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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 and welcome to the
united states department of nerds where we
are for the people by the people and
of the people in
Oh, my God.
Some stories are born from imaginations.
Others are forged through survival.
Tonight on the USDM podcast,
we're joined by a writer and creator,
John Holland of Die Bold Comics,
to talk assassins, demons,
legacy storytelling,
and the power of building a comic catalog
that spans decades of ideas.
From an upcoming crowdfunder, Akimi,
to a digital library of nearly thirty
stories.
That's right.
Thirty published works.
This is a conversation about evolution,
endurance in indie comics without limits.
The Council of Nerds is now in session.
John, welcome to the podcast, my friend.
Thank you.
Thank you for having me.
I have to I have to tell you
that opening was pretty cool.
I appreciate that.
Shout out to Kelvin for making that happen
for me.
And let's dive into it, man.
We got a lot to get into.
So, John,
for folks discovering you for the first
time tonight,
who is John Holland and what is Die
Bold Comics?
Die Bold...
I've been working in comics for, you know,
quite a while.
I started writing back in the nineties or
I started getting published back in the
nineties,
back when the direct market kind of just
got started when you had First Comics,
Eclipse Comics, Comico, Fantagraphics,
when all those publishers were up and
about.
And at that time I was getting published
in, like I had,
I've worked with Fantagraphics,
I've worked with Innovation.
At the time, Innovation was...
uh, adapting the quantum leap,
the original version of quantum leap,
the TV show.
And I wrote the,
I wrote the Christmas issue of quantum
leap form, uh,
where he jumped into Santa Claus and, uh,
uh, so I did, you know, innovation, uh,
Fantagraphics,
I've worked for Kitchen Sink.
I did short stories for their Deathrattle
comic.
I did Caliber, Malibu,
pretty much a whole bunch of those smaller
publishers at the time I've worked with.
Hey, Malibu did print the first Spawn.
Yeah, yeah.
They did Image for a brief time before
Image went off on their own.
I did an adaptation of the Death World
novels by Harry Harrison for them.
And then right towards the end of the
nineties, I self-published my first comic.
In fact, it was Diebold,
which is where I ended up getting the
name from the publishing company later.
It had such a cool name that,
you know,
it really didn't have anything to do with
the comic.
It just was more the name than anything
that made me want to use it for
a publishing company.
So we did two issues of Diebold.
And then I kind of took a break.
You know,
I kind of think I got burned out.
Things just kind of didn't seem to be
going anywhere.
I took a break for a few years.
And then when I decided to come back,
I already had like this.
collection of stories, you know,
that I'd already did in the nineties.
Like in with fan of graphics,
I did a series called lizards and their
critters anthology.
And when I came back,
I decided to publish them as comics,
put them into,
I had five issues worth of comics stories
that I was able to do.
So that was like five issues right there.
And then I'm still working on just a
six issue came out a while back.
So hopefully that's one of those things
that I'm going to keep, keep doing.
Okay.
And then that's cool.
Yeah.
And most of that stuff was in black
and white.
So when I was coming back,
I wanted to color some of it like
Diebold.
We colored and I found a colorist to
work on it at the time.
And then while he was doing that,
he told me, he says, well, he says,
you know, I draw, too.
So I was like, oh, cool.
So we ended up doing a new story
for issues of a speaker for the dead.
uh with javier la barra which was that
was really the first kind of the beginning
at the time i wasn't publishing as diebold
for it took me a little while to
actually
market myself or brand myself as a uh
as a company i was just publishing under
my own name you know i was just
you know but i i got to the
point where i i figured i needed something
to keep bring it all together and brand
you know have a brand not just okay
this comic by me and there's another comic
by me and you know people didn't know
what you know it was all kind of
all over the place because i write in
so many different genres to begin with
it's not like oh i only write science
fiction or i only write horror you know
i write
I'm all over.
I write humor, horror, science fiction,
slice of life, you know, anything that,
you know, gets my attention.
All right.
So I put it all, you know,
I decided to put under the Diebold label
and I've just been republishing some of my
older stuff and then doing, you know,
newer stuff with that too, you know,
just to get it out,
which like I said, I'm about to,
I think about up to almost three titles
right now.
Okay.
That puppy is having a whole lot of
fun.
Oh yeah.
But so you've been writing for a long
time across a lot of genres.
When you look back,
what do you think has stayed consistent in
your storytelling?
Oh, I don't know.
Like I said, I try to, you know,
to, to, I tried not to, you know,
I try to mix things up, you know,
and change the genres and change the way
I write stuff too.
You know, uh, uh, I just,
I try to keep things fresh and, and,
and going.
Um,
So I don't know if I have anything
that has stayed the same throughout
everything.
Okay.
So let's jump right on into Akimi.
And it's going to be on Fund My
Comics or Fund My Comic.
Yeah.
Where did that story begin for you?
Was it a character, a theme,
or just something else entirely that said
you wanted to do that book?
It actually started,
we talked about this a little before,
Ben Dunn from Antarctica Press had a title
called Warrior Nun.
And it came out in the nineties and
he actually sold it to a studio and
Netflix did two seasons of it.
They did, you know,
Warrior Nun was on Netflix,
I think for two seasons.
Yeah.
Well, when he sold it,
he sold all the work.
He sold all the rights to it.
He couldn't do the comic book version of
it.
They owned everything.
I did some work with Ben.
He's published a few things from me.
We've done some work together.
Ben's a really super nice guy.
And
I don't really know the details of
everything,
so a lot of this is just me
guessing on part,
but he started to talk about he wanted
to bring back.
He couldn't bring back Warrior or none,
but he wanted to bring back something
similar to it.
So I'm assuming he probably had a
non-compete clause,
and I'm assuming that probably was running
out.
and uh so he posted that and it
kind of got me thinking i now i've
never read warrior none and i never saw
the tv show so i really don't know
what it's about but i like the idea
of a fighting nun you know just something
about that they're kind of you know i
was like that was kind of in the
nineties uh kamiko had put out a comic
called evangeline that was by chuck dixon
and judith
Judith Hunt that was a fighting nun too.
That was a book that I always enjoyed.
They went from Kimiko to I think First
and a couple other publishers.
I kind of liked the idea.
It interested me.
I decided to write up a script to
see what I could come up with.
I came up with the character Akimi.
I think it was good that I didn't
know anything about Warrior Nun.
I still haven't seen anything, so
Unless I just happen to come across a
subject, something that is similar to it,
the only similarity should be that they're
fighting none.
It's a battling none.
I came up with that.
There was an artist at the time that
was kind of connected to it.
We actually were going to pitch it to
Ben.
I actually talked to Ben about it.
I went to San Diego last year and
talked to him at the San Diego Con.
Ben had read it, said he liked it,
but
He told me, he says, well,
just go off and kickstart it or something.
He really didn't seem like he was wanting
to publish it so much.
I was like, that's cool.
I'll go off.
I waited for this other artist.
San Diego was July,
so it has to be a good six,
seven months.
I finally came to the conclusion that this
wasn't going to move forward with this
artist.
He had a lot on his plate.
Other things were coming up that
You know,
so around the end of last year,
beginning of this year,
I started looking for a new artist.
I went on Facebook.
I know to a lot of people,
Facebook is a very toxic place.
A lot of people don't like Facebook.
The indie comic community on Facebook is
some of the most top-notch people out
there.
Oh, yes.
In the last probably ten years,
all the artists that I've worked with,
I've found on Facebook.
You know, so Facebook is like you said,
Facebook has a really good indie
community.
So I actually went on some of those
group sites and advertised that I needed
an artist.
You know, I just posted, hey,
I'm looking at it.
And, you know,
I was probably I probably got like close
to a hundred people, you know.
Easy.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And Jorge was one of the first people
that had messaged me.
And I looked at his work and I
thought, oh, it's good.
But it wasn't exactly what originally I
had in mind for Akimi because the artist
that originally was working on it was more
of a, I guess,
more of like kind of a Neil Adams
type artist.
So I was kind of thinking along that
line.
And, you know,
Jorge's art's completely different.
And so I kept looking for some of
these other artists,
but I kept going back to Jorge's art.
I kept going like, this is so good.
I really like his artwork.
so it didn't take me long to realize
this is this should who should be the
artist for this book and uh so you
know i got hold of him and we
started working on it and one of the
advantages and one of the you know i
guess the the great things about it is
jorge is fast
Like I said,
we started this in January and he's
already got the first issue done.
The first issue is a hundred percent done.
Colored letter.
And he's, he does everything.
He draws, colors it and letters it.
Okay.
He's, he's, you know, the book,
that's one of the good things about this
is there's no risk involved in this
campaign because the book is done.
you know when it's when if when we
you know reach the end we'll be able
to just send it to the printer and
then that's going to be the only weight
is waiting for the printers to get the
book back and then we'll send it to
the backers and we're already starting on
the second issue i've got the second issue
just about finished wrote and he's going
to start drawing it so we're hoping
that the second issue will be done about
the end of the by the end of
the campaign or maybe a little after that
so we can go do a campaign for
that and we can get it you know
so the issues will fall at least my
my goal is the first four issues to
kind of fall on a maybe a bi-monthly
schedule because i don't think we're going
to that's actually really good yeah
You know,
I think that will help it because,
you know, the problem,
and it's happened to me too, you know,
with some of the stuff I've created is
you do an issue and then it takes
eight months to do the second issue.
You know,
it's like you're losing a lot of people
within those eight months.
You know, if I get,
if we can get that out on a
regular basis and then we'll do a trade
for that.
And then, you know,
hopefully come back and do another four
issues.
Cause I see this as a,
an ongoing project, you know,
something that could, you know,
last as long as the two of us
want to keep doing it.
That's really good.
Cause I mean,
I've bet some kit starters before where I
think I backed it in December of twenty
twenty four.
And I got it in December of twenty
twenty five.
It just had that many setbacks with
artists and.
Well, it was horrible,
but the book turned out amazing.
And it's no fault of the person who
wrote it and put it together.
It's just shitty luck, I guess.
You know,
I'll be I'll be up front right now.
I've got a Kickstarter that we did that's
at least a year and a half old.
We haven't been able to fulfill yet
because I'm waiting for the artist.
That's wild to think about.
At this point,
I would have done fired and found a
new one.
Well, the problem is...
The book is more the artist's book than
it was for me.
He came up with the concept and I
kind of used it.
He wanted to use it through Diebold,
which now looking at it,
I probably should have said no,
because now it looks like I'm the one
behind.
My other Kickstarter I did was Alma.
And again,
it was finished before I went to the
Kickstarter.
I will never do a Kickstarter or any
crowdfunding.
If it's not a hundred percent finished,
it's going to be ninety percent finished.
I can't deal with that.
This other thing has just been driving me
crazy.
From now on, everything will be done.
If it's got your stamp on it,
you're putting your reputation at risk for
somebody.
That's hard to do.
Lesson learned.
It was a hard lesson.
But hopefully I can, you know,
at least with everything else,
when I come out with it,
when they see that it comes out on
time, you know, we'll, you know,
realize that I'm not going to, you know,
keep that pattern up.
So Akimi is a character trained from
childhood to be an assassin,
but the story itself is more about escape
and reclaiming themselves.
What made you want to kind of like,
it's almost like a contradiction almost,
but what made you go with that?
You know, it's it's first and foremost,
I think it's it's it's a it's it's
an action adventure story.
You know, there's a lot of fighting,
a lot of, you know, adventure in it.
But I don't you know,
I like to put more some subtext behind
the story.
I don't just want to have, you know,
two people fighting or whatever.
Yeah.
And just the idea of of her being
a nun in a sense or, you know,
being the whole Catholic church thing.
You know,
and then she's coming from Japan.
So part of it is going to be
that that combination of, you know, yes,
she she grew up in Japan and her
father was very bad to her.
But she still that's you know,
she was raised in the Shinto religion.
That's that's her life until the age of
twelve.
So it's not that easy to just pick
her up and put her in another religion
and say, OK, this is your new God.
This is who you have to, you know,
worship now.
So there's going to be that that tension
between that.
And, you know,
she she started like in the book.
There's a couple of pages in the book
that we have when she was still living
in Japan,
where she was ten years old and she's
out there fighting, you know,
a whole group of bad guys and stuff.
Actually, not bad guys,
but she's fighting them and killing them
at ten years old.
She was trained from as soon as she
could walk by her father to be this
assassin ninja.
Somebody on Facebook, when I was posting,
somebody made a comment.
They said, oh, it's a nunja.
A combination of a ninja and a nun.
Yeah.
That's kind of wild.
Cool concept, though.
But the Order of Innocent Blood is such
a striking concept.
What role do they play in Akimi's journey?
And what do they kind of represent on
a thematic level?
The name I've had for years,
there's actually,
there was an actual order of innocent
blood back in like the eighteen hundreds
from the Catholic Church.
And some reason that name has always stuck
with me.
And I've,
I've almost used it for other stuff and
it's never quite worked out.
And, uh,
This was, you know,
I figured this is going to be the
perfect spot for it,
and they're part of the Catholic Church,
and they're tasked with fighting,
you know, the demons and the monsters,
and so they're pretty much the good guys,
but they're, you know,
there's still that conflict that,
you know,
she's having to deal with the whole new
religion, and...
you know, against her old religion.
So, but they're more,
more or less the good guys.
I'm not going to say they're a hundred
percent good, but, uh,
cause I don't think any,
once you start religion into a lot of
stuff, you know, that, that hardcore,
it gets the water definitely gets murky.
Yes.
But, uh,
so the series is blended action and horror
and emotional trauma.
How,
how did you find balancing the muster
fighting with the very human cost of a
Kimi's past?
It just, you know, as I write,
I just have to kind of, you know,
I don't want to write, you know,
I'll write so many pages of, OK,
fighting or whatever.
But then I know I've got to pull
back and I want to do more than
just, OK, this is a fight.
I want to show how it's affecting Akeem
here, you know, something from her past.
And the first issue pretty much almost
ends.
way the book is broken down between every
two and three pages it's a whole new
scene it's a whole you know it's like
it goes pretty fast if you look at
it like that it's like you know you
go from the beginning of the book she
starts off coming to america then it flips
back to when she was a kid and
comes back to you know so it just
it moves really quick there's no uh long
scene i think the longest scene in one
time is three pages
Now,
is this like a twenty eight page or
a thirty two page comic?
Twenty four pages.
OK.
OK.
Twenty four pages.
Now,
the second issue is pretty much one
storyline.
It's it's it's her first, you know,
once she's with the group and they're kind
of having their first battle and stuff.
So, OK.
I like these kind of stories.
This story is very much in line with
something that's killing the children in
the House of Slaughter and that kind of
stuff.
I just really like these type of stories.
It's strange you brought that up.
I never really read James Tyron that much
with his Batman DC run.
Nobody did.
To be fair, I didn't either.
I was in a... He's not...
I will never take anything from him.
The man is a genius of a writer.
Just some of the stories.
I probably have all his titles minus his
Batman, to be fair.
I highly regard him as a writer and
a creator.
I just didn't get behind that Batman run.
His Batman run influenced me where I never
really picked up any of his other work.
You missed out on a lot of good
stuff.
I've started to.
I picked up... What was it?
One of the first things I picked up
from it was The Deviant.
That just blew me away.
What did you think about it?
This was so good.
It made me pick up...
I've read the first...
or maybe the first and second storyline
from something that's killing the
children.
I haven't finished reading it yet.
Cause I'm, I'm waiting to,
I want to get like the big book
that, you know, the truck bus.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, but I just loved it.
I was like, wow.
I said, I just, you know, this,
this was good.
Check out the department of truth.
Oh, see, I need to.
Yeah.
But so nice house by the lake.
The, uh, was it corpses?
I can,
that list can go on and on and
on.
That's how big of a fan of his
I am,
but this Batman was not it for me.
Yeah.
Well, I'm going back and looking at,
but somewhere I think part of something is
killing the children.
I don't know how or where,
but I think some of that influenced this
storyline, you know,
because I just read it before I started
doing this character, you know,
and it just kinda,
it just was so good, you know,
and I read the, um,
The one with What's-Her-Name's Brother,
what is it, The House of Slaughter?
So there's The House of Slaughter,
and then there's other little mini stories
in there too, like The Book of Cutter.
And House of Slaughter finally came to a
close.
They closed that chapter out finally,
which was just so good and so brilliant.
Yeah,
so I'm slowly going back and filling in
the gaps because, like I said,
I just kind of ignored them because of
Batman.
And once I once I started reading Deviant
was just such a good book.
I mean,
that was like if you were going to
pick a book to get back into his
writing, the Deviant was the way to go.
It looked so different from everything
that I thought, okay.
I'll pick up a book that I don't
have any idea about if it looks different.
I was like, this looks really different.
It held me.
I was like, all right,
now I've got to start reading some of
his other stuff.
You're definitely cheating yourself.
Now I've got a lot of books that
I have to go out and buy.
And to be fair,
you're not going to be disappointed.
One of the first ones I picked up
was The Deviant,
The Nice House by the Lake,
and then The Nice House by the Sea.
Exquisite Corpses that he's currently
doing right now has been just a brilliant
mastermind of writing on that one.
And it just got sold as well.
He sold like three series back to back
to back.
to become TV shows or movies.
Wow.
Well, you know,
besides his writing so good,
he's probably one of the best people in
years for marketing and creating his own
brand.
I mean,
it's amazing what he's done since he's
left the mainstream.
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, no, I agree a hundred percent.
And he has his own production company now
called tiny onion.
They have titles with image with boom
studios.
And, uh, he's got a series.
I'm trying to think of what it's called.
Um,
let this one be the devil about the
Jersey devil.
Oh,
it's like the birth of the Jersey devil.
That one was really good, but yeah,
I don't think he's put his name on
a bad title since Batman.
Yeah,
he's who I want to be when I
grow up.
You know what I mean?
You and me both.
And I think I'm actually older than him.
Yeah, I know.
But, yeah, no, he's brilliant.
He's got a great marketing team.
They've been doing the Exquisite Corpse
Tour here lately and just doing the
pop-ups with that and signing the books.
And the way they designed that book around
a tabletop board game
So whoever dies in the board game is
the next killer that dies in the comic
book.
Oh, wow.
So it's just been this really amazing,
like,
storytelling between him and Michael
Walsh.
And I think Geordie Belair is in there.
So it's just been brilliant.
I can't say enough nice things about him.
But that Batman run was not it.
I'm with you.
If I ever said anything bad about him,
it was that Batman run wasn't it.
The only Batman that I've read in the
last couple decades and a lot of people
don't like him is Tom King.
I'm just over the big dark and grim
and never smiled.
Tom King actually made him smile a few
times.
He gave him a little more personality.
Yeah, exactly.
I really enjoyed the Hush run,
the Hush II, which is ongoing, I think.
What is it?
The Three Jokers was really good.
The Longest Halloween is really good.
There's a few stories in there that have
been good,
but am I just going to go out
and grab it?
No, I'm not.
I am reading Matt Fractions,
the new Batman,
and I'm reading Absolute Batman.
Okay.
So I,
I'm not reading any of the absolutes.
I was re I did try the absolute
flash.
It was okay for about ten issues and
I was just done.
But what I've been doing is I'm a
cover guy.
So if there's been like certain artists
who have done certain covers for them,
like the, um, what's his name?
Oh my God.
I can't remember his name now,
but he did a holy Trinity with the
Batman, the Superman and the wonder woman.
combination covers.
Mark Spears.
Okay.
I got the Mark Spears connecting covers
for Issues One in the foil variant because
it was just so cool.
I seen them sitting there and I was
just like...
okay, you can come home.
I got you.
They're just so beautiful.
I'm a big fan of Mark Spears' art.
For me, that was like, okay.
Then I just picked up the Joker cover.
The Joker cover was absolutely beautiful.
I can't remember who the artist was on
it, but just the spin on Joker,
it was just amazing.
I love that concept of the Joker in
this absolute series.
I like the fact that
The Absolute Universe is really a lot
different than the normal DC universe.
They took that concept and put their spin
on it.
I think of all the titles,
Absolute Wonder Woman is the best.
I heard it was Martian Manhunter.
Martian Manhunter is the best one.
It's right up there with it.
Martian Manhunter is very...
It's very good.
But Martian Manhunter,
sometimes my brain just kind of like,
when you read it, you just go like,
boom.
So the Absolute Flash,
it didn't work for me because it felt
like any other Flash story.
And that's why it didn't work.
Did it feel like the stripped down
versions like the Absolute Wonder Woman
and Batman and Superman?
No.
To me, it kind of didn't.
But that's me, though.
I'm not a big mainstream comic book fan.
I will always prefer the indie comics over
the big two.
You know what I'm saying?
But let's keep on going,
talking about some Akimi here.
So without spoiling anything,
what do you want readers to take away
after they read this first issue?
Just I want people to, I guess,
like the character of Akimi, you know,
and kind of relate to her, you know,
her issues that she has and to see
her.
I want people to see Akimi as a
real person, you know, as you know,
to me, you know,
if I'm reading a book or, you know,
a comic and I can relate to that
person,
even if they're completely different from
me.
that means I'm going to keep reading that
book or that comic or whatever, you know,
there's gotta be some type of connection.
And I just want people to have that
connection to, to the character, you know,
she's going through a lot, you know,
she's, she's definitely not, you know,
she's only in the main storyline.
She's, she's going to be,
she's going to be, she's going to be,
she's going to be, she's going to be,
she's going to be, she's going to be,
she's going to be, she's going to be,
she's going to be, she's going to be,
she's going to be, she's going to be,
she's going to be, she's going to be,
she's going to be, she's going to be,
she's going to be, she's going to be,
she's going to be, she's going to be,
she's going to be, she's going to be,
she's going to be,
she's
This book is going to be on Fund
My Comic.
We have not had a book on here
before that is going to be funded by
Fund My Comic.
We've done Kickstarter.
We've done Indiegogo.
We've had many of just self-publishers
where you can go to their website and
purchase their books.
But this is the first time we've had
somebody doing a comic book funding
through Fund My Comic.
I know you just kicked it off today,
but can you kind of walk us through
what that's been like so far?
Well,
I just clicked to see if anybody's backed
it, but no.
So far as of today,
I'm kind of freaking out because,
you know,
today we launched today and there's no
backers, but it's the first day.
So I'm not, you know, I'm keeping that.
But the actual setting everything up and
going through was very simple.
You know, it was a very easy process.
You know, it's, you know, the template,
you just go in and,
put everything in place and then when you
get it in place,
they have to review it.
It took them like
I don't even think it took them four
hours to review it and it came back.
So everything has been, you know, they go,
they use Stripe instead of PayPal,
which I've always been more of a PayPal
person, you know,
so I had to go back and I
had a Stripe,
but I think it was so old that
I had to go back and kind of,
it had,
it was connected to an old account that
I had to update,
which isn't bad because a lot of places
use Stripe.
So I probably need that anyway.
But it's been simple now.
You know, the biggest difference,
you know,
Kickstarter has a lot bigger reach.
You know,
Kickstarter has a lot more people that,
you know, I look at Kickstarter.
Kickstarter is like its own comic shop.
There's people on Kickstarter that make
it.
never probably go to a comic shop they
just scroll through the comics on
kickstarter and pick what they like you
know they probably never even you know
leave their house to go to a comic
shop they just buy them you know so
there's a lot you know you can get
people you pick up people on kickstarter
that you know you that probably never seen
a faith your facebook posts or your ads
that you put out they just seen it
by scrolling through kickstarter
Fun My Comic,
I don't know how big that is.
I know it's not as big as Kickstarter.
But then by the same token,
Fun My Comic is geared just for comic
books.
A lot of other...
Kickstarter kickstarts everything.
Yeah.
So, you know, I do see, you know,
like people like Pat Broderick is on Fund
My Comic, Mike Barron's on Fund My Comic.
So I do see some, you know,
some established names using it.
And I've seen people, you know,
and I kind of scrolled through it to
see,
if people were actually funding their
comics, you know,
if I was scrolling through it,
and seeing people not funding,
I would be like, Okay,
this is not a good.
So I have seen people do run like
simultaneous, you know,
programs with Indiegogo, and Kickstarter,
both at the same time, I'm just like,
that is a lot of work.
I'd be dead.
It's hard enough to run one campaign.
I don't know.
I'm worried now because basically I'm
doing this campaign.
As soon as this ends,
I should be doing a Zoop campaign.
As soon as that ends,
I'm actually going back to Kickstarter.
I have a Kickstarter coming up in a
couple months.
I'm glad you brought up Zoop because
that's what we're talking about next.
Yeah.
So I'm glad you brought it up, man.
So your Die Bold Comets Digital Library is
on Zoom.
Nearly thirty comets in one digital
collection.
What made you want to bring your entire
body of work together like this?
It gives me a chance to get it
in front of everybody.
And I kind of had the idea.
I've had it for like about a year
and a half now that, you know,
Kickstarter, when you look at Kickstarter,
you see more and more people backing the
digital versions of stuff.
I mean, it still hasn't got like,
you know, over half.
But, you know,
there's a lot of a lot of people
are going just digital now.
so i thought well i wanted to try
something that there is no like this this
campaign from zoop when it launches there
is no print versions there is no physical
versions it's all going to be digital you
can buy you know any of the comics
you know digitally so one it's going to
be cheaper because i don't have to worry
about printing and shipping so all of them
you know will be a lot cheaper yeah
you can get and as soon as the
campaign's over
you'll be getting your comics within as
quick as I can get everything done and
shipped to people.
I don't expect to make a lot of
money off of it because they will be
cheaper.
I haven't decided on the exact price for
it yet,
but it's probably going to be at least
half the price, if not less,
than what a print version costs.
But by the same token,
all the money I make off of a
digital library,
there's nothing I'm having to spend.
There's no overhead.
It's money in your pocket.
Yeah.
Once you make good money out of it,
everything is mine.
So if I only make five hundred dollars
off of it,
that's five hundred dollars I can use to
make the next comic or whatever.
I just thought it would be a cool
idea to give it a try.
I know a few people have did it
since before me,
but I actually tried this about a year
ago or more.
There's a site in New Zealand called Comic
with an X.
Yeah,
I was actually one of the first people
that kind of joined that.
And he sells digital comics.
He sells them online,
like Comicology or whatever.
And he wanted to try and do a
crowdfunding site.
And I was his guinea pig.
And we tried to do the digital library,
and it didn't turn out too good.
Mainly because nobody knew about it.
It was hard to get the word out.
You know, but, you know,
that's that idea stayed with me.
And I was like,
I really still want to do this.
I originally was going to do it for
Kickstarter,
but I've been wanting to do it.
I've been wanting to try Zoop for the
last year or two since I've heard about
it.
You know,
one of the things from what I understand,
Zoop right now,
we're on the very just in the beginning
stages.
I just they just basically approved my
campaign.
But Zoop basically creates they do the
heavy lifting.
They do.
You know, they create for you.
So you kind of don't have to do
a whole lot of work.
It's really nice.
Yes.
Well, we'll see.
Like I said,
I haven't got to that point yet.
We're just getting there.
They just sent me an email saying, hey,
we're going to get ready to start doing
this soon.
We'll see how it goes and how it
works out.
Zoop has built kind of a following.
They're kind of like Fund My Comics where
they're not going to have a
Kickstarter-sized funding.
I've seen a lot of people go through
Zoop.
A lot of big names went through Zoop.
So your library spans A Girl and Her
Dog, Alma, to Robot Sex.
Is there anything that kind of like
connects those books together or any of
your books together?
Or are they just all like – Well,
it's kind of funny.
Like Alma, Aayla, Robot Sex –
those three for sure i've kind of dropped
little hints in it that they're all in
the same universe okay you know there's
there's not a lot uh you know because
all of those you know almost set in
the in the present robot sex is set
way way way in the future and uh
what was the third i forgot what the
third one was now oh um a girl
and her dog
Or a dog stand by itself.
It's kind of like a slice of life
said in the near future.
So there's a little connections between
it, but nothing major.
And I just dropped it and just kind
of thought, you know,
I want to see if anybody notices this.
And I actually had a podcast about a
year ago.
And the guy was like he had read
all of them.
And he goes,
is all this connected together?
And I was like, oh, you notice that.
Nice.
No, that's always cool.
I always enjoy when you read, you know,
a writer's work.
And then as you read the books,
you start connecting little pieces like,
wait,
that was mentioned over here in this book.
Yeah.
And then you read another book.
You're like, wait,
that was mentioned in the other two books.
And you're like,
i see what you did there yeah i
enjoy easter eggs like that and i say
this all the time like i just enjoy
finding those little nuances to the
writers and to the artists where they drop
those little things in their work and
you're like i look at that and then
look at that over there i see what
you're doing i'm on to you
Those are always really fun for me.
It's very subtle.
I didn't want to say, oh,
I'm creating this big universe or
whatever.
I just want to leave a little Easter
eggs that you can say, oh,
this connects back to that, maybe.
They're really probably the only couple.
Most of the stuff stands on its own.
Like I said, I've got
You know, horror, science fiction.
The book that we're going to do in
a couple months through Kickstarter is
called Two Tons of Fury.
And we've already got two issues of it.
You've been doing a whole lot of
advertising for that one.
Yeah, yeah.
And Ben from Antarctica actually
republished the first issue for us.
And then we did an issue where...
the two characters meet tomorrow girl and
uh okay this is a really fun book
to to write because it's it takes public
domain characters and the two main
characters are herbie the fat fury and fat
man the human flying saucer so as you
can tell with those characters this the
book is not very serious it's very you
know and uh the the one where we
have coming up that's going to be in
probably march or june depending because
we're working on it right it's about half
done
and we don't want to, you know,
go to Kickstarter until it's finished.
It's going to be two times the fury
versus Cthulhu.
So it's going to be a very weird
book.
You know what?
Cthulhu's been getting a lot of love the
last two years, so more power to him.
Yeah.
Well,
I read somewhere that this was before most
of the NSFW comics popped up.
The Cthulhu was like the biggest draw in
comic books on Kickstarter.
Yeah, there's a lot.
You can literally just type that into
Kickstarter and I bet it produces fifty
books.
Yeah.
So I was like,
how can I work that into, you know,
and I just, you know,
this is about the most weird, you know,
way that we're going to, you know,
these characters are going to meet and,
you know, and...
You know, we're throwing in some,
like we're going to throw in Buck Rogers
as guest stars in it, Flash Gordon.
Oh, nice.
Alan Moore is going to guest star in
it.
There is actually a comic book character
from the forties named Alan Moore.
Okay.
So I said, I can't not let that,
you know,
he's only going to probably be in a
panel, but I said,
I can't not put that in the comic
book.
The public domain the last couple of years
has been a wild source of material.
More power to it.
I've enjoyed seeing a lot of these weird
characters coming back today.
You know what I'm saying?
The weirder, the better.
That's the way I see it.
This book is very, very weird.
One of my biggest influences in my writing
is Steve Gerber,
who created Howard the Duck.
And he wrote he wrote for me the
best run on the defenders ever.
But, you know,
Steve Gerber was always thrown.
You know,
his stories were so absurd and such,
you know.
And, you know,
that's one of the things I like to
do in my work.
You know,
it's like I got to throw something in
there that, you know,
just it's weird or different.
I don't want to, you know,
almost everything I write has some of that
little in that little bit into it.
You know what's great is Howard the Duck
was just in the last season of Marvel's
What If?
And it was just so refreshing to see
him, you know, in present day,
a flash from the eighties,
getting some more love.
I was like, how cool is this?
But so let's,
let's jump into the indie grind because
you have been doing it for some time
now.
So what's harder now than it used to
be and what's actually like easier now?
Harder is going to be just the money.
It's just trying to fund everything.
I've probably got five or six projects
that I'm always working on more things
than I can do,
but I can only afford one or two
at a time if I'm lucky.
When I worked,
I used to work in retail and I
was a store manager.
You're not going to make a fortune in
retail, but I made decent money.
I don't have a lot of vices.
I don't have a lot of
you know i'm single uh all my money
all my my i guess my extra money
went to producing comics making comics so
uh you know it's it's i think the
hardest part is just finding the money i
think the easiest part now is you know
back in the
there was people doing self-publishing,
you know, Dave Sim did Cerebus, you know,
Terry Moore did Strangers in Paradise.
You know,
I did an issue of Diebold in the
late nineties, but you know,
it wasn't as common.
And I don't think it was harder to,
you know, there was no Kickstarters.
There were no crowdfunders.
There was no social media.
There was no, you know,
Facebook or Twitter.
Yeah.
putting a comic in an envelope and then
sending it out all the producers that you
knew about and hoping one of them said
hell yeah let's do it yeah nowadays you
know it's like you've got all the social
media you've got the crowdfunding so it is
i think it's a lot easier to to
get the comic out there in front of
people you know to you know it's it's
a lot of work you know you you
spend a lot of time on you know
you know, going through, you know,
Facebook or Twitter or blue sky or
whatever, you know,
I'm on every freaking social media site
that, you know, you have to,
you have to,
if you're going to put yourself out there,
you have to hit every little corner of
the market.
Yeah.
And, uh, you know, the, the,
the crowdfunding I think brings in,
you know, new, new, new eyes too.
But, uh, so I think that's gotten easier,
you know, and, uh,
compared to what it was back, you know,
like in the nineties,
when I first started, it was,
it was hard to, you know,
because unless you got in Diamond,
you didn't get, you know, people,
it was hard to get people to see
stuff.
And, you know,
and Diamond always had that limit of,
you know, well, you're going to,
we have to think you're going to sell
so many copies before we're going to take
you.
Yeah.
So what is the one lesson you've learned
the hard way that you wish new creators
understood before launching their first
crowd funder?
Have the book finished.
That's one that I hear so often.
I understand both sides of that.
I understand some people aren't going to
be able to make the book they want
to make without launching first.
There's the other side that believes the
book has to be finished and then you
launch.
I can see both sides of that line.
I've supported comics on both sides of
that line.
And it really just depends.
You can tell the person who is,
you know,
working on getting the book finished and
the only way the book is getting finished
is if they crowdfunded to get it
completed.
And you can tell the ones who are
driven to get that done.
And they go above and beyond what they
– most people would even dream of to
make that dream come true for themselves.
And I always love seeing it because
they're so passionate about the book and
about the story they're trying to tell.
And they're so passionate about getting it
funded.
And I love having people like that on
the podcast because it –
It makes you feel a certain kind of
way, right?
Oh, yeah.
Definitely.
I've seen the opposite of that as well,
where it's like,
I would never do it this way.
I'm like, hey, I get that.
But some people don't have the money to
make that kind of money.
Oh, definitely.
Everybody has to do it the way that
works best for them.
Because like you said,
some people don't have that money to pay
the artist or whatever.
Yeah, spendable income is hard to come by.
Oh, yes, definitely.
To get Akimi done,
I've used a credit card,
and I'm hoping I make enough money that
I can pay this back.
I hear you.
How do you personally measure success at
this stage of your creator career?
You're retired.
How are you measuring success these days
when it comes to creating comic books?
To me, it's, you know,
as long as I'm enjoying it,
I feel like I'm successful.
As long as I keep liking what I'm
doing, I would like to, you know,
my goal is, you know,
I would like to be able to at
least pay for what I'm doing.
You know,
if I can make enough money to pay
for my next comic, then I'll be happy.
You know, yeah,
I have bigger goals that I'd like to,
you know, maybe, you know,
be able to make it, you know,
a better living through my comics,
but I've been doing this long enough that
I know, well, that may never happen.
You know, you hear the stories of,
you know, the, you know,
Robert Kirkman's and the, you know,
Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird,
but there's a hundred more people for
every one of those guys that, you know,
They may keep struggling to put their
books out,
but that's going to be their life.
I keep working to put the books out.
As long as I enjoy it and have
fun doing it, to me,
that's success right now.
As long as I don't keep losing too
much money doing it.
Right now,
conventions have probably been my best
where I do most of my selling.
Usually, I do
Quite a few conventions.
I try to do at least one convention
a month, if not more.
That's not bad at all.
At least you're not out there trying to
hit four or five in a month.
It's just like, you're doing how many?
I'm excited whenever I see creators
dropping their con schedules.
It's one of my favorite things to see
if they're going to be close to me.
There's a few signatures out there that I
still haven't got yet that I really want.
And a lot of them are from people
overseas.
And there's one Korean artist who I was
hoping I was going to be able to
get a signature from last year at a
local convention.
But they were like, oh,
I'm not going to show up until,
you know, one p.m.
because I'll be in my room doing
commissions.
Like, dude,
I'm trying to get out of here by
lunchtime.
Yeah.
So I was able to get all the
others that I had planned on.
And plus one that I didn't even know
was going to be there.
But I was just like,
I'm not sticking around that long for your
signatures for you to be able to.
I mean, I get it.
You make most of your money off of
commissions.
I completely understand that.
Like, dude,
I just wanted a damn signature on a
comic book.
Something is killing the children book,
actually.
yeah it was just it was a virgin
print of one of his covers that he
did and i was just like i really
wanted that sign like yeah like the whole
day i was like protecting this book and
hoping you know to get this thing signed
and then it just didn't happen because he
was like oh i'm in my room till
like one or two o'clock and then i'll
only be on the floor from like this
time to this time i'm like
David, what the hell?
And I understand as well.
I get it.
So now I'm watching his convention
schedule going, okay,
where is he going to be close to
me or close to a friend of mine
to where I can send them the book?
Like, hey,
I need you to do me a favor.
I will pay your way.
I will do whatever.
But can you go get this signed for
me by this one guy?
Yeah, boom.
But no,
it's cool that you get to do at
least one a month.
That's pretty good.
The area I live in,
that would not be possible because there's
just not that
Well,
I'm in Louisiana and surprisingly there's
a lot of local conventions,
but I've kind of moved off of the
local conventions because I just did so
many of them and people were like,
I already,
anybody that was interested in my work,
most of them had already bought it.
Yeah.
So I'm trying to move,
like I'm doing in Texas, Tennessee,
Florida, Georgia, anywhere.
I didn't see you say that.
no no further than about you know eight
hours yeah usually six to eight hours now
two years ago i did do heroes con
and that was like a nineteen hour drive
but that was a special you know that
was you know heroes yeah yeah i'm not
gonna do that for like you know a
lot of a lot of uh just local
conventions you know but uh so i've got
a you know we've got a a good
bit
set up for, like I said, for Texas,
Tennessee.
I think I've got Georgia and Florida
coming.
We do a few local conventions.
One of the best places I do conventions
now are library conventions.
LibraryCon?
I got invited to do
one of those last year.
The timing wasn't there.
I had an interview scheduled for that day
as well.
I'm not going to cancel this for this.
If you let me know ahead of time
next year,
I will more than happily do it.
I think I did better at LibraryCons than
any other convention.
There was a social media portion of it.
I was going to come in live stream
and talk to people and do that kind
of stuff.
But that's like an entire day.
And I would still have to have somebody
to do the filming.
And at the time,
my daughter was away at college.
I had an interview scheduled for that
morning with a friend of mine in the
UK.
And I was just like,
I'm not going to do that for this.
If you tell me months ahead of time,
a hundred percent, I'm there.
Count me in.
I will bring some books for the kids.
I will do all that.
Yeah,
I do at least there's probably about
three,
maybe four library cons that I'll go,
you know, through the different parishes,
you know, around New Orleans.
So you're down in southern Louisiana.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We're parish, not county.
So people that, you know,
I know I lived in northern Louisiana.
OK.
For a couple of years.
Yeah.
There's a convention in Shreveport that
I've done a few years.
I never went to it when I was
there.
Honestly, I got there, started my job,
and I was like, I'm retiring.
I spent the rest of my time trying
to retire and do what I needed to
do to move on.
Nothing against it, but when it's like
What year was it?
Twenty twenty one.
Twenty twenty.
Twenty twenty one.
Coming out of covid.
Shreveport got hit by a hurricane.
An ice storm.
And then a week later,
I think it was like one hundred and
ten in the shade.
Wow.
I was like, I'm done with this shit.
The convention was in downtown Shreveport.
And I've been there a couple of years.
And downtown Shreveport is tough.
slowest i mean it's like it's almost like
a ghost it's like a slow yeah it's
like a ghost town down there but it's
yeah it looks amazing though with all the
art and stuff like that it but it
does feel like the slowest ghost town in
the world looking out like you know on
the streets and stuff and and you know
it's not seeing that many people walking
around and going this is just a weird
you know i mean yeah i know most
of the people that live there too yeah
there's a lot of people that live in
that area,
but it's just wild to go downtown on
a Saturday and you can find parking and
you can get into places and get what
you need to do done.
And it's just wild.
Yeah.
But let's hit up this lightning round
before we call it a good evening.
So can you give us a Kimi in
three words?
Um,
Oh, that's tough.
I'm terrible about log lines or the
elevator pitch.
I guess it's not much of a lightning
round right now.
Hey, it's all good.
I mean,
you gave me your elevator pitch earlier,
so it's all good.
What's your favorite genre to write?
Oh,
I really don't have one.
Like I said,
I write an all over the place.
I write horror, science fiction.
I've got slice of life.
It just, it depends on the, you know,
lately I've been writing a little more
horror, I think, but that,
that would change.
Like a team.
He's just got a little bit of horror
in it, but not a lot.
It's, you know,
so I really can't pinpoint one genre.
And I think some ways that might've hurt
me because sometimes I think maybe I
should have just stuck with one book.
By now,
I might have had like five hundred issues
of it out.
Possibly.
It's one of those where you play what
if in your head and you're like,
what might have been.
What is one Diebold comic more people
should be talking about?
A Girl and Her Dog.
Perfect.
I like it.
I thought that was going to be a
really big hit.
Tony Isabella,
I don't know if you're familiar with Tony
Isabella.
He created Black Lightning.
He said when the year that A Girl
and Her Doll came out,
he called that one of the best comics
of anybody of that year.
Big words.
Big words and hot praise right there.
Yeah, and that book was always great.
That would be in a frame.
Right.
Yeah.
And that was that book just meant a
lot.
I mean,
it's just kind of a slice of life.
It's just about a girl and her dog.
And it just it really, you know,
when I wrote it,
it meant a lot to me.
And it just it's still I thought it
was going to be one of those books
that, you know, could cross over.
And it just it never it's sale.
All right.
But we're taking off like I thought it
was going to.
Perfect.
Digital or print?
Personally, I like print, you know,
but I think I need to get more
into digital because digital, you know,
I don't think it's going to take over
print.
You know,
I don't think it's going to become because
there's something about a book in your
hand.
Exactly.
The smell as you turn the page,
the noise, the page mates.
It's the best thing ever.
And I don't know if you've heard of
a bad idea comments.
They print on that like newspaper paper.
It makes this amazing sound.
They have a lot of really good titles
right now.
I noticed them late last year,
and I've been picking up their titles ever
since.
They're doing Cul-de-sac.
If there's a wind book you need to
check out, check out Cul-de-sac.
It has been amazing.
I've heard about it.
It's like that old school comic book
paper, almost like newspaper.
yeah it just makes that one particular
sound you know it's very unique to itself
and i just love it and the books
have just been like i said they haven't
made a bad book yet so them and
mad cave and a few others have just
been on fire on e-press and ec yeah
he's doing amazing things over the last
like eighteen months to two years
I love seeing it.
Last one for the lightning round.
Indie comics need more fill in the blank.
More exposure, more press,
more getting the word out to people.
A hundred percent.
That's why I do what I do.
Yeah, yeah.
It's easy.
Marvel and DC can get, you know,
all they got to do is put something
out and everybody's talking about it.
But indie comics, it's like, you know,
it's hard to get the word out.
Unless you're certain people in the indie
comic world, you know,
it's hard to get the word out.
Again,
that's why I sit here and do what
I do.
That's why I'm willing to sacrifice a lot
of my free time where I could be
watching TV or doing something else.
I would much rather spend that time
talking to people like you, John,
and just spreading the love and getting
your book out to more people.
This is the best job ever,
in my opinion.
People like you doing this is a big
help because...
know it gets people people will see this
and you know hopefully somebody will say
hey let me try out what a book
or two
The way I look at it, it's small.
You have to win the small battles.
You have to get that out of a
hundred people.
If I get two people to pick up
the book and read it and like it
and want to come back, then that's great.
I'm not going to get that hundred people.
The odds of a hundred people of a
group saying, oh,
we're going to all go to it.
You just have to keep going.
You're building it one small step at a
time.
A hundred percent.
A hundred percent.
And as long as I can keep doing
this, John,
you are more than welcome to come back
anytime you want.
But before we close it out, John,
can you tell everybody where they can find
you, Akimi, and all your other socials?
I have where, let's see.
on Substack is pretty much the best place
because I've kind of consolidated
everything there.
It's jholland.substack.com.
I keep that updated usually weekly.
Sometimes I'll be on there every day
dropping stuff.
I talk about the new stuff coming out.
I talk about old stuff.
I talk about creating comics.
I use that site for everything that I
want to talk about or write about goes
on that site.
The
Akimi,
if you just go into fundmycomics.com and
then just look for Akimi,
you can find it.
It'll pop up.
I'm on every social media site,
so if you type in my name on
Facebook or either my name or Diebold
Comics, I'm on everything.
I'm pretty easy to find.
For some reason, on some,
I'm under my name.
Some,
I'm under Diebold Comics because I can't
remember when I'm doing these things,
when I set them up.
So, you know,
but I'm on Facebook all the time.
Facebook is probably the site that I,
you know,
I've been seeing you everywhere here
lately.
If you follow any of the indie comic
pages,
I've seen you everywhere here lately.
So it's been great.
Yeah.
Instagram, I'm getting Instagram.
I've always had an account,
but I've never been very big on it.
But I've been doing a lot more on
Instagram because I've heard Instagram is
a really good site to be on.
I'm finally getting Instagram to work for
me.
So thankfully,
I finally I think I've found something
that kind of works for me and.
here lately i've been doing pretty good
over there so shout out to all those
guys who who are following me over there
because it's amazing every time i log in
and get online i got more followers and
it feels like it's been like this long
uphill journey that's finally working so
it just feels really good to finally have
stuff working for you
Yeah.
So, yeah.
So, you know, so I'm on like,
you know, if I post something on Facebook,
especially if it's anything for like one
of my books or something,
I try to hit like all the sites,
you know, you're going to see, you know,
you're going to see it on Twitter and
blue sky and threads.
That's how I do it actually is I
have pre-written stuff and like a new,
new drop.
I start, you know,
right to left and I just go one
by one by one by one.
All at one time.
And then I'm like, okay.
And finally, you know, like I said,
everything's starting to fall into place
now.
And it's been amazing interacting with a
lot of people and getting to know a
lot of people.
The only site that I'm not on really
that I've heard is that I need to
be on is TikTok.
TikTok.
I've heard TikTok has a pretty good-sized
comic community, but I'm not a video guy.
I'm not going to make videos.
One, I don't like myself.
I don't like my voice.
I don't like being on video.
It took me a while even to do
podcasts because I was like,
I don't want to be there.
It is one of those days where it
takes you a few minutes to kind of
like I'm looking at myself,
I'm listening to myself.
And it's just one of those where,
I mean,
I've been doing it now for a,
you know, a little bit.
So for me,
it's just kind of like a second nature
now, but in the beginning,
especially when I would go back and listen
to myself later, I'd be like, God,
now it's like,
I listened to myself and I'm like,
you know what?
I'm not that bad.
I'm learning.
I can do the podcast now,
but I just, you know, I don't know.
Tick tock.
It's a weird site.
I've heard that there's a pretty big comic
book community on TikTok.
It's one of those where eventually one day
I'm going to create an account for the
podcast and just post clips and shorts on
there.
Right now, I'm just literally just...
I know there's a certain point I want
to get myself to before I go down
that road,
and I'm almost to that point now.
There's a number in my head that I
want to reach before I do it,
and I'm getting closer to that number now.
Once I hit that number I'm looking for,
that's when I'll probably go, okay,
I've got that number where I want it
across my platforms.
Let me venture with this now because
otherwise I feel like I'm just taking too
much at one time and I don't want
to do that.
Yeah.
But, John,
I want to say thank you for joining
us tonight and giving us the opportunity
to talk about both Akimi and your upcoming
Zoop, you know,
your digital library that you're going to
be selling here soon.
It's been amazing hearing about the legacy
of Diebold because it's truly something
spectacular.
And just the passion you have to keep
Indie Comets alive, man.
It's infectious, and I love to see it.
Like I said,
I've seen you everywhere here lately,
so keep it going, dude.
I appreciate it.
Thank you for having me.
I've enjoyed it.
Like I said, you're welcome back anytime.
But if you believe in creator-owned
stories, bold ideas,
and the people willing to build them,
make sure you support their crowdfunders.
Follow John's work.
They will all be down in the description
below this video.
And stay connected.
This has been the Chairman,
and the Council of Nerds is now adjourned.
This has been the USDN Podcast,
where indie comics come to life.
Y'all be safe out there.