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.
Some stories begin with legends.
Others begin with the idea scrimpled in a
notebook,
as sketching the margins are a strange
character that refuses to stay quiet.
Sometimes the Wild West isn't filled with
cowboys.
Sometimes it's filled with wasps.
tonight on the usdm podcast we step into
a strange frontier a buzzing frontier
where creator imagination meets indie
comics grit a world called once upon a
hive in the west a place where creator
david bids is building something from the
ground up not just a comic but a
label a
a place called disco punk comics tonight
we talk about the journey of making comics
independently building a creative
collective and bringing a bizarre western
world to life this is the story behind
the hive the council of nerds is now
in session dk welcome to the usdn hey
man welcome i'm glad to be on buddy
So we got a little carried away,
everybody,
before we got started with a conversation
we were having about ethical use of AI,
which this comic does not have.
We're just putting that out there.
We were just having a conversation.
We got carried away.
We do apologize for that.
But DK, let's start at the beginning,
right?
What first pulled you into comics as a
creator?
it's um i read my first comic when
i was like eight or nine my buddy
his birthday party got an issue of blade
and i had a nightmare and i did
not start reading comics then i was at
a buddy's house in high school and i
read a random issue i don't remember being
a good one of invincible
And so funny,
I've been writing for a while.
I've had daydreams and stories for a
while.
This may be basic to admit,
but when Amazon started coming out with
Invincible,
I watched the first episode and I was
like,
I've read this before and immediately went
online and got the omnibus and just tore
through it.
And from then I was hooked.
I was probably twenty six,
twenty five at the time.
Yeah.
Followed it with everything.
Kirkman got to get it for everybody,
in my opinion.
It's it's it's such a great intro.
And then you're already into such a great
label with image.
And then if you go back in time
with image and I think I've heard you
talk about this on your other podcast,
I won't regurgitate too much.
But, you know,
the glory days of the Matt Spahn drew
me in so much.
Yeah,
it blew me away that y'all were willing
to read so much in a comic back
then.
And, you know,
reading Spawn of the Max is a lot
of verbiage.
But anyways, I was hooked.
I've always written short stories and
little novellas, tiny stories and whatnot.
But I've been daydreaming of massive
stories for a while.
And then after yelling my stories to my
friends for a long time, I decided,
you know,
let's let's do it and just go into
it.
Dude, that's a great way to do it.
And the fact that Blade gave you a
nightmare lets you know how great that
comic book was in the night.
Yes.
That most recent run of the Red Band
of Blade was fantastic.
I have a list of need to reads
a mile high,
and they were interrupted by Absolute
Series that just came out.
My daughter,
I have turned into a huge Wonder Woman
fan, so we're everything Wonder Woman.
She's too young to be checking out the
Austin illustrations that they got there,
but she loves it, man.
So honestly,
most of the comics that I've been reading,
indulging that i'm not trying to write and
produce have been with my with my kids
so it's been like a lot of spidey
gwen they got a new series out that's
going to be all right yep um but
but yeah um uh definitely need to check
that i think i read i'm not even
sure which run of blade it was but
i went back in and reread it probably
about i think it's no bigger than like
Oh, yeah.
And that's what I've always liked about
Blade and Midnight Suns and those like
smaller runs of some of the characters
that I really enjoy.
They get maybe ten or fifteen issues and
that run is done.
And then it kind of goes dormant again
for about five or ten years and then
it pops back out onto shelves again.
And honestly,
I like that because it doesn't wear you
out on the character.
Yeah.
No, I agree.
It was funny when I started getting really
big into comics and going to comic shops.
The thousand different issues,
and this I don't get yelled at because
I'm a younger guy here,
but the thousand different issues of X-Men
that I needed to go into,
all the different Avengers,
all the different DCs.
I found when it comes to streamline,
I'm more of a DC guy in the
first place and really have stuck to
those.
And I think outside media, you know,
being video games, TV,
movies has done so much recently for new
types of fandom.
And even as intelligent as DC
incorporating injustice back and forth
storylines from the video game.
to the comic,
which was one of my favorites by far
and one of my favorite games, too.
So it's kind of fun that fandom gets
the time.
Yeah,
so I ended up getting the trade paperback
of the Injustice run.
Really?
Because I wasn't collecting comic books at
the time, but I loved the video game.
And then it was like a random store
wherever I was living at the time.
And I seen the Omnibus or trade paperback
for it.
I was like, ooh, let me get that.
Yeah.
but let's jump into disco punk comics.
Where did that come from?
Disco punk.
Um,
Disco punk for a lot of reasons.
Disco for a lot of reasons.
Some that I won't get into.
Yeah,
I was always a big disco kid with
my mom.
It was always Sunday mornings cooking
breakfast, Bee Gees in the background,
Chic, all goofy disco.
And then also I used to play in
a lot of metal bands and everything or
had a jam band in high school.
And so a piece that I wrote a
long time ago had a line in it
by a character named Disco.
which is when you take the life and
love from disco,
you're just left with metal.
I won't get into it too much.
My mother passed away when I was about
twenty three for a little bit.
That kind of disco was gone and it
was the big metal scene and everything.
And so disco to me is my favorite
and my flagship character,
but also just a big piece of me
being able to move forward and create
something.
So I'm the disco punk or I'm not.
But that's the label.
No, I like it.
And so we were talking before we went
live.
So is Disco Punk Comics intended to be
a publisher, a creator collective,
or what is Disco Punk at its heart?
So the goal of Disco Punk is to
get to a place where we can offer
guidance through the potholes that I'm
learning to face as we create.
There's so many things that you just don't
know.
I'd like at one point to be kind
of an information hub for best practices
for a number of things.
I would love to publish a number of
other individuals.
My color is on Once Upon a Hive.
His name is Jorge Elias.
He's actually runs his own fiction comics,
but he's needed help in a number of
areas.
And so, you know,
Disco Comics and Fiction Comics is
bringing together
you know already and so yeah i did
not expect to be getting involved in other
individuals intellectual property so fast
um you know once upon a hive um
you know when this comes to publish in
just a few months this will be the
first piece of mine of many projects in
the work now
but already getting an avenue to help.
And so everything I'm learning on the way,
passing that information to Jorge,
and he's got a great team over there
with Fiction too.
So there's a lot of avenues for me
to look for letterers and a short notice
and everything.
So inflecting collaborations has been
great.
But yeah,
I would like it to be a big
collaboration hub.
that's kind of the goal as well,
obviously,
and selfishly to kick out all my writing,
you know,
a place to where I can indulge myself
in my own art, you know?
Yeah.
No, it's a must.
Yeah.
And so,
and I've had a number of people to
me, you know, come to me and say,
Hey,
could I help get certain things off the
ground?
You know,
are we at a place to where we're
helping fund other people's projects?
No,
we had a place to where we're very
open to help you with Kickstarter and,
you know, get things taken care of,
learn together as much as possible.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
um and i think honestly um my favorite
part of all this so far has just
been the community it's great working
alongside people being a writer alone
isn't as fun i'll tell you that much
no i will say it doesn't matter which
group you're in on facebook the the indie
comic book scene as a collective whole has
been amazing i know there's a lot of
groups that allow me to share
like the podcast in those groups.
And I am so thankful that they allow
me to do that because it literally keeps
me booked months in advance and it's
really awesome.
So it's just really amazing communities
out there.
And it's a lot of the same people
within those communities and they're all
really great.
So yeah.
But what has the indie comics journey been
like so far as you've been building Disco
Punk?
Oh,
it's been an excuse to learn something.
It's been learning that you've got a lot
to learn and you're going to keep
learning.
It's been great.
It really has...
I look at it two ways.
I've got one kind of goofy analogy.
One is you're kind of going down a
road, and like I said,
the potholes that you're going through,
there's a lot of bumps.
Where you live, there are plenty of them.
Yeah.
So listen to the people that have driven
in that road before.
That's a big piece.
But my biggest analogy, though,
is sometimes –
You're swimming in the waters you don't
know.
So it's like you're swimming,
you got your head down,
and then you touch a buoy,
then you look up and you're like, oh,
gosh, look how far I've come.
But then it's also like, man,
shore is so far away.
All you can do is put your head
down, keep swimming, find the next buoy.
But it's great.
You get inspired, like you said,
online in the community,
people that have gone so much further than
you,
more buoys than you further down that
road.
And all of them, for the most part,
without any exception so far,
had been nothing but giving with their
knowledge and respectful.
Oh, yeah.
If you ask a question,
you're going to get a multitude of
different answers that are very similar in
nature,
just different routes that that person
took to get there.
So it really is phenomenal communities out
there for that.
But what would you say has been your
biggest challenge so far with launching
the label?
Wanting to do far more than I can
do at a time.
The biggest advice that has been from
people is, hey man, just hey.
Because we have Once Upon a Hive.
I'm working with Fiction Comics for The
Fallen Seven.
I'm doing a manga right now.
It's called Riki Riki Recoil.
I have a number of things going on.
Webtoons.
But it's not without planning.
Before any of these even came to be,
I was researching for a good two years.
I was saving for a good two years.
I was talking to creators in the field
for two years,
trying to back other people's comics,
see what's everything's going on.
The biggest road bump
or the biggest challenge you ask.
Like I said,
just not making sure you can eat what's
on your plate.
But I do think different people's labels
have different purposes.
Majority of the time what I see is,
especially the first step out the door
seems to be usually superhero comics,
a series, one world,
and then you have your audience locking
into that one world.
I do have some series that'll be coming
out as well,
but I also love sci-fi one-offs and just
good stories and short one-shots.
I'm a huge one-shot fan,
and there's a lot of creators out there
that do them really well.
Yeah.
It's within the same type of genre.
It's just a multitude of one-shots.
Those are some of my favorite comic books.
But let's dive into Once Upon a Hive
in the West.
Yeah.
What is Once Upon a Hive in the
West?
It's a gritty imagination of a world,
said very plain put,
where bugs were the cowboys.
No,
it's actually a really good look at the
life cycles of bugs through this lens of
this Western spaghetti scope.
The story came to be in a really
funny, silly way.
But what it is essentially is going to
be a seven issue series.
We have a Halloween special that follows
our protagonist slip print paper wing and
his kind of journey to be the first
paper wasp to survive to the end of
winter and live again.
uh as some people may or may not
know life cycle of wasps i'm gonna nerd
out for a split second but like ninety
five percent of the population dies all
the males dies everybody dies except the
queen so there is a mass extinction and
then by next spring the population has
been reborn and if you would look at
that from a human perspective it would be
horrifying
And so many different facets within a
bug's life is actually horrifying.
And with the good Western tropes,
there's a lot of things that I like
that I've watched with my pop through the
years, like Cowboys vs. Aliens.
There's Cowboys vs. Dinosaur movies.
So there's a lot of space to play.
And within all that space,
it just wrote itself very
character-driven,
bug spaghetti Western with a whole bunch
of kookiness and wackiness to spare.
No,
it's been such a fun thing to watch
on your Instagram,
like the art coming together,
just the whole thing.
It's just like a stroke of genius.
You know what I'm saying?
And it's just so fun.
And as I was coming up with titles
for this episode,
I kept hitting on the Wild West.
And I'm like,
if I'm going to do Wild West,
it has to be Wild Wild West,
but with Wasp.
And it was just one of those where
I was like, it wrote itself.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
In fact, it's just such a fun character.
Your main protagonist, you know?
Yeah.
Well, and so, and there's a,
there's a switch up there and I won't
give too much away and I'll probably end
up,
we'll talk about it for a little bit,
but, but I'll touch base on this too.
There were so many opportunities with
this.
It was so hard to pin down a
name because there was super, so good,
bad in the ugly, good,
bad in the bugly.
No country for old men,
no country for old wasps.
But really I wanted to kind of give
an homage to kind of a lot of
spaghetti westerns I used to watch growing
up as a kid.
the classic Clint Eastwood's, you know,
the Festival of Dollars trilogy,
and of course, you know,
Once Upon a Time in the West.
But it's not so much so,
it's not just like a classic tale of
you killed my pa.
There really is a diverse spectrum to look
at this when you start implementing the
characteristics of the different type of
bugs that may interact with a wasp in
the community that's actually built and
what is called, what is Bisbee, Arizona,
that what I call the Hive Haven Holler.
So it's a fun time.
The inspiration for it was just the
silliest thing.
I am a bug guy.
I like bugs.
I take them out of the house instead
of squashing them,
try to teach my kids that.
And they're also pretty interesting to me.
So you kind of just let them live
a little bit.
There's a wasp nest that comes up in
front of my house every single year.
It's been there for the past five years.
It comes down in wintertime.
They're all dead,
and it comes back by the time of
spring.
It was winter about two years ago,
and I'm walking with my daughter.
I mean, it was cold, cold winter,
and this wasp spooked down and then took
by, and she got scared.
I was just thinking, and I was like,
honey, that ain't trying to hurt you.
He's waiting to die.
He's put down his irons.
And he's put down his irons and I
was like, oh, wait a minute.
And I was thinking to you,
if you were born to die,
you're just waiting for the cold.
What does that life look like?
Yeah.
And so the kind of older,
gritty Western feel came and then started
typing away.
It's such a fun concept,
not just for those of us who love
comic books.
Your kids are going to love this, too.
Like,
it's just going to be one of those
fun comic books,
depending on the age of your kids,
that you can sit down and read with
your kids and enjoy with your kids.
And it's cool that you kind of made
it for that based off an experience that
you had with your daughter.
Yeah.
And it's great.
There's definitely...
upper on the age appropriacy a little bit.
There's a number of themes there that
really does stick true to the old West
being as gritty as it is.
Yeah.
My son, maybe for sure.
My daughter will give her a couple of
years.
Okay.
But no, but it's great.
I would definitely say it's great.
I guess your demographic would be
somewhere, you know, teenage and up,
so to speak.
But yeah,
if you were the goofy kid that was
always quoting Tombstone, you know,
if you said something,
Doc Holliday every five seconds.
Dude,
I think we all did when that movie
came out.
Oh, man.
There's a couple little nods.
I'm trying not to be blunt and do
this and do that,
but there are nods to things that I
appreciate that I didn't want to let
disrupt the story or influence.
In fact,
whenever I started rewriting this,
I told myself I was not going to
rewatch all my old Spaghetti Western
movies.
You did anyway.
No, I didn't.
I didn't.
I rewatched a handful of them now.
I'll tell you that.
I rewatched a fistful of dollars.
But no, I'm telling you,
I wanted to stay away from them.
Yeah.
Have them not over influence anything like
that.
And and really, it's funny.
It's a Western through and through.
But the storyline is really just inspired
by random bug facts that are just really
cool content.
No,
that's one of those where it wasn't that
long ago.
And I think I lost a day of
my life on this one because I had
seen an old John Wayne clip and I'm
like, Hulu, John Wayne,
and just started watching like Westerns.
And by the time I realized it,
my entire day was gone.
And I was like, well,
I guess I'm not doing laundry now.
Yeah.
So anyway,
It's fun when it happens,
but at the same time, you're like, damn,
I just wasted a whole entire day where
I needed to do other things on top
of that.
You can't really devote that time to
anything productive.
You're not going to be on a Clint
Eastwood trivia show.
Who are some of the key characters in
this story?
I know we got our main character,
who is the Wasp.
But what else are we looking at?
So we we really follow.
There's a there's a broadcast.
And what I can't wait for issue two
and three to come out because some of
my favorite people are brought in.
So looking over the series,
there's a lot of great characters.
Issue one kind of works as a world
builder, intro builder,
specifically for our two main
protagonists, antagonists, antagonists.
Hanny, villain, villain, hero, whatever.
Where Slick Prick, Paper Wing,
and Odd Drop Pop Pop.
Now, this issue,
majority in the most of the art that
you've seen of the wasp on the page
are going to be from Odd Drop Pop
Pop,
who is the living legend who aspires to
be the first to never lose.
And we follow him for the majority of
a story that kind of helps build our
backdrop for Slick Prick Paper Wing and to
tell his story.
So Once Upon a Hive itself is the
ballad of Slick Prick Paper Wing.
But you'll find issue one,
a pistol for Pop Pop is heavily involved.
Pop Pop being a character who was meant
for issue one that I love so much.
We've done a number of things.
We get to keep them around and play
with them a little bit more as we
get into kind of the other themes of
the later in the issue.
So we do start off with a much
more grounded Western based introducing
our world,
getting y'all comfortable with all the
bugs and bees and butterflies.
But our two main protagonists, yeah,
Paper Wasp.
We have the Dirty Dauber Gang,
which are dirt daubers.
I love that.
I love that name.
The Dobber Six.
I love them, man.
They're great characters and they're
inspired by a number of rednecks that I've
known for a while.
Dude,
you live in a state full of all
of them.
Oh, man.
Oh, yeah.
Come on now.
But I live in Memphis myself, too.
So I'm in Memphis, Tennessee.
And so I'm kind of in this weird
limbo of Tennessee.
But we have it all.
I mean,
you're you're you're Bass Pro is a
pyramid.
All right.
I still.
Yeah, I love it because of the song.
I used to go there and watch basketball
games all the time as a kid.
And dude,
I remember when Tyson fought there.
Yeah.
Lennox Lewis.
That's right.
Oh, I love Memphis.
I love my town.
There's a soul food restaurant right up
the road from it that is absolutely
phenomenal.
Countless.
We got some good food out on Beale
Street as well.
I'm a big fan.
A lot of our local taco vendors and
our food trucks throughout Memphis are
rad.
That's new.
They didn't have that back when I lived
local to that area.
Well,
they've hindered out a couple areas around
here.
So it's a lot of pop-ups.
I see that last time I drove through.
Yeah.
A lot more flannel than you would have
outside of winter.
I will say the roads there have greatly
improved to its more eastern neighbor of
Mottsville.
Oh, I can agree with that.
Memphis potholes are nuts, man.
I drive a Jeep, so it's already terrible.
So I could complain about our roads all
day, but I won't.
But yeah,
there's a number of aside from again the
two paper wasps.
We have a butterfly butterfly brothel,
which was a very interesting conversation
with the artist.
It's nothing like doing character concept
work and being like, hey man,
I know they're butterflies, but.
lingerie something skank him up a little
bit.
That was a very hilarious conversation to
have an understanding,
but now there's a whole gang of locusts.
We have Miss Widow who runs the butterfly
brothel and we had the proprietors of the
Hive Haven strip that come into play very
largely.
There's also my favorite Sheriff Buzzkill.
who is, of course,
a very large bumblebee who runs the
sheriff's station there.
So there's a big town of characters that
come into play,
and a large piece of the series is
the consequences of what happens when a
paper wasp lives past winter.
And so it becomes, of course,
old faces coming back for revenge,
but also a little bit of a deterioration
of our lead character's mind as he starts
to actually struggle with what is real in
this new season and what is not.
Mm-hmm.
Dude, I absolutely love this concept.
And honestly,
it's one of those where I'm like,
you want to hit that fast forward button
so we can get to this point of
this comic book actually releasing so it
can be in people's hands.
Yeah, no, it is tough.
And I'll say it as a creator to,
you know, get your stuff out there.
You know,
when when you're any guy even new and
you have one or two,
three or four issues that you're pushing
out,
it's a lot different from the guy who's
talking to the first one.
So I'm looking to get this first issue
in y'all's hands.
Do it right.
Make it well.
Because we are looking for immediately
hitting ground with issue two, three,
four, five.
There's only seven.
And like I said,
we have a little goofy Halloween special
that I just had to have.
Yeah.
um that we're gonna do in total and
um and then that's it everything's
scripted out everything's done we're done
with uh colors and paging uh when it
comes to issue one moving on to lettering
and editing and getting real close guys
getting real close dude i like it i
like the fact that you're almost there and
everything is being laid out properly but
um so who are some more of the
artists and kind of collaborators helping
bring this story to life
Yeah, and I actually might have, you know,
one or two updates for the couple of
things I got going on.
But the guys right in the ship right
now, Billy Micaiah Kanza,
who's been the pencil and anchor,
has been awesome.
Like I said,
I'm working on a number of different
projects right now.
He has been the most responsive,
just respectful on it.
Good communication, great concept work.
Really happy to have been working with
him.
And his color is Jorge Elias,
who is with, of course,
the team I was mentioning before,
Fiction Comics.
Yeah.
So they're doing a lot of work on
the Fallen Seven right now.
Elias has been on the cover of a
number of real good works,
some silly stuff.
One of them I think was called the
Alabama Alligator
Something, something,
but it is really good.
When I saw his work, I definitely,
I was like, all right,
we're moving forward with these guys.
So those have been the leads so far.
I'm actually working with a guy right now,
Noah Carabello.
He's with Edge Comics.
He's going to be doing our variant cover
that's in the works right now.
that we're going to have with our
Kickstarter,
which I'm going to have feature a little
bit more of Slick Prick Paper Wing to
kind of give his due justice as is
his series.
But in the fat of it,
this issue in a way is pop pops.
I like it, man.
So what was your creative process like?
Did you start with a full script or
how has this process been for you?
Like a full up collaboration at the same
time?
Or did you literally sit down,
write out this nice big script for the
full seven issues and then kind of like,
Like we shop here for one, two, three,
four, five.
So I write a lot of short stories
and I always look for goofy reasons to
write them.
And the sillier, the better.
I usually write about ten to twelve pages
and I'm writing something.
I usually know if I'm going to want
to keep playing with it or not.
And so Pop Pop was the first one
created and I had, you know,
ideas in my head for him about what
the story would be.
And I wrote probably
probably a good fifteen.
That's it.
Fifteen,
sixteen pages of scripting for all drop
pop pop and loved it so much.
And the other characters kept on
developing around it.
And this antagonist that I had been
writing out the entire time,
there was a point where to sit down
and I was like,
this is the protagonist like this is this
is who we're about.
And so once I really started to paint
more in the light of Slick Prick,
It just opened up.
And so the concepts of it really have
changed once or twice in the first two,
three weeks of inception.
And then...
I wrote script one of what is actually
what you will be reading at Once Upon
a Hive.
And it was clear to me at that
ending the way I specifically wrote it,
how much I wanted to do and how
much groundwork I've laid.
So I went to write a quick synopsis
of what I would do for an issue
two and have the synopsis for this series
done.
and so i decided i was like wow
so i'm gonna really deep dive into this
and so i did more bug research had
more fun uh learned about more about them
uh because again you know it's uh the
more you know about your characters the
more of the world you're going to be
able to build yeah and you know the
the palette of who these characters were
were right there and everyday kind of
silly things and just personified by who
they would be almost in the wild west
um and then it's very character driven i
think uh this story was more so um
But yeah,
so I started off just a sixteen-pager,
turned into a full script,
said I can't be done with this,
added more to the first script,
and just synopsis the entire story.
And then over the course of maybe about
a month or two,
took the time to script well out the
rest of it.
Okay,
so what has surprised you the most during
the production of this comic book?
Um, it's attraction.
It's weirdness.
Um, I have, I have a lot of,
I will, I will agree with that.
Yeah.
It's a, it's far out.
And, uh, I have some,
you're one of the real sci-fi stuff.
I'm a big horror guy.
I love sci-fi horror.
Um, you know, goofy stuff.
Like I think the iron lung movie that
just came out was brilliant.
Loved it.
Loved everything about it.
Everybody did.
Cause that movie like racked up on the,
the weekends, uh,
I was writing, I mentioned earlier,
I don't know if this was beforehand or
not, but I was writing a submarine story.
I stopped.
I think that was while we were,
before we went live.
Yeah.
I was writing a story and doing a
lot of research for it and watched Iron
Long and I just put it away.
I was like,
they did an existential Lovecraftian
horror in a submarine.
That's what I was writing.
They did it better.
We're going to let them have that.
Sorry, I went off the rails.
I'm sorry about that.
No, you're good.
What were we on?
What has surprised you the most during the
production of the comic book?
Yeah, the attraction of it.
I write a number of weird different
things.
Like I said,
I write a number of short stories.
When I started talking to this one,
to my buddies and to my wife,
it was kind of the...
You sure?
And when you have a number of projects
that are locked and ready to go,
and it's a matter of which ones you're
going to put budget into,
which ones are you going to start
producing, there's a lot of conversation.
And there was conversation of,
do you think Hive is one of them?
Are you sure you don't want to do
this one instead?
And I was like, no, man.
I was like,
it was just so fun when I wrote
it.
Like, it's got to be fun.
And then I'm really blown away happy about
the uniqueness that people are finding
from it.
Yeah.
No,
it's one of those where you when you
sent me the stills of the book and
that's what I turned into the hype video
for this.
Yeah.
And I was just like,
there is the two images that I used
in the middle.
One of them is kind of like the
artwork for the top left hand corner,
you know?
Yeah.
And then the other one was like the
full like wanted poster image.
That gives you the synopsis of the book.
And I was like, sitting there, I'm like,
I had stuff ready to put there.
And I was just like,
I can't cover that.
I ended up doing the first part of
the hype video and the end and part
of the hype video with the information
that I wanted to get across because I
just couldn't touch those two middle pages
that you had sent me.
I was just like,
this is too pretty to freaking cover.
And I love the one at poster that
you did with the synopsis on it.
I was just like, that's just too good.
I can't cover that.
I told Billy Micaiah,
I told him when we first started out
and he was telling me too,
he was like,
I'll have a lot of different side sketches
for each different character.
I was like, keep them all.
I was like,
every time you're doing character work or
something, just keep it for me,
send it to me, send it to me.
And I ended up being able to play
with a lot of his line work and
do a lot of cool marketing stuff.
I'd say that as an advice for anybody
who's brand new to have whatever your
artist is working on,
especially your work in progress.
get it.
If they're making videos and stuff,
get it.
You know,
that's some of my favorite stuff to watch.
A hundred percent.
Absolutely.
And right now your Instagram is full of
those.
Yeah.
I'm, I'm, I'm learning, unfortunately,
this algorithm motion that we're in right
now.
Good luck.
It'll change tomorrow.
That's, that's, I've been hearing that.
Yeah, I'm hearing that.
So it's, so it's tough.
I want to say that it's tough because
you want to get what the algorithm wants,
which is these,
shorter form things and everything that
works for a world that is created and
out there and has a fandom.
You can do a slim shot of Battle
Beast and the whole image comic world
knows exactly what's this and that.
To try to sell something to your reader,
not just what I mean sell,
I mean to purvey a thought to someone
in that shorter form is tough.
I'm actually going to be looking to see
what I can do about
I don't know.
Changing things up.
Yeah,
I love the I love making the videos
and reels, man.
They're fun.
I I'm laughing because,
and I'm not laughing at you.
I'm laughing because that is the struggle
I have for every single interview I do
because every single one is different.
So I'm,
and I try to keep it to my
flair of the podcast, right.
And make it about the person because I'm
literally marketing you for the podcast.
Right.
But it has to be different and it
has to be unique because,
each time yeah and it's just and i
laugh at myself because i'm like the exact
thing you just described doing it for one
project
i do up to eighteen sometimes a month
yeah which that that number is getting
slashed in greatly starting in april
because yeah march is like i just want
to survive march to be fair i saw
your lineup and i was like he's working
april is like i said i i did
a drastic cut down in april may i'm
taking a vacation for a week so that's
going to help but
end goal is probably ten to twelve a
month and that's still a lot compared to
what some people do yeah these are all
live everything everything is unique to
the person coming on it's not generic
everything is like as i was telling you
before we had went live i literally build
each interview to the person the man hours
i put in to learn who you are
and to go to your social media i
do the research i find questions and i
make everything literally about the person
so yeah yeah it's a lot and this
month is going to be a struggle but
i'm going to get through it like i
always do
Yeah,
aside from the actual interviewing aspect,
that's a lot of the marketing aspect.
This is the easy part.
Yeah.
This is the easy part right here.
I'd say the same thing.
It sounds crazy.
It's not easy building a comic book.
It's a much more complex machine than
anyone would assume.
But building it,
writing it is the easy part.
Like being a comic book writer is like,
yeah, that's the fun part.
You know, getting involved.
And I want to thank, too,
a number of creators out there that have
set the tone for it.
made it more acceptable,
more common to get out there and promote
your stuff, the Kickstarter style,
the social media style.
Because, you know, few of us, I think,
would have ever have, you know, gone on,
put our face somewhere and started talking
about something, put ourselves out there.
Yeah.
Been aware how big the marketing and
social media aspect is to the entirety of
the project.
And yeah, you're right.
This is creating, you know,
and having fun collaborating.
That's the easy part.
Oh, a hundred percent.
So you're working in an indie space where
creators often wear multiple hats.
What advice would you give to someone who
wants to start their own comic?
My dad gave me advice in the beginning
of this when I asked him a question
about something and he told me it takes
a wise man to understand that sometimes
someone else can do it better than you.
I mean it.
I think what I took from that was
I aspired to do all my lettering.
I aspired to do a number of different
things myself.
I'm going to hand over lettering.
I just did.
I hired a guy just a week and
a half ago.
Go ahead and get started on a number
of things for the lettering because I'm
taking a look at the quality that Billy
and Jorge have provided for me as an
illustrator.
The quality, not to toot my own horn,
that I feel like I've given this story.
And do I want to debase that by,
let's see if I can do it.
yeah and there are things and i have
webtoons and they'll all be practicing
lettering and i'll be trying to be more
professional about how i go to do so
but do i really want to have a
lower quality lettering it's going to look
terrible just because like i really want
to do it myself i want to do
it myself a guy just hired is going
to do it a lot better
And so I would say there's a handful.
I would give you a thousand pieces of
advice if you're a new creator.
But aside from that one thing,
I'll say just do it.
A lot of this is just throwing stuff
into the sky and being surprised what I'm
not saying throwing spaghetti and poor
quality at the wall.
I'm saying it's being brave enough to just
do it.
We live in a world where people think
that like somebody is a famous writer
because they're a famous writer.
They were born to be a famous writer.
a majority of the famous writers you know
had normal jobs the greatest writers
you've ever known have the greatest jobs
greatest artists you've ever seen had
normal jobs um don't sell yourself short
in an art space just do it don't
ask permission uh there are no rules
literally none aside perhaps copyright but
like there's not just um nike there yeah
So, you know,
it's funny is like that goes back to
when you're building a business or a brand
is to surround yourself with people
smarter than yourself.
Because if you're the smartest person in
the room, you've already fucked that up.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah.
Mm hmm.
yeah absolutely um i've said this for a
long time too and i've worked in a
number of different things i won't get
into what i've done career-wise and
everything but the best resource in the
world will always be another person who's
done something before um and i'm telling
you this as a reader who i'm telling
you this is somebody who uses google
somebody who looks for things for advice
the person in front of you will always
be a better resource
Talk to these people that have done it
before.
Listen to their advice about Kickstarters,
about story writing,
about not getting overly involved in
things you don't want to get overly
involved in.
Be receptive.
And when it's your turn,
teach somebody what you can.
Yeah.
So...
I can't remember if we talked about this.
Actually, no,
we already talked about this.
This is one of the first things we
talked about was the community for Indie
Comments today.
So we'll scroll over that one and go
to this.
What role do you think social platforms
play in building an audience for comments
like this?
Right now, it's huge.
To be honest with you,
I can't imagine how you guys would have
gone about it beforehand.
Look,
we don't live in a day and age
where people have thousands of dollars to
pay artists to do this unless they have
some type of budgeting or getting
crowdfunding or anything.
I don't really understand how like a
nineties in these guys would have got off
the ground.
The bigger guys that we respect and know
that we call me like an indie like
image were founded by people that were
already very successful in a very
successful industry.
Um, I think it plays a massive role.
I never once thought I'd be, I didn't,
I didn't get on Facebook before I started
comic books.
I didn't get on Instagram,
TikTok or anything like that.
I felt old asking my friends advice about
how to build a TikTok and do all
this and do all that.
But it's, it's paramountly important.
It's very important,
which does kind of sting to say that
there is an extent to where creative
community is being with.
I mean, there is an algorithm.
There is a madman science behind something
you really don't have that much control
over.
So, again, advice to new people.
Learn it.
You don't have to start treading this
water because it's part of it.
Social media has been wonderful, you know,
and don't.
I think it's slow.
Your brand will grow as you do.
When that moment is right,
it's going to hit the right way and
you're going to find your audience.
But what else is coming for Disco Punk?
Oh, man.
Probably more than I should.
So I have Once Upon a Hive and
we're ready for issue two ASAP ASAP.
Ricky Ricky Recoil is a
Very fun,
very fun manga that I've been working on.
I originally did not want it to be
a manga.
And I even said when I was looking
and listing for an artist for this,
it's not going to be that guy.
And some guy sent me something.
I was like, yeah, I can see that.
And I was like, man,
it just really changed the way I looked
at it.
But Riki Riki Recoil is going to be
great.
I said when I first started that I
didn't do superheroes.
Sorry, I'll be right back.
I got to check something.
Oh, you're good, Buff.
I apologize to everybody who is watching
at home right now.
One of my cats sounded like it was
struggling to get a hairball up.
Thankfully,
this microphone and stuff cuts a lot of
background noise out.
No, you're doing it.
I'm hearing it in this ear,
and I'm like, come on, dude.
You're all right here.
Cat's all good, though, right?
Yeah, no, he'll be fine.
He's got long hair,
so it's one of those where it happens
with him.
Yeah.
So Ricky, Ricky recoil.
Yeah.
I think Ricky,
Ricky recoils can be real fun.
Definitely a sci-fi driven.
Don't want to give too much away.
Go ahead.
Social media is right away.
Check out that one.
We have a lot of content on that.
A lot of works in progress that are
coming out.
There's a lot of stuff on your Instagram.
Well,
and a couple of the projects I'll talk
about real quick,
we haven't really released yet that we
haven't really brought to the public.
So the couple of big ones right now,
of course, Riki Riki Requel,
Once Upon a Hive,
and we have The Fallen Seven, which,
of course, fiction comics.
Yep.
and uh and they had some great stuff
there um they really do um i wanted
maybe as much as i can to get
this out because i read the story as
a writer i love it um and writers
don't always like everybody else's stuff
um so i mean it's one of those
things i read it and i was like
oh man that was a
um some great story um very excited to
talk about this one real quick and i'm
going to be releasing information on this
i had a buddy that passed away about
two years ago named jc and growing up
he would tell these infatuated stories
that just were not true and we would
find out like five years later growing up
in the south we we all had that
one friend
Oh, wait,
so he told this story one time,
and this is where I got the inspiration
for it, where he was telling me,
he was like, he talked like this,
and he was like,
so I was in a fight with a
dude,
and I put my arms like this on
the wall,
and I just like scissor kicked him in
the face.
And we're like, JC, that didn't happen.
But five years later,
like after high school,
I'm talking to some guy,
and he was like, oh,
you're friends with JC.
And I was like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He was like, dude,
I was in seventh grade with him.
He scissor kicked some dude in the face.
And I'm like, that can't be true.
And but anyways,
there's a really good guy.
He would tell these crazy stories that
just could not be true.
And then you'd find out that were.
So when he passed away and he was
just he was a big hippie.
He had a smiley face,
smiley face tattoo on his butt,
all the stuff he passed away.
I wrote this story called J.C.
McSmiley Face Spaceman.
So we have a webtoon that's going to
be kind of coming up.
It's going to be voice acted and a
couple of things,
but it's basically the story of a very
embellished space adventure that my buddy
JC had.
And it's very it's very potty mouth humor.
It's really teenage stoner flick.
It's got to be a real good sign,
but we're bringing that in.
Gosh, what else?
Because there's more coming.
I'm working with a rather, rather,
rather talented,
well-known artist around the social media
community to a sixty page one shot that
has been in slow production for a while.
That is a graphic novel.
It had to be.
So many people at times come to me,
have you thought about breaking that down?
And I'm like, no.
So that story is Genesis.
That is the creation of the universe into
which everything I have written lives in.
And it's a great story.
It's definitely kind of the opus ode to
art.
It was owed to my mom and really
heartfelt sci-fi story.
That's in slow production right now.
Not going to be.
My dogs are coming out.
It's going to be a second before we
get that one really where we need it
to be.
I have heard horror stories about people
crowdfunding for longer projects,
even getting the funding and still messing
it up.
I've seen some really successful ones out
there where they
know somebody who has a currently they
just funded this there's the second part
of their graphic novel series and the
third part is coming soon so stay tuned
to everybody that will yeah they will be
back but um
That's a complete misconception,
I believe.
It's really all about how you and people
you're creating this book with utilize
their social media to push people to that
project.
So for people to say, oh, well,
they don't do as well,
that is not true at all.
Not that they don't do as well.
I think with the additional longevity of
the project,
with the time that it takes to create,
from what I've just, again,
before I started doing anything,
I spent like a year just talking with
people.
hearing the goods, hearing the bads.
And there was a number of things that
shine through to me about people that have
made mistakes with larger projects,
getting funded early or missing funding
or, you know,
going fifty pages in a seventy pager and
not getting there.
um so we're doing things slow away i
mean we're taking our time we're doing it
right we're making sure it's getting done
and it to me is one of the
biggest pieces close to my heart so i
really want to make sure uh it's done
with care and then in the back of
it uh like i said i may have
said this from podcasts i've just been
writing this story daydreaming since i was
about fifteen years old um there will come
a day well disco punk will be doing
something called eaters
But when we get there,
I'm going to make sure I have my
own Ryan Otley to my Kirkman.
Like, I need somebody.
We got a long way to go, baby.
So I want to make sure we're buckled
in.
What a combination to want to have your
own part of.
Who couldn't want one?
I've said that to so many people.
Like, could you just be my Otley, man?
Could you just work with me on everything
that I really want you to?
Those two put their name on anything.
A brown paper bag is going to sell.
It's going to be the most creative brown
paper bag you've ever seen.
Yeah, it's just the partnership of it.
That's what I long for.
I really want nothing more.
And I love all the artists that I
have now,
especially all the artists I have for the
series will remain on the series.
They will be my guys.
But yeah,
you're definitely always looking for,
especially the series that I want to do
when I'm ready for it is long.
Yeah.
There's a lot going on.
There's a lot of factors.
There's a lot of worlds to build.
There's a lot of different sections,
areas.
It's going to take someone who's really,
really, this is a long haul deal.
And also, I think as well,
it's easier once you have a little bit
more traction to want to be in a
place to set up so many consecutive
successful campaigns to get something
done.
Yeah.
And that does start to eat at you
after a while from what I hear.
Yeah, I can imagine.
I'm fresh.
I'm real green.
Hey, I'm learning every day I go.
I'm coming out swinging with a lot of
stuff.
I've done a lot of research,
but I also do understand that there's just
so much to learn.
And so, like I said,
every different street that I'm on,
there is a new...
new way to cross the street every time
and so there's a lot of hat you
ask you know what type of hats what
type of roles do you play it's a
lot you if you want to be a
writer if you've written a story and you
want to bring it to life in the
form of a comic book you have to
put on a producer's hat I've worked in
management for the majority of my life
managing an artist is a very different
thing than managing somebody who's
employed by a company you also work for
And there's a lot of,
there are artists out there that work at
different paces and you gotta learn
different personalities,
who's gonna work with what,
how things are gonna go.
So yeah, you wear a manager's hat,
a producer's hat, a funder's hat,
a marketer's hat.
Get ready.
I feel that.
All worth it.
I feel that.
Mega worth it.
Get ready.
You're having some fun.
Oh, yeah.
So what do you see as your long-term
vision, not just for the label,
but let's say five years from now,
how would you define disco punk success?
I...
Five years from now,
I kind of know what I want in
five years from now in three categories.
As for me, DK Biggs, I,
in the next five years,
want to continue to learn illustration so
I can maybe one day start working on
my own variant covers and attributing to
my own illustrative.
That's my five-year goal is in the next
five years.
I've been working for the past year or
so.
I'm still trashed.
Probably still going to be trashed five
years, but I'm having fun.
For Disco Punk Comics itself,
I want to see successful traction for the
series that I have here,
and I want to become again somewhat of
an information hub or a community.
Disco Punk is a community for people to
learn how to do this right,
find people to collaborate with.
I'm inspired by a number of people.
In Indie Comics,
you'll see some guy who's lone wolfing it
and trying to get everything done and
freelance and everything,
and then you'll come across every now and
then teams.
And doesn't everybody long to be a part
of one, you know?
So I would love to cultivate and continue
growing my my room of artists and
teammates and then more letters,
editors and just more people on the way.
So I can sit back, write,
produce and have people that have their
own hats that are helping me out.
That'd be nice in five years.
Don't blame me there, man.
I think that's the ultimate goal for not
just you,
but a lot of creators out there,
even for guys like me.
I would love to be able to get
to a point where I write the interview,
I do the interview,
I then take said interview and I slide
it over to my guy over here who
makes my clips and he does my social
media and I can just focus right here
where I want to be.
Yeah.
Well, and two,
and I'll say this as the aspiration,
and I'll make it quick.
I know we're probably close on time.
You're good.
When you look at some of the success
again, Indy is a very broad term.
When you look at people that are like
dark hearts,
dark horse or image or anything,
they do have teams where a writer is
doing this.
A pencil is doing this and he was
doing this.
A colorist is doing this and editors doing
this.
You'll find yourself when you start out
more roles and responsibilities come to a
smaller team.
So if I if I were to aspire
to get to my one of my favorite
series that I really can't wait to show
to the world,
it's going to come with a team.
Because you need to consistently be
releasing issues not to lose too much of
the track mod.
No.
Once you've got something good going,
you want to keep it going.
Otherwise, you lose the traction on it.
Nobody knows DK,
so if that traction's gone, it's gone.
You may not get that back.
Whereas a Robert Kirkman takes it like,
hey, guys,
I need to take a three-month break from
writing this series.
I will be back.
He pops back up in three months.
It's like he was never gone anyway because
his name is Robert Kirkman.
right yeah oh yeah oh and then there's
a number of writers that work under him
to do this and do that in those
worlds too uh and i also say this
and this is maybe because um i i
did not luckily with the research i did
i did not share this delusion but i've
had a number of people that i've seen
either come to me or i've posted online
and whatnot if you're a writer if you've
made the idea
You're going to have to budget it.
You're going to have to figure it out
like this is.
You're not gonna put a script on Facebook
and our course is going to be like
alright son,
let's make you a star like get ready
like so you know you'd be aware that
that's part of it.
Artists don't want to work for free.
The idea can be...
They're not going to either.
Yeah, exactly.
The idea can be the greatest thing in
the world.
But I see it all the time in
posts and stuff,
and I see kids get thrashed by it.
I wish I could have reached out to
them and said, hey, let me help you.
This is how we find artists a different
way.
This is how we save a couple bucks
and maybe pay one or two pages a
month or do something.
But saying, hey,
I've seen people on there.
I have a fifty-two issue synopsis written.
Who wants to do it all for free?
Let's split the money.
They're just like, well...
google google the type of indie sales
you're going to see give yourself a
realistic budget look at it from a
business standpoint uh have two devils on
your shoulder one that wants to create
things blindly carefree and the other ones
that's making sure that your pockets are
okay and you're not leaving yourself down
that road oh yeah yeah and it's amazing
what a simple google search will tell you
right off the hand no kidding no kidding
and it's it's
But anyways, go ahead.
No, no, no.
Trust me.
You definitely want to go.
No,
I was just going to say on Google
as well,
it's
There's a number of things that,
so as a,
as a writer and a producer,
you are going to look at things very
differently from other people that are in
the market that are more so freelancers.
Um, I heard somebody say this,
I don't entirely believe this,
but to an extent,
some common book artists are there to draw
pages, not to create books.
You are the one creating the book.
You are the brainchild.
You're the one doing all this.
Um,
be very aware of that concept that like
you,
I'm not sure where I was really going
with this, but like,
I think I know where you're going with
this.
So I think what you're trying to portray
here is or purvey.
Some artists have to have their hands
held.
And what I mean by that is you
give them your story.
But they need more than that.
They need to know what your characters are
looking at.
For instance,
if you have a character facing this way
and you want them to be looking at
something specific on that screen that
way, they want you to tell them,
are they facing east?
Are they facing west?
Are they facing north?
Provide your artists the guidance that
you're looking for.
Don't just give them the story.
Pervade your idea to that artist so they
can interpret your story and your idea and
your thought the way that you intend it
to be.
Because you can do that.
some artists intentionally allow an artist
to change your story entirely entirely and
and that's a fact and that's it's not
a slight to them it's just that this
came from your brain they are translating
like they and and so that's a big
piece of it but yeah it's it's just
go out there meet people be respectful
also be aware especially depending on
where you're finding artists there are
scams it's it's a whole world out there
no matter where you are contracts
Google Docs will create simple contracts
with signatures that are legal.
Set absolutely clear expectations.
Timeline.
Talk about timeline.
I mean, there's a thousand things.
I could talk literally for the next hour
about do's and don'ts.
I could, too.
And that's another show for another time.
I'll bring you back to that one with
some of the other people that I know
that are really good at this.
And we'll have a roundtable about that
one.
That sounds good.
Yeah.
I got some thoughts on that.
Yeah.
But just be mindful of who you're working
with, their limitations,
what they need to make your dreams come
true is the short stick of that.
Yes.
Yeah.
But DK,
I'm going to hit you with some rapid
fire questions.
You ready?
Oh, let's go.
Favorite comic of all time.
Favorite comic of all time is the boys.
Hands down.
Fucking good one, dude.
I'm happy that we're getting season five,
but I'm also sad that we're getting season
five.
You know what I'm saying?
I love it because they're so different.
It's just watching a new interpretation of
the characters almost.
It really is,
but if I don't get the comic book
ending, I will fucking riot.
You can't.
Noir's dead.
Except for that part, but you can't.
Spoiler, sorry.
Well,
they've already killed him in the show.
They killed one of them.
The fake one is still there.
Yeah, so I...
The Boys to me,
and I'm going to make a joke,
is my Forrest Gump because it's one of
my favorites.
But it's also you're going to cry
specifically like two times.
Yeah.
And I'll never the first time reading
this.
It cracked me up so hard because I
was like tearing up.
And my wife looked at me and I
was just like.
Starlight and Wee Huey are separating,
but they both know they shouldn't.
They both know they're wrong.
But anyways, too,
that's ones where if you're reading that,
you got to make sure no one's looking
over your shoulder because it's just
graphic.
Oh,
there's a reason why it says graphic on
the cover.
It's gnarly.
Favorite Western?
If it counts as a Western,
which it should,
it's No Country for Old Men.
Fucking brilliant.
I love that movie.
Oh, my God.
It's so good.
Yes.
Creator you would love to collaborate
with?
I don't even know if I should say
it.
There's some dude I've talked to once or
twice.
It's a really, really,
really high up guy that's just been
probably nice to be messing to me because
I'm a fan.
Todd Beetz.
I would kill for a Todd Beetz cover.
Dude, phenomenal, phenomenal artist.
Great guy.
Great dude.
That's the way I feel about Aubrey
Sitterson as a writer who writes Free
Planet for Image right now.
Yeah.
The story and everything going on
currently in the world is just –
The perfect time for that story to land.
But it's just an absolutely beautiful
story about what it truly means to be
the first free planet.
Yeah.
To truly be free.
Well, I think, I think too,
and I've said this to Todd,
I put messages on there once or twice
and we talked about, oh wait,
we're not like friends or anything,
but he's been nice again,
probably responded to me and was just
like,
he writes these amazing pieces and they're
not like,
he's just talking about how he feels,
like, you know,
the struggles of being an artist,
the issues that he's gone through.
He writes these amazing pieces,
and I'm a writer,
and he says he's not.
He is.
It's wild, right,
how good some of these artists are at
writing.
But you ask them to write a comic,
but they're going to be like, no,
that ain't what I do.
You write beautifully.
Why not?
Yeah.
I will interpret your story for you.
I'll draw your story.
Like character creation.
If I could illustrate –
That would just be so good.
I love world building.
And so that's one of the reasons why
I aspire to do so.
But I look at so many different artists
and one of the reasons,
one of the ways I found the artist
that's going to be working on Genesis is
just seeing his art.
And I saw it and I was like,
that is disco.
Like that's the character I've thought
about since I was seventeen years old.
There he is.
All right.
One word to describe Disco Pump.
Disco.
Fucking love it.
Let's go.
Let's go, DK, man.
DK,
tell everybody where they can find you and
Disco Punk Comics.
You can check out Disco Punk Comics on
Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook.
We've recently opened up on threads just
because I like to talk with people a
little bit more,
and you all seem to be a lot
more talkative there.
Reach us out there.
We should have a website that I'll have
links to by the end of this month
that's in production right now.
I'm not good at building it.
Having a friend help out,
sorry for the delay.
I like it, dude.
I like it.
Once you've got more links,
if you want to shoot those to me,
I can go back and add those to
this show as well.
And then to the kicks,
you can find me at Disco Punk Comics
on the Kickstarter.
I have not launched the project yet.
You can follow the creator, though.
And if you follow the creators and once
they launch a project, it gives you like,
hey,
Disco Punk just launched a new campaign.
So that's really cool.
And that's what I do a lot of
is I just follow the creator.
Yeah.
But every creator builds something
different.
Some build heroes, some build worlds,
and some build entire hives.
Tonight, we spoke with David Biggs, a.k.a.
DK,
the creator behind Once Upon a Hive in
the West and the mind behind Disco Comets,
a project that shows just how powerful
independent storytelling can be because
the future of comets isn't just happening
at major places.
Publishers.
It can be happening in garages,
in notebooks, on drawing tables,
or in the minds of creators who decide
to build their own frontier.
If you've enjoyed this conversation,
make sure to subscribe to the USDN Podcast
for more creator interviews,
more indie comic spotlights,
and the stories from behind the panels.
Ladies and gentlemen,
this has been the USDN Podcast,
where indie comics come to life.
The council is now adjourned.
Y'all be safe out there.
Y'all take care, guys.