Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
USDN Podcast is a cinematic indie comics interview series hosted by the USDN_Chairman and the Council of Nerds spotlighting the creators, storytellers, and worldbuilders shaping the future of independent comics.
Each episode dives beyond headlines into the real journeys behind the books from Kickstarter launches and creative struggles to the philosophies driving today’s indie storytelling movement.
This isn’t about rumors or recycled news.
It’s about the people creating the worlds.
Through in-depth conversations, creator spotlights, and crowdfunding discussions, USDN explores:
• The rise of indie comics
• The business of crowdfunding
• The art of worldbuilding
• The realities of independent storytelling
USDN is where indie comics come to life for the fans, by the creators, and powered by the community.
You are listening to the USDN on the
DFPN.
Thanks for watching!
What is up everybody and welcome to the
United States Department of Nerds where we
are for the people, by the people,
and of the people.
And today we're welcoming two creators who
have spent the last several years building
one of Indie Comet's most intriguing
horror and urban fantasy worlds.
Inspired by the classics like Hellboy,
Hellblazer, and Swamp Thing,
Otherkin follows a spell creator named
Alex through a world of magic, mystery,
and increasingly dangerous choices.
Across five issues,
Victor and Marco have built a
creator-owned series that blends horror,
fantasy, mythology,
and deeply personal storytelling into
something uniquely their own.
Tonight,
we're talking about the origins of
Otherkin,
the realities of independent publishing,
building a long-form comic series,
horror storytelling,
artistic collaboration,
and what it takes to build a creator-owned
vision,
to bring a creator-owned vision to life
one issue at a time.
So whether you're a longtime fan of
Otherkin,
a horror comic enthusiast our creator
looking to learn from two people doing it
the right way you've come to the right
place ladies and gentlemen the council of
nerds is now in session victor marco
welcome to the council friends thank you
so today is pretty unique i have victor
halen
from brazil and marco halen from france so
it's kind of cool that we got to
write a writer and a creator living in
two separate countries who have worked on
this amazing comic book together doing a
live podcast in the us
really cool stuff i'm glad we can make
this happen but let's dive into it fellas
marco we'll start with you tell us about
your journey into comics and storytelling
um well i i've always liked writing since
i was a child actually i used to
i remember when i was learning how to
to read and write i used to make
small illustrated books made with stick
figures and i would use uh you know
uh
a little piece of string to tie together
pages and make a little book that you
could flip.
And this is something that always was part
of me.
When I grew up, I studied journalism.
I started writing as a journalist.
And I also started writing as a
ghostwriter.
So I was paid to write other people's
books, basically.
I did a lot of different things.
One of the things that I did was
even autobiography for other person.
And I always like to tell this because
it's a little bit wacky.
But for many years,
I was using my passion to write,
and I was using my skills to write
for work, for other people,
for other projects.
And this is something that bothered me.
And since I was always a comic book
enthusiast,
I have been reading comic books forever,
Marvel, DC,
and also a lot of indie stuff.
That's where the impulse to create The
Other King came from because I wanted to
create something of my own,
something that I could tell a story that
was important to me,
that had meaning to me,
that was meaningful somehow.
And yeah,
I decided to go through comic books
because Victor was visiting me here in
France.
He was on the couch and he was...
complaining a little bit about the same
thing,
how he was always illustrator for other
people and how he wanted to do something
of his own.
And we thought, you know what?
Comic book is a way to unite both
of our skills.
So why don't we try it?
So that's a little bit of the story.
I hope you know who this is because
they say, ah,
these are the nerds behind the other game.
We take nerves as a compliment.
Amazing artist from Argentina.
She followed today.
I've been aware of her work for a
little bit now.
She's always shown a lot of love to
the podcast,
liking the posts that I put up on
Facebook.
Great that she's talking.
It's really cool to...
Yeah, Bianca's great.
Bianca is great,
and now it's an exclusive for you,
chairman.
We've been in discussions with Bianca,
and she is going to make a variant
cover for a future e-show for The King.
We cannot say more for the time being,
but yeah, she's an amazing artist.
We are really happy.
I'm going to send her an open invite.
If she ever wants to come on the
podcast,
we'll get her on the podcast and let
her tell her journey as well.
But we'll kick it over to you, Victor.
Tell us about your artistic journey and
kind of how did you find your way
into comic books as well?
Right.
Yeah.
Well,
Opposite to Marco,
I haven't read much comics growing up.
I think I mostly read the classics like
Watchmen and Dark Knight.
and i mean the league of extraordinary
gentlemen that's a good one that
criminally underrated yeah yeah i like
that i liked the movie growing up and
then i liked the movie a lot and
people told me i should have read the
comic and the comic is way better than
the movie because the movie is not good
at all the comics are always better
I mean, I don't know.
I don't know.
I kind of like Watchmen.
We are already starting with the closing.
Very close.
I will still go with the comic book
on that one.
Right, yeah.
Anyway,
so I worked a bit for tabletop RPGs,
making illustrations.
I've been an artist all my life.
I don't know how to do anything else.
I have no actual skills.
All I can do is drawing.
So I like it.
And yeah, Marco,
we were talking about creating something
and he had this idea for
for an expanded universe.
And he had this idea for a character,
and he wanted to get it moving.
So we started small.
We started slow.
And I didn't have much experience with
comics,
so I had to try to figure it
out, try and narrow it, basically.
So we started with something small,
and then we jumped into this series.
of other King comics.
That's the way to do it.
Just jump in, right?
Yeah.
I got to jump head first.
So I had mentioned Hellboy earlier and
Hellblazer and Swamp Thing.
Were those some of the books that both
of you as creators made you fall in
love with comics?
Well,
I know Watchmen for somebody up there.
But what were some of those other things
that kind of made you fall in love
with the comic book genre?
I always loved Mike Mignola's art.
I still haven't read Hellboy much at all.
It's hard to get your hands on.
Yeah, I have the omnibus.
I have all the omnibus.
I haven't read them.
I just flip through them.
That's the way to do it,
because if you're chasing single issues,
you're never going to get all the single
issues.
Yeah.
I always loved the art, and I mean...
Mike Mignola and Genndy Tatakovsky from
Samurai Jack are my main inspirations for
art.
And I don't have really any actual
inspiration from comics at all,
outside of Hellboy.
I can get over to you, Mark.
Same question.
Yeah, when we started working together,
we actually started to do like a book
club, a weekly book club,
where we would do something and we would
discuss something.
We went through a lot of classics,
including something from Alan Moore,
the world from Alan Moore.
And because we wanted to understand the
reference of one another and
Thanks to Victor,
I also started reading more recent stuff
from DC.
He really wanted to get into the absolute
universe as soon as it started.
And I said, OK, let's do this.
And it's been amazing.
So yeah, when I was a child,
I used to read mostly Marvel and DC,
because that was what was
available in Brazil.
We still don't have a strong comic book
market in Brazil.
So it was really hard to find even
some things on Marvel and DC.
And Hellboy was the first big book that
was not from the big two to arrive
in Brazil.
And I fell in love with it hard.
So I started to read Hellboy.
and then BPRD, and then Witchfinder,
and every book that was connected to that
universe, Lobster Johnson.
So that was huge for me,
and I really like how Mike Mignola manages
to build stories that are contained
somehow,
but they are set in a world that's
so expensive, so huge.
He's doing that again with Unknown Lands
now.
So, yeah, that is a major,
major influence.
I like it.
But let's talk about the birth of
Otherkin.
That's what we're here to talk about.
Let's dive into that.
And we'll start it with you, Marco.
Where did the original idea for Otherkin
come from?
Before we started to work on a comic
book project,
we tried to develop a video game,
a roguelike video game inspired by Hades.
that would have a team of superheroes.
And the story was a little bit more
less, it was not serious.
It was a bit a love letter for
different archetypes.
And the main character was not,
Alex was not the king.
And we had to come up with different
superheroes and we tried to make a
parodies of superheroes that we loved.
And we made a parody of John Constantine.
That was Other King.
At first,
Other King was just a name and a
look.
We didn't have anything about that.
But as time went by,
that character started to pop up in my
mind again.
And I started to think, OK, Other King,
where does the name come from?
The name was something I thought it was
just cool the first time.
But where does this name come from?
Where does this character come from?
Where do their powers come from?
And I started to build a story around
this character.
So Other King started to become its own
thing.
It's no longer a parody of John
Constantine.
It's no longer something that's trying to
copy John Constantine.
It was inspired right at the beginning.
You can see some of the resemblance still
there, which I think is really cool.
Yeah, but yeah,
it's something that evolved and shifts and
I started to write some sort of origin
story and put on the corner.
It was not something that we were working
on and we hadn't discussed this and we
left there.
And when we decided to make comics
together,
we decided to do a six-page comic just
to understand the process.
What kind of software do we use?
How do we deal with lettering?
At which stage?
All these small questions of production we
didn't know.
We were completely ignorant about that.
So we decided to pick a little project,
six pages,
just to learn how to do this.
And this story...
was about a dog who saw a demon
at her place and tried to warn the
owners.
And of course,
the owners think that the dog is being
hysterical and that leads to tragedy.
And at the end of the story,
we wanted to put a figure that was
some sort of paranormal investigator.
and i said okay let's let's use alex
alex is doing nothing alex is picking up
dust so so why not put that character
there and that create another process that
we started to discuss
But how the heck did that character arrive
in this story?
What did they do before that?
How do they know that there was a
demon there?
And we start to build this whole story
of Alex and who they are and how
they got to do this job of investigating
demons and stuff like that.
And that's where Are the King came from,
basically.
I like it.
And I'll kick it over to you, Victor.
What was your first impression when Marco
kind of like brought this to you?
The Expanded Universe thing?
Just the entire thing in general,
like from him having Alex just sitting on
the shelf and then kind of like, hey,
how did we get from here to here?
And like, since you're the man drawing it,
like when he presented it to you,
what was your like,
your first impressions of that or were you
there the whole fight was yeah no like
together i was i was there at the
beginning with this uh six page stories
with the dog and i i already knew
uh the idea behind other king because uh
as he mentioned that video game project he
had
He had started working on it before I
came in.
He had the ideas.
He had some concepts drawn out by other
people.
So I had some idea.
I knew Otherking existed in some form,
although it wasn't nowhere near what it is
now.
And we were just spitballing about this
short horror story with the dog.
as he told he wanted to fit Other
King there.
So we started to,
basically from the beginning,
to rethink Other King.
I suggested some stuff about their powers,
about their origin.
And we kind of recreated it from the
beginning.
So I kind of considered that I was
there from the beginning.
Y'all are friends to begin with.
So it was one of those where I'm
like, okay,
I don't know how close of friends y'all
were, but now I know.
So a lot of the questions I ask
is just because going into this,
I didn't know y'all were alike.
like close friends so if questions are a
little odd that's probably why because i
thought this was like yeah i didn't
realize y'all were like close close you
know like y'all y'all been homies since
the beginning so that's really cool kind
of we we've known each other for almost
ten years now and but at the time
he came to me with the idea for
the the video game project thing he had
started it without i mean without me
and and just oh i'm working on this
what do you think like let's work on
that and he had some initial ideas and
then that stopped for a while and we
weren't talking about it anymore and then
we picked back up with the the comic
book idea just from the start and i
mean i it kind of it kind of
was born at that time when i was
visiting him before uh he was living in
in brazil in rio
as I am when we met.
And then we started talking about the
comic book after he moved and I was
visiting him.
So it's different times.
Okay.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I would say that Victor has been
there from the beginning and he has been
influential to other King.
we like i always say that other king
is a creation of us both it doesn't
matter that the original idea came from me
because uh because uh victor is all the
time given ideas we have a incredible
collaborative process where i write
anything i send to victor he will read
and he will say i think that's good
i think this is not good
Okay, I don't know how to fix it,
but you need to change it.
And okay,
I will have the job to change it.
It's not an issue.
And sometimes he will also give some ideas
like, oh, I think this would look cool.
You know, artistic sense.
This would...
This would be cool on the page.
And can you come up with an excuse
for this to show up in the story?
Okay, let's do this.
And so all the time, all these ideas,
all this feedback is building a stronger
story and it's building a comic book that
is more interesting to look at and more
interesting to read.
Yeah.
I like to say, I like to say,
so I just said,
I like to say Marco came up with
the comic book background,
the horror background,
Hellblazer and everything.
And I added some emo,
emo bands on top of that.
Yeah.
No, dude, I love that.
And it's funny that you brought that up.
Um,
Heartstroke,
who's an artist out of Mexico,
he likes to inject punk rock into the
projects that he works on.
So when you said that, I was like,
oh,
that's similar to what Heartstroke does
because he's such a big punk rock fan.
Awesome.
He kind of ingests that kind of music
and style into the work he does.
So that's really freaking cool that you
mentioned that.
This is for both of you.
Kind of at what point did you realize
that this project had a lot of long-term
potential?
I mean, your own issue five,
or you just ended the Kickstarter for
issue five.
At what moment did y'all both kind of
go,
this has some long-term potential to tell
a really great story?
So I would say about...
the start because we have a problem that
it's actually, it's not a bug,
it's a feature.
We cannot do anything that doesn't make
absolutely sense in all levels.
So just to give you an example,
We knew that Alex would be a spellcaster.
Alex is making spells.
So we had to think, okay,
how does this work how magic works in
this world what is magic how how all
of this comes together so in order to
write a simple story of alex fighting a
monster i had to understand what is a
monster what is magic what is on that
so the the first the first stretch of
the writing process of other king took a
long time
a really really long time i spent almost
a year writing because i had to to
figure out how all these pieces work
together and when you put all these pieces
together and when all of these start to
make sense you start to realize that there
are more stories to tell in this universe
so so yeah uh
We got a little bit lost with all
the stories that we wanted to tell.
And then we took a step back and
we decided, okay,
we want to tell all the stories,
but we are doing this ourselves.
We have no funding.
We need to be a little bit less
ambitious.
So we decided to tell one story that
would be like Alex arriving in London,
like we are telling.
And we wrote the story.
It's a story that will end in eight
parts.
It's a story that has a closure.
And the story that we are telling now,
it ends.
It leaves things open for other stories.
And we want to tell these other stories.
But yeah, we see the potential already.
We told ourselves we are going to get
to issue eight no matter what,
no matter what sacrifice we have to make,
let's do this.
And recently we decided to expand a little
bit.
We are going to get to issue ten
no matter what.
Because issue nine and ten is going to
be like intermission issues.
that are going to spend a little bit,
do a little bit of world building,
introduce other characters.
And then if everything goes well,
we can move to the next story.
But yeah,
we see the potential to tell a lot
of stories,
to explore different areas of horror.
This was very important for us right from
the beginning that we wanted to
Now we are exploring a little bit of
body horror in these first issues.
And we want to explore different kinds of
influences.
We want to explore Victorian horror.
We want to explore cosmic horror.
We have stories that some of them are
plotted already.
Some of them are just a concept that
we say, okay, we want to do this.
Let's leave this written down.
I like it.
This is for both of you again.
What makes Otherkin unique among other
indie horror comics?
If you had to pitch this to me,
if I was going to buy this horror
comic over here and you're like, hey,
wait,
I have something that is more unique than
that.
Like, what is it that makes it unique,
the indie horror comic?
I think there are several things that make
it more unique.
The first is, in terms of story structure,
we are not following a hero.
Both in horror stories,
we carry this from superhero comics,
we have usually a character that will face
a challenge and this character will make
the choices to overcome that challenge.
And Alex is not a hero.
Alex is someone who wants to be a
hero.
He wants to do the right thing,
but for selfish reasons.
They want to prove their value.
They want to be important somehow.
And that leads to Alex doing stupid
decisions in almost every issue.
So it's funny that the main character arcs
that we are dealing are not...
Alex is a vehicle to explore other
characters and other arcs.
Another thing that makes Otherkin unique
is that from the start we wanted to
explore
different mythologies,
different traditions,
different mystical traditions.
And we didn't want to go to the
classic horror comic book that's based
basically on Christianity and this idea of
hell and this idea of demons and this
idea of challenge.
and we wanted to do things a little
bit different.
So this first arc of order king that
we are working right now,
it draws a lot from Aboriginal cosmology
in Australia.
So the first people of Australia and their
cosmology and how this is going to reflect
in different ways of thinking.
So that is something that we also think
that we are doing differently.
Victor, how's it going?
Oh,
I'm so glad Marco is here because I
got so nervous from that question.
I don't know how to answer it.
I don't know what makes it unique.
It's just, it's great, guys.
Fair enough, fair enough.
Marco answered perfectly.
I mean, he's the brains of the operation.
I like to think I'm the heart,
but he's the brains.
That's perfect right there.
That's a legit answer.
Throw the hard questions at him.
and i like it but let's talk a
little bit about the world of uh otherkin
um and marco since you're the the brains
of the operation why was london the right
setting for this story um
London is the setting for this story
because we are telling a story that will
touch in the tradition of the mystic arts
as we know them.
And London is a setting that is not
essential for this first story,
to be honest,
but for other stories that we want to
tell and why London is important,
it's going to be.
So we...
we wanted to set in London as this
heart of a mystical tradition.
We had in the Victorian era in London
this rise of interest in alchemy and all
this
traditions that came with the mystics that
were studying, I don't know,
Solomon demons.
And all this makes London historically an
interesting place to deal with horror and
mysticism.
And due to some characters and how we
want to explore these characters in the
future, we decided to set this in London.
I like it.
And I'm going to kick this one to
you, Victor, as the heart.
So how much reference work goes into
creating believable environments?
I mean, if we're talking London here,
it's a big city.
It's known for its older buildings and the
fashion styles of London.
How much do you put in a lot
of research or you just go, oh, yeah,
it's just another area?
Yeah.
I would love to sell.
I do a lot of research.
I spend a lot of time looking for
reference, but I don't.
So honestly, I really like architecture.
I really like London.
I've never been, but I like it.
We were just talking about this the other
day for some other plan.
I had an idea to look at the
map of London.
and look for references and in assassin's
creed syndicate and watch dark legion to
to compare the yeah the the different uh
times i forgot the word the different ages
like victorian london more than london to
compare okay yeah yeah
So I like that stuff a lot,
but I try not to get too locked
into that,
because if you try too much to mirror
reality,
then the holes start to show up and
people start noticing.
So I try not to be too locked
into, OK, we have the library.
I kind of tried to give it a
feel, a general feel.
This could be set in London.
But not, OK, this is the street.
You can look at the street right now.
Because then, also,
the story is set years ago.
It happens in this first arc.
First arc happens in in
So we have some leeway there on House
of Flutes and House of Fuse.
You don't want to say, oh,
this is this street and that street,
because if you have fans in London,
they're going to just be nitpicking it,
just tearing it apart.
I would hate to.
i would hate to to get emails from
our fans in london oh no my street
is wrong that would be and they're huge
comic book fans in in the uk so
you definitely don't want to get something
wrong imply it's london and call it good
some actual buildings
We have the airport.
There's a real building that Victor
produced.
We have also the National Archives.
So there are some things that are supposed
to be part of the real world,
but we are not trying to tell a
story that is set in our London.
It's just a version of London.
Yeah.
You have to do it that way.
Like I was saying,
like they will pick it apart.
If you say, Oh, in London,
they're going to be like, Oh really?
And just start tearing it apart.
And that, that, God,
that would just be horrible.
Maybe that's a good strategy for
engagement.
Like we can, we can start some baits.
Yeah.
Put a,
have a Kickstarter, you know,
like one of the prizes, like, oh,
if you pay this much,
we'll draw your flat in the book or
we'll draw you into the book and pointing
at your street sign.
I don't know.
But yeah, it's definitely one of those.
You have to like pick and choose your
battles on that one.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But.
And this is kind of for both of
you.
How do you find a way to balance
horror and mystery and fantasy and like
character development all within the book?
Because, I mean,
it all goes hand in hand,
the story and the art.
It all kind of has to work together
to balance all these elements out.
Character comes first.
That's the rule that we both have.
A character comes for us.
Oh,
it would be really cool if that happened.
But would that character make this choice?
Would they go to this direction?
Would they try this?
No.
So that is not going to happen.
So we really want these characters to
be...
to be complex, to be,
to have their own motivations,
their own preference, their, their way of,
uh,
interacting with the world around them.
So that is,
that is always the top priority.
That is, uh, the most important thing to,
to every issue too.
It's what we try to do best.
Right.
Also, I think we,
we try to approach this from, uh,
heavy visceral storytelling language.
So we try to do as much as
possible with just images.
And because of that,
I think we have to think a lot
on how stuff moves and you know what
I mean?
How the world works.
It's easier to think about the development
this way.
Yeah, I mean,
you're going to have those little
intricacies built into the stories,
the characters,
and the art that's uniquely a way to
define otherkin versus other stories.
It's part of storytelling, right?
That's why I make storytelling in comic
book formats so unique and so vast because
you can do so much with it.
Yeah,
it's funny because one thing that I
learned since I started writing comic
books is that it takes a lot more
time to write a silent page than plaster
a lot of narration, dialogue everywhere.
That silent page,
that's Victor's writing right there.
You let the art tell the story and
the words back up the art.
Yeah, exactly.
I think now I should have gone with
that for the answer of what makes it
unique,
because we have a lot of just visual
storytelling, just silent pages,
and that's great.
There was one reviewer that said,
other can really make you pay attention to
the details,
and
uh that's that's deep in my heart i
i that's one of my favorite things like
you can read a comic book in five
minutes i can read a comic book in
twenty five minutes because i'm looking at
those little smaller details in the panels
because how do you tell a story it's
a visual you know genre of storytelling
with comic books who you have to pay
attention to the art
And the words are just backing up the
art and helping that story flow along
through that art.
And so always, like,
I'm going panel by panel and looking at
the art and the little smaller details.
Like, oh, that was something unique there.
I wonder if that's going to come back
later in the story.
And quite often that little thing that you
notice on that one panel,
it comes back later to help advance that
story a little further along.
Yeah.
Everybody out there who reads comic books
is like, oh,
I read a comic book in ten minutes.
You didn't really read it.
If you didn't pay attention to the art
in that, you didn't really read that.
Is that a race?
Do you want a medal?
What's going on?
People are like, oh,
I can read a comic book so fast.
I'm like, okay, cool.
I'm studying.
I'm studying that book.
But let's talk about the protagonist of
this story and talk about Alex.
We'll start it with you, Marco.
Why make Alex the protagonist of this
story?
So,
the story that we wanted to tell with
Other King,
the story that we wanted to explore,
was about someone who...
who was trying to figure out where they
fit in the world.
And...
And so Alex came first with this concept.
This is a person who is really into
all the things that are creepy and all
the things that are magic.
And this is someone who is trying to
find meaning in life.
This is someone who looks into the things
that other people think that are nonsense
because
they cannot find the meaning in the
regular everyday life.
So Alex's journey is this journey.
It's someone who finally realizes that
they were right.
Something exists, something more exists.
It's more than the work,
more than the routine,
more than the repetition.
And now what they will do with this
knowledge?
They will try to...
to think that this gives them a little
bit more insight in the world of this
makes them more capable and they are going
to be proved wrong a lot.
And yeah, so basically,
that is the story that we wanted to
tell with alex that's why alex is the
protagonist we wanted to explore this uh
this bothersome thing that we all feel at
some point that we all feel in some
measure that life it's uh sometimes not
enough life it's it's heavy life
Life is not something that has so much
meaning all the time.
So we are always in different ways,
in different fashions,
trying to find meaning.
I think that the human experience is
always finding meaning.
So that is why Alex is the protagonist,
because this is the themes that we want
to explore.
And Victor for you is like,
when you were coming up with this design
for Alex,
now that we we have talked about it,
I can see the Constantine influences there
from Hellblazer.
Like what was that challenge with with
y'all like coming up with his design for
design for Alice and what he looks like
and how he dresses and that kind of
stuff?
Much of it was trying to...
I don't think parody is the right word,
but reference, you know what I mean?
Much of it was trying to capture this
feeling of Constantine.
And if you read along,
you notice Alex is someone that would try
to imitate that, to...
steal some importance from these kind of
characters.
I think the idea there was mostly to
add personality through imitation than to
actually imitate.
Yeah.
And there are some references there as
well for making romance in Alex's
appearance and
how they evolved through the art.
And issue five is big on these changes
of trying to find their identity.
And I think that's mostly the design
itself is mostly this attempt
of importance by Alex.
Yeah, it is.
We're sitting here talking about it and
I'm like,
he kind of looks a little bit like,
uh,
another character from a show that I
really enjoy from, uh, Vox Machina.
There's a character on there with the
blonde hair and the glasses and, um,
I get those Constantine vibes and I get
that character from Vos Machina as well.
And I was like, that's kind of cool.
It was purely unintentional on the Vos
Machina side.
It's just,
that's the vibe I see when I see
him with the glasses and the blonde hair.
I'm like, oh,
he kind of looks like the guy from
Vox Machina too.
Totally coincidental.
I have never watched Vox Machina at all.
So it's wild, right?
Like when I see him, I'm like,
I get the Constantine vibes and then I
get like,
but the facial structure and everything
kind of looks like this other character
from Vox Machina, which fantastic show.
If you've never watched it,
it's really fun.
I mean, it's not like,
it's not like a overcoat with glasses.
It's the most original design ever.
I know.
Right.
I know.
And it's funny because, oh, it's not.
Yeah.
But that's the vibe I see when I
see it.
And it's pure coincidental,
which I think is funny.
But everybody's mind goes to different
places when they see characters, right?
And, like, I'm like, oh,
I can see this.
And, oh, and this one right here, too.
So, but what do y'all think?
And this is for both of you.
What makes Alex such a...
like fans connect with him and obviously
if we're on issue five of this this
comic book people are obviously enjoying
the story of alice why do you think
mates readers connect with him i i think
it's mostly i mean we are millennials
we're both we're both born in the nineties
I think the main thing is this identity
crisis, this need to belong somewhere.
And I think mostly Other King is a
story about belonging somewhere,
of trying to find identity,
to try to be something, be someone.
And I think that's what drives Alex the
most.
Trying too hard to be someone and yeah
failing at that while there are other
powers controlling the whole world and
They're aware of it.
We have all been there.
Just trying way too hard Yeah, yeah.
Yeah,
I think that that is something that people
connect a lot and From the few people
who read issue five They days
They said about how issue five changes a
little bit the perception of Alex,
because I think that people are a little
bit resistant to the idea that Alex is
not necessarily a good person.
They are trying to do good.
They are trying.
But since they have this huge need of
being someone...
of finding an identity that is relevant,
that's meaningful,
they end up hurting other people.
And I think that, yeah,
that speaks to something that is very
basic in the human experience.
Yeah,
I would say that especially for
millennials,
because we are all depressed and we are
all lost.
I mean,
you've got to have character growth.
You're five issues in.
Alex has to have grown some from a
personality standpoint and a character.
You're going to get that character growth,
and you're going to start to notice
different things about the character.
So...
But let's talk about the creative process
of the book.
And this is for both of you.
Walk us through the creation of a typical
issue.
When you get ready to go and write
issue number six and to draw issue number
six,
how does that work between the two of
you?
Okay, so for this first arc,
we decided that...
that we decided that every arc,
every story that we want to tell,
we need to have it written from the
start to finish before we draw a single
page.
The idea is that we don't want to
start writing something that we think is
good and we think that is going somewhere.
And then in issue five,
we suddenly realize, oh, wait,
this doesn't make any sense.
We need to go back,
but we cannot go back.
So...
the process was i wrote all eight scripts
for all eight issues of the story arc
and then i sent victor he gave feedback
and then i started to rework that and
now every time that we will start a
new issue production in art we sit down
we call each other and we read a
full a full script we do funny voices
we try to have fun with it yeah
And then we refine, we improve, we polish,
but the story is all written because we
do not want to risk sabotaging ourselves
by writing something in the future and
we'll see where we go.
This is not something that we were
comfortable.
For the first eight issues,
since Victor did not have a lot of
experience with comic books,
The script was not written in a typical
way because I also did all the paneling.
And the issues are getting better because
Victor read a lot of comic books since
then,
and now he is changing my paneling more
and more and more.
Because the first issue,
the paneling that was on my script was
pretty much the paneling that we see on
the first issue.
But I'm a writer,
and even if I have a pretty good
notion of paneling,
I am not a visual artist first.
So, of course,
I'm severely limited with that.
And as issues go by,
they get a lot better because Victor,
he can just call me and say, oh,
this page is good,
but the paneling is shit.
I will change everything.
Go ahead.
No, I like it.
And that was actually a question that's
kind of like,
how has this collaboration evolved over
time?
It's just perfect that you said that.
On issue four, yeah, issue four,
we were getting ready to begin the drawing
process.
By the way,
just picking back up a bit,
when I was working on drawing that
six-page story,
During the time I was drawing the six
page story,
Marco wrote everything for all the eight
issues for the King and I just read
them and it was the best thing I've
ever read.
So I had to work on it.
And now every issue we do a read
and go back and forth and I suggest
things to his process,
he suggests things to my process.
And on issue four, we were reading
um before i started drawing and i felt
like this this lacks something like some
punch like some rhythm okay and we added
some pages great page that was all yeah
on the right so it should be on
the left because it should be hidden by
a page flip and i didn't think of
that
And Victor thought of that in three
seconds and say,
why did you hide this in a page
flip?
Because I'm dumb.
And it's one of those where that's those
little details, right?
Like what made that page pop more.
And that's why you have a good team
because they're going to tell you like,
Hey,
I think this one looks better over here
and that you can change it.
And that's,
that's those little details that are
usually missed.
The fact is nobody has read that with
the page flip yet.
Nobody has seen the issue with a page
flip.
The issue four isn't out in print yet,
I think, right?
It is.
It is?
It is.
OK.
I don't have issue four in print.
Yeah, well,
it still hasn't crossed the ocean,
but it is.
Because the issues are being printed in
the US by W Comics.
So they already printed up to issue four.
Okay.
But our copies take a little bit longer
to get here because international
transportation is saying right now.
Oh, I get it.
Like,
there's some comics in the UK and other
places that, you know,
where I want to back the Kickstarter,
but it's going to cost me, you know,
ten bucks for the book,
but thirty dollars for shipping.
And I'm like,
I just can't commit to a forty dollar
book when thirty dollars of it is
shipping.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We had one backer on our Kickstarter from
Australia that is going to pay thirty
euros for shipping.
And
I feel bad.
I feel so bad.
I'm so grateful that it's a backer who
bought the five issues,
so the full collection.
So it's worth it, though,
if it's thirty bucks.
I mean, you're getting five books.
That makes more sense, right?
But no, I get it.
It's still painful because it's more
expensive than the books itself.
So it's hard.
Yeah, no, just like when.
What I was trying to say is we
try to think on these small things,
like the page flip,
what a page flip means, way in advance.
So we kind of have some surprises for
the long game.
Yeah.
And Victor makes me a better writer.
because when he points things up like
that,
this is something I will never forget.
I remember exactly what the issue was with
issue four because I will never forget it
now.
When I'm writing scripts,
I always think about the page flip.
I like it.
Yeah.
He makes a, oh, what a cutie.
I saw a cat.
This is,
let me see if I can get her.
she wants to fight me now this one's
Evie hello Evie oh she's a cutie she's
a little cutie mischievous little cutie
hello yeah oh my god
But yeah,
the process is really back and forth.
Like in issue six,
I wrote two pages that were individual
pages.
And then Victor said, okay,
we should maybe organize the panels as if
they were a double page.
And I said, okay, let's do that.
And once he had finished those pages,
we looked and he said,
no one is going to know how to
read this.
The order of the panels is weird.
So we went back to one page,
two pages,
to single pages and we reorganize
everything.
So yeah,
we have a lot of back and forth.
And I think that the fact that we
are both creators and we are both invested
and we are both making our baby means
that there is not
um hierarchy there's not someone doing
stuff and the other person just doing what
they must to to comply and i think
that we can improve and make better books
like that
It's kind of wild because that's a double
splash page, right?
And you're like, oh,
people aren't going to understand how to
read that.
If this was being made in the nineties,
you would need at least two different
double splash pages like that in order to
make a good comic book in the nineties.
Yeah.
So it's kind of weird how that's evolved
and you don't see as many of those
big double splash pages like you were just
talking about.
Yeah,
I think that we see a few good
examples.
I think that Tino likes to do that
a lot,
like something from The Children or The
Nice House.
They are mostly written as double pages.
Like not spreads, but double pages.
It changes a little bit the...
It's one of my favorite comic books,
so I know exactly what you were talking
about.
Yeah, that comic is so good.
Yeah, Marco won't admit it,
but I think Tinion is his favorite writer
right now because every single day he
comes to me with another Tinion-written
comic book.
You need to read this,
and I just can't find the time to
read everything.
Yeah,
my favorite one is Dennis Camp for the
time being.
okay yeah uh assorted crisis event is
brilliant so i missed that out on that
one when it first started so i've went
back and gotten the trade paperbacks of it
and that one's been so good but i
don't think like i was able to track
down
the single issues or the earlier stuff
from something is killing the children.
And that is like,
definitely one of my favorite series
between that and the house of slaughter
and the book of butcher and all the
other fall of slaughter.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then now there's a novel,
there's a novel about to come out as
well.
Yeah.
And, um, but no,
it's just such a compelling story.
And the fact that we're about to get
it as a TV show as well,
which is kind of scary, um,
Because I'm such a huge fan of the
comic book, and I'm like, man,
this TV series could really ruin it.
What would be a TV show?
Something that's killing the children.
Awesome.
Maybe I'll watch it now.
It's got me worried.
I mean, I think it's going to be,
I can't remember if it's Netflix or Amazon
Prime, one of the two,
but it's one of those where, like,
that could be really good or really bad.
Yeah.
Genevieve kind of sold everything for TV.
It's going to be a World Tree also.
Yeah,
World Tree is going to be an animated
series.
Yeah.
There was something else.
I don't remember if The Nice House is
going to be a series.
There was something mentioned of it.
Yeah, there's been something mentioned of,
I don't know if it's going to be
the last house or the nice house by
the lake or a nice house by the
sea, which one they're going to do.
Yeah,
hopefully the lake because I thought it
was a lot better than the nice house
by the sea.
Both equally good,
but by the lake was definitely the
superior of the two.
yeah yeah so yeah i agree i agree
nice house by the lake was amazing nice
house where they see is it's good but
yeah and i think the biggest issue is
it's taken so far in between issues that
you just kind of like yeah they got
a reading for that yeah yeah it's not
a book that's built for reading uh singles
it's a book that is better enjoying as
a trade
Yeah.
Weird.
I'm feeling a bit, as I said,
I don't have the, I didn't have the,
I didn't read much comics ever in my
life.
I started reading after,
reading more after working on other
things.
And I have more trouble with reading
what's currently being released because
the weight between issues.
It just breaks the pace so much.
When I started reading Episode One Woman,
it was amazing.
There were like five issues out,
ten issues out, something like that.
And it was great.
I could just read them.
And now reading them,
the issues as they come, I feel like,
I mean, the last one was better,
I think.
I'm not sure.
Yeah.
The lack of reading kind of breaks it.
Yeah, and it's ever-expanding, right?
They just released Green Arrow.
I never got into the Absolute series.
But what I've done is I like certain
artists,
so I will collect the cover that a
certain artist has done.
I pick up the number ones of each
series as it comes out,
just so I can have a number one
of the book for later on down the
road.
But as far as the reading it goes...
I'll catch you when it's done on an
omnibus or something, you know?
Yeah,
I kind of feel like it's the best
way to read, honestly.
Yeah.
But let's talk about issue number five of
Otherkin.
And without spoilers,
what makes issue number five different
from the previous issues?
And Marco,
we can start with you on that one.
Okay,
so issue number five is a little bit
different because it's a flashback issue
focused on what happened to Alex before
they went to London.
So this is a book that is going
to answer a lot of questions.
How Alex got their powers,
how and why they went to London,
why they are in London,
looking into this man called the Wizard.
And also, who is Noah?
Noah is a name that appears in every
issue, every previous issue.
First as a note on the notebook pages
on the end of the first issue.
And then Alex mentioned Noah to Lorelei.
And we know that Noah is an important
figure of Alex's past.
So issue five is about to answer a
lot of questions.
And it's about to give readers a look
at this kind of origin of Alex.
And it's great.
It's an important issue for this
eight-story arc because we first see Alex
in London and their investigation.
And we now see what...
why alex is doing all that and this
marks a a shifting point where noah is
going to become a main character so okay
yeah and uh yeah uh we are already
working on issue six for for for instance
okay coloring issue six
And yeah,
it's making a main character changes a lot
and allows us to do some pretty
interesting stuff.
I like it.
And Victor, for you on that,
did you approach issue five from a
different perspective from the art
standpoint?
Not really, I want to say.
I kind of did so on issue six
because issue six goes places.
Fair enough.
Issue six is our Eisner issue.
It's our Eisner issue.
I like it.
I like it.
But mostly,
I've been changing my process a lot.
I'm learning while I do this from issue
one.
So every time I think I can make
something better on my process,
I try to change it,
try to change it in a way that
fits.
Issue six kind of has different,
some art differences between the rest.
And I don't think they're going to stay
there.
I'm going to go back to something more
akin to issues one to five after that.
But on issue five,
I think mostly what I tried to do
there was Alex is different.
Every time Alex shows up,
they're different.
Because the idea there was to try to
communicate this search for identity.
Alex is a shapeshifter.
They learned to shapeshift at some point
in issue five.
And every time they show up,
they look different.
And that's the idea.
They are trying to fit the world.
They're trying to understand their place
in the world.
That's the idea.
main point this is this is for both
of you um if somebody is just now
discovering otherkin would have would
issue five kind of be like a good
place to jump in or should they go
back and read those first four issues the
story was designed uh so that so that
uh
we would prefer you to spend a little
bit of time with Alex in London before
learning about their pests.
But you can absolutely grab issue five and
read it.
There's absolutely nothing preventing
that.
And this is something that we discuss a
lot in terms of production, like...
since we are releasing things in issues in
floppies it's important to also give
certain ways of someone to jump into the
into the comic without feeling completely
completely lost so the issue must have a
reason to exist in itself uh this is
not always perfectly possible because we
are telling a serialized story so so there
are things that carry over from one issue
to the other but we really try to
give each issue uh a structure of uh
of their own so so yeah and issue
five i think that's the easiest one to
grab and read it and and check a
little bit of the the universe but uh
yeah
Just enforcing something that Victor said
about Alex's appearance in this issue
five,
and how each scene has a different Alex.
This is something that we discussed a lot.
Alex is a shapeshifter.
So they choose how they want to look.
And how would you choose how you would
want to look if you got these powers?
You would experiment.
You would try different things.
Oh, yeah.
A hundred percent.
And even in the future,
if we tell other stories,
Alex is going to be looking differently
also because...
that version of them that they are in
London,
maybe it's not who they want to be
in a few months.
And so this is something that is quite
part of the identity of Alex.
They are fluid in all senses.
They are comfortable with experimenting
with different ways of being.
And yeah,
issue five shows a little bit of this.
I like it.
So,
and this is for both of you again,
what do you think long-time readers will
appreciate about issue five?
Mostly the answers.
I think that people who read the first
four issues,
they always send me messages like, oh,
I'm so curious about this.
I'm so curious about that.
Can you tell me what happened so it
happened?
And I think that the issue five is
going to answer a lot of questions
because, uh, again, we, we,
we planned the story to be eight parts
and, uh,
to answer most of the questions that
freeze on this eight parts.
There are a few things left for the
future, but, uh,
this should be self-sufficient.
That is how we are looking.
So we don't like,
as readers and as people who read comic
books,
when a mystery gets dragged out too long
for no other reason than extracting a
story.
So if we created this mystery,
we need to offer answers.
Yeah,
I think we made a bet on a
slow building
on expanding stuff with the right timing.
And I think issue one kind of feels
a bit slow.
It's just setting up stuff.
And if you get to issue five,
you get this feeling of, OK,
this makes sense.
This is how this stuff fits.
And then on issue six, we have, OK,
this is new.
There's something more.
You know what I mean?
It's not the whole puzzle yet on issue
five.
We have a lot to evolve from there.
But what you read until then makes sense
by issue five.
No, I like it.
So issue five has come and gone.
It's off of Kickstarter.
Fulfillment is taking place.
Now let's look at life after issue five.
Has anybody reviewed it yet?
Has anybody read it and gave you all
feedback on it yet?
Yeah,
we got two or three reviews so far,
and the reviews were really positive.
So we are quite happy about it.
We always try to get more reviews.
Once we have a release date for people
outside Kickstarter,
we are going to be hitting every member
of the press again.
because we are trying.
But yeah,
we still don't have this release date
because since people backed us on
Kickstarter,
they should get the issue first.
So yeah.
Nimona, absolutely great comic.
Yes, there are similarities.
I didn't read Nimona until after I had
written Other King,
the first arc of Other King.
But I also love how Nimona is a
shape-shifting story that deals with
gender a lot.
And I found it really interesting to see
how Alex had this similarity of pneumonia,
because Alex is gender fluid,
so they shapeshift between different
genders,
and they are comfortable with that.
And yeah, Nimona has the similarities.
And for instance, with Alex,
there are entire scenes where Alex
shapeshifts to a woman and they stay like
that while they are dealing with
something.
They don't think,
I need to change to my basic form
because, okay,
they are comfortable with that.
so so yeah yeah nimona also has this
kind of uh spirits and i'm amazingly the
netflix adaptation is great also i haven't
i haven't checked out the netflix because
i had this is the first time i've
ever heard of it so if it's something
on netflix that i can just easily go
to and check out yeah yeah it's a
movie and it's good i haven't read the
graphic novel but i watched the the movie
and it's great
I have to check it out.
Is Nimona locked into animals?
Is there something about shapeshifting
into animals?
Yes, they shapeshift into animals too.
They can shapeshift into humans and
different humans and animals.
And they use a lot of animals to
create action set pieces.
It's amazing.
Like they are gorilla and they are
fighting someone and then they are a whale
and crash everything.
and uh it's like a high-tech medieval
setting that yeah yeah i remember i
remember that no i like it soon we
are well me i am going to be
back up and running and doing i'm not
going to do traditional reviews of comic
books i'm going to do a quick
probably sixty seconds to ninety second
just like short video on reviews on comic
books here soon.
I don't know when I'm going to start
that yet,
but that's going to be coming soon.
So.
But.
Well,
having you review Other King would be
amazing.
As soon as I get through the bullets,
I'll definitely get one out for y'all.
I don't know, like I said,
when it will be.
I do have an episode ahead of this
one that I need to finish editing and
getting posted before I can start on this
one.
But yeah,
I'll definitely get one out for y'all.
Thank you so much.
That's a good question right here.
You can pick a number on the comment
about the crossover with.
Easy.
BPRD.
BPRD, wow.
That's a good one.
Early BPRD,
like Hellboy is still working there.
And then Alex and they go on some
supernatural case together.
That would be really cool.
And Liz and everyone.
Yeah, I got to say Event Horizon.
I mean,
it would be a dream to cross over
with Event Horizon.
So have you been reading it?
The new Event Horizon comic book?
I have.
Yeah.
Are you liking it?
I liked the first series as a whole.
I didn't like the ending so much.
It felt a little too rushed that they
just ended things.
It was a little bit weird because it
was building up and then just stopped.
Some books,
you can squeeze it all out in five
issues.
I feel like if they would have gave
us one more issue of that one,
it would have been a solid ending.
It's better than the movie.
The new one is good so far.
I enjoyed the movie,
but I know exactly about the movie.
Yeah, I understand about the movie, too.
Trust me.
But this is kind of a question.
I'll go ahead.
This is actually an honest answer now,
because I'm seeing a lot of Godzilla
crossovers with the Marvel Universe,
with Justice League, with everything.
I love Godzilla.
I love kaijus and a Godzilla crossover.
I know it doesn't work at all,
but that would be great.
But it'd be cool, right?
I'm kind of over the Godzilla crossovers
at this point.
I love Godzilla.
I love King Kong.
I love the movies.
I love the comics.
They're always very good.
But fuck.
You're talking about beating a dead horse
and milking that cash cow.
Godzilla with Romeo and Juliet.
Yeah, I know, right?
I know.
Is that real?
Yes.
Yeah, it was on IGW.
It was actually good.
Oddly enough, it was.
It was oddly good,
which it should not have been,
but they made it work.
I got it.
Is that a comic book?
Yeah.
I got to read that.
I got to read that.
But this is kind of for both of
you.
Now, like,
what are y'all most proud of when you
look back on this series so far?
I mean, for one,
I'm proud that we got to issue five.
A damn good one.
We just keep doing it.
We're just going through the plans.
what i mean you have we have all
these scripts and and we are making them
and i mean people aren't aren't really
reading them yet but who reads them like
them yeah reviews are good it's hard with
the indie comics to persist because um
We don't get a lot of readers.
We don't get a lot of attention.
It's really hard to get people to review
your comic because there are so many
comics all the time that people
prioritize.
And yes,
depending on the people that we reach out
to review our comic,
we are competing with Marvel Odyssey
image.
It's another level.
So yeah,
but I see that things have consistently
improved.
We get consistently more readers as the
issue goes by and we get to meet
new people.
Thanks to working with comic books,
we are now in touch with a lot
of amazing writers and artists that are
all supporting each other all the time.
We are making connections that are great.
Like Bianca was here earlier today just to
say hi.
And she's an amazing artist.
And yeah,
I saw Travis Brown like here on the
comments also.
Travis is a writer who is going to
launch the...
his Kickstarter this month and we've been
talking a lot about writing and how to
help each other.
And yeah,
Aquarium Starman is another artist that we
know.
She's been asking questions here.
Mina is an amazing person that we are
very fortunate to have met because uh
because we are making comics so so the
fact that we are making comics is already
being uh amazing and amazing to to meet
people or to to you know build art
together and this is this is uh something
that is really satisfying and i'm also
happy uh really happy that uh at each
step of the way every time that we
came up with one idea that we could
do things easier we could do things
simpler in terms of comic book if we
just do the panels straight away we can
tell the same story but victor and i
feel that we are constantly challenging
each other to be better
constantly challenging each other to do
something better and uh that that you know
gave birth to comic book pages that i
look and i'm absolutely proud of and i
said damn this is a page that uh
that uh that i see in great books
that i i love and admire and uh
right i made this i i helped me
this and this is uh yeah it's weird
it's it's weird you know it's not uh
and i'm not trying to to say that
we are just doing amazing stuff we are
making a lot of mistakes we are learning
it's a process but sometimes we we make
something that i i i look and they
say okay
okay this is this is good you should
take the the page with the blood on
the background yeah yeah
So they'll split that for me,
but they're going to ask you both a
question real quick.
And then I got to go check on
one of my cats.
I heard it, but while I'm,
it won't take long, but while I'm away,
I want to let y'all answer this question.
It's like,
why has y'all excited for the future of
other kin and why y'all are answering
that?
I'll be right back.
So I'll let you, Marco,
you start with you and then kick it
over to Victor.
What we have in sight for the future
is we are currently working on issue six.
We already have the issue seven script
ready.
And the issue eight is already described,
but we still need to read it again,
polish and solve things.
So, yeah,
we have these three issues that are mostly
done that we want to tackle all three
issues this year.
Our goal is to reach the end of
these issues this year.
Hopefully we get there, but we'll see.
Yeah,
and the first step is going to make
two intermission issues.
So we can close this nice collection of
ten chapters and hopefully we will turn
this into a trade paperback and, you know,
get a larger audience.
Once this is done,
we still haven't decided what we'll do
yet.
But yeah,
five more issues to go seems to be
a nice goal.
You put the goal out there and then
you go for it, right?
One thing that makes me really excited for
the future of Other King is some stuff
that Marco has planned for the next arc.
It's not scripted yet, just outlines,
just ideas and stuff that he wrote for
the next arc are just amazing.
I mean, there is no script yet.
A little teaser?
A little teaser?
No, no, no teaser.
Come on.
The teaser that I have to...
Don't do it, don't do it.
No, no, no, don't do it,
don't do it.
No, no, no, no spoiler, no spoiler,
but just to understand a little bit of
the process.
The second arc of Other King I wrote
as an outline, like...
Before I write scripts,
Victor has to approve the outline because
he is part of this.
So I write the issue one of the
next arc,
the first scene is going to be this,
the second scene is going to be that,
the third scene is going to be that.
So there's a breakdown scene by scene of
everything that happens.
And I wrote an arc, the second arc,
and I sent to Victor and he read
it and he called me and said,
this sucks.
I didn't like it.
I think that this overall doesn't make any
sense.
And he started to list a bunch of
issues.
So, okay.
I let it slip a week or two.
And I said, let's give it another go.
And then I wrote...
And the number of issues is completely
different.
The events are completely different.
The concept of the arc is the same.
But I changed everything.
And I wrote.
And I sent Victor.
And he called me and said, dude,
I'm crying.
And I said, OK.
We have to do that.
You start getting tears.
That's when you're like, oh, yeah.
And there is not even a script yet.
Yeah.
It's kind of wild, right?
Because you can write something and be
like, damn, I don't like this.
And then you just sit it to the
side.
You let it marinate over there.
You come back to it and be like,
okay.
And you start changing things.
You start rewriting it.
And then you're like, that's it.
That's the one right there.
And then we got Victor over here crying
because it's so good.
Like, dude, I'm hyped for it.
Like, I'm ready for it.
Yeah, we got to get there.
We get to do another –
eight, ten issues after this, that,
or plan, so... Ooh,
this is a good question.
Maria's doing out the hard questions.
If an artist that inspired you both to
create Otherkin could read it,
do you think they would like it?
That's a good question.
I would be afraid of having...
I don't know.
Imagine Mike Minola reading my comic and
say, eh, this, this, I don't like it.
Hey, y'all threw out Alan Moore too.
Don't forget that.
Yeah, Alan Moore is, okay,
Alan Moore not liking it.
It's something that I would not take so
personally because he doesn't like
anything.
I absolutely love that man,
but that's the truth.
It is very vocal about it too.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Honestly, if Alan Moore didn't like it,
it wouldn't mean much.
Yeah,
you just joined the long list of other
stuff that he doesn't like.
Right.
We're along with the greats.
We're top level.
Exactly.
Yeah, but imagine if, I don't know,
Grant Morrison,
who's a writer that is phenomenal and
If he reads and says, this is shit,
that would destroy me.
Really thinking about this question,
I think if Gerard Way read Other King,
I think he'd love it.
You should send it to him.
Because if Gerard Way makes us a quote
saying, I love Other King,
all our problems are solved.
Yeah, we should try it.
Yeah, you don't know unless you send it,
right?
Just send him issue one and call it
good and just like sit back and wait,
right?
That's all you can do.
Sometimes I think about it.
You know what?
I'm going to start sending emails with
other kings to Scott Snyder and Chip
Zdarsky and Dennis Campbell and Tino.
If one of them read it,
likes it and reply, that's all right.
Yeah.
That's all right.
Great.
You know,
that's exactly you never know what's going
to come out of it.
Right.
And this is one of those stories where
you're already five issues deep.
It's ready to be made into a trade
paperback or a graphic novel length.
So, I mean, it's ready.
So you never know.
You send it to one of them going,
hey,
have a look at our issue one where
we've already written five issues of this
that could turn into, hey,
we want to make it into a trade
paperback and sell that for you all.
You never know.
Like I've seen crazier shit happen in this
world.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We can talk about that yet,
but we've been discussing this with third
parties about turning other key into a
trade.
It's not something that is all set to
stone with all the details, but yeah.
It seems it might happen.
Oh, I like it.
I like it.
It could be coming soon.
Not so soon.
hey soon not so soon the fact that
the conversations are happening is a win
right yeah yeah it's already it's already
something that makes us feel good like
okay we are not delusional this is if
you've managed to do five successful
kickstarters for the same series you've
already won like by far more than most
people have
And you're still going.
You're still developing.
Some people do one,
and if it's successful, they're like,
I'm done.
I'm out.
Because they come back for the second one,
and maybe they don't promote it as well,
or the audience isn't there anymore
because it took so long.
You never know, right?
And it's hard to predict the market in
that regards.
Do we hit another –
COVID or something, God forbid, you know,
that dampens the market again.
We actually did two Kickstarters.
The first one was for the first three
issues and the second one for five.
And the first Kickstarter we did all
digital because I'm in France,
Victorino is in Brazil.
To print this and send it would be
a little bit complicated.
And it was really hard because people
would send us messages saying,
We would like to contribute, but digital,
I'm not willing to buy it digitally.
You need to have physical copies.
Yeah, that's the biggest thing.
But I've also noticed that there's been a
lot of hit starters lately that have been
digital only.
Our people are like offering up like, hey,
if you want a tid book bundle for
my digital library,
you can support it like this way.
And so I've been seeing that pop up
a lot as well,
which is kind of cool.
But I, for one,
I like digital comics when I can just
like in disrespect, right,
because of what I do.
Yeah, of course,
digital comics make sense.
But at the end of the day,
they're just going to eat space on my
hard drive.
Right.
And I got like terabytes of hard drives
over here.
And I mean,
it's kind of cool because it's like any
time like a previous person who's been on
the podcast is coming back to talk about
the next issue of their book.
I can go refresh myself on the issue
one or the issue two because I have
them because they were generous enough to
send them to me.
And I'm thankful for that.
I am definitely more of a floppy type
of person or a trade paperback type of
person because I like to have that
physical product in my hand because I like
it.
I like to feel the weight of the
book.
I like the smell of the paper.
I can actually...
With my eyes versus, yeah,
I can zoom in on my computer and
look at the pages,
but you lose some of the finer details
the more you do that.
So I definitely just prefer to have that
book in my hands.
Nothing compares to it.
And that is also the sensation of owning
something
you never feel like you own something
digitally.
I already bought a lot of comic books
digitally.
Like when Humble Bundle gets sometimes a
pack of something that I like,
I buy it.
But yeah, the first Kickstarter,
it was successful,
but a lot of people complain about the
lack of physical book.
The second one,
we got this partnership with Derry Comics
in the US.
They are handling the printing and
distribution.
And we got the physical comics,
but in the six months that separated these
two fulfillments, these two campaigns,
these two Kickstarters,
a lot less people were buying physical the
second time and a lot more buying digital
because shipping is crazy.
That's the market.
The shipping is what's killing most of it.
Yeah.
Exactly.
We have no idea what to do next.
Some of the earlier kit starters I
supported out of the UK,
it was costing me five or six bucks
to ship the book.
That's okay.
Perfect.
I'm paying a total of what?
Thirteen bucks or something like that.
And then all of a sudden,
like it was like twenty five or thirty
bucks to ship a book from the UK.
And I'm like, you know,
I can't do it.
I can't do it.
Like I want to I so bad want
to support it.
But when the shipment is more than the
physical product.
Yeah.
Even U.S.
to U.S., the prices climbed a lot,
like people are paying eight to ten
dollars from U.S.
to U.S., and that is
that is like too much.
Yeah.
So it's like,
I want to sell my stickers, right?
Like I have brand new USDN stickers that
I had made and I love them and
I would love to be able to sell
them and send them to people.
But the cost to ship one sticker or
two stickers costs more than it takes to
make one sticker.
So I'm like, how do I do it?
You know, it's like, that's just too much.
I just, I can't justify it.
I'm saving them for conventions and stuff
like that.
I'll sell them at conventions.
Yeah, exactly.
So, yeah,
we still need to think a little bit
more about how we will handle the upcoming
issues.
But we are trying to take things one
step at a time.
We are fulfilling issue five.
Let's fulfill issue five.
Let's discuss the rest.
And meanwhile,
we keep working and we keep getting more
material done.
Yeah,
you got to focus on the next one
while fulfilling.
So, I mean, it's a never-ending journey.
Yeah, exactly.
But this is for both of you as
we get ready to close this out.
What do you want readers to ultimately
take away from Otherkin?
And Victor,
we'll start with you on that one.
Okay.
I gave this answer before on another...
interview we had and I think that the
main thing for the king is to not
give up that's been our journey working on
it that's Alex's journey that's been our
journey in life just don't give up just
keep trying maybe you're doing it wrong
but just keep trying try to learn how
to do how to work it out and
That's Alec's journey.
That's what I think you can take away
from Other King.
And there's more to life than you can
notice sometimes.
Yeah.
Marco?
That answer is perfect.
And yeah, for the second point,
just to underline,
I think that having more...
more accepting accepting a little bit more
life as is and uh being a little
less hard on yourself or trying to think
that you need to be more need to
do more and maybe you can just be
in the justice be in this present moment
and uh
And that is enough.
I think that is something important.
Now that's a, that's a perfect answer.
And before I adjourn the council today,
where can everyone follow your work,
support Otherkin and stay up to date on
what's coming next for both you and
Victor?
So, um,
main channel to to communicate the news
and uh take a look at things is
uh instagram we are on instagram at other
king dot comic so that is that is
a way to to get news and stay
in touch but i recently also started uh
Substack,
where I've been writing long-form updates
on Other King, like Instagram,
something that we are going to publish
more often,
and you get a little bit of information
on everything.
And on Substack,
we discuss really how we are making the
comics.
So this example of how we interact with
each other, how this is collaborative,
we explain in detail on Substack and we
do something that is a little bit more
in-depth.
The Substack is my name,
marcovitoodo.substack.com.
So yeah,
I think that would be the two main
platforms to get in touch and to follow
the project.
I'm on Instagram at victorcosta.art and
that's it.
I hate social media.
You got to tell them though to pay
attention because there's more than one
victorcosta.art on Instagram.
Make sure you select the right one.
Is there?
I'm not sure.
Thankfully,
it's easy to pick which one is which
because yours has a picture from Otherkin
on it.
So I had to go like, okay,
I'm going to go with this one.
I'm like, okay, this is the one.
But yeah, there was more than one.
There was, I think, two.
I mean, yeah,
I'm trying to look it up,
but it wouldn't show right to me because
I already follow myself.
So I wouldn't know.
So yeah, VictorCrosses.org.
It's the one that follows Other King.
You can just reach Other King and you'll
see my work there.
All those links are down in the
description if you want to give these guys
a follow so you can stay up to
date on Other King and what they have
going on.
But Marco, Victor,
I want to thank you both for joining
us and sharing the journey with the
council.
I always enjoy speaking with creators who
are willing to bet on themselves,
build something from the ground up,
and continue pushing forward issue after
issue.
And that's exactly what the indie comics
community is built on.
And this is exactly why conversations like
this
matter.
Council members,
if you've enjoyed today's discussion,
make sure you support Marco and Victor and
follow their work and check out Otherkin.
All those links are down in the
description below.
Independent comments survive because
readers discover them,
share them and champion the creators
behind them.
And if you enjoyed this episode,
make sure you like,
follow and share because every
subscription,
every comment and every view helps us
continue
our mission of spotlighting incredible
creators,
keeping independent comics alive and
thriving.
From all of us here at the USDN,
thank you all for spending a part of
your day with the council.
Ladies and gentlemen, I am the chairman.
This has been the USDN podcast where indie
comics come to life.
Ladies and gentlemen,
the council is adjourned.
Y'all stay safe.