to.
It was very manga-esque.
Yes, yeah.
Was that done intentionally?
I know we're kind of bouncing between
these two stories,
but now that you said it that way,
I was like,
it kind of feels almost like a manga
when you read it.
yeah it feels i wanted it to feel
like an old school manga uh yes it's
not it's not bombastic it's not my hero
academia imagination but it's the same
thing with uh with narita right you have
these heavy white gutters on all the
panels um and they you barely rarely get
broken right they'll get broken for like a
full-page splash that's what like that
yeah
but you don't have characters typically
jumping out of the panels unless there's
something really important that's
happening.
Like the bear fight scene in issue three,
he gets thrown out of a panel and
I was like, okay,
hopefully this will have that much more
effect because the rest of the comic book
is so, you know,
stuck inside of the boxes.
Um,
so I try and use it for that,
that effect.
Uh, and that came from God, who, uh,
james heron you ever like read rumble or
yeah he did the first like five uh
five issues or ten issues of rumble um
with uh john arcudi i think and he
like the way he sets up his pages
and the way he utilizes breaking out of
panels
just blows my mind you know when he
wants a panel to be quiet we want
the page to be quiet and creepy he'll
put tons of detail he'll keep everybody in
their box and you're following along
meticulously right when he wants something
to happen quickly
It's bombastic.
It's crazy.
Things are jumping out at you.
Things are breaking out of the boxes.
I really,
really love the way that gets utilized
sometimes in comic books.
I feel like it's not utilized enough or
it's utilized too often in some comics.
My Hero Academia being one of them where
every page is like...
It works for MHA though.
Yes.
You're on the same team as my daughter
for sure.
I've only ever seen it because my daughter
like has the run.
And so I would like.
when she first got into it,
I didn't know what the hell it was.
And then I was like, Oh,
it's just a miniature comic book from
Japan.
Cool.
Yeah.
Sorry.
You know, never really read it,
but I like to look at the art
and I was like, Oh,
this is kind of neat.
I like how they do this.
And MHA was just one of those that
kind of stuck out to me because it
did just,
I don't want to say it's art regurgitated
on a page, but,
but it's a lot going on.
A lot of little details,
little intricacies that you,
you have to kind of hold the book
up to your face and just kind of
like, and you're not reading it.
You're just studying the art and seeing
like what all is going on and what
are all like,
because if you have it here, you like,
I kind of feel like if you hold
it too far away,
you're not going to get all the little
details.
So you got to bring it just a
little bit closer to get like,
Oh, look at that.
You know, it's almost like you need to,
you need like a viewfinder, right?
Like a little cardboard cutout and you can
just over the page.
Like now I can see this.
Exactly.
So much going on.
And like the guy who draws it is
just so good at those little intricate
details that if you don't pay attention to
them,
you're going to completely overlook them.
We're talking about the blood and the guts
and the cuts and the scrapes and that
kind of stuff.
He does very well.
And the dude who does Chainsaw Man is
the same way.
Yeah, I like that.
I can't remember if it's a dude or
a lady.
I think it's a dude.
My kiddo brought home a few of those
from school and was like, hey,
I got some Chainsaw Man.
I was like, ooh.
Yeah, Chainsaw Man had me, man.
I really enjoyed it.
Genji is my dude, man.
But how important is color and atmosphere
when creating fantasy comics like you're
doing?
Oh, I'd say it's very important.
As a matter of fact,
I have a color palette that's – man,
I should have taken the screenshot and
sent it to you because it's pretty nice.
Because I really like the way the colors
are done on Narita.
It's like the same color palette,
but the way it's mixed with the tones
and everything just works so well.
It's a theme throughout the book,
you know?
Yeah, yeah.
Well,
I wanted to – so in book two,
it takes place a lot during the daytime.
So it's the same colors that I was
using, but then you manipulate them.
because all of a sudden you have warm
tones affecting those colors, right,
as opposed to cool tones affecting the
colors.
When she comes out of the water,
it's all dark, purple, blues.
There's all these gray tones and weird
things like that,
and it's meant to be a little bit
creepy.
And then during the daytime,
it's like this bright forest, blah, blah,
blah.
And then issue three goes back to
nighttime again.
And so changing the transition between day
and night is something that I've been
super interested in.
uh, in comic books.
Uh, uh, what's his name?
Sean Phillips.
Uh, Ed Brubaker, you know,
they're always doing cool stuff.
They did a run called the fade out
that's set in Hollywood in the what
thirties or something like that.
And it's all, you know,
murder and intrigue and like,
like their books always are.
Right.
Yeah.
The coloring on it was amazing because it
was, uh,
they would change the warmth and the
coolness of the scenes based on if it
was daytime or nighttime and creepy,
like horrible stuff is happening at night.
And then people are just on set,
like yucking it up during the day.
So it really changed the atmosphere.
Like night and day,
literally night and day.
It was awesome.
It was so good.
When I read that, I was like, Ooh,
I want to try and use that.
So that's what I've been trying to go
for in terms of atmosphere and
Using color it's working man.
It's working whatever you're doing man.
It definitely works So deep I don't know
if you've ever done superhero comics
before do you but do you think?
Fantasy is harder to draw than like a
standard like superhero comic would be oh
I mean Yes,
and no I think
Yes, because my kid, again,
gets really upset about this.
I rarely do character sheets,
so I have no idea what these characters'
costumes are,
which is why my two main characters are
just naked ladies.
She's struggling to get home.
They're not bad.
The way he says it, it's like, yes,
they are,
but it's not gratuitous in that way.
No.
Well, I try not to be anyway, but...
I'm really bad at costumes, right?
So fantasy is all about cool costumes and
where does that set you in kind of
a time-based period thing and dah, dah,
dah, dah, dah, dah.
Whereas with superheroes,
it's kind of like you're basically drawing
a naked person and you paint on some
super suit and then they got ripped abs,
but they're perfect, right?
You know what I mean?
So in that aspect,
it's a little bit easier because I can
draw the human form all day long and
then just paint them yellow and all of
a sudden it's whoever,
you know what I mean?
uh so there's that and also the thing
with uh the thing with superhero comic
books is superhero comic books tend to
take place and this is this is the
the latter the opposite argument superhero
comic books tend to take place in a
an urban environment usually like a modern
like metropolis yeah you know wherever um
so you have to draw an urban environment
which is like a nightmarish scenario for
me right yeah
It's like the least fun thing to do
to draw a building.
Like I can draw that house over there,
but it's not going to be fun,
you know?
Whereas I know people who draw urban
environments like that's one of their
they're really good at it Yeah,
I mean you know later they're like oh
They just have those it's the same
buildings just recycled to some degree
because they just keep those buildings
like and they just like Okay,
and they just pull it like oh there.
Oh,
there are so many cheat codes I've been
watching I'll do a rabbit hole with cheat
codes how to drop bill yes They can
look at perspective and stuff,
and I'm like oh yeah,
I know that you know I
When you start learning how they do it,
you're like, oh, that's how they do it?
But then you're like, damn,
that's still fucking impressive though.
Yeah, you fooled me.
Yeah,
because you still have to know how the
perception of it is.
They're looking at it from this direction.
You're going to see a whole new side
of this building.
They're still putting in a lot of effort
Yeah, yeah.
Into it.
So it's kind of wild.
Like, oh, it's a cheat code.
But at the same time,
it's still a lot of work and skill
that went into that.
So I did a comic book called Dusk
Witch about a young priestess, I guess,
who lives in New Orleans.
And she's trying to keep the monsters of
the Dusk Realm at bay from breaking into
our universe.
But she lives in New Orleans.
And so I needed to make the comic
book look like it was set in New
Orleans.
And I've been there a million times.
It's one of my favorite places to go.
Oh, yeah, absolutely.
There's just so much crazy.
It's like you can never, like,
you always see something that you didn't
see the time you were there before.
Yep.
And everything's so old and kind of rotten
and dilapidated, but still standing.
It's got a thousand coats of paint on
it.
You're still stopping for beignets at the
same spot no matter what.
Yep, exactly.
That hour-long line.
Yeah.
But that was a really interesting one for
me because, again,
it was a fantasy book involving magic and
all that kind of stuff.
But I had to draw it in an
urban setting and not just an urban
setting.
It had to be New Orleans.
It had to look like New Orleans
specifically.
So, man,
I was walking all over the place on
Google Maps just looking for cool houses.
I was basically scouting for a photo
shoot.
online in order to make this comic book
look believable.
Oh, you got to do the,
this time you're there.
I don't know if you've done it before.
Do the horse and carriage ride.
I have not done that.
Get that other perspective of it.
It's, it's a whole nother vibe at night.
Cause I've done the horse and carriage
both during the day and at night,
the same as that tour,
the same as that driver.
Yeah.
Two completely different vibes.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.
But you got to do it.
It's one of those where – and get
the pictures and everything else for
reference later because it is amazing.
Like it's this really cool, vibrant,
old southern town during the day,
but at night it just fucking just feels
creepy.
The vibe is different.
And you're like, man, this is cool,
but – and it's the fucking degrees
outside, you know?
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
So my band went and played a show
recently.
Well, not too recently.
I guess last year in New Orleans.
And my wife had to fly back early.
She plays guitar in my band.
And she had to fly back early for
a job in town.
And so I was left there with a
day on my own where I just got
to kind of wander around.
And it happened right as I was working
on this comic Big Chief that I talked
about earlier a little bit about the New
Orleans Indians and
but they're like a,
basically a superhero gang,
like an altruistic superhero gang who were
trying to keep these like crazy, nasty,
like drug addled rat creatures at bay who
are coming up from the city streets.
And so I got to wander around.
That's actually believable in New Orleans.
Yeah, exactly.
It really is.
It really is.
And that book,
that book is much more believable as like
an actual New Orleans story.
Yeah.
But that one, that one, I got to,
I got to take tons of reference photos
and like,
really kind of go hang out in cemeteries
and do sketches and all kinds of stuff.
When I was there, it's like, yeah.
And it's wild because the port of new
Orleans is like right in the middle of
new Orleans.
Yeah.
And you like the, they got the nice,
um, well, it's not really nice, but the,
um,
the mall over there and right in front
of the mall is the no shit port
to get on the, like,
I think it's Caribbean cruise line.
yeah yeah it's like it's wild it's like
right there and like you can literally
walk out of the mall straight onto your
cruise ship yeah it's real weird it's real
weird and it really puts you in
perspective too because you're this big
and that boat is just like if you've
never been on a cruise before like that
thing is just a massive machine and it's
really cool like i don't know why i
think those are the coolest things ever
But I do.
I've never been on a cruise, man.
I've never been.
My dad's been a bunch of times,
but he's never invited me.
Come on, Dad.
Hey, Father's Day is coming up in June,
right?
There you go.
Sure.
Bless your chance.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So you're a Kickstarter guy.
I am.
Why has Kickstarter kind of taught you
about indie comics?
Because it can very much humble you or
it could, you know,
inflate your ego a little bit.
Yeah.
I think Kickstarter has caused me to have
an actual very healthy view of creating my
own comic books and creating indie comics
in general.
Because I'm like a wham, bam, thank you,
ma'am type person on Kickstarter.
My Kickstarter campaign lasts for fourteen
days.
Okay, yeah.
And it's like,
you either want the comic book or you
don't.
I hit it hard for fourteen days on
all the social medias, blah, blah, blah,
blah, blah, blah.
And then
Right before it's done,
I'll order the comics to have them printed
so that they show up to me in
time for me to get them out the
door.
And then, boom, fulfillment's done.
I just operate real fast knowing that I
can just keep doing Kickstarters and they
can keep growing.
So I feel like it's actually,
I don't stress about,
oh, man,
I didn't hit that point or I didn't
– this stretch goal and that thing and
da-da-da-da.
Because that stuff, like, that's cool,
you know, whatever.
But the amount of stress versus the amount
of payoff for, like,
those extra five sales of a comic book
is really bad.
It's kind of wild, right, because –
You get the option.
You can do a fourteen day and I
think it's what a twenty eight day.
I don't know if there's anything that goes
past the twenty eight days or whatever.
You can do a thirty day one.
It's a thirty day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And like you kind of like depending on
who's on the show, it goes both ways.
Right.
You're like one of the few that do
like, hey,
I'm a fourteen day type of guy.
Boom.
Yeah.
Out the door.
done yeah and there's some people who are
like i need that full thirty days to
get you know to the point i want
to be at yeah are they some people
are just very overly ambitious and what
they're expecting yeah you know and and i
hate to see those like where you're you're
like
they're just trying too much at one time
or it's only like their second Kickstarter
or something like that.
And they're just like, Oh,
the first one went really well.
The second one's going to do better.
I've learned my lessons.
Like, no,
you're not done learning lessons.
You got more to learn.
You got overly ambitious on this one.
So, so the way I see it is,
and I have other friends who are in
the comic scene who do this too.
It's like,
You do a Kickstarter.
It's book number one.
Hopefully, it sells a whole bunch.
That's awesome.
People love issue one.
Then you do issue two.
It doesn't sell as much,
but you throw issue one in there.
So people like this last campaign for
issue three,
The majority of the fulfillment that I did
was actually for people who got the tier
that was all three books because they had
never heard of the series at all.
I end up doing that a lot.
I have a podcast about indie comics,
and what usually ends up happening is the
next time that Kickstarter comes back
around in case I missed it,
like in this case, yeah,
I did read them,
but I'm very much a physical copy type
of person.
But the next time it comes around, though,
it's going to be like, okay,
now there's four books.
I need all four books because I like
to have my hands on all four books.
I'm a physical collector.
And, you know, like I follow the person,
right?
You follow your artist or your creators on
Kickstarter, right?
that way you just automatically like boom
hey david just gets off a new kickstarter
and you're like oh which one you know
because i'm familiar with your books and i
can be like oh yeah maybe not that
one i'll circle back when the next issue
in narita comes out or the next issue
of yuriko comes out absolutely yeah i had
a lot of this time around i had
a lot of backers who actually had missed
issue two but got issue one and then
i somehow fell off the radar for whatever
reason
But then I got back onto their radar
when issue three came out,
and they were like, oh, cool.
All right.
I don't know how I missed number two,
but I want to get both of those,
you know,
get caught up to the series again,
you know, blah, blah, blah.
So which has been harder?
And I ask this question a lot,
and I always get about the same answer
when I ask it.
What's harder,
creating the comic or building and
maintaining the audience for the comic in
your work?
Creating the comic is harder by far for
me.
I do what's called social media crunches
every morning.
I get on.
I log on.
I follow people.
I've shared some followers that aren't
interested in me.
I try and go through and see what's
going on and give away a bunch of
likes to some people.
I respond to any comments.
I get it done in the first week.
Thirty minutes of the morning.
And that's my afternoons.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Right.
I go to my normal job.
I come home.
I'm like, OK,
I know I just released these clips on
social media or to my YouTube.
So now let me go push those clips
over to my other social medias.
Yep.
And then like I admit,
like I'm working on fits in this.
And this is one of those things where
I come back from the vacation,
reinvigorate it.
like i want to do different things and
do more things from a social media
standpoint that i'm going to start doing
when i come back and so hopefully that
will drive more attention to what we're
doing here with the podcast and indie
creators and that kind of stuff so but
It's like weekends and weekends and
weekends and evenings after shows.
Just what can I do to bring more
eyes into what we do for Indie Comics
and with Indie Comics and for Indie
creators in general?
And it's hard.
I have one major goal for that.
I feel like, though,
that it's an incremental thing, right?
Because it's the same thing you do with
a comic book.
It's just mountains.
it's Mount Fuji to get to the top
of that mountain is really, really hard.
But if you just get up to base
camp first day,
and then after that you go, you know,
you hike for four hours and then you
hike for another four hours the next day.
Like eventually you will get to the top
of that mountain and then you'll make your
way back down.
It's kind of the same thing with social
media.
And another reason why I do like,
I limit myself and say, Oh,
I'm only going to do, you know,
a few minutes a day or, or how,
however long I'm going to do it is
to cut myself off.
Because it's very easy to spiral.
It's so easy to just get sucked in.
Oh, yeah, that's cool.
Oh, that's cool.
Then you realize, oh, no,
I just wasted an hour when I could
have been drawing or I could have been
whatever.
I don't have to draw, though.
For me,
it's like the social media aspect is kind
of what I do.
For me,
it's like I promote the Davids of the
world, the Marts of the world,
and then
i have to figure out then how to
bring their followers and their audience
and convert them over to being my audience
as well and hopefully introduce them to
more creators and more artists and more
inkers and publishers that they may not be
familiar with and that's like my yeah my
big goal in my my mount rushmore if
you will of or my mount fuji if
you will of what i want to do
with this podcast which is to make indie
comics
mainstream, spoken in the same words as,
oh yeah,
did you see that new comic book from
Dark Horse or from Image?
Like, yeah, that's cool, but hey,
did you read Narita?
Yeah.
I'm trying to figure that part out.
And that's why I have...
plot hours upon hours of like time behind
this keyboard here trying to figure out
how I can do that and there's no
right or wrong way it's just one day
it's going to be like a it happens
is what I'm hoping there's no right or
wrong answer it's just do the work yeah
exactly like right now I'm really trying
to build my
Threads audience because I'm kind of new
to that platform.
During my Kickstarter campaign,
it was great because there's a lot more
interactive threads that were happening
where people were like, hey,
post your Kickstarter, tell us about it,
give us your sales pitch.
And so I was doing a lot of
that during that time.
But then the in-between time,
I don't really know what to do.
I can comment on people's stuff,
but so what?
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
that's me right now that's where i'm at
with all my social medias it's like i'm
really good at the advertising part i'm
really good at the follow-ups with the
creators like sharing the reels and stuff
But what do I do in between that
stuff?
I need other types of content to go
out to these other platforms because every
platform is different.
Threads, yes,
they're owned by Meta and Instagram,
but Threads is very much interactive.
So I have some stuff I'm going to
start doing when I come back.
this a little bit more interactive and
hopefully we'll like, Oh,
he's talking about this book or that book,
or he's talking about this creator or that
creator.
He's asking for our inputs into stuff.
And I'm hoping that drives a little bit
more because honestly,
I just kind of like, I went from,
um,
like,
twenty followers on threads one day to,
like, a hundred and fifty or something.
Like, over a nice, like,
swell of a moment.
I was like, oh,
this is kind of cool.
Like, because you lingered, like,
I lingered right there in, like,
that sixty or seventy for a while.
And then it was like, boop, jumped over.
And then it's like,
you always will lose followers or you'll
gain followers.
And I've never understood that, like,
why are you unfollowing?
Yeah.
Like it makes no sense.
It makes zero sense.
Are you just followed me while I was
pushing this one creator?
And then you unfollowed me when you
noticed that, Oh, he has no more,
nothing else to share about that creator.
Well, I do,
but you have to stick around for it.
Like, yeah,
I no longer have reels for them.
Like I've shared all the reels,
but I'm still going to be sharing their
content as it comes across my feet as
well.
So, yes,
I'm going to share a bunch of reels
from this podcast with you, David.
And then when those reels run out, well,
guess what?
When I see David post later,
I'm going to share that content as well.
So stick around.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean,
it's the same thing on Blue Sky.
Like,
I have a whole – I created a
list of, like, just indie comic lovers,
just people who have gone through my page
and been like,
this is awesome and this is awesome and
this is awesome.
Or they're pumping stuff out that has to
do with indie comics and –
Um,
I've started to finally get some traction
on there,
but I want to make sure that I
keep those people that I don't lose those.
I don't want to unfollow any of those
people.
There are any number of trolls on any
number of all these platforms.
Yeah.
The blue sky is like, Oh,
we're the anti Twitter.
Then all of a sudden it's like no
different than Twitter.
This is why I never had a Twitter.
I know.
I'm like,
if I want to deal with politics,
I would just watch the news.
Yeah, exactly.
So, I mean, yeah, for, for,
for blue sky, for example, I logged in,
in,
in the real world on my computer and
like put in a bunch of keywords that
were going to be blocked.
So anybody who mentions anything about the
Supreme court or the Senate or anything
political at all, it's like, Nope, Nope,
Nope, Nope.
I literally only want comic book content
only.
They still have trouble with that.
They still can't fathom that.
I only want to see dinky indie comics
that are like mine.
That's all I want from you.
Leave me alone with everything else.
I don't care.
I'm a hundred percent behind that, dude.
What advice would you give another creator
getting ready to launch their first
Kickstarter or their first comic book?
What advice would you have for them?
I would have a little checklist.
So you would want to put up six
pages, maybe the first six pages,
maybe not.
It's the scattershot of pages on a
platform like Global Comics or something
like that or Webtoon, wherever.
Somebody can go and check it out for
free.
If I may, comics.one is a great option.
Okay.
I've heard of this.
I haven't gone to check it out.
They're a great indie platform made by an
indie creator for indie creators.
You can sell your work on there.
You can say, for instance,
if you no longer have print copies of
your comic book,
you can work with them and you can
have your book printed like print on
demand.
Like if I wanted to order a copy
of Narita and you were on comics.
One,
I could order issue number three of Narita
one copy.
They're going to print that one copy and
send it straight to my house.
Wow, that's crazy.
And they're working with several different
printing companies to make that happen for
you.
So I really like them.
I've not put my name behind any of
these other ones.
And that's not saying they're not good or
they're not credible sources because they
very much are.
But I really like the direction of Comet
Stop One is going in because for long,
they're going to have their own
marketplace in there where you can auction
like a whatnot auction within there.
You can crowdfund.
within comments.one wow crazy it's it's
being there's a better beta testament
right now i think that we just closed
the first two crowdfunding campaigns in
there and i think they both funded so
cool that's awesome i really like them and
yes that's me pitching for them to to
all my other indie creator brethren out
there because
it's very rare that I stick my name
on something and I would be willing to
stick my name on theirs.
Well, yeah.
I mean,
comics.one or whatever your preferred
platform is, essentially,
if you're giving away a free preview of
your comic book,
get that up and running and you have,
whether it's,
whatever your crowdfunding platform is,
if it's going to be, you know,
an Indiegogo or it's going to be a
Kickstarter or it's going to be whatever
your crowdfunding thing is,
you need to drive your audience there
right so once you start getting onto your
socials and saying hey check out this
comic book then you've got a link
Ready to go so that you can actually
promote that link and start sending people
there right away.
Yeah.
Because too often I see people,
myself included,
sometimes they're posting cool pictures
and stuff.
And everyone's like, oh, that's cool.
You know, you got thirty likes.
You got a hundred likes, blah, blah, blah,
blah.
But you didn't tell them to go to
the thing,
sign up for the thing so they can
buy the thing, get the stuff.
You know what I mean?
Yep.
So that would be my number,
number one piece of advice.
Yeah.
And that's something I also need to get
better at as well is like just putting
a quick,
a tiny URL to the Kickstarter campaign.
Like it's always in the description of
what I'm posting,
but I know the thing is there to
make a tiny URL there.
You know,
that way you can just click off the
reel, right?
I remember it after the fact.
Yeah, it's all like connectivity.
Well, for me too,
like if I draw a cool picture of
Yuriko or Narita or whoever, I'm like,
ooh, I want to post this.
This looks great.
I'm going to post it.
Everyone's going to like it.
I'm going to feel good about myself.
That's awesome.
But really what I need to do is
I need to save that image for when
I'm ready to start really promoting my
campaigns.
And then I have cannon fodder.
Then I have imagery.
Then I have stuff to show people.
You tease it, right?
You tease it.
You just post a partial sketch of an
arm or a foot or a leg.
It's like, hey,
who am I working on this week?
In actuality,
so right now I'm working on a comic
called Big Game Saga.
This is a time-traveling ninja who gets
abducted from time and hunted for support.
this is issue two.
And what I should have is a Kickstarter
page right now,
but I just got the green light from
the writer to say, Hey, should we,
should we do a Kickstarter for this?
Cause he didn't know if he was going
to shop it around to some publishers or
whatever.
And he's like, yeah,
let's go ahead and do a Kickstarter.
So I should have, if I was smart,
already had the Kickstarter page ready to
go for the prelaunch.
And now,
and because I've been putting out images
of this thing all over blue sky and
threads and whatever, I'm like,
me working on pages and work in progress
and this is a screenshot of what my
screen looks like right now yeah coloring
the comic just all the dumb stuff right
so if i was smart i would have
some be able to direct people so who's
going to do that kickstarter are you going
to run that kickstarter or is the writer
uh i will probably run it off out
of mind um okay because i trust them
and we've done it before through mine okay
and then
I'll add him as a co-host or whatever.
Got you.
I have been involved in some Kickstarters
where I was not happy with the results.
Yeah.
And I was like, oh, my God,
what have I got myself involved in?
This is not cool.
It makes me look bad.
You know, that kind of thing.
Yeah.
You got to be.
That's the one thing you got is your
reputation in the industry.
And you got to protect that shit at
all costs.
Yeah.
It's like if I'm not doing the
fulfillment, then no,
we're not doing a Kickstarter together.
Yeah.
I want that out the door and I
want it to be fast.
I hear the horror stories.
pretty often of people getting burned on
kickstarters or they supported a
kickstarter and then it funded they got
paid and then they just never delivered
and that just makes you look horrible as
a creator and i don't want to that
people i don't want people to have to
go through that but the creator themselves
like what are you doing what in your
life has changed to make this happen
Yeah.
Can you come back from this and are
you working to fix that?
You know, I mean,
I don't even I don't ever start campaigns
unless the book is done,
like completely colored, lettered, edited,
done in the can.
Because, you know, man,
like the Kickstarter is going to offset
the cost of the comic book.
But it's let's be honest that my level
of, I don't know,
popularity
It's not going to raise ten grand.
It's not going to raise twenty grand.
There's not enough boobs in my comic books
to make that happen on Kickstarter.
A lot of people call this true.
It's puffed up and sad.
Yeah.
I mean,
I sneak in as many boobs as I
think this comic I'm working on right now.
I snuck in like six boobs.
No, five boobs.
There's five boobs in there.
But they're itty bitty and they're like
in a locker, you know,
pasted to a wall because it's a big
sausage party.
It's a bunch of dudes, like,
guys with guns and ninjas with swords.
And I'm like, there's gotta be, like,
a couple of boobs.
The writer just laughed.
No, a hundred percent.
A hundred percent.
Oh, that's frickin' hilarious.
But, um...
What can readers expect from the future of
Narita?
Uh, you guys can expect...
Things to get even more complicated.
I mean, they're already complicated.
They're already complicated,
but it's going to get even weirder.
The next two issues,
next two or three issues,
there's going to be a bunch of full
on like two page spread battle scenes
between warring factions.
It's going to be,
it's going to be very difficult to draw,
but I'm excited for the challenge.
And I hope it comes out as cool
as it is in my mind.
So yeah,
So I know there's a nine issue run
of this comic book expected.
Do you, at the end of the day,
think this will become larger than that?
Or is like, it's going to be nine,
it's going to be done.
And I want to go to the next
thing.
It's going to be nine and done with
this story for sure.
That's not to say that there isn't going
to be something that catches my interest.
That's a spinoff that happens in the same
world.
Right.
But maybe the cat and fairy word makes
a return.
The cat.
Yeah.
The cat, the great cat very well.
It'd be like the Silmarillion of the
Narita diaspora.
You know,
I don't have to come with a glossary,
like a compendium.
You have to look up the terms and
the name where the compendium is bigger
than the book.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
People get this tome and there's only
like, you know,
it's when he pages of comic and the
rest of it's like,
let me explain what's happening.
You know?
I'm not that good at lore.
There's not enough in my brain.
The actual Narita arc, I think,
is going to be done at nine.
But that's not to say that more stuff
won't happen in this world.
Yeah.
I like it, man.
I like it.
The fact that you just compared it to
Lord of the Rings is awesome.
There's no comparison.
You're the one that said it, man.
I'm way down here.
So when readers finish Narita,
whether it be next year or the year
after when you round out these nine
issues,
what do you want them to remember the
most about Narita?
Ooh.
It can't be boobs.
Well,
that's probably what they're going to
write.
I really want them to remember her
costumes, you know?
Yeah.
What do I want them to remember?
I don't know, man.
I want them to, I mean,
I honestly want them to remember the final
battle scene that happens between the
wizard and the rest of the parties
involved.
In my mind,
that is like this weird apex moment.
Yeah.
That visually,
hopefully will look pretty cool.
But yeah, I don't know.
That's, that's a good question, man.
I don't know what people are going to
take away from it, you know?
hopefully they're going to take away that
you told a story that with as few
words as possible with amazing artwork
that just worked together very, very well.
And it went to show that you can
tell a good story without the words or
with as little words as possible.
Yeah.
is true yeah because that's what i'm
taking away because i really like it that
way my scripts my script pages have very
few very few words it's funny it's like
blank page for me to draw out sketch
out the idea of what i want it
to be you know but it works so
well for this type of story but david
before i let you go you have to
tell everybody where they can find you and
your works at um so narita comic
Dot com is my website where you can
go, you know,
buy comics from me directly if you want
to.
I'm also on Instagram,
Blue Sky and Threads.
And it's just at Narita Comic.
And yeah,
that's that's pretty much the best way to
get a hold of me.
And all those he just mentioned are down
in the description of this show right now.
If you want to check those out,
I highly recommend you do so.
And while you're there, hit the website,
pick up a couple of these books because
you will not be disappointed with either
Narita.
are yuriko and i will put the syllable
approval on both those books but david i
want to say a huge thank you to
you for joining us tonight and giving us
a deeper look into both narita and yuriko
and what those worlds are going to become
um it's really cool i thoroughly enjoyed
both of those stories i can't thank you
enough for sending those over to me to
have a look at and to read
But for everybody else out there,
make sure you support indie creators,
support creator-owned storytelling,
and check out Narita yourself across
David's social medias.
Make sure you like, follow, and share,
because this has been the USDM Podcast,
where indie comics come to life.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the Council of Nerds is now adjourned.
Y'all be safe out there.
Adios.
Thank you.