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USDN Podcast is a cinematic indie comics interview series hosted by the USDN_Chairman and the Council of Nerds — spotlighting the creators, storytellers, and worldbuilders shaping the future of independent comics.
Each episode dives beyond headlines into the real journeys behind the books — from Kickstarter launches and creative struggles to the philosophies driving today’s indie storytelling movement.
This isn’t about rumors or recycled news.
It’s about the people creating the worlds.
Through in-depth conversations, creator spotlights, and crowdfunding discussions, USDN explores:
• The rise of indie comics
• The business of crowdfunding
• The art of worldbuilding
• The realities of independent storytelling
USDN is where indie comics come to life — for the fans, by the creators, and powered by the community.
You are listening to the USDN on the
DFPN.
Thank you.
What is up, everybody?
It's the chairman here of the United
States Department of Nerds,
where we are for the people,
by the people, and of the people.
And tonight, comments aren't just stories.
They're classified anomalies of art,
imagination, and unregulated nerd energy.
tonight we're stepping through a
dimensional rift into a fantasy apocalypse
wasteland where greek gods take up arms
mutant cyborg cyborg screech for blood and
unicorns well
They suffer fates we don't describe before
dinner.
Guns, magic, mayhem, and machines.
This is Lord of the Cosmos number five.
An eighties inspired heavy metal drenched
cyber fantasy odyssey and the mastermind
behind this mutant empire is with us
tonight.
creator, illustrator,
and a fantastic world builder.
The artist who makes lizards with
revolvers look dignified.
Ladies and gentlemen, Jason Lennox.
Chairman, thanks.
I am blown away by the kind words.
I'm still blown away by the cool intro,
Little John, Star Wars.
And I just realized the background is like
we're flying through space.
So I just I just now.
And yeah,
it's like we're on a big trip together.
Thanks for having me as a guest this
evening.
Oh, absolutely.
You're welcome, dude.
Yeah.
And I'm going to be honest with you.
You're the first guy who's like, hey,
here's all my stuff.
can I come on?
And I was like, dude,
I didn't even have to ask for shit.
You were just like, yep, here you go,
dude.
Here's everything.
And it was literally everything.
I was like, Oh,
this guy made it so easy.
Like, hell yeah.
I want this guy on.
Here's the thing.
It's hard enough.
It's hard enough to get people to want
to look at what you're doing.
Cause there's so many options for people
to read, watch, listen, et cetera, that,
um,
in a world of file sharing and
organization,
you got to make it easy and painless
because we're always trying to find new
new readers.
So I'm glad you appreciated that.
I have everything always ready to go.
I'm always eager to meet new and diverse
audiences from around the galaxy because I
always want to find new readers, right?
Because that's what it's really all about.
Yeah.
As you want to get new people on
board.
You definitely got me as a new reader.
And like I told you earlier,
I read it again today.
I read it when you sent it.
I read it again today.
And each time you read it,
you find something else you really like
about it.
And I can always get behind and support
that type of entertainment.
But first,
welcome to the Council of Nerds, my man.
And before we crack open your latest
chapter of issue five,
for the uninitiated,
what is Lords of the Cosmos and what
chaos is
is about to erupt for people just learning
about it.
So the story of Lords of the Cosmos
starts off in issue one,
where we're kind of, as the readers,
rolling into the aftermath of decades or
centuries of warfare on a planet that is
kind of like Eternia from He-Man and
Masters of the Universe.
It's kind of like Mongo from Flash Gordon.
It's kind of like...
the planet from thundercats first earth
and i'm forgetting what third earth third
earth right uh where there's technology
there's magic uh there's robots there's
talking cats there's wizards there's
cyborgs so pretty much anything can happen
right and you've had the lords of the
cosmos and then their enemies the
disciples of umex who are both basically
armies that have
been fighting for quite some time and they
stopped fighting because they've beaten
each other to a pulp uh over the
last couple decades so it starts off with
the villains uh they're the focus and
they're starting to go back on the march
because they've gotten off the mat and
they want to hunt down the lords of
the cosmos and they want to finish it
after many rounds of fighting and then
We start following them as they realize
the Lords of the Cosmos have gone into
hiding and they start laying siege to the
world.
And over the first five issues,
the villains,
the disciples of Umex have taken their
campaign to the capital of the world,
Gem Spire.
and the Lords of the Cosmos are making
a decision about whether or not to come
out of their self-imposed exile and or
retirement and working to summon all of
their remaining soldiers from around the
world.
Each issue
is an anthology, though,
because I love anthologies.
I've always been a huge fan of books
like heavy metal, etc.
I've always enjoyed that format.
So what we've been able to do with
Lords of the Cosmos is we have our
main story that basically follows that
storyline, which is the main, you know,
current time story.
But each issue has branching side stories
that start picking up on
or events you see in the main story.
And I always like to think of Starship
Troopers.
Would you like to know more?
So you'll read the main story and then
you'll start seeing other stories by
different writers and artists in this
universe where they start spotlighting and
highlighting, again, different issues,
different characters.
So we keep building the world out like
branches from a tree.
So where the main story's going is a
little bit obvious.
It's gonna be a final showdown.
Ideally,
we can wrap it up in ten issues.
That's been the plan since we started it
years ago.
So we're kind of pushing towards the good
guys and the bad guys having one final
throwdown for the ages.
But along the way,
we're discovering a lot of, well,
what the hell's going on and who are
these characters?
And as we've talked about before the show,
there's a lot going on, right?
So the world of Lords of the Cosmos
and planet Aiden and the Disciples of
Umex,
there are layers and layers and layers and
things,
and we start going backwards in time,
you know, by the year, by the decade.
One of the stories goes back thousands,
or I'm sorry,
hundreds of thousands of years to a time
when there's intelligent plants flooding
on the planets,
that one of those characters exists into
the present as basically an intelligent
plant that lives inside a machine that
apparently can't die.
And has been making bad decisions over
millennia and now has decided to fight for
the side of good in the present.
So that's really what Lords of the Cosmos
is.
But, you know, from a reader standpoint,
it's a black and white anthology.
I like to think about it a lot
as the issues are very influenced by Heavy
Metal Magazine in two thousand eighty for
the formatting.
So the books have between three and five
stories in each book.
And so I'm black and white,
and there's a lot of different artists,
and there's a lot of different, you know,
writers and styles.
So it's Lords of the Cosmos, but,
you know,
myself and Jason Palminter and Dennis
Fallon,
we've always appreciated and had a lot of
love for other people's, you know,
diverse talents, diverse skill sets,
different writing styles,
different art styles,
but to bring it under one banner with
a character guide and an ongoing story
uh you know story bible so that's kind
of the general gist of what words of
the is thematically things that we were
inspired by uh silver hawks thundercats
masters of the universe flash gordon uh
which is wild because all those things are
are back now
Yeah, they're all cycling back.
Thundar the Barbarian,
which was a cartoon from the early
eighties that I loved a lot as a
kid.
And so if we gave Lords of the
Cosmos kind of a theme,
like you have like Western science
fiction, you know,
I would call this sci-fi barbarians.
Right.
Because, like I said, it's in again,
some of those titles, you know, again,
Silverhawks, Thundercats, Flash Gordon,
Masters of the Universe,
where it's kind of a OK,
there's kind of like some swashbuckling
heroes.
But then there's robots, flying horses,
jet planes.
Right.
Well,
there's a lot of things that just kind
of don't make a whole lot of sense.
Like there's a talking cat and guys with
rifles.
Right.
and you have to have a little bit
of disbelief to just to say okay we're
going to understand there's some things in
here that just they don't really make a
whole lot of sense um i remember with
you know he-man one of the toys was
a jet fighter the looking eagle and it's
like okay so you have a guy with
a sword is going to fight like a
you know an f you know an f-fifteen
but you know for what it was it
just it worked because it didn't make a
whole lot of sense
and that's what makes it beautiful and
what one of the things i want to
point out he was referring to the stories
within the stories within the stories and
if you pay close enough attention you'll
see a little box in the lower right
hand corner sometimes that refers to what
they're talking about oh this is from this
story from this issue and then if you
have it digital like i do you can
just go back to that story and that
issue and be like yeah now remember what
that right there
I really liked the way you did that.
That to me was like, I'm like,
this is awesome.
Cause you're,
but although there was some that you're
referring to that haven't happened yet,
like it's in a different issue.
I was like, I'm like,
I see what you did there, but yeah,
I'm like, okay.
Number six is when.
Some of the ones,
we may never go anywhere.
Some of them we may drop in and
they're there.
Some go back to old issues.
You don't really know.
One of the things we did in issue
four, we asked fans to write us letters.
The fan letters were hilarious.
They were printed at the end of issue
four, which I thought was cool.
Some of them
Well,
and one of them went off about the
live action movie that went south and how
the toy line and, you know,
one person talked about their mom throwing
out their back issues back in the day.
I actually had one person that was like,
I don't remember the show being on,
but it's cool.
You got the license for it.
And that was kind of another kind of
bit of fun we had with it.
Like,
let's let's drop people in immediately
that the issues are self-referential to a
bigger being a bigger pop culture
phenomenon.
Kind of like when you watch South Park
and they have Terrence and Phillip, right?
It's like a popular show in universe.
So Lords of the Cosmos, you know,
the back of every issue has a toy.
Yeah,
that was one of my favorite things to
see when you got to the end of
the issue and you seen the toy that
was picked for that one issue.
I was like, dude, this is so cool.
So there's a lot of that stuff that's
self-referential that like we're dropping
you in as a reader that we're all
kind of in on it,
that Lords of the Cosmos was like this
big pop culture phenomenon from the
eighties and kind of went away in the
early nineties that,
that in that letters page is kind of
the one hint to that phase of where
it was trying to break out like other,
you know, pop culture items of the time.
And it just didn't quite make it into
the nineties, right?
The kids were into it and it kind
of faded away.
So yeah,
Well,
some of it couldn't have come with it
into the nineties,
like some of the cartoons and some of
the stuff that was said or done during
those
They're in the cartoons in the eighties.
Yeah.
They probably wouldn't have made it too
far in the nineties anyway.
So,
so that's kind of the overall big picture
look of the theme of the book,
the style and type of the book,
and then kind of our own nod to
our kind of in-universe fun we have with
this is Lords of the Cosmos.
And it's,
it's this gigantic property that never
existed.
so going in was this always planned to
be a a ten book series or was
there a certain point in issue one that
was kind of like an aha moment like
hey i think we got something here let's
let's start planning this out further into
the future
We always had an idea for where the
series would start and end.
And as we've slowly gotten through five
issues,
we have a pretty good idea of where
it needs to end.
I say ten, it could go eleven.
But the idea is that...
Issue six is going to be,
if it was a roller coaster,
it's going to be like the top of
the mountain.
And then from there on,
it's going to go crazy on the way
out.
And then the idea is to end it,
right?
To bring it to a conclusion and bring
it to an end.
So I think it's going to end up
being bigger than we originally thought it
was.
But you got to tell the story that
you want to tell.
And we know how to get there.
We just got to wind our way through
doing it.
did you always imagine it being an
anthology style like that because i mean
i'm like you i love a good anthology
like there's nothing better than a good
anthology comic book so when we started
working on this book nine or the series
nine years ago um dennis and jason had
so many ideas and i had so many
ideas and the idea was that i would
draw everything and then you hit a point
with the first issue where it was like
these are so many good ideas i don't
have time to do all this and we
said well what if we
what if we just changed what the format
was and made it an anthology and then
we can,
have other writers, other artists,
and then it frees us up to do,
because you only have one artist,
then I become a limiter, right?
Then if I can't, it'll take me forever.
You know,
so you have to be able to let
go of doing everything and embrace the
change, right?
Embrace having people that have completely
different styles and everything else.
It's cool, though,
that you learned that early on and noticed
that limitation early on because there's a
lot of people who don't know how to
let go.
Yeah.
and they become their own worst enemies so
one of the things that happened during uh
issue three was david newbold who's done a
couple of short stories for us he's an
incredible artist he said hey i'm not
really clear how big some of these
characters are are they man size are they
giants are they
Kaiju.
He just said,
I have no idea what's going on.
We actually hired an artist to do a
character scale sheet.
Do you want to bring it up?
Yes.
I don't have it handy,
but did I send it to you?
Bring it up.
Good guys or bad guys?
We can do the good guys.
Let's do them.
But David asked us to do that.
And again,
that was one of those things that it
was a super request and we really should
have thought of it in the first place.
But we've used that now since issue three
to give to people to say this is
a guide.
These are names.
These are what these characters generally
look like.
you know, that way.
And then you can see how big they
are.
Right.
So most of the characters are man,
you know, man sized.
And there's,
there's a couple of characters that are
bigger.
And then you have one that's like a
Kaiju.
So one of the guys, I'm sorry, Eric,
who designs all or builds all of our
toys, Eric,
he's so funny when he saw this,
he said, well, he said,
those are weekend action figure purchases.
And then the middle size ones are
birthday.
And the big ones are Christmas.
When I was a kid,
Right.
It's true.
It's true.
So it's like an action figure vehicles.
And then the big characters,
like a gigantic place that like the USS
flag, right.
From GI Joe.
The turtle is by far like my favorite.
And then this doesn't even show the
battleship that they ride on.
Yeah, well, the giant sea turtle.
So the giant sea turtle,
when you meet him in issue four,
he basically has like a battleship,
like he's a ship.
Right.
Then when he's introduced in the current
time,
he's just got his cannons on his side.
So we're basically kind of throwing the
fact that he's kind of a multipurpose
tool.
where he can be modded up with different
equipment tools.
He can walk on the land.
He can swim in the sea.
And you see him as a warship.
And then you see him as kind of
this gigantic walking creature.
We do have his origin story written.
It has not been drawn yet.
Yes, his origin story is pretty wild.
It basically plays out like a two-part
cartoon from Transformers where they
introduce a weird character.
So, yes, he's an incredibly old character.
He predates he predates Orca Memnon,
the plant character.
So he goes back even further beyond.
Oh, nice, because I liked his backstory,
too.
Like that was that one was really good.
And the fact that he's still carrying
around his brothers and sisters basically
in seed form,
just waiting for the opportunity to
replant them and reintroduce his people to
the world.
Yeah,
so kind of a quick insight into that.
So each side has one gigantic character.
So the bad guys have like a cyborg
dragon,
and then the good guys have a gigantic
turtle.
The idea is that those two creatures were
weapons from a war that predates the plant
people that you saw.
We'll give them a little sampling.
So the plant people that you see,
that's their post-apocalyptic era after
another war that knocked them down from
being very high tech.
So that plant robot armor that Orca Memnon
has,
that's a relic from the time when these
creatures were used as weapons in a war.
So we've kind of gone backwards a little
bit too with some of this stuff,
which is really fun.
I like weird old stuff and I like
fleshing out some of these characters,
how they're all interconnected.
All the characters are so different and so
unique,
and I love the fact that part of
the anthology has given us the backstory
to a character.
It's a very unique thing,
and I really like that you're fleshing it
out that way,
because it's not something you see often.
And when those popped into my email,
I was like, oh,
he sent everything like literally.
And I was like looking at these,
I was like so fascinated by the character
sheets that I probably spent a good,
you know, fifteen,
twenty minutes just studying character
sheets before I even started reading
volume one of this book.
And I was just like,
I can't get enough of this.
Like it's so good.
Yeah.
if you're of a certain age and you
might be chairman, um,
one of the things that I was obsessed
with as a kid in the eighties was
especially with GI Joe and transformers,
you'd get a toy, whatever.
And on the back,
they would have like a, like a card,
um,
This is Frenzy.
He's a Decepticon.
If you remember,
they had a piece of red plastic that
you had to put up and it would
show you firepower, strength,
intelligence.
Then it would have maybe a paragraph about
the character.
This character could do this and hates
this character.
As a kid,
you'd have these toys and you'd have these
little, you know, kind of summaries.
And that's where our imaginations went
wild.
So you were like, you know, man,
I wish I knew more why frenzy can't
stand, you know,
trail breaker or whatever the case may be.
And there was a lot of,
creativity those little tidbits gave to
basically just a bunch of toys.
It's fun.
I like that aspect of it because literally
it felt just like a walk through my
childhood for five straight issues.
Even through puberty for one of those
issues.
I'm not going to lie.
There's a cover for number five that
probably would have helped me get through
puberty back in the day.
We'll talk about the covers later.
There's literally...
I felt like I hit the eighties and
the nineties and the two thousands,
the whole nine going through this book.
And I loved it.
If you got that feeling,
we're doing our job, right?
That's great.
A hundred percent.
A hundred percent.
If people didn't say that,
then they're lying to themselves.
But let's talk about number five.
This is the war on Aiden.
And it picks up immediately where number
four leaves off, like no breathing room,
no water breaks, no safety rails,
just straight back into it.
And let's just talk about like stories in
this book.
You have enemy of my enemy.
Yep.
And we see – I think his –
I'm not sure how you pronounce his name.
Aegis.
Aegis.
Okay.
So I pronounced it right for a whole
issue.
I'm happy.
Good.
So he summons all his other lords of
the cosmos to him.
With his sword,
which has a very unique history in and
of itself.
And I want everybody to go buy –
I think it was issue four that gave
us the backstory.
Go read issue number four because you get
a phenomenal backstory for this sword that
is like – he had probably the most
interesting backstory of everybody in the
book just about.
And he talks.
He has a thirst for blood.
I love it.
I've seen that in –
Oh, the D&D show on Amazon Prime.
They had a sword like that.
Not the Mighty Nein, but the one...
Was it the one that was like secret
video games or something?
No.
No.
I'm brain farting it,
which I've been doing a lot here lately.
You'll find it.
I need some Ginkgo Biloba or whatever it
is to help you with the memory stuff.
But...
His mental state as he summons the heroes
with like the living lightning.
This dude had basically just been staring
into space for eons basically at this
point.
And then all of a sudden it's like,
okay, the threat is real.
Let me bring the homies in for the
business.
So what were y'all thinking when y'all
were doing that scenes with him?
so the idea with the lords of the
cosmos is when they start off they're
basically there's a there there used to be
a lot more of them and there used
to be a lot more umex guys but
in the toy world right you'd only have
limited sets so you have to explain why
they're only like you know fifteen of
these guys on each side because it's a
toy set so he's no that's really cool
though most of his men are dead his
his brother who's the statue with the
trident
He's dead.
So his own brother got killed by the
main villain, right?
Yeah, we see that.
And he's like, I'm out.
He's like, I don't want to fight.
I don't want to kill.
He goes,
I no longer want to participate in any
of this.
I'm out.
And there's only a handful of his soldiers
that are still with him.
And then they're all arguing.
We should fight.
We shouldn't fight.
It's all rumors.
We can't just sit here and do nothing.
And then they show him what's happening
around the world.
And he basically loses it.
And he's taken that sword and he's locked
it away because it's so powerful.
It's like a weapon of mass destruction.
So he goes and gets it.
And he says, we have to summon...
what's left of our soldiers because the
rest of them are like rather around the
world they base they've all kind of quit
on the game and he's basically it's it's
the it's the thundercat too right the
symbol it's the oh yeah that's that's
that's the first thing i thought at the
moment he held up the sword in the
light and shot through and the thunder
rang out i was like yeah
So basically he's saying,
I've got to get everyone back together,
right?
Which will address that in the next issue
of like, do they come back?
Do they not want to come back?
The Lords of the Cosmos are not together.
The bad guys are together.
And as you learned in issue four,
they're doing things on purpose to bait
these guys out.
And then you caught the thing where they
were jamming all the radio signals from
the Capitol.
And then Umex, the main villain,
says shut it off to his guys.
And they're like, well,
but if we shut it off,
then the Lords of the Cosmos will hear
the distress call.
And he's like, I know.
Like he wants to fight.
He's like, no, shut it down.
He wants his end game.
He wants the end.
He wants to draw these guys out.
Right.
So then that's part one of the main
story.
But the living lightning travels all
around the world.
So we kind of use that as a
narrative device to introduce you to
what's going on at this siege.
So really,
then the next part of the main story
is,
is we kind of go to the cliffhanger,
is that.
uh zemba who is who's a villain that
we haven't really seen a whole lot of
um you'll kind of see her wandering to
a a small uh structure where inside is
now uh more danix who we got to
learn his back issue in issue four and
how much he hates psycorn
and psycorn is a coward little cowardly
little and that was actually my very next
question for you is zimba heading into
mordant's pain palace and then the
relationship between zimba sycorn and
mordant it's like how much that was
organic you know it's it's funny um we
it was never initially planned that way
but through kind of talking about where we
wanted to see issue five and
We knew we kind of wanted to put
it all together.
Psycorn was always our Starscream.
We're all big fans of that original
character.
Oh, yeah.
The whiny sniveling cabbage shit.
And he's been a sniveling failure shit all
through the series.
And then he gets in trouble where
basically Umix is like,
take him and torture him.
And then you realize that in the past,
he's the one that he created Mordanix by,
you know, just, you know,
forcing him into this horrible situation.
Half-Life is this cannibal cyborg.
Him seeking revenge instead of backing him
up like he was supposed to is why
it got more dented.
It's looking like...
a vial of, you know, acid.
So again, we get,
we get to explore these characters.
When you first meet him in issue one,
there's a lot of pinups and here's these
characters are, but there's,
but there's no dynamic,
but now you realize, okay,
these two guys hate each other.
They have been messing with each other for
years,
but now the one who's been victimized has
been given the power.
But now Zemba shows up and basically she's
kind of like a resident torturer.
and then you realize she shows up and
starts behaving very strangely and then
you realize that wait who shot like whose
side is she even on right um and
then obviously we have i like that twist
that was a really good twist in there
right where now then she she murders uh
you know she murders more danix to save
psycorn and then we we cut to the
end right
And then, of course,
then the question of the reader is, well,
hold on.
Like,
if she's one of the soldiers for the
disciples,
then why would she why is she betraying
these people?
Right.
So we knew that we were going to
have a character betray the bad guys in
this issue.
And we we talked about which one could
it be.
And we had an idea for Zimba early
on where we just said it'd be really
cool to just tell a story about what
her nine to five is like.
Like, what is this?
Yeah.
Like this, you know, torture queen.
What is her data?
We thought it'd be funny.
You know what I thought?
Yeah.
I thought so.
Zimba.
And what was the other girl who was
with Mordantix?
Well, there's Obsidia.
No, Obsidian,
the girl that was together with him.
Oh, that was Lady Vi, and she dies.
Lady Vi and Zimba,
you know they have the lunch together or
whatever.
So I thought those two were some type
how intertwined and interrelated friends
or lovers from the past.
And then when Dantis kills her,
I thought when that scene was happening,
I'm like, oh, she's circling back.
Well, there's that too.
She doesn't like him because of that,
but she's got bigger plans and Vi getting
killed because, yeah,
there's the implication that they're like,
in some kind of pseudo religious
relationship are there more of them or
they're like yeah other right so the
implication is they're like they're like
priestesses in this right so now we we've
you know in a day of the life
right they have their their lunch in a
person's like they use the guy's body
they're growing mushrooms out of like
having lunch and basically you know going
back to to be like wait what is
the connection between these this this
woman that we met
That was my vibe,
and I really liked it.
And by the way,
the show I was thinking of on Prime
is The Legend of Bots Machina.
Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
So anyway,
so then the origin story of the Zimba,
we had always had that in the back
of our heads that we thought it'd be
cool, right?
Just to just,
what does she do on a day-to-day click?
What, what is, what does she do?
Right.
So we had a lot of these ideas
that she would have a torture garden,
that she would have gladiatorial games.
What we really wanted to take that story
then is to show why she decides to
turn on the disciples.
Now, look,
part of it's because they killed her
friend.
But there's more going on that she's
basically saying,
I am going to try to go,
I'm going to end around the boss.
I'm going to get Psycorn out of here.
He's got some powerful weaponry built into
him.
What if she takes Psycorn and she can
make an end around to try to kill
the boss?
Yeah.
Right.
But you see that anger because she has
her slave, right?
Gimp guy.
Yeah.
He's basically the Greek chorus.
He's asking all these.
He's saying the things you would say as
a reader, like, well,
that painting is as nice as Umek's.
And she's like tearing it off a wall.
And, you know,
she's being constantly humiliated.
And she's trying to justify it to Lady
Vi.
She's like, well, no, no, it's good.
It's good.
It's good.
And then...
People keep saying,
you used to be kind of a badass,
and now you kind of seem like a
servant, right?
Is that really who you are?
And, like, she doesn't like it.
And then the end of it is when
she tears Umek's portrait out of her
mouth, basically, and she says,
Hail Zemba.
And, you know,
all the characters are like, Hail Umek,
Hail Umek, right?
Yeah, that's like, yeah.
Yeah.
So we've kind of baked in there like,
okay, from the reader,
we've had a bad guy now turn on
the other bad guys.
Well, the first question is, well,
why the hell did they do that?
So we really thought a day in the
life was a really fun way to tell
that.
And then it also kind of leads into
like,
that's the planning session where they're
discussing the battle that went down in
the prior issue.
yeah right so a little bit of a
thousand and one arabian nights where
there's a story inside a story inside a
story you're like oh my god that that
was really cool and once i realized what
was happening with that because i'm like
everybody else i probably got a little
confused at that point like wait in that
winning shoe i saw her die but here
she is right now i'm like then you're
like oh this is what happened to this
before this and you're like oh it all
makes sense
Yeah.
I like that kind of stuff when it
is done properly and y'all did it up
proper.
Like it made a hundred percent sense once
you circled back.
Yep.
And I was like, oh, well,
like this makes plenty of sense.
You literally, you told us a story,
then gave us the events leading up to
this story over here,
just to circle us back to over here
to a present time in the story.
I'm like, yeah, like that's amazing.
And I think we have a note that's
dropped in at the beginning on the first
page that says this story takes place
before the hunger and the prior issue.
So we do.
You did.
There was a note.
But if you've ever read A Thousand and
One Rabian Nights,
they do a lot of that where you
meet a guy and then there's kind of
like the further you go in the book,
he's going backwards to explain things.
And then we have a third story in
issue five.
Pulse.
Pulse.
It's going to be a multi-part story.
And we have the second part already drawn.
We have to just get it lettered now.
where one of the things that we had
talked about internally was we wanted to
have a Lords of the Cosmos story that
was very much like an eighties action
film, like a Rambo.
It literally says aliens meets Ninja
Turtles.
Yeah,
so we really wanted to have that Rambo
predator where it just kind of comes
across as this is going to be kind
of like an eighties military movie,
but it's going to have Cosmo's character.
So again, there's a lizard who's a cowboy,
right?
He was one of our favorite characters.
So cool.
There's a rhinoceros, right?
And then like Wasp with a shotgun that
we really learned about in issue three.
He's like the main guy.
So there's a smattering of the characters
that we know.
So we know they're not going to die,
right?
Yeah, yeah.
It's the cat, right?
And then you've got two cats named,
what was it, Booger and something?
Booger and Frodo,
that was one of our characters, right?
So they have two house cats with them.
So there's, you know,
they have a character that's a total nod
to,
it's basically the Tin Man from the Wizard
of Oz.
It's a robot.
Yeah.
So you've got this kind of weird crew
of people, but we play it straight.
I think it's cool that you took
Kickstarter.
That was an option on part of your
Kickstarter was to have a character
created and put into the story.
I see a lot of people advertising that.
Like, oh,
you could be a character in the story.
But you took it to another level with
it.
And I thought that was really cool.
got dropped in and the thing with pulses
on the one hand there's there's a level
of absurdity where they have like the tin
pan from the wizard of oz there's like
a pixie a you know cowboy there's a
robot samurai but but again we play it
straight where it's like okay so these
characters are just as absurd as it is
they're a military strike force they're
going behind enemy lines
I thought it was cool.
That was one of those cool things,
like the Stallone movies with all the old
action stars.
I was like,
this kind of feels like that,
and they're about to drop in with their
little spaceship or whatever.
I was like, this is freaking cool.
Yeah,
and I really love the action scene where
they steal the truck, right,
where they're running around the trucks,
and they blow up the little outpost,
and then they steal basically what's what.
I don't know if you've ever been near
a quarry, but there's one near my house,
and there's a special intersection for
those gigantic trucks,
and those trucks freak me out because
they're so big.
The drive is like four feet up in
the air.
The wheels are like ten feet high.
So the characters steal it.
And there's a panel that Sasha drew in
that.
It's so funny because the rhinoceros is
driving the truck.
He's behind the wheel.
And I'm just, when they, he drew that.
He did the initial burst through too.
If I'm not mistaken,
like when he went through the one
barricade,
he rams through the barricade and then
it's like,
it cuts over into the next panel or
two.
And all of a sudden he's behind the
wheel of the truck.
Yeah.
Wait, he's a straight-up rhino.
He doesn't have hands.
But he's driving him strong.
He's got his little...
He's got his paws up there, just...
Yeah, and to me,
those are the kind of things that, again,
there's a million reasons you'd say it
doesn't make sense.
But to me,
those are the kinds of things that I
loved as a kid.
So I kind of want to have those
kind of levels of absurdity where it's
like,
so now there's a rhinoceros driving a
gigantic quarry truck.
But it makes sense within this story in
Lords of the Cosmos where it's like
everything just – anything that would
traditionally be in your mind just –
bust that shit out and just go with
the most absurd over the top thing
possible.
And it works perfectly within this world.
And I love it.
It's a phenomenal thing that you've done
with it.
And I think to me, it's about consistency.
So like, for example,
if you had done a comic about like
a modern day espionage story,
and if you had readers that were like,
Hey man, you drew that handgun,
that's an Israeli handgun.
And these guys wouldn't have that,
whatever.
Right.
We can get really deep into like the,
you know,
that kind of car doesn't do that.
And I'm one of those guys, right?
Like I, I remember, um,
I drew a Cthulhu poster, um,
as a spec project.
And then my friend Dave used it as
a poster for his Lovecraft PI project.
And, um,
I remember I put in a World War
II military group,
and there was a gentleman that said if
that U-boat is supposed to be in the
Pacific Ocean,
it was like you've drawn a North Atlantic
Wolfpack submarine that wouldn't have had
the ability to travel.
Travel at this submarine,
which was bigger and had like additional
batteries.
And I redrew it because I was like,
it doesn't make any sense.
So so I'm in that camp of being
like super anal about things like that.
Yeah.
Most people would say, well,
it doesn't matter.
I'm like, well, it does matter.
But the beauty of Lords of the Cosmos
is because it's so far out.
There is no, well,
that's not really the accurate shotgun for
a bug to have or, you know, hey,
robots that look like the Wizard of Oz
shouldn't have this kind of axe.
It doesn't matter.
Exactly.
It's very freeing because there is no
wrong answer.
We could have cyborgs.
Sarge is literally a bug with a shotgun.
He's a wasp with a shotgun.
Yeah.
How cool is that?
He's great.
And we loved his intro story in issue
three where their whole society is trying
to fight with like spears in their hands.
And Umex has kind of a third party
kind of terrorist group attacking their
bug city that's on top of a giant
bug.
And they're using mortars, guns, gas,
and they're getting their asses beat until
Starge gets a gun.
And all the humans are like, wait,
these guys can't use guns.
And he's like, yeah, I got it now.
So, I mean, to me, you know,
Pulse is fun because it's, again,
it goes back in time.
Because we're seeing layers.
Like in issue two,
we have Obsidia's origin.
You see there was kind of a She-Ra
and the Princess of Power group that
Umek's rolled over, right?
Decades ago.
In the Lords of the Cosmos,
you see the original two guys,
the brothers,
like the one that died with the statue,
like they're there.
And then they...
they find the last living female soldier
from the prism, right?
Yeah, the prism, yeah.
And then you're like, wait,
this is the origin of this military group
coming together when it's just two guys
walking through the desert and they find
this one woman that like escaped, right?
So like we went back to that,
but so then what you saw in Pulse
is like after that.
So it's like, okay,
so those three meet up and they build
an army, right?
it is cool the way you do call
bats like that like you could do call
bat like i've seen like call bats done
in comic books to like earlier stuff but
the way y'all did it was like it
was very refined approach to it like it
made sense in how you do call bats
you weren't just calling that to something
insignificant that like
nobody's going to notice that but that
callback was really cool when because i
didn't realize it at first either when it
was the two brothers who found her and
then i was like after the fact when
i see the statue of him and then
i'm like oh i get it now it's
those it's the brothers and i'm like oh
well it's always fun when that kind of
stuff happens in these types of books
So some of the questions that need to
be answered is, okay, well,
where did those guys...
So we know where Prism came from, right?
So it's the two brothers, Aegis...
Myrmidon and Prism.
We see that they're like the main three.
So we really understand where, okay,
so Prism was in this group that's kind
of like She-Ra, you know,
where every girl's a color rainbow, right?
Which, of course,
in a black and white book's great, right?
Oh my God, right?
Dude, it's amazing.
Right?
So we haven't mentioned that yet.
Yeah.
And we're about to get into the art
of this book.
Yeah.
So this thing is very heavily line
detailed.
You do a phenomenal job at it.
Mm-hmm.
But it's all in black and white and
gray scales.
And I love old G like books like
this,
like Mike's Grace in the UK who does
zip the comic book.
He does his work this way.
Granted, he doesn't do the art of it.
But he is his book.
He is done in black and grayscale,
like amazing line work.
And that's what I love about it,
because you don't get to cover up any
bad lines because there's no coloring,
no ink, no nothing.
Just phenomenal line work in these types
of books.
So I'm a big fan of black and
white artwork.
I always have been.
whether it was, I used to,
I still do.
I love doing the fighting fantasy game
books,
where you roll dice and read a book.
A lot of those came from the UK.
You know, Steven Jackson and Ian,
I can't think of his name,
Warlock of Firetop Mountain.
They had some really awesome artists that
did a lot of black and white for
those books.
And I loved them as a kid.
So I've always been a fan of black
and white art.
Part of it was a cost consideration.
Coloring escalates prices a lot.
So black and white books are cheaper.
You don't have to hire a colorist and
then you don't.
So there's a little bit of a cost
concern,
but I'm also a big fan of black
and white.
Right.
So to me, we've really, really,
really had some amazing artists that have
done interiors and sequential work for us.
And so one of the things that that's
been really cool when you jam with other
creatives is,
is other artists and writers have done
things with our we try to give very
basic guidance and then we want to see
what you bring to it so there's been
a lot of really cool stuff that people
have kind of worked out on their own
and kind of like found little things that
they kind of ran with with our kind
of basic guidance and then we've taken
some of that feedback
from the people that have done work for
us and built it into, you know,
it's like a ship.
That's what I do.
Let's, you know, let's bring that in.
Let's make it work.
Let's use that little visual cue.
so one of the characters um the bad
guys have a cat right because he you
know skeletor and he managed a cat yeah
yes um we have our cat which i
forget why we just when we initially made
it it's called hexalore seven and you see
it it's in the book a little bit
in the first couple issues background
character we already have we have a twelve
page origin story for that cat
Dude,
that's insane and amazing and I like it.
So if you notice in issue two –
I'm a cat guy.
That cat's there,
but it's got like a monocle and like
some different hardware that Danny drew
onto it.
And so we took that and that's like
the – that's Hexalore four.
So we had a writer actually from the
U.K.,
we gave some basic direction and said this
character basically keeps getting killed
and then umex keeps bringing it back to
life yeah right so then we got to
go back in the continuity i'm like okay
we showed this cat as an older version
in this book so you've got to when
you do that when you do one of
these older versions you got to go back
to this one where it's got this weird
like eyepiece right yeah that is so cool
though
right but but then we got to catch
all of our stuff because when danny drew
the cat she drew it a little differently
you know you're like all right cool and
i think we told her to um so
it's like wait so there's that cat but
then we go back and you'll see that
version of the cat because that story is
basically version one until it dies
version two till it dies version three
till it dies six six seven and seven
is the last one that's in the main
story that you know it's kind of with
the bad guys rolling around the background
but
It's a really cool story.
And for a character, you're like,
it's just kind of a,
it's a cat that seemingly just is kind
of a soldier, just kills people.
So there's a lot of this stuff that
like we're hyper,
Like when I was a kid, right.
I was, I was one of those kids.
I'd get a toy.
I'd watch a cartoon and I would wonder,
you know, Hey, the guy in the background,
like, where's he going?
Like, what, what is like, what,
what's going on?
I see a background painting.
I see a second castle.
Like, so when I was a kid,
a little kid and I watched the wizard
of Oz, the classic movie,
there's the two little roads, right.
With the yellow brick road.
There's like a purple road and then
yellow.
Yeah.
I'm the asshole that I would have been
like, where's the other one?
Yeah.
Like, where does it go, right?
I don't know, but to me,
there's always like the stuff you don't
see,
but your imagination is probably better
than we can show you.
So kind of in my role as a
creator,
I do writing.
I do art obviously.
But then part of it is being like
this,
if we're going to jump around with
timelines and have all these characters
doing different stuff,
you got to have some of this,
like the continuity, you know, overwork.
So those are the kinds of weird things
that I look for to make sure, Hey,
remember we had that character, you know,
we zipped back in the past to show
that character doing this.
Well then, okay, then why are they,
then why did they have that?
Okay.
Well that was, we, you know,
this character was going to have different
iterations and we were going to show him
getting killed,
but like getting killed in different ways.
Um,
So,
and one of the fun things is that
the writer that wrote that story,
he's a big fan of a lot of
the stuff you're talking about.
So he put a lot of callbacks to
the first four issues that he picked up
on that he wanted to like re-highlight.
At the same time,
he also did some really cool original
stuff that ties into existing stuff that
we've done, which is cool.
So do you do traditional mediums or have
you made the switch over to go a
hundred percent digital now when it comes
to your artwork?
So there was a time when I did
all my penciling by hand,
and I hand inked everything with India ink
and little Micron pens.
Being a dad, full-time job,
I had to bail on the inking just
to get stuff done.
So at this point,
I still do everything by hand with pencil
that I do.
I have two guys that are digital inkers
that I send my originals to as a
high-resolution scan,
and I tell them to ink it.
They're probably better anchors than me.
They work digitally.
It'd be cool if they did it all
by hand.
But at this point,
if that's the medium they choose to work
in,
that's the medium they choose to work in.
So in this book,
my art was pencil with digital inks.
The other two stories in issue five were
all hand pencil, hand inked.
So the other two, Luigi and Sasha,
I have all their originals.
Each issue has a folder of all the
originals and then they get sold through
Kickstarters and Indiegogo.
So those guys did their stuff by hand,
but we have some stuff that's in the
can for some future issues.
It's all digital, right?
So it's different from story to story to
artist to artist.
So actually a couple of the ones we
have coming up are all just digital.
But for me, it's pencil.
It is cool, though.
And nobody outside of you and your team
are going to know the difference anyway.
You're going to have to have a very
good eye to notice the difference between
the two because it's not easy.
Well, at this point,
we've been doing this long enough that now
you've got AI as an issue.
And that's a big no-go for me.
I don't want to see that in our
books.
That wasn't an issue until about a year
and a half ago.
And to me, that's a whole different thing.
I've heard some, well,
people are using computers.
When you're using a computer as a tool,
it's just a digital pencil.
Whereas AI is...
ai is scraping other people's work and
like combining it into some algorithm to
build things that are just kind of like
it's like we're stealing but we'll steal
one percent from like a hundred people so
it's not as easy to see per se
but you know i don't i don't want
that but yeah i probably will never go
to digital but my anchors use digital on
my work which is cool with me
I like it,
and especially the fact that you just come
out and said, we don't do AI,
which I'm always happy to hear.
I think so far, knock on wood,
I've had a lot of customers on over
the last year,
and I don't think I've had a single
one whose work looked like it was AI
in any kind of way.
will tell you this and this is and
this this came out of left field at
my at my regular job which has nothing
to do with comics i had a i
had a person at work that said man
he goes i got an idea for you
and i said well what's that he goes
you could use ai on your comics and
think of all the work you would say
and this person said it to me from
a place of caring like they were helping
me yeah and i said well i said
i i let me just kind of walk
you back i was like
If you make art, whether it's dance,
music, writing, visual arts, whatever,
the finished product is a goal.
But I'm like,
the process and creating it and learning,
there's massive,
I get massive enjoyment out of that.
So to me, to take that away,
just to speed to the finish line,
I'm like,
it would be like having food with no
flavor.
Absolutely.
Hey, here's calories.
You don't need to eat.
There's no flavor.
We'll just inject you once a day and
you'll have calories and you won't die.
Think about the time you save eating.
And it's like, no,
I like the inefficiencies of eating and
cooking and everything.
you know flavors and food and all that
stuff so and i told him that and
he goes oh i'm sorry i said no
no i said you you i mean you're
trying to help you're not a creator you
you look at it as work yeah if
you have a passion for creating
It's not work at all.
It's really not.
Look, dude,
sometimes it is painful and it's a
struggle and you'll struggle to figure out
a pose or a page or you'll have
to redo work.
There's shit that's painful.
One of the pages in Lord's Five that
I did,
the original is actually three pieces of
board sliced with a razor and taped on
the back.
Because the top panel and the bottom panel
were exactly how I wanted them.
And the panel in the middle,
it just wasn't quite right.
It's like Zemba's pointing a pistol in the
middle.
It's like three.
And I erased so many times in the
middle that the paper like fell apart.
i redid the center panel on a different
board and i was really happy with how
that turned out and i took a knife
and i cut them yeah and i i
i reassembled the pages and look dude that
was a pain in the ass and i
hated it but
It's not about the finished product.
It's about the struggle and achieving the
struggle to get where I wanted to get.
And I was a labor of love.
Yeah.
And then like so that page specifically to
me is gorgeous because it means it's like
it's like scarred man in the back.
It's like I cut them apart,
laid them down, taped them back together.
So it's like one.
The measurements have to be spot on still.
yeah it still has to be a certain
requirement you can it's not like you
could just like do this no that's awesome
though you know and someone say well think
of all the time you'd saved if you
did this or that it's like yeah but
i i'm really i'm super proud of that
page and that how i i fought to
make that middle panel the best it could
be
So when you're drawing the same characters
over and over and over,
you're trying for different angles,
different zooms, different pan outs.
So you don't want it to be the
same and you want to move the eye
and everything else.
So I'm really proud of that page.
But it was a freaking struggle.
But I'm proud of the struggle.
Right.
That's the like,
I know it's like when your mom would
make you dinner growing up and you're
like, hey, mom,
what's the secret ingredient?
It's love, son.
And I see that no different in art.
When people are talking about AI and that
kind of stuff, yeah, you can do it,
but you're not putting the love into it
to make it what you want it to
be.
It's like the easy button at Staples.
Yeah.
And like I said, to me...
And it has no soul.
To me,
the struggle is part of the enjoyment that
we struggle to get better.
I can look back at these five issues
and I can look at all the mistakes
and I can look at all the improvements.
and change and evolution as writers,
creators, editors,
putting the books together from a
formatting and printing process.
So issue five,
when I was putting it together,
I went to go back to reorder the
original four books from a printer I used
in Arizona.
And they said, well, you know,
all these things are the wrong formats.
They're the wrong size.
I said, well,
how the hell did you print them?
They said the guy that was printing them
was doing stuff he shouldn't have done.
He should not have printed your books for
years the way they were.
And I was like,
So they said,
you got to reformat all these books.
And then I went back to the old
books that I had printed and I had
realized that there was printing errors
that no one ever noticed.
I never noticed them where there should
have been gutters at the bottom.
The art was printed out past the page
and we lost like small bits of art.
Yeah.
One of the reasons that Lords of the
Cosmos five was such a burden was not
only did I have to get the current
book correct,
I had to go back and reformat every
single old issue.
I was cleaning up margins,
cleaning up pages,
formatted each book for PDF and print.
So that was really like doing five books
of like, okay,
you've got one hundred and sixty eight
pages that you clean up and reformat it.
And you're like,
PDF can be a fickle beast itself.
pdf can be different than print for a
lot of reasons right because like printing
you may leave a little bit for a
bleed and a cut whereas a pdf is
digital digital it's different so i hit a
point now i can format a book for
you forward and back for years apparently
i was just the idiot being like oh
here's a png here's a pdf here's a
jpeg and they were all different sizes
And this guy at this printing company was
just like, sure, fuck it.
Well, excuse my language.
We'll just print it.
It printed.
But I was I didn't even have the
eye to pick up on the mistakes.
I'm not saying I'm a printing expert,
but I'm a lot more dangerous.
There's a lot of this stuff that like
you you learn and like the guy you
are today versus the guy you were when
you started.
And this started in twenty sixteen.
Like I'm a lot more dangerous, I'm better.
And I wanna keep getting better
But there's an enjoyment in tackling those
problems.
I had to go fix all those damn
pages.
I didn't say, hey, AI, fix these pages.
No, I said,
create a single page and fix them for
print and PDF.
That's wild, man.
So, like I said,
I have a very – there's times where
I look at these pages and I love
them, and then I'm like, what?
You know what I mean?
Or you take a film director where we
have to watch this film over and over
and over and over and over and over.
And, you know, look,
you could take a film.
Obviously, you're a Star Wars fan,
so you could say Empire Strikes Back and
I could say watch it sixty times.
Dude,
I don't care how good that movie is
and it's great.
Yeah,
sixty times in a row is going to
be a struggle, especially Rewind.
Fast forward.
Like,
I don't like this little thing right here.
Let's see this little thing right here.
Yeah, let's cut that out.
Yeah.
I couldn't imagine.
And you'll hit a point where it's like,
I never want to see it.
It's like, it's a great movie.
And you're like, brother,
that's why you hear so many actors and
directors and stuff like that.
And editors who go, I won't see that.
Like I worked on that and I won't
watch it because they pour so many hours
of their life into it.
And they're just like,
Yeah, it's great.
Everybody told me it's a great movie.
Well, I never want to see it again.
And there's another part of it, too.
You see all your mistakes.
There's all that they so mean to me.
No matter how much you work on these
books,
you just see there is a level of
like you see all the warts.
So I do think it is hard to
have fun with your own work to a
degree.
One thing that is fun about an anthology
is having other people do stuff.
So I kind of get to geek out
over like other people's art.
Like, yeah, cool.
Right.
Um,
But one of the things,
and it's a blessing and a curse,
some of the guys, like Luigi and Sasha,
the two artists, they're both from Italy,
that did the art for the other two
stories that weren't the main story.
I mean, those guys,
I look at them and I feel like
an amateur.
I felt their art...
was so good.
I was like, damn,
I can't believe these guys are in my
book.
You know what's wild is you just brought
up the fact that they're both from Italy.
I just had Sabe on here who does
Shot Kitted Peter, the art for it.
He's also from Italy and I had him
on the podcast I think two weeks ago.
to talk about his work and that kind
of stuff and his influences.
So it's just wild that you're like,
oh yeah, both these guys are from Italy.
And I'm like,
I just had an Italian artist on here
too.
And it's crazy.
Like the number of Italian artists out
there that people are sleeping on.
Don't sleep on those Italian artists
because they are so good.
I mean, they are both so good.
Like I said,
I kind of felt embarrassed at some point
looking at how good their art was.
I was like, Ooh, this stuff is great.
Um, it's a global world, man.
I mean, both of those guys,
I found one,
I found Luigi on Instagram and I found
Sasha on Facebook.
I just was like, Hey, you know,
I'd love to have you work on my
book.
And they, they were awesome.
Um,
I've been blessed.
We've had a lot of really good people
that have worked on the book,
guest covers, pinups, sequentials.
Probably one of the worst things I have
right now is I probably have five stories
that are completely done that just need to
be put in a book that are done
by others,
that they were things that we've gotten
done over the last couple of years.
Some of them are still sitting around
since COVID.
It's just the problem is it's just...
if I could get these books out faster,
I could, I could get it.
But there's a lot of stuff that's just
like, and like ready to go.
It just needs lettered,
put to print and go.
I probably will.
That's really cool though,
that you have like just all this material
for this, this story,
just ready to go when the time is
appropriate.
Yeah.
Well, I got to go ahead.
I'm sorry.
Let's jump into DeLorean real quick and go
back to the nineteen eighties.
Yeah.
Not that we haven't been walking down
memory lane for the last hour almost, but,
why eighties let's backtrack,
which creators or franchises from the
eighties are still influencing you today?
I know we've been hitting on it a
little bit,
but if there's like one or two that
you could like, say,
I arrive a lot of my story from
these right here.
Um,
I think probably the number one influence,
uh, is,
is the filmation masters of the universe.
Um,
Filmation cut a lot of corners.
They did a lot of stuff that was
kind of cheap and corny.
But that showed to me when I was
a kid with the toys,
and each toy had a little comic book
that was about this big.
That whole thing was fun.
I might have been nine or ten when
that was new.
No,
I might have been like seven or eight.
But they were very fun.
They were very crazy.
And I really think that that was a
fundamental thing for me.
In two thousand three, the Four Horsemen,
which is a toy company in L.A.,
did some like really high end masters redo
toys and they put a cartoon out to
support those toys.
Those toys and that cartoon.
Kind of recodified toys.
how cool...
The concept in the eighties was really
cool.
The execution was a little bit lacking.
Early two thousands cartoon,
if you've never seen it, was peak.
It was like, okay,
let's take this concept and we'll turn it
up to an eleven.
They had Korean animators do it.
The action was three dimensional.
I don't know if you've seen it,
but it's probably... It's great.
It's on Netflix too.
There's a whole new...
He-Man storylines and the whole nine going
on.
Yeah.
Well, for me,
the O three version was just incredible.
So, I mean, to me,
Masters of the Universe is one that I'd
say if I had to pick one that
was really fundamental,
I would say Masters of the Universe.
And I would say the other one that
still sticks in my head that never really
got as big was was Thundar the Barbarian.
Which was really crazy because it was like
a violent post-apocalyptic Saturday
morning Ruby Spears cartoon where it's
like the moon crashes and the moon splits
in half and like oceans drown cities and
now it's this world in the future where
this...
Guy with a lightsaber and like a talking
bear and like this lady that's a magician
are like going to fight across like
destroyed landscapes in North America and
fight wizards, monsters.
And it just there was so much creativity
in that show.
I loved it.
And look, the other thing I'll say,
big anime fan.
I'm wearing my Ninja Scroll shirt right
now,
which is cool because it's got Ninja
Scroll stuff in the sleeve.
Huge fan of anime.
I was born in the seventies.
I remember watching Battle of the Planets
as a very small child when I was
like three or four.
that and speed racer and then it was
robotech then it was bubblegum crisis then
it was dominion tank police then it was
akira uh you know giant robo cowboy bebop
etc so to me oh yeah uh anime's
always been a huge influence to me that
that it's weird because i've been a fan
my whole life um there's new shows out
now that are amazing they're they're in my
mind like uh dan and solo leveling which
i think oh yeah
I was actually just watching,
catching up on the newest season of Dan
to Dan.
I hadn't started season two yet,
so I was starting season two.
But then I love to go back and
watch Midnight Aigoku or City Hunter or
whatever.
There's so much.
That stuff's always in my mind with an
aesthetic.
There's so much kinetic energy.
That explains the anime cover that you did
on issue five as well.
Yeah,
so that was a big nod to Bubblegum
Crisis.
When I first got Bubblegum Crisis,
they were in like clamshell VHS tapes.
So what we did for that cover is
I found a guy that he did Psycorn
and Obsidian as anime characters in the
nineties style.
And then we got a photograph of one
of those clamshell boxes and then put like
the, the unicolor block at the bottom.
And we matched up the fonts from the
box.
Cause even my Danny who did the layout,
she said, this looks like shit.
Why are we using this?
And I was like,
I showed her a picture and she goes,
okay.
She goes, I get it.
She goes, it still looks like shit.
And I said, well, I know.
I said, yeah, you're not wrong.
It looks like shit,
but we're trying to like imitate it.
Like this is,
this is literally if Lords of the Cosmos
was a clamshell box from the, from like,
from like the, from like the,
from like the, from like the,
from like the, from like the,
from like the, from like the,
from like the, from like the,
from like the, from like the,
from like the, from like the,
from like the,
So I love anime.
Shout out to CJ.
CJ in the chat there.
He has a fantastic horror podcast where he
does nothing but horror.
Hi, CJ.
Amazing dude.
Super smart.
So if Lords of the Cosmos was a
toy line in nineteen eighty six,
which figure would be impossible to find
at Toys R Us?
you know you got the back and it
tells you all the figures from the line
which one of those figures is going to
be next to impossible to ever find if
it ever really existed i think the obvious
answer would be the two gigantic
characters because they would be like the
uss flag right where it's like this holy
grail of toys people like oh my god
i saw one i saw a box because
they're oversized they're too big
And they're hard to get.
So I follow a lot of toy stuff
on social media.
And there's a guy that he puts old
toy catalog stuff up.
And his name's like US Toy Dad or
something like that.
So he'll put up like Sears catalogs and
JCPenney, stuff like that.
And he put a thing up that was
a play set called Eternia.
I was like, what?
So there was Gray Skull.
There was Snake Mountain.
then there was this thing that connected
with both of them that had like a
monorail on it.
And it was a toy that was,
it was big.
It was like their biggest play set ever.
I had never heard until like last year.
And I'm like,
I don't even remember this as a kid.
And so I think the hardest ones to
find are when these toy lines are near
the end.
So maybe it would be like a gigantic,
uh, Oh my God.
Uh,
Like a gigantic play set of the planet
or something like that.
Oh, that'd be kind of dope.
Especially because the planet itself is
living.
The planet Aiden play set.
Well, you picked up on that.
Is the planet alive?
Like there's an eyeball in it, right?
In issue one.
So that's going to be addressed in issue
six again, right?
There's going to be more of that.
I'll just keep building up that good hype
for issue six.
I like it.
So we're like, is this planet alive?
What's going on here, right?
Because, I mean,
you got the whole vibe of it.
And, like, even before the eye.
Because you see basically the veins of the
planet and how the planet is providing the
power and the life energy of this planet.
So that whole thing is just like,
maybe this planet is alive.
And then you do see the giant eyeball.
And then you're like, oh, well,
maybe it's kind of like from the Marvel
Universe where there's a living being
inside the core of that planet just
waiting to explode out.
So, you know,
the hardest toy to get would be the
Planet Aiden playset, right?
They would have made it when the toy
line was declining and they would say,
hey,
we made this hundred fifty dollar playset
with a gigantic eyeball and a mountain and
like a monorail and like the pipes and
everything else.
That would be the toy that you couldn't
get.
It would be like, oh, my God,
you would find out this year,
twenty twenty.
You said there was a Planet Aiden playset.
Yeah, we made a few.
It was only out in stores for a
little bit.
That'd be the one that would be hard
to get.
Yeah,
but it was only in bigger cities and
there was only one per store per every
ten stores.
So one in every ten stores in a
major city got exactly one.
Correct.
That's how you'd find out.
So that would be the Planet Aiden playset.
Yeah,
because the bad guys would have their
fortress playset and the good guys would
have theirs.
But it's like the bigger,
because like G.I.
Joe had a space shuttle toy.
Did you know that?
I did, actually.
I found out about that recently, too,
and I was like, damn,
I didn't know that.
I remember I didn't know that,
and it was probably near the end of
its big run.
They were pumping out bigger toys,
and that was just kind of the end,
right?
They crowdfund a lot of those play sets
now.
Yes.
Which is really cool.
They're like pricey.
I know on the Star Wars side of
the house, I keep up with those.
And they just did a Jabba's Cell Barge
on that side.
I think it was the Jabba's Cell Barge.
And it was like a six hundred dollar
like just to buy in on it.
And then if they didn't hit its amount
of units ordered,
they couldn't produce the toy.
So
I'm like,
so you're throwing in six hundred dollars
and you a you're not getting that six
hundred dollars back.
Oh, it doesn't go.
Oh,
so you're rolling dice literally with your
your hard earned cash.
So but is there going to be a
video game?
A Lords of the Cosmos, I wish.
Yeah, you brought it.
You had it in your in your,
you know, thing and.
When I read through Indiegogo and
Kickstarter stuff,
I'm picking out the details.
So if Lords of the Cosmos was a
video game,
it would be like the four-person X-Men
side scroll that just sucked quarters,
right?
That's what it would be.
But it would be so fun.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah,
and then you'd have the main villains as
bosses,
and it would be a quarter-eating machine.
That's what it would be.
That would totally be what Lords of the
Cosmos would be.
It would be the X-Men four-player cabinet.
And I would just be sitting there,
dropping them in.
You could pick the characters,
and they would be, like, generic.
They would have, like, generic soldiers.
And then you hit Umek's, you know,
goons along the way.
You'd fight Psycorn, like,
three levels in.
You'd fight Obsidian in so many levels.
And, like, they would be, like, the...
Well, Obsidian would have to be, like,
the number two before you face Umek.
Yeah.
Yeah.
She's the main squeeze, man.
She is.
And she don't let anybody forget it,
either.
Who?
Who?
She's quick to remind people.
So let's talk about.
So you did Kickstarter.
Yeah.
And you also did Indiegogo,
which is a first for us here at
USDN.
We've dealt with many of Kickstarters.
We've dealt with many of self-funded
books.
But this is the first one that's currently
still active on Indiegogo,
if I'm not mistaken.
Yep.
So for one more week.
how what's the difference between the two
really?
And like from a,
cause you still have to build the page.
You still have to preload everything.
You still have this,
a lot of work to build a front
page of one of these sites for your
book.
But what's the biggest difference between
Indiegogo and Kickstarter?
So Indiegogo is the biggest name brand
and,
Like, they are the Coca-Cola, right?
So the first thing that Kickstarter is
going to bring is that they have a
lot of eyes on it.
They just have more customers.
Yeah.
I think their platform is a little easier
to use in the back end.
A little bit.
Okay.
So what's the – why do two?
Okay.
A couple of years ago,
I picked up on people doing exactly this,
where they would put it on Kickstarter and
then they would do like Backerkit,
Indiegogo, Crowdfunder, Zoop.
There's different ones.
Yeah.
So the reason there's a couple thoughts to
it.
One, there's a delay.
Maybe new people find you.
Like, oh,
I didn't know you a year ago.
And shoot, you know what I mean?
Like, this is cool.
So it's like a second chance to kind
of bring people around.
And then I also think that you can
do a little bit of re-engagement.
So we have a couple things on the
Indiegogo that weren't on Kickstarter.
Like, hey, you know,
we have a couple different covers, right?
Yeah.
And then there's some people that just
like different platforms.
Like, oh, yeah,
you will meet people that are like, oh,
I hate Kickstarter for whatever reason,
right?
Yeah.
I mean, no different than someone saying,
oh, my God,
we all love going to McDonald's.
And you're like, oh, I'll never go there.
I hate it.
I like going to, you know, Five Guys,
right?
I'm like, well, come on, we're going here.
And you're like, no, I don't like that.
Well, it makes sense.
It a hundred percent makes sense.
It was just one of those where I
didn't know the difference personally
because I had never seen Indiegogo until
today.
I mean, I knew it existed,
but I've never seen like anybody like,
oh yeah,
I'm on Kickstarter and I'm on Indiegogo,
which is kind of cool.
so Kickstarter was kind of like the main
act and I've called this the encore.
So basically, um, my friend Tara,
I paid her to help put everything together
for the Kickstarter.
And then I just gave her, you know,
a feed at basically I was like,
just export the work from this one to
that one.
So a lot of it's just right.
You're not reinventing the wheel per se.
It's like a lot of the stuff's just
done.
You can just kind of export it over.
Um,
Indiegogo just changed.
They got bought by a company called
GameFound.
So the one problem we did have in
full transparency,
we had the campaign ready to go.
And then one of the guys from Indiegogo
sent us a note and said, hey,
you should wait till we transfer to the
new platform and your campaign will be
saved.
It was saved, but there was an issue,
kind of like if you had an old
Word file,
then you try to open it in Microsoft
today, it could be like, oh,
there's no spacing or paragraphs.
And you're like, oh, shoot.
I got to go back and make it
look like the way it's supposed to.
So we did have to go back and
kind of reformat all the data.
So it's...
There's some nice things about it.
One really nice thing with Indiegogo,
if you really want to get in the
weeds,
pre-launch followers is a big deal now.
One problem with Kickstarter is if you
have like four hundred people follow your
project,
you don't get access to who they are.
With Indiegogo,
you have access to who those people are.
So there's little things like that where
it's like, okay,
I'm glad you're telling me who these
people are because it's valuable to me to
be able to communicate with them.
um no that's really cool though so my
coloring book project that i did before
this i did a coloring book between lords
four and lords five that was the first
time i did a double dip campaign so
my main kickstarter campaign raised like
sixteen thousand dollars and then the
indiegogo raised like twelve hundred
dollars
And this one's kind of the same.
Like Kickstarter was like, yeah,
ten dollars.
The Indiegogo is like seven fifty.
But to me,
it's seven fifty and backers that we
didn't get the first time.
So my expectations,
my gut feeling is it may get to
a thousand dollars by the end.
right but but it's expectations right if i
looked at my indigo my indiegogo from my
coloring book it did you know about eight
eight percent seven percent of kickstarter
this is maybe about the same maybe a
little bit more yeah you know again so
to me um if it finds one new
reader okay cool great i mean and i
think it's got ten backers for seven
hundred and fifty one dollars last i
checked it
Yeah, I mean, that's not bad.
I mean, it's just, you know,
you're given opportunities for people,
like if they're watching the show today.
Correct.
And when I do the re-release in a
couple of days,
they're still going to have a few days
left to get in on this campaign.
So you're literally going to have an
opportunity to go in.
You can get all the issues you want
digitally.
You can catch up on it.
You can get
Any of the actual physical copies that you
want, one through five.
You have an amazing lineup of covers with
this.
You have anime variants, spicy variants,
international artists.
You have your black and white metal.
You name it,
you have a cover that will inspire
somebody.
And you also do personalized covers,
if I'm not mistaken, for some of them.
So I did put a ban on sketch
covers for Yogo.
I really put a lot of time into
Kickstarter sketch covers.
So I just didn't.
What I want to do is wrap this
up, get these rewards out in the mail,
and I want to wrap it up and
be done,
and I'm going to start working on the
next comic.
I didn't want to do sketch covers.
I didn't want to take another six weeks
to work on all of them.
So on this, no.
But I will on the next Kickstarter.
I do got to ask, though,
what has been the best thing you've ever
gotten from a request for a sketch cover
when it comes to the book?
so a friend of mine that i went
to college with um asked me to ask
me to draw the lords of the cosmos
characters at a college party that's
actually kind of cool i drew them playing
beer pong little animal house action yeah
like it's it's it's like zemba and like
the guy who's a minotaur and there's a
handful of just these kind of oddball
characters they're having some drinks and
they're playing beer pop and what's the
weirdest
PG, rate it R.
We won't go past rated R.
I think the weirdest one,
because I live near Penn State University,
I had a guy that was like,
I want to see the Lords of the
Cosmos characters fighting at Beaver
Stadium.
So I drew the two gigantic characters,
the dragon and the turtle,
smashing the ones fighting.
That's actually kind of cool.
Yeah, so that was kind of weird.
It's kind of a little bit of a
local flair.
Weird, but cool.
Yeah, weird but cool.
Just two Titans going at each other?
Yeah.
I get weird sketch requests at shows.
There's one gentleman that always asks me,
like I just did a sketch cover for
a guy at Morgantown, West Virginia,
that he asked me to draw Barbarella nude
sitting in a chair holding a hamburger the
size of a chair over her head.
I did read that on your, yeah,
that was on your Instagram.
Was it not?
Yeah.
Yeah.
No, I've seen that.
Yeah.
Where it's like, okay,
so you want a topless woman in a
chair holding a hamburger,
the size of like a chair over her
head.
So it's like, you have this naked.
It's amazing how,
how many people still will from our
generation that they love Barbarella still
like to a point where Barbarella is still
in production.
She still gets runs.
Well,
she has a hamburger the size of a
chair overhead.
So, no,
but I would say the Lords of the
Cosmos ones,
a lot of people are just like,
just draw something.
Draw something cool.
And I usually just dick around with it.
And then I just try to think of
a character that I want to draw on.
I just kind of do that.
I just did a sketch cover just for
Shits and Giggles recently on an issue two
slab project.
or an issue two blank cover,
I just drew Bonesaw,
the guy with the chainsaw,
just kind of like running over it.
You know what I mean?
So that one, I just have it.
I'll just have it at shows for someone
to pick it up.
So anytime I've seen Bonesaw pop up in
the comic book,
I go immediately to Superman and Macho
Man, Randy Savage,
when they're in the wrestling ring.
You're going one-on-one with the Bonesaw.
Yeah.
Well,
I always think of the Bonesaw character.
I think of him a lot of the
character that Doomsday that kills
Superman where he doesn't speak.
Yeah.
Goggles.
So our Bonesaw is just kind of this
guy with no he doesn't speak.
He just kills things and he just has
a saw.
And his little story in issue one,
I thought was amazing.
Really good one, too.
I like that one a lot.
He doesn't say a word, man.
He's just this guy.
And by the time the character who was
hunting him realizes what is going on,
it's too late.
He's fucked.
Yep.
Yeah, well, that's the thing.
He doesn't talk.
That's so cool.
And is he intelligent?
He could be very intelligent.
But like you said,
he's kind of a Michael Myers.
He's kind of a doomsday character.
I'll have to send it to you.
I was really happy with his little sketch
cover.
Let's talk about the community and the fan
base and the legacy of this book.
You built a very dedicated fan community.
And people have backed this for years,
obviously.
They've cosplayed your characters.
They've made custom toys.
They've sent you fan art.
How has this fan community shaped this
series?
I mean, obviously,
we know that they've requested certain
characters and that kind of stuff.
But outside of that,
how has the fans shaped this for you?
um i think anyone that that makes
something and i i dancers writers whatever
is that i don't think any artist vacuum
we do feed off of the energy that
fans give you so i do think that
um
getting that positive feedback from people
it's it's like fuel right uh it's it's
it's transformers so um even an interview
like this it's awesome right it's great
obviously you've read the book great
questions you're into it it appealed to
you um it's the fuel that keeps your
creative fire going because if you were
just in a vacuum you could still do
it but it lacks the
pizazz.
You enjoy the applause.
You enjoy the, you enjoy people saying,
dude, that was cool as shit.
You know what I mean?
Like I got what you're doing.
Like, holy shit.
Because ideally you want to make things
for yourself.
But when other people that, you know,
are strangers or people you don't know,
they're like, holy shit, dude.
Like this is what I got out of
your, your project.
That's great.
I just saw this yesterday in the news.
Um,
Lily Wachowski,
one of the people that made the original
Matrix movie,
was responding to people getting a message
out of the Matrix that was not
her intention.
So her intention that it was about, uh,
transgender,
like that's her stated point of what he
felt the matrix was,
which makes sense for her.
It does.
Um, but I guess now there's,
and I didn't realize this, but the, the,
the article I was reading was saying,
they were saying like, well, you know,
a lot of right-wingers have co-opted, uh,
the red pill scene is like,
that's a right-wing message.
And she had said, well,
You can't control things once they're out.
right you can't you're out in the world
um i said i can't do anything about
it you know it's not what the intention
was but i can't fight i can't fight
it right yeah so ideally if you're doing
something and people are getting what you
wanted out of it then that's a little
bit more rewarding than oh my god no
you're all getting the wrong message out
of this so here's the thing though people
are going to take away what they want
from a certain piece
Yes.
At the end of the day,
the only thing you care about as a
creator, as an artist, as a creative,
in general,
is that somebody took something away from
it.
It may not be what you were wanting
to convey a hundred percent,
but at the end of the day,
they still took something away from it.
They still had some type of emotion with
it.
I feel blessed that most of the people
that have talked to me about the books
got out of it what I want.
Like,
they got out of it what I wanted
them to get out of it.
So especially reading that article the
other day about The Matrix, I was like,
okay.
Well, I mean, check it out.
Like, when you read the Zimba story,
you were focused more on the murder of
the friends.
Whereas I viewed that more secondary thing
and more of like, no,
she's going for a power play.
She's,
she's less concerned about her friend.
She still doesn't like that, but right.
So I viewed that a little differently,
but that's cool.
Like you got to look,
you got a little bit of a different
flavor.
You get it more as a personal payback.
Whereas I viewed that as more of a
secondary goal.
That's cool.
It wasn't until they were at the,
the meeting with a,
you met that like when,
like her attitude and everything,
I'm like, okay,
Well,
she's got some animosity here as well.
I think she's upset about her friend,
but I think that friend dying is just
a secondary thing because there's some
animosities here.
And it is the whole time.
I'm thinking there's another story within
this story that isn't being talked about
yet.
And when it does get talked about,
it's going to be fucking amazing.
Well, they're all there.
You gave it to us just a little
bit at the end of five.
they're all really bad people and
creatures because they're not all people
and they're awful and like what would
happen when you put really awful people
together they don't they don't like the
good guys they don't like each other like
it's like no like maybe oh yeah you
get that whole vibe from everybody then
everybody is just there because this one
guy is the batter of the bad guys
but if enough of the batter of the
bad guys team together that guy ain't so
bad no more
That's right.
But maybe he can take them all out.
But back to the fans.
No, like I said, to me,
fans are like energy.
They can boost us up.
It's a two way street.
So one of the things that I've become
more and more aware of is I've done
more and more stuff is that, you know,
if you if you have a platform,
even a little platform, you know,
when you say things,
it's important to think about what you
say, because it does affect people.
Um,
so I try to become very conscious about,
you know,
when I speak to people and to try
to be, you know,
positive and thoughtful with what I say,
but it's also a two way street.
So for a fan just to be like,
Hey man,
I really appreciate what you're doing.
Um,
that means an incredible amount.
I mean, not only to myself,
but any creator.
So I would always say, you know,
if you have a creator that you like
and you're a fan,
it never hurts to send them a little
note and just be, Hey man,
I just want to let you know what
you're doing is great.
I really, I really enjoy it.
You know, whether you, even if you can't,
if you're like,
I can't even afford to buy anything right
now, just even the words like that,
it's all very important.
So to me, you know,
I love Lords of the Cosmos cause I
like to read it myself and it's something
that speaks to me.
I've been blessed that there's been enough
people to really kind of help take it
to the next level with the financial
support and the interest,
the fandom and everything else.
So like I said, to me,
I could do it in a vacuum,
but it wouldn't be anywhere near as fun
just by myself.
Oh, yeah.
So before I let you get out of
here.
Yeah.
Um,
let's the council know where they can
follow you and where they can stay into
Lord of the cosmos.
So, um, you can follow me on Facebook.
My art page is Jason Lennox illustrator.
So if you search for that on,
it's like facebook.com slash Jason likes
illustrator.
Um, so there's that, um,
I'm on Instagram and Twitter as at Lennox
artist and on blue sky.
Right.
I don't want to forget blue sky.
Uh, also at Lennox artist, uh,
I have an Etsy store, which is Lenox,
L-E-N-O-X, Art Emporium.
You can look me up there.
And if you want to check out the
Indiegogo,
I do have it pinned on all my
social media pages.
I do as well.
Anywhere where I've tagged you,
I have that tagged as well.
Appreciate it.
But it's just, you know,
Lords of the Cosmos, five on Indiegogo.
and you know whether if you if you
need help finding it just find me at
lennox artist and just shoot me a message
or comment uh or ask the chairman he'll
direct you he's been great absolutely i
i'm i'm pretty good at tagging things and
keeping um that kind of stuff up to
date on any of the posts where i'm
where i'm talking about art today actually
I do appreciate it.
I really tried to get the message out
today.
Obviously,
they can catch a replay of this later
if they're not catching it live.
Not tomorrow, but Tuesday,
it will go live again.
It will go out to all podcasts and
platforms.
Even in the description of the podcast
platform, whatever it is,
whether it's Apple,
if you hit the description,
it's going to have all your links in
there.
It's going to have all that in there.
That's the one thing I try to do
good is...
tagging everything the proper way and
making sure people know where to follow
you and if they want to contact you,
all that information is in there.
But Jason,
I want to thank you for taking the
time to dive into the world of Aiden
with us tonight.
It's a place where gods bleed,
machines rebel,
and cartoon logic drives taints into war
against mutant cyborg nightmares.
Which is dope as hell.
Y'all go check out this book, please.
But council members, support the campaign.
Support indie creators.
Support the chaos.
Indiegogo links are in the description.
Go arm yourselves and prepare for battle.
Jason, welcome to the Council of Nerds,
my friend.
Yourself.
Lords of the Cosmos are officially USDN
approved.
And with that,
this has been the USDN Podcast,
where indie comics come to life,
and the Council of Nerds are adjourned.