Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (00:07):
Good evening everyone. Shane here from Comex with Jerome from also from, we’re here tonight to talk with Brad and Mark. I just forgot who our guests were. That’s pretty bad. And so yeah, let’s get on with the show without any further ado. And first up tonight we’ve got Brad Daniels. Hey Brad.

Brad Daniels (00:58):
Hi folks. Hi there, Shane. Hi Jerome.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:02):
Hi. Just quickly what we’ll do is just give us a little brief summary of your involvement in the comics industry.

Brad Daniels (01:13):
Okay. It’s a long and varied story. It starts in 1994 when I was, well, it starts before then. Okay. It starts when I was a kid and I was really keen on comics. I was keen for many years. And then in my twenties I was living in a share house with some excellent artists and I had a close friend who also ran a print shop and I said, wait a second. I’ve got everything here that I need to make comic books with my friends. So that’s what I did. We put together a book called Groovy Gravy, which was an anthology of weird humour. It ran from 1994 till 2019, I think.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (02:02):
Wow.

Brad Daniels (02:04):
Yeah. It was only 23 issues in total, but it was a lot of fun. And that’s where I started in the nineties and I faded off in the two thousands. It was eight years where I did nothing. And I got Keen again because comic conventions were starting up again. Supernova was a thing and I said, I’d love to go to Supernova and table there, but I need to have something to sell so I have to make new comics. And that’s what I did. And since then I’ve been working on a lot of different stuff. I do primarily humour books and stuff like that. I did work for Australian Mad for a few years there, writing stuff for them in the early two thousands. And yeah, I run my own company Edge Comics and I’m trying to make it about my full-time job at the moment.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (03:03):
Oh, that’s awesome.

Brad Daniels (03:04):
Yeah. That’s

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (03:07):
Good luck with that.

Brad Daniels (03:09):
Me in a nutshell.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (03:11):
Alright, cool. Well, I don’t have any questions that I’ve organised, so I think I’ll let Jerome start with his question while I think what to say because I’m very unprepared tonight. So very professional,

Brad Daniels (03:29):
Just instantaneous, man. It’s all good.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (03:31):
Yeah, I’ve been told that this show is very raw. I found that amusing. I thought that was a nice way of putting it, that I’m very unprofessional. But yeah, that was a nice way of putting it.

Jerome Castro (03:43):
You are. You’re very nice. The

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (03:44):
Show.

Jerome Castro (03:49):
Well,

Brad Daniels (03:50):
You got some Hey Brad, questions for me? Jerome?

Jerome Castro (03:52):
Yeah. Hey, Brad. Yeah, I think you just answered my supposedly first question. How did you start in the comic book industry, but well, since you started with a bunch of friends in the share house and someone who publishes, what was the challenge that you all had coming to you as newcomers into the industry? Because I can’t imagine writing and publishing comic books. Is that easy that you just go into it as is? So what was the challenge of it?

Brad Daniels (04:31):
Here’s the thing, Jerome, it’s easy if you don’t know what you’re doing

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (04:38):
Because

Brad Daniels (04:39):
We are like, this is all my mad brainchild, but we didn’t know what was like, I don’t even feel like I’m part of the comic industry today. I’m just still doing my own thing. So we didn’t know what limitations we had. We knew we’d never get our comics into news agents, which was the major distributor of comics back when we started because you’d, you’d have to print, I don’t know, a minimum of five or 6,000, and we did not have that sort of money, so we just printed it up ourselves, sold ’em at market days and band gigs and wherever we could record stores. And if we sold a couple of hundred, it was like woo-hoo.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (05:35):
Yeah.

Brad Daniels (05:39):
So yeah, the challenges were for us, those challenges were just, they were just what we were working around. We didn’t know what any better, so we just did what we could. The main thing, I did a lot of writing of comics. I wrote five issues of a superhero spoof based on a role playing game that we played. And that’ll never see the light of day again, I don’t think. But the saving grace for me is that the artists that I was working with were so good. They were all studying animation and art at Brisbane Arts College. I think that was it. And they just, they elevated the work. I had silly ideas. I told silly jokes, which is basically what I’m still doing today, and they elevated it with their artwork and made it into something memorable. It’s like people still remember groovy gravy round Brisbane today.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (06:49):
I’ve actually heard the name. So someone said it at some stage to me as well. So when you said it, I went, I know that name. Why do I know that name? In the nineties? Oh, sorry. You still had more to say. Sorry.

Brad Daniels (07:03):
I was going to say we’ve got a cult following in the fact that so cultish that no one knows us. Very exclusive cult.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (07:13):
Very exclusive. So how did you find comics in the nineties? I mean, were there things like comics on demand and stuff like that, printing comics, or did you have to go down to No, I didn’t think so.

Brad Daniels (07:25):
No. Like I said, I didn’t know anything that was possible or what was necessary. All I knew is I wanted to make comics, so there was no distribution for the comics, as I said. And my friend Daniel Zimmerman, who was probably the nicest guy you could ever meet, just like a real sweetheart, he printed ’em up for us because he owned a print shop and he was printing manuals for computer software and stuff like that.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (07:59):
Oh, okay.

Brad Daniels (08:02):
I’d bring in piles of these photocopies of pages that guys have done stuff stuck all over and he turned them into printed comic books. That’s awesome. And then I’d say, I’ll pay you back when I sell enough to pay for ’em, man. And then six months later you get the money. But yeah, it was just for me, just a pure joy of being able to hold a comic book and say, I made that. I made that.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (08:35):
Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think that’s the same joy that most people get out of comics in Australia because there isn’t a lot of money.

Brad Daniels (08:42):
That’s right. Hold on one second, I’ll grab one.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (08:45):
Yep, sure. If

Jerome Castro (08:49):
It was in the nineties, they’re like the ash cans, huh?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (08:53):
I guess they would be. So this

Brad Daniels (08:54):
Is from,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (08:57):
Oh, nice.

Brad Daniels (08:59):
2012 I think. Oh

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (09:02):
Yeah.

Brad Daniels (09:03):
That was done by the cover art was done by my then wife. I got stories here. There’s one that I drew.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (09:13):
Hang on. Sorry. I just realised I could boost you up there.

Brad Daniels (09:16):
Oh wow. It was all black and white. This was in the period. That’s my Batman story. The only Batman story you’ll ever need to read. This guy went on to be someone Rob Cordless. I’m sure he is done some more comic work around the place. But yeah, and I wanted to give a shout out to my mate, Brett Williams, who was like the finest artist I know, and it’s a tragedy these days. He works like driving the forklift and he is one of the most talented artists I’ve ever met.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (10:00):
Oh, that’s a shame

Brad Daniels (10:02):
Throw stuff

Jerome Castro (10:02):
That’s beautiful panelling.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (10:04):
Yeah.

Jerome Castro (10:08):
Wow. That panel is beautiful.

Brad Daniels (10:10):
Yeah.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (10:10):
Yeah. That’s awesome.

Jerome Castro (10:13):
I haven’t seen panelling style like that.

Brad Daniels (10:16):
Yeah, he’s had lots of different styles, so I, I’ll look him up on Instagram and let you know where to find them.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (10:30):
Oh yeah,

Brad Daniels (10:31):
One stuff. He was working in negative space at that stage.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (10:37):
I was going to say, I guess you’ve got to go out there and get that day job with comics in Australia for most people.

Brad Daniels (10:44):
Exactly right. Okay, here’s battle fart on Instagram.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (10:52):
On Instagram. Okay.

Brad Daniels (10:53):
That’s battle fart. One word.

Jerome Castro (10:59):
That’s cute. So

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (11:03):
I’ll just put that on the comments.

Jerome Castro (11:05):
What comic IP started your love for comic books?

Brad Daniels (11:10):
What comic ip?

Jerome Castro (11:13):
Yeah, which comic titles did you read as a child?

Brad Daniels (11:17):
Yeah. Well, I guess there’s three answers. First, when I was very young, I would go to my grandmother’s house and she had a pile of comics there, and I would read Rupert The Bear. I don’t know if you guys are familiar with that. It’s like a very quaint English comic about these amorphic animals that looks very stayed and old fashioned, and they’d go on adventures in the woods and have picnics with trumpets and tea and all sorts of stuff like that. Nice. That was the first thing I can remember reading. Then when I was about seven years old, I started showing, I was growing up in Bundaberg and they started showing the Batman TV show on television, the Adam West One repeats of that, and I was like,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (12:09):
This is the best

Brad Daniels (12:10):
Show in the world. World for a 7-year-old was like, yeah, man. Wow. And you didn’t know that they were making fun of the concepts when you’re that age. You just knew that it had Batman being heroic and the bad guys were evil, and there was all these crazy fights and Biff, our band.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (12:29):
And

Brad Daniels (12:33):
As I grew older into my early teens, I think the first comic I can remember buying myself was a Spider-Man comic. So I got really heavily in the Marvel through my teens until I brought out Secret Wars two, and then I went off to Marvel Comics almost completely for many years. So yeah, those would be the stories that grabbed me. I also, I really started collecting comics with a series that DC bought out called Captain Carat and this amazing zoo crew.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (13:18):
I’ve heard of that, but I never read it.

Jerome Castro (13:19):
Captain Carat. Yeah.

Brad Daniels (13:22):
It was written by Roy Thomas, who I didn’t know at the time, but was this legendary comics writer for both Marvel and DC who specialised in reviving Golden Age heroes and updating them for the eighties for the then current time. And it was drawn by Scott Shaw and it was just like this really wacky superhero homage with Captain Carat and this amazing zoo crew fighting all these funny animal characters. And everyone had a pun name, and it was just like, it was s heroics, but it was with lots of jokes, which is really affected what I write, I suppose.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (14:04):
Oh, yeah. Well, there’s a lot of humour in what you write, so I can understand that. Yeah,

Brad Daniels (14:12):
So Love me, captain Carrot.

Jerome Castro (14:14):
Yeah. And I think Captain Carrot has been, I’m not sure, correct me if I’m wrong, don’t quote me on this, but Captain Kat is being revived by BC recently. I think I’ve seen a few titles reference Captain Carat. Yeah, I’ve only heard of him.

Brad Daniels (14:30):
Brian Morrison in Multiverse. He was one of the Justice League that he put together for that. I can’t remember what it was called, but Justice Legion or something like that. And one of the major heroes was Captain Carris. He fought.

Jerome Castro (14:53):
Yeah, because at some point, I think I’ve seen him in Final Crisis or something. Oh

Brad Daniels (14:58):
Yeah, he showed up in Final Crisis. Everyone did.

Jerome Castro (15:01):
Yeah. So since you watch the Adam West Batman when it first showed up, so who in your opinion, is the best joker?

Brad Daniels (15:19):
Oh, that’s

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (15:23):
A loaded question. There’d

Brad Daniels (15:24):
Be quite hard questions

Jerome Castro (15:29):
Because I’m Esor fanatic.

Brad Daniels (15:35):
I’ll say the same thing I do about Batman’s Batman actors. They each have their own strengths and weaknesses. There’s no one that leaps out of me. I suppose Heath Ledger was the most original take at that point in time. Jack Nicholson just chewed the scenery. Even what Phoenix was it?

Jerome Castro (16:04):
Hooking scenes? Yeah,

Brad Daniels (16:06):
The newest one. That was an interesting interpretation of the mythos, but I don’t have a favourite Joker actor. I’ve enjoyed everyone, but there’s no one who should I go? Yeah. Yeah, that’s me. That’s the Joker. I don’t think we’ve had that yet. I don’t think we’ve had someone who I feel is the Joker.

Jerome Castro (16:25):
Oh, Hamill,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (16:28):
I was going to say that. Mark Hamill, the cartoon Joker.

Brad Daniels (16:33):
Yeah, the cartoon Joker is the closest because it’s not constrained by the live action. You don’t have a, mark Hamill doesn’t look or particularly act like the Joker, but he has the voice and you just project that onto a drawing and there, that’s your joker.

Jerome Castro (16:56):
True. Well, tell us something about your tail’s. Too stupid to tell. I’ve checked your website. I’ve seen the samples, so it’s quite a cute idea. Yeah.

Brad Daniels (17:11):
Tale’s too stupid.

Jerome Castro (17:12):
Oh, there it is.

Brad Daniels (17:15):
This is a humour book that I did. So it’s actually inspired credit where creditors due back in the nineties when I was doing comics, and there were lots of underground comic artists in Brisbane and Australia as there are to this day. There was a guy called Damien Wood who did really cool comics, and he did a mini comic of an old Christian comic that he had taken and changed all the words.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (17:51):
Okay,

Brad Daniels (17:51):
Nice. It had the same art, but it was like instead of being about how Jesus is groovy, it was about drugs and stuff like that. Really subverting the original message of it. And I loved it. I thought it was hilarious. I still got that hidden away somewhere in my collection, but many years later was, this is probably 2014 15, I was going to Zix, which is the Zine and Independent Comic Symposium, which is like a convention for zines.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (18:37):
Cool.

Brad Daniels (18:38):
Which they had that at the library, state Library South Brisbane. And I had a few groovy gravy there, but I wanted to do something original to sell at Zs. And what I came up with was I found an old horror story, and I changed all the words like Damien had done back in those days and changed it into a straight comedy. So the artwork was still the same, but dubbing over an old film. I just changed it to absurdist comedy. People loved it. They liked it better than anything else I had on the stall. So I said, well, I’ll do that again. And I just kept on doing that. So yeah, it grew from that. And then I did a couple of stories for Groovy Gravy, and then I collected them into the first issue. And then I did another issue and another issue, and I’m up to issue five at the moment, and I also have Nice, the Collected edition. This is the hard cover. Oh,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (19:40):
Hard cover. Nice.

Brad Daniels (19:41):
I kickstarted last year and had great success. So I think I had about, I’m thinking it was like 50 or 60 orders from around the world for this. It’s got an introduction by Anna Lee, who was one of the kranky sisters that appeared on A, B, C, the Sideshow, and it’s got 110 pages of hilarious comics in it. Yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (20:11):
Nice.

Brad Daniels (20:14):
Oh yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (20:14):
That’s four

Brad Daniels (20:16):
Sites.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (20:18):
Was that early this year or late last year? Was that early this year or late last year? That one.

Brad Daniels (20:27):
Late last year.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (20:29):
Okay. Sorry, I got that, but I don’t remember it being hardcover. Was there a trade version?

Brad Daniels (20:36):
There was a trade version.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (20:38):
Ah, that must be what I got. Pay

Brad Daniels (20:39):
Extra for the hardcover.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (20:41):
Yeah. I’m a cheap bastard, so yeah, probably got the cheaper one.

Brad Daniels (20:48):
Yeah. It costs me, I barely make a profit on the hard covers. They were so much more expensive than the soft covers, but I just really wanted to have a big thick one on my shelf. Oh

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (20:59):
Yeah. Nice. Very nice. Well, that’s what it’s all about, getting out there, what you want to get out there.

Brad Daniels (21:05):
Exactly right.

Jerome Castro (21:09):
Especially with these old stories. I mean, I’ve seen a few attempts on it, but a lot of them didn’t really hit it. I won’t mention the title of the comic, but I’ve seen a few attempts at the humour that he’d do, and it doesn’t hit the same as the ones that I’ve seen in your samples.

Brad Daniels (21:34):
Thank you very much, Sharon. Well, my favourite is I try not to read the actual stories that I changing. I just try, I get the artwork and I say what is happening in this panel and try to do a literal interpretation of the images that I see in front of me.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (21:54):
Nice.

Jerome Castro (21:55):
That’s where it comes

Brad Daniels (21:56):
From because it’s like often there’ll be like things like someone will be posed dramatically and it looks like they’ve just thrown a spaceship into orbit or something like that. It’s like I just, okay, so this person just threw that spaceship into orbit. That’s what happened.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (22:13):
Nice.

Jerome Castro (22:14):
How do you even find these stories?

Brad Daniels (22:17):
How do I find the stories? Well, I cheat. There’s a website called Comic books plus comic books plus, yeah, comic books Plus, which is an online depository of public domain comic books. So comics that have fallen out of copyright and are available for free use by the public. And I spend hours and hours and hours trawling through their collection. They have thousands of comics trying to find stories and covers that are suitable for my purposes. So it is very time consuming, finding stories that have the right mixture of wacky art and just crazy ideas in them that I can use for tell, too stupid to tell.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (23:13):
That’s awesome. Well, that’s a lot of time consuming as well. That’s dedication, my friend. That’s dedication.

Brad Daniels (23:19):
Well, I don’t want to just half as stuff. I want to do good comics. Yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (23:25):
Of course.

Brad Daniels (23:26):
And I also, I don’t just do those spoofs, but that’s the most popular one I seem to do.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (23:34):
Well, I Right. What else do you do?

Brad Daniels (23:37):
I’m so glad you asked. At the moment, I’m working, I started doing my own artwork as well as writing. I’ve always been a writer because when I started doing comics, I was surrounded by these excellent artists and anything I did looked like pond scum in relation to what they could do. So I didn’t even bother. But I’ve been trying really hard to expand my artistic skills. So there’s two projects I’m working on at the moment. I’ll give you a quick preview of one and I’ll tell you about the other one. So first off is Alpha, the Strikes of Tara. This is an anime inspired book are, so my friend Gary over in Singapore has come up with his characters and he really wants to get them out there. He wants them to be the next big thing. So what I’ve been doing is I’ve been writing stories using this concept and background he’s given us and doing the artwork on that. So this is all my work. This is a short story introducing one of the characters. So yeah, I did the writing and artwork and all the characters and concepts are made up by Gary. So

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (24:56):
Nice.

Brad Daniels (24:57):
Yeah, I’m very proud of it. This is just a mini comic of a little seven page story that I did, but I’m very happy with how it came out. I finished Second Story and I’ve got another three to do for the first book. Oh yeah,

Jerome Castro (25:14):
That’s cute. It reminds me of something from Japan that I think it was from Ija Factory, but the designs are cute.

Brad Daniels (25:27):
Yeah, yeah. Well, that’s deliberately inspired by anime and manga. That’s probably the most commercial thing that I’ve worked on is like, okay, we’re just going to do something that’s Kauai, something cute and get that out there. And it’s like, yeah, it’s actually, I’ve been selling that. So the way I’m making money these days is I’m doing weekend markets and selling both secondhand comics and my comics at a stall there. And that’s usually the top seller on any given day will be a copy of Alpha Sprites.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (26:07):
Oh, awesome.

Brad Daniels (26:09):
Yeah,

Jerome Castro (26:11):
Because just a glance at it, I think I know the design inspirations for a few of the characters.

Brad Daniels (26:22):
We have to work on those and get them a little less recognisable.

Jerome Castro (26:28):
Yeah.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (26:32):
Cool.

Jerome Castro (26:33):
Why?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (26:35):
Oh, sorry. I was just going to say, you’re a very good artist for a writer.

Brad Daniels (26:41):
Well, it’s like people, I show that to people and they say, oh, you’re so talented. And I’m saying, I am not talented. I just put in a lot of work. It’s like eight hours a page. It’s just taking forever to do the artwork. But we do a good job. I reached the stage of my life and my career where I don’t want to just be, if I want someone to illustrate a story for me, I want to be able to pay them for it. And I realise that some things that I write, like the others project I’m working on, I wouldn’t give that to another artist. Something that it’s literally a comic that I think I’m the only person who would be interested in reading. I’m just doing it for myself.

Jerome Castro (27:32):
Well, how, oh, hi Lee. Hi Lee. So what’s your process of writing? Tell us a look into the day of Brad Daniels when you’re doing your comic books.

Brad Daniels (27:55):
So yeah, writing is usually taken, I usually work from characters. So rather than starting with a plot, I’ll start with a character and I’ll try and figure out something that would be interesting, a situation that would be interesting to put that character into.

Jerome Castro (28:19):
I’ve heard a few writers do it like that. Yeah.

Brad Daniels (28:23):
But having said that, the sci-fi thing I’m working on, which I can’t show you, I don’t have any printouts of any of the work. It is totally plot based at this stage. Even then it is character based, but it is like, yeah, but I’d start with characters and then I worked from there and Marv Wolfman, the DC Comics DC and Marvel comics writer came down to Supernova a few years back, and I found he described the process. He went about creating the Teen Titans, the new Teen Titans, and how it was like a personality matrix. Everyone had issues with their father figures. There were people who was the person who was always calm and in control. And then there was the passionate person and there was the person who was pragmatic. And you go through that. So you have, Raven is emotionless. Starfire is highly emotional, and Wonder Girl is the in control one. And on the male side you got Vic Stone, who is Sidewalk, who’s highly emotional, Robin, who’s in control, and Changeling, who’s always hiding his emotions by making jokes and stuff like that. And then he set up how each of their relationships worked and how everyone had daddy issues, which were all related and they had different,

Jerome Castro (30:08):
Who doesn’t have daddy issues these days?

Brad Daniels (30:13):
It’s a trend baby.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (30:16):
Everyone’s

Brad Daniels (30:17):
Doing it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (30:19):
Yeah.

Brad Daniels (30:21):
I’m working on a concept for, I’m very early stages, so I don’t want to talk too much about it, but it’s like a interpretation of an existing hero. I say, I’d really like to write this hero before I die. It is very unlikely I’ll ever be hired by the multinational conglomerate who owns that hero. So I’ll just do my own version.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (30:46):
Nice.

Brad Daniels (30:46):
I’ve been working on concepts for that, and part of that is a character matrix to try and figure out who relates to who and why and how they feel about things and stuff like that. So yeah, that’s something we’re going to be working on tomorrow. I’m very excited about it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (31:04):
Nice. Well,

Jerome Castro (31:06):
Tell us about the sci-fi story.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (31:12):
He just said he can’t, it,

Brad Daniels (31:14):
It’s a mad scheme I have. Ideally it is a sequel to an existing property.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (31:23):
Okay.

Brad Daniels (31:25):
But

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (31:28):
With your twist,

Brad Daniels (31:29):
Let me restart that. Can I cut that out? No.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (31:32):
Okay. Rewind. Hang on. Let me see if I can find the button.

Brad Daniels (31:37):
It’s a high concept science fiction story. I’m working on the operating idea of six chapters. The first one I’ve already scripted and done. It doesn’t really get, not really excited until I get to the third chapter, which I’m very excited about the idea. And I’m only six pages in on the artwork, so it’s going to take, I’m probably going to die before it gets finished. But

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (32:09):
Positive thinking, that’s the way, yeah. Start

Jerome Castro (32:13):
A chapter three and go backwards

Brad Daniels (32:15):
Set across time. It’s based on the Arthur C. Clark Maxim that sufficiently advanced technology is distinct from magic. So set in distant past and distant future, and it’s very much inspired by the work of Jack Kirby and his crazy ideas that he’d do.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (32:40):
Cool. That doesn’t narrow it down, but that’s all good. Romans person what, sorry?

Brad Daniels (32:47):
Picks. Picks like ancient Scottish people.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (32:53):
Oh, okay. I wasn’t familiar with that term.

Brad Daniels (32:56):
And then we cut forward to war in the distant future and the two stories

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (33:05):
Trying me, ah, I can’t wait.

Brad Daniels (33:09):
Any

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (33:10):
Approximate, any approximate times frames? Are we talking next year or this year or? Yeah,

Brad Daniels (33:20):
I should be working on it right now. So

Jerome Castro (33:24):
Let’s end this and start working on,

Brad Daniels (33:29):
I’m going to say if I can get it done by the first issue done by the end of the year, I’ll be very happy indeed.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (33:35):
Alright, cool. Cool.

Brad Daniels (33:37):
I’ll aim for that. We’ve got six months. I can do that.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (33:40):
Awesome. Good target. Yeah,

Jerome Castro (33:43):
Looking forward to it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (33:46):
That sounds, every week I’ll ask you how you’re going.

Brad Daniels (33:48):
Yeah, no worries.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (33:49):
Excellent.

Brad Daniels (33:51):
Only 20 pages.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (33:53):
Is it nearly done? Is it nearly done?

Brad Daniels (33:58):
Well now look, this is what I need. This is what I need, is that motivation of people saying, do it, do it. And I’m like, yes, yes. I must do it.

Jerome Castro (34:07):
Then I’ll need to ask Shane to keep doing, keep asking you every week then.

Brad Daniels (34:12):
Yeah, yeah. Please

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (34:13):
Do.

Brad Daniels (34:14):
Get me on the show every week and say, how are you going with the thing, Brad?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (34:21):
Sounds like a plan.

Brad Daniels (34:25):
No worries at all. We’ve

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (34:26):
Just announced our new regular guest, Brad Daniels, who’ll be on at the end of every show to check for five minutes how he’s going.

Brad Daniels (34:33):
Yes, indeed. I’ll wait. Spend five minutes making excuses that

Jerome Castro (34:42):
We can spend five minutes end of the stream just checking up on you and then see how is it?

Brad Daniels (34:49):
Yeah, I can probably flash up. Well, if you wanted to go to my Instagram, which

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (34:55):
Is comments, can you type it all or you want to?

Brad Daniels (35:00):
Yeah, I can type.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (35:01):
There’s a private chat. If you can put your name in the address into the private chat. I’ll give it to the whole group.

Brad Daniels (35:08):
Okay. Let me see if I hit the chat button. Private chat. Oh

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (35:14):
Yeah. Yep. Just put it in there and I’ll copy it to the main chat.

Brad Daniels (35:18):
I’ll check to see what it is.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (35:23):
Live tv.

Brad Daniels (35:25):
I’m very organised. I was so,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (35:28):
Oh, it’s okay. You’re raw. You’re raw. It’s all good.

Brad Daniels (35:32):
I’m raw.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (35:33):
I’m raw baby.

Brad Daniels (35:36):
Okay, let’s try this. It’s actually at Edge Comics, so exactly what you’d think it would be.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (35:48):
Oh yeah, with a X. Cool. Yeah. And that’s your Instagram?

Brad Daniels (35:53):
That’s my Instagram. So if you check the second, I’ve put a couple of posts up recently, but the second latest one is pencils of a page that I’m working on at the moment. And you’ll also see the work in progress for the Alpha Sprites in there, as well as lots of market stalls where I’m saying, come see me at the markets.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (36:24):
Oh, yes, yes, I’ve seen some of those.

Brad Daniels (36:27):
Yeah. Yeah.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (36:31):
Sorry, I just catching up with the audience here. Cool. I just put your Edge comics out there to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Twitch.

Brad Daniels (36:40):
Thank you.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (36:42):
Yeah. So what I might do is J ask a question while I do this.

Jerome Castro (36:48):
Yeah, sure. Okay. This might be a silly question, but how do you come up with all the jokes that you put in your stories? It’s like asking a comic how he does comedy.

Brad Daniels (37:03):
Yeah. I always, there’s a great comedy skit. I can’t remember where it’s from. I think it might be the Office where someone says, it might’ve been the lead characters, or people ask, were you the class clown? And I wasn’t, but I did study them very closely. So yeah, I’ve been doing improv comedy, live theatrical comedy for about as long as I’ve been doing comics. So I started, I think in the same year, 1994. Oh, nice. I teach improv comedy workshops. That’s what I was doing last night. And I perform in shows and in fact, I just did a one man show as part of the Anywhere Festival last month here in Brisbane.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (37:59):
Oh, cool.

Brad Daniels (38:00):
So I’ve just been trying to be funny for so long that, but I think I’ve finally cracked it in some ways.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (38:12):
Awesome.

Brad Daniels (38:14):
Much like drawing, it’s all like 90% practise perspiration and 10% inspiration. So yeah, that’s where my comedy comes from. And also, I’ve just got a really weird way of looking at the world. There are very few asking me what my favourite Joker is. No, I can’t answer that question easily.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (38:43):
No, I don’t think most people can

Brad Daniels (38:45):
Just think about this now, jokers, what’s good, what’s bad. So I guess it’s from overthinking everything, if anything would be the source of my humour.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (38:59):
Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Brad, just we’re running out of your time. So what I might do is tell us about one of the books that you brought.

Brad Daniels (39:08):
I’ve got a big pile of Aussie comics. You’ve

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (39:10):
Got a big poll. If you can’t decide, just take the top one.

Brad Daniels (39:13):
I’ve got the top one. It is by my mate, Dave Dye. Amazing Tail is

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (39:18):
Oh, nice. I’ll just boost you up so people can see that cover.

Brad Daniels (39:23):
Dave Dye is as Oker Rinky dink Aussie as you can get.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (39:28):
Yes,

Brad Daniels (39:29):
He is fully, is fully an aka. This is his fourth issue of his ongoing anthology series where she writes and draws everything. There’s three stories in it and it’s done in the style of the old EC horror comics. Okay. He’s got an intro by the, the Mad Convict is like the host for the show. It was

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (39:56):
Actually

Brad Daniels (39:56):
Really good earlier this year. Dave was saying he was given up on comics because he just wasn’t getting any joy out of it. But then I see him down in Melbourne and he’s got a new one, so he is found the Love back again. Very

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (40:10):
Cool. He found the love. Nice.

Brad Daniels (40:12):
Yeah. Oh, also on Abound. That’s good too. On

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (40:16):
Abound. Who’s that? I haven’t seen that one.

Brad Daniels (40:20):
Ollie Wall, I think he’s in, he’s from Wollongong, I think.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (40:26):
Yeah, I know the name, but I haven’t heard of the comic, so yeah.

Brad Daniels (40:30):
Yeah. This is his second issue. I ran into him down in Melbourne as well. No, it was down in Sydney at Oz. Comic on popup, and he had his

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (40:41):
First.

Brad Daniels (40:43):
The second one is a big improvement. It was like the first one was pretty rough around the edge. He’s got a good comedic sense of timing with his stories. And the first issue I recommend because it starts in one genre and then flips unexpectedly into another genre about halfway through, so

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (41:02):
Oh, nice. We’re

Brad Daniels (41:03):
Checking out Honorbound, Ollie Productions. Ollie. Ollie, ward Comics. OLI.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (41:12):
I’ll look him up after this. Actually, I want a copy now.

Brad Daniels (41:16):
I got more.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (41:19):
We can do one more. We can do one more,

Brad Daniels (41:21):
One more. Well, let’s see, what’s my favourite? Oh look, they’re all so good. Give us your threshold. Okay. This is the one with the best art. Oh God. Making me make choices.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (41:39):
Yeah, sorry about that.

Brad Daniels (41:40):
Okay. Master Apprentice by Invisible Inc. Studios, this is a very interesting Mid Middle Eastern influenced fantasy adventure with magicians and apprentices, as you might expect, magic myths and a very interesting story, which goes places you would not expect. And the art is just absolutely beautiful. I can’t remember, what’s this fellow’s name? Daniel Becker Invisible Inc. Check it out. He also does, he’s got several other comics that he’s done. He just released a collected edition of this one. Beautiful work. Absolutely beautiful work.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (42:31):
That’s why I know the name. Did he release it on Kickstarter?

Brad Daniels (42:36):
Yes, he did. I think he did a Kickstarter

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (42:38):
Edition. I’m waiting for the collected edition then. Awesome. I’ve got it. Woo.

Brad Daniels (42:43):
And he is really, he is professional level artist. He should be working for the big guys over in the US at the moment. He’s got the goods. Definitely. There

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (42:55):
You go. Cool. Well, thank you very much, Brad. It was good to have you on tonight or you’re just trying to get one in I No, put in metal. Yeah, yeah. Put that one in. Put that one in. I’ve got to give Maurice in the medal.

Brad Daniels (43:09):
Okay. Here’s my thing. I think it’s really good. I don’t believe there are goths around when this story is happening. It’s historically inaccurate. There were no goths

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (43:20):
At the

Brad Daniels (43:21):
Point in time. The bad guys are GOs. There were no goths

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (43:26):
There. My brain’s going blank. I know who actually, well Aaron, I’ll have to tell Aaron that.

Brad Daniels (43:41):
Tell him Brad said historically inaccurate.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (43:45):
Historically. No goths when there was tape recorders. Yeah. Goths under 880.

Brad Daniels (43:54):
Yeah, those are the busy goths. So they had a thing going on.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (43:59):
Cool. Well, we’ve got Mark Freon in the room, so in the green room as they call it. It was wonderful to have you on tonight, Brad. Yeah, thanks. We’ll have to bring you on another time. We’ll get you to do some reviews on some comics and so forth another time. Yes, please. That’d be awesome. Yeah, that’d be awesome. The last half an hour of our show is meant to be reviews, so we could grab you for the last half an hour and we could all talk about comics bread. Yeah,

Brad Daniels (44:23):
Get me in and I’ll do your job for you. Okay.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (44:26):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Because I’m not doing it, so someone has to do it unpaid internship. Perfect. Awesome. Well you have a great night. Enjoy the game. Thanks Shane. Thanks Jerome. Yep. Hey, and see you later. Bye. See you. See you Brad. Okay, that was fun. Our next guest is Mark. I don’t think he’s ready for us at the moment. There he is. He’s just put his head up. Okay, we’ve got Mark. Hey Mark. Sorry about that. I must’ve got the time to you wrong. Sorry about that. Or you are just a bit early one or the other

Mark Abnett (45:09):
Time zones and all. Yeah, crazy. I’m barely waking up and it is 10 to 11 UK time in Scotland.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (45:20):
And you’re only just waking up?

Mark Abnett (45:22):
I barely, I haven’t slept well, but,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (45:25):
Oh, okay.

Mark Abnett (45:26):
I’m getting there. Trying to find the middle of,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (45:29):
How are you? You’ve definitely got the props thing going on. Got the sign, I thought I had it going on with this. You’re killing it.

Mark Abnett (45:39):
ComicCon at home. That’s what it’s been the last couple of months with all the interviews and podcasts and all the other stuff. I’ve managed to get this set up done real quick, I started up, so this is a small office, which is line with bookcases and toy cases and stuff. And at one point I had a full convention table set up. Now I’ve just got a large zero bit of card sitting on a tool chest in the middle of the room on one knee and a cushion. Organised chaos mate.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (46:15):
Organised chaos. Lovely. Well, for those that don’t know you, tell us a little bit about where you started in comics and what got you to where you are today.

Mark Abnett (46:26):
Right, so I’m a Kiwi living in Scotland. I grew up in New Zealand and basically we got fed our comics basically with your tin tins and your asterisks

(46:44)
And your corner stores. You’d have stuff like Commando comics and we had a little bit of the old Phantom and a little bit of the old 2000 ad and stuff like that. And it was very, when you did get American comics, it was very inconsistent. You get issue two or eight or something like that, you’d never get a full run from month to month. So they were a bit impenetrable. And then in the nineties, the old X-Men cartoon kicked in and I was like, oh, I like it. I like this. This is a bit of all right. And I walked into the local comic book shop for the first time because back then this fandom and nerdiness was kind of poo-pooed upon and not really, he’s kind of walking through these doors here and I’m not sure what, I feel a bit weird, but I tell you Mark one comics in Hamilton, New Zealand have always been the most welcoming and organised place.

(47:52)
And the guy there, Chris is just absolutely amazing. And I walked in there not knowing what was through the front door and the shop was well laid out and well lit and just organised from top to bottom. You could answer any question on anything you wanted. And at the time I was looking at the covers of X-Men comics and marble comics and stuff. And this one stood out to me and it was, where are we? Oh, I remember that one. And I was just like, wow, that’s impressive. Because in the cartoon at the time, cable was a mysterious hardass. He’s cooler than Wolverine sort of thing. And there he was with this guy wearing this sort of apocalypse arm standing over him. And this is the first comic book shop, comic bookshop, comic overboard. And and from there I was just sucked in. And most of my, I think, what was it doing at that point?

(48:53)
I think it was working at Burger King. I was 14 or 15 Hungry Jacks for you. For the Aussies, is it still Hungry Jacks or it’s still Hungry Jacks, yes. Yeah, it’s a copyright thing, isn’t it? So all my pitiful, I think it was $5 Divide New Zealand dollars an Hour was all going on comic book and absolutely loved it. I was surprised because I was about 14 or 15 at the time and I was surprised how many guys at school were interested in it as well. They didn’t own a lot of ’em, but I would end up sharing my books with everyone and whatnot. And yeah, I was quite surprised. I was still, I’m a six two, I was still a rugby player and stuff, and not your stereotypical if you wanted to pigeonhole people fully into my sport and stuff. So it was quite interesting to see what people were interested in, what I was interested in as well.

(49:49)
And it was just across the board then. So I was a heavy collector about for the next forever since then. So in 2010 I flew over to decided to do my OE when I turned 30 and big overseas experience and ended up in Scotland and Nice. And had about 15 long boxes sent over with them. With me. I don’t think I’ve got some of the most travelled comics in the world. I would’ve gone from Omnibuses, from China to America to New to Scotland to all over the shop. So Mark Miller, Scottish Publics creator and creator of the Ultimates and Ultimate X-Men and obviously Hit Girl and kickass. He did a talent contest in 2016 and I was humming and haring about whether I should enter it or not. And Mrs said, look, you’re obviously like your colleagues, you’ve got a room full of them, just pull your socks up and get stuck in and do it.

(50:54)
So I sat down and wrote a hit Gull story, a four page hit Gull story and ended up winning and being published in the first Bill of World Annual. Nice. So something I wrote in two and a half hours, I was like, holy shit, that’s awesome. And from there I was like, yes, I’ve made it. I’ve been published by image, I’ve written heck out. That’s awesome. Now what? Nothing. So the truth is I didn’t really know a lot about the industry. So over the last couple of years I’ve spent a lot of time going to conventions. The good thing about conventions in the uk, UK is tiny. It’s about the same size as New Zealand, but it’s easy to get around and density of population and stuff and the motorways and the train and rail and stuff. You can pretty much go to any convention in the country you want and you can basically have a lot of access to your heroes.

(51:50)
And I went to Glasgow and I sat down and chatted with Rad Pal of er fame, created a bar Barracuda chat with guys like Frank quietly and just hanging out, having a chat at the bar with them at a convention. And they’d have stuff like trade days where you could sort of teaching days where you’d have guest speakers come in and they’d talk trade and story theory. Oh, that’s really cool. And if I wasn’t in the UK, I wouldn’t be doing this because, and so instead of listening to everyone’s advice and everyone says what you should do is start writing lots of short stories and doing anthology and stuff like that, I started that and then got a bit carried away and I created a five issue series called This Land Nicely Prepared. And that’s basically a story where a future New Zealand where everyone has the powers of the gods and the Gods have returned and they’re not happy. So yeah, it’s a a project of passion and it’s been written and rewritten a hundred times over. And what’s good about the project is it’s completely drawn all five issues and this year have been slowly seeding it out book by book every couple of months. So issue one is released February and issue two Fresher Off the press is in the mail all the way around the world.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (53:32):
So I’m waiting for mine

Mark Abnett (53:35):
If I could turn the camera around. There’s piles of packaging and tape. It’s just stuff everywhere. But yeah, it’s been really good and it’s been

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (53:50):
Quite the adventure

Mark Abnett (53:51):
As well. And they will probably got Schism, which is basically Battle Angel Leader meets Memento, if you can imagine that.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:05):
Oh, okay.

Mark Abnett (54:06):
And that’s done by myself and a Scottish artist. And issue two for that will be kickstarted later in October we hope. And hopefully we’ll

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:14):
Be,

Mark Abnett (54:15):
Have the hard copy for sale at Thought Bubble, which is UK’s biggest comic focused convention. Not like, you know how your conventions are really media

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:27):
Focused. Pop culture.

Mark Abnett (54:28):
Yeah, pop culture. So yeah, thought Bubbles is the biggest pop artist comic book convention in the uk. So

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:37):
Yeah,

Mark Abnett (54:38):
Third table there for a first time Bloody Frank Miller’s coming, so God knows how I’m going to be going to be sitting at a table for two days knowing Frank Miller’s walking around the place. Jesus. But yeah, so that’s sort of my comics long short story.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (54:57):
Nice. Yeah, well dream. Okay.

Jerome Castro (55:09):
Yeah, I was also thinking what you’d do if Frank Miller was around. So

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:16):
Yeah,

Mark Abnett (55:18):
It’s really funny because thought bubble,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (55:20):
That’d be hard to sit at your table.

Mark Abnett (55:23):
I dunno how I’m going to do it. And it’s going to be interesting too because it’s good having a big name like him coming because whilst pretty much the entire UK comics scene, the independent comics scene and guys like your marble writers like S Spurrier and Al Ewing, Kerry Gillen, most of the big UK names are there. And you get your DC Thompson Comics and your 2008 e comics guys there and the independence scene in the UK is just massively strong. Massively strong. And I’ll tell you what, it’s such a good scene for people who will offer advice and share and explain stuff with you. It has been an absolute pleasure to meet and talk to a lot of these folks and they know this shit and am I allowed to swear it’s Facebook? Who knows?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (56:20):
It’s all good.

Mark Abnett (56:21):
Yeah. What time is it? Where you at? Is it 11:00 PM

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (56:26):
It’s almost eight o’clock. It’s almost eight o’clock. Almost eight.

Mark Abnett (56:29):
We’re almost at that PG 13 hour for you guys,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (56:35):
I swear worse. That’s okay.

Mark Abnett (56:37):
I’m very lucky to, yeah, the Kickstarter’s gone really well. I’d hope to fund the entire campaign like all the artists for this land, everyone’s been paid up, so the funds for issue two will pay for colours and lettering for issue three. The funds for issue three will pay for colouring and lettering before. Yeah, I’ve just made sure everyone’s paid on time and in their pocket sort of thing. So I was hoping to do the whole thing by myself, but Covid being what it is and work being what it’s over here, things change. But Kickstarter has been a fantastic opportunity and experience to, it’s actually gotten the book out there fervour field and been really, really pleased with the feedback from all over the world. I dunno if you saw this one, Shane, there was a young Irish lad who did a review on it and I don’t understand him, but oh my God, the enthusiasm this kid was going to explode. He’s 14 or 15 years old and he interviews guys from all over the world if you can understand his a thick Irish accent. But it’s just fun to see people respond and really get into the story after a story. Been sitting with me for four or five years and then finally seeing Frank.

(57:57)
Yeah, Kickstarter has been a really good opportunity to, and get stuff into the hands of lots of Americans who might not have seen the story and a lot of Aussies and Kiwis as well, which is great, which has been, but the amount of support from your South Shane and the other AIE guys have been really, really outstanding and very much appreciated.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (58:21):
It was a pleasure. I’ll just put this comment up here, Rob saying good day, Rob, check this out. He’s all over you on the presenting the comments and having them all on hand. Look at that, Rob. I give Rob a hard time because he’s always got comics close at hand to show on the camera and he’s got nothing on you.

Mark Abnett (58:47):
If I turn the camera another 90 degrees, I’ve got the whole bloody bookcase behind me. But I was listening, you guys speak earlier and you’re pulling out books and stuff like that. It said, oh, I should bring some stuff down to show you

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (59:00):
What I, you’re inspired

Mark Abnett (59:02):
My prize comics, possessions and all that sort of stuff. But I’m massively, massively into marble stuff and cable especially ever since that this first issue caught my eye. He’s been my go-to Guy Cable and a lot of people get confused by him, but I absolutely love it. Basically he’s almost like a cross between, he’s got this judge thread thing about him as well, this hard edge and stuff

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (59:29):
Like that.

Mark Abnett (59:31):
But at the same time, if you go into the character, a lot of family stuff in there torn from his parents and then has his own kid died and then betray him and his wife was killed and all sorts of stuff like that. So there’s a lot of that Greek pathos and stuff in there, the tragedies and bits amongst all and fair enough. There’s a lot of tiny whiny nonsense. But yeah, no, it is good fun. I absolutely love it. And big guns as well, ridiculous nineties, big guns and stuff like that.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:00:04):
Oh yeah, he loves his big guns old cable.

Mark Abnett (01:00:07):
Oh, I’ve got a ridiculous statue up here and gun’s almost big as him. It’s ridiculous. But yeah.

Jerome Castro (01:00:16):
Well he’s from the future.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:00:18):
Oh, absolutely. Apparently guns are big in the future.

Mark Abnett (01:00:21):
Yeah.

Jerome Castro (01:00:23):
Well, was your Miller world entry your first foray into the comic book industry or did you start even before that?

Mark Abnett (01:00:32):
No, it was literally the first comic story I’d ever written and it was merely just a fanboy. But what I did before I got stuck into this land and everything, like I said, I tried, I was lucky with the Mill World story because there were four page story, it’s called Hit Girl Mindy’s ABCs, and essentially it’s, oh God can’t say it me device for her to remember how to breaking an entry into a place and it’s the most similar story in the world, but it was like one because it was different. It’s basically her going through her ABCs. A is the alpha of the man, I must top B is for bridge the path. So I must cross C is clear the way I must take D is for darkness. My friend keeps me safe. It’s basically a, B, C, D is so bloody easy, it’s ridiculous. But it got me in the door.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:01:33):
Nice.

Mark Abnett (01:01:36):
And then Mark Miller being the promoter that he is, because he is his own best hype man and he’ll admit that because he does talk a bit out of his backside sometimes, but he’s good at it. He was like, oh, this guy, I thought he was from Scotland, but he’s actually from New Zealand, which bummed me out, but he could be the next a Moore. I’m like, oh my God, no

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:01:57):
Expectations, you’ll get there, you’ll get there,

Jerome Castro (01:02:02):
You’ll get there, man. Two

Mark Abnett (01:02:03):
Hours a row, A, B, C and tried to come up with, that’s all I learned.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:02:08):
Yeah,

Mark Abnett (01:02:09):
But it’s fun to have that little blurb because I can still say, yep, no, no, that’s real. You go to CBR, it’s up there. He calls me Alan. The man’s trying to sell some comic books, so there you go. But yeah, I spent a lot of time and it’s interesting, Shane, watching your journey as well and the books that you’ve picked up, and I’ve been through a lot of those books as well. Words with Pictures by Bendis out Adam Moore’s very short, it’s about 15 or 16 pages about writing comics and it’s just more just, it’s not even a technique thing, it’s just his thoughts on comic books. Basically you get stuff like Scott McLeod’s Thinking Comics. Oh my God,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:02:59):
Very famous. I think I’ve got it actually.

Mark Abnett (01:03:01):
You’ve got it. I know you’ve got it. Understanding comics.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:03:07):
Oh, understanding comics. Yeah, understanding comics. Yeah.

Mark Abnett (01:03:09):
Yeah. And that I’ve got

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:03:10):
Understanding, reinventing and see if I can remember making.

Mark Abnett (01:03:16):
Yeah, so that book is great in itself because whilst it doesn’t tell you how to write a periodical comic book, it does explain the use of time and space within a book and things like that. And just going through and picking up silly tips like always your odds and your even numbered pages and always make sure the bottom of your right hand page has something compelling for people to turn the page. You want your page turn there, page turn, what happens.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:03:43):
Yeah, your old page turn,

Mark Abnett (01:03:45):
There’s the reveal sort of thing. So I mean, I’m a bit formulaic with come a couple of my books. So with this land I always put a double page spread on page two, three. So you start off, you have a little intro and then bang, you’re into the big story sort of thing. Vendors does that a lot, I think.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:04:02):
Oh, okay.

Mark Abnett (01:04:03):
And you see a lot of Marvel comics over the last 10, 15 years. So two and three is usually a splash page slash credits page. So you do a little setup and then bang your in on the action sort of thing, which is case in court guy nattering, Hey, what’s happening, what’s going on? And you turn the page and there’s a massive fight.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:04:26):
Yep, nice.

Mark Abnett (01:04:27):
Blow it up. But yeah, I a lot on Lent and learned a lot on a lot of the UK comic scene and they’ve been absolutely fantastic for helping out and just pointing you in the right direction and stuff and

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:04:44):
That’s going to be awesome.

Mark Abnett (01:04:46):
Yeah, it’s been really good. Yeah. And one thing with this land especially, which is good, is a lot of people have come to me and they said, oh, so you’re going to make it into a movie or TV or cartoon? No, no, no, no, no. If you start thinking like that, then the quality of your work, you can’t say a comic book’s going to be a movie or anything like that. You focused on making it the best comic book you can be. It can be. And then if shit happens from that, then shit happens from there. Exactly. Definitely. I think everyone’s read those comic books. It’s like, is this just, it’s like someone taking a movie script and trying to adapt it or force it into being a comic. There’s been a lot of that bullshit happen and then you get these big names and so Hollywood writers do things and the books are just awful. I mean the whole JJ Abrams and his son thing writing a comic for Spider-Man, that wasn’t a great comic book at all. And unfortunately they were leaning on J’s name and his son’s never written a comic and it wasn’t a very good comic and you could tell it must’ve had been rewritten and restructured so many times.

(01:06:03)
So I would recommend to anyone before they start blasting and making comics is do your due diligence and find out what you like the best about the comics you like and why those work. And not everything has to be, there isn’t a golden rule of fun for comic book, but there is still certain formulas and beats and patterns in there that if you understand those correctly, you’re going to come away with a half decent book straight away. Because a lot of times you’ll pick up some books and art and illustration might be great, but the story doesn’t make any sense. Or you’ve got basically blocks and blocks of word balloons and there’s hardly any art behind it. There’s a lot to be said for pacing and position and timing

Jerome Castro (01:07:05):
And that’s totally true because with the review work that I do for Shane, I’ve seen that that’s a common problem with some comic books. They have this pretty art, but the pacing sometimes is not right for the illustration and the panelling.

Mark Abnett (01:07:26):
Yeah, and there’s a lot of that in the nineties actually. You look at some of those old nineties comics, they were just churning them out just to get ’em out, just to get them. They were selling millions of comics, but the quality of the storytelling isn’t quite there. Or there’s Marvel style where you can, which is what Stan Lee did where he’d just say, right here’s the plot. The artist would go, I want three pages of this, three pages of this, three pages of this. And then he’d go in after and fill it all in and the band was wired that way. A lot of times now you can’t really do that. You have to be quite particular about why you’re doing certain things. You can still write Marvel style, there’s no rule against it. And it does give the artist a lot more freedom, but you need to still say, actually I need these story beats to happen on this page. You can do as many powers as you want, but I want these two to have a conversation and this has to happen at the end of it. Whereas some stuff you see, it’s just not right. And I don’t think a lot of people go back and look at the books that they love and try to figure out why they love that.

(01:08:38)
And also you get a lot of stuff you get where people who read a lot of comics, but they put a book out and it’s just night and dates where what they talk about and what they say they like and they’ve missed a trick there. They’ve just gone and tried to shove everything into a can and it’s overflowing aside sort of thing. Or it’s not even half full, whatever you choose to present your comic as needs to have a strong framework. So you can’t just sit down and just blast out 20 pages and then hope it works for the best. You need to know why you’re doing those 20 pages and what will lead to with your story structure. And if you’ve got an A plot and a B plot, which again, you don’t have to do, but you need to know, have some pretty decent reasoning as why you’re doing certain things, I believe. Anyway, again, there’s no correct way to comment, but if you have the basic framework in place, it’ll be a lot easier in the long run.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:09:52):
Yeah, that makes sense.

Mark Abnett (01:09:53):
Is little things like don’t have any more than 30 words in a word balloon. Some people are loading up 25 and that comes down to lettering. And as a writer, knowing I’ve just written this more than two actions in a panel as well, you see that a lot where a writer will say, he turns around, pats him on his shoulder and looks the other way, that’s three pounds, turn around, tap on the shoulder, look the other way. Things like that. One action per panel sort of thing. And a lot of times that’s where artists come unstuck because the writers haven’t processed that properly that you can only deliver one thing per panel.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:10:35):
Yeah, makes sense.

Mark Abnett (01:10:41):
Yeah.

Jerome Castro (01:10:41):
Well, since you started until now, what do you think is still a big challenge for you as a comic book writer and publisher? I guess what’s still the challenge for you?

Mark Abnett (01:10:55):
I think the biggest thing is obviously trying to grow fan base is really tough. I’ve done something that is reasonably bespoke about. I’m living on the other side of the world creating a story. I’m living in Scotland, creating a story about a future New Zealand and trying to sell it to British and American readers, but it’s going well, but you’d always like to get it in front of more and more people, and that’s just a bit of time and patience. I think I’ve been lucky with the Kickstarter. I’ve shown that I’ve been consistently delivering. I mean, again, the second one’s all in the mail analysis. As soon as that’s delivered, people will say, when the first four, four or five months of this year, I’ve done run two Kickstarters and fulfilled both of ’em. So that’s a good thing to lean on, still starting off and trying to gain that audience’s trust.

(01:11:54)
And does the book deliver on what I said it would do? Is it intriguing enough to pick up issue three and four and five? The problem with a Kickstarter over five issues is that people might trade weight or it’ll just wait for the fifth issue because postage is a bitch. Anyone know that? You’d see that Shane Post digital books are great though, but it’s always tough to give people value for money for those digital books as well. Three pounds is different than $6 Australian count sounds all right. The equivalence is there with what you could actually buy with it. But a number three is easier than a number six for a digital comic, and I totally get why people. So it’s about providing as much value for money within that is possible, which is tough. It’s hard to do. Yeah, it would be currency fluctuations and posted fluctuations.

(01:12:53)
They’re the kind of killers and distribution at the moment, but it’s a long, exciting journey to see. It’s interesting. So the numbers that came back for issue two were very close to issue. One raised the same amount of money as well, which was fantastic. Had a couple of super backers for the first time, which was like, wow, people, one guy, he bought two original pages and two original sketches and something else is, I can’t remember what it was. And all the books and bits and pieces go with it and I was like, it wasn’t someone on you. Because often you’ll get some of those big backers will be people and out of the blue I’m like, is this for real? And you’re watching it and you’re waiting for the way Kickstarter works. People could still pull out at the last minute. And I was like, nah, this can’t be right. This can’t be right. This is just someone having pulling my leg. And it came through and I’m just, so that guy’s getting a Christmas car forever, I’ll tell you that.

(01:13:58)
But yeah, it’s been really interesting to see how a Kickstarter works. I was told that I actually ran issue two too close to issue one because people who get Kickstarter, actually I used Kickstarter backers especially are used to waiting a couple of months or even another year to issue two. A lot of people thought and the no way I named it this land issue one and two. So people thought, some people thought it was still the first Kickstarter. It’s like, no, you’ve already got in your hands. So very, when you’re running things so close together, the timeline sort of blur. And I don’t want to be that guy who’s on the megaphone 24 7 on social media that people end up ignoring. Ah, it’s just Mark going on about that again. So when you do say something, it’s got to be something worthwhile. So I’ve definitely cut back in my communication for the second campaign and we’re going to launch issue three in August. So there’s a good, it’s two and a half months away, pretty much middle of August. We’re going to issue three. You’re going to give us a looking forward

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:15:02):
To it.

Mark Abnett (01:15:03):
Yeah, well I think it got to you. I think issue one got to you in less than three weeks, Shane, which wasn’t too bad.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:15:10):
Yeah, it was pretty quick the first one. So I’m guessing the second one will be the same.

Mark Abnett (01:15:14):
Yeah, I’ve only mailed the UK one so far, so there’s still a, I’m just looking at,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:15:23):
It’s still a lot. It’s a good problem to have. It’s a good problem to have.

Mark Abnett (01:15:27):
And luckily my Hit Kill partner, I think I sent you the cover the other day and I don’t really, fine. I might be able to pull it up. My Hit Kill partner, oga did an amazing Days of Future Path tribute.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:15:44):
Oh yeah, I saw that. Hang on, I might

Mark Abnett (01:15:47):
Hang, let’s see, I got on the phone here, so I must have it on the phone.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:15:51):
Yeah, I’ve got it

Mark Abnett (01:15:52):
Absolutely blew me away. So version three, we’re going to have a variant cover for the first time, which is great, and have it as available as a pinup.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:16:05):
Oh, that’s awesome. I’ll just put it up now. I’ve got it.

Mark Abnett (01:16:09):
So Oger does a lot of covers for, he was the hit girl artist for my store and the Miller world. He does a lot of covers for Mulley, does a lot of design work for Miller Wield as well. And he also does, he did a Loki series covers. He’s done Cosmic Ghost Rider covers all sorts of stuff. But yeah, that’s just what he said. I was like, oh my God, lived for those sort of things. So I’ve been very lucky. I, I’ve learned heavily on a lot of friends all over the world and I’ve been very lucky with what they’ve helped me out with for our schism story. Go has done the cover for issue two for that, and it looks absolutely incredible. So I’ll save that for another day when we talk maybe.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:17:01):
Yeah, yeah, sounds good.

Mark Abnett (01:17:04):
But yeah, comics over here in the UK are interesting. The conventions are plentiful. There are still a lot of places that call themselves comic conventions and they don’t have any comics at all. You have a lot of fan where you’ve got old Doctor who actors or someone who turned up once on Game of Thrones as a corpse or something like that. And you know what? New Zealand Australia have a bit of that as well. You get that?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:17:29):
Yeah. Yep, yep. We get that too.

Mark Abnett (01:17:32):
But every week in the UK there’ll be at least two or three conventions. Now that hasn’t happened. Only rarely starting coming out of Covid now. Basically from March last year to July, we were locked down and then it was, but no conventions obviously through that whole period. Then July to November we were out and we were locked down again from Christmas, November, December through to, where are we three weeks ago? So yeah, it’s most of the last 12 months there hasn’t been any physical conventions. The first couple start in the next few months. So people are curious to see what’s going to happen. I’ve only had my first jab, they’ve got another jab to go before I’ll be comfortable to go to a convention. And conventions are basically, they are germ fests, cra and all

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:18:34):
That real thing,

Mark Abnett (01:18:36):
I think. True, true. We try and kill that cra off with alcohol because there’s one thing about the UK conventions, it’s a good time to socialise and meet people, but it’ll be

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:18:51):
Lots of social lubricant. Hey.

Mark Abnett (01:18:53):
Oh, plentiful. Plentiful, yeah. But it’ll be interesting. I think that might change this year because I think people are more health conscious as well. And I guess with Thought Bubble, which is UK’s biggest comment convention is in November, and that is in Hatter Gate, which is just north of Leeds. So Leeds would be like Newcastle. So let’s say you’ve got your Londons, your Manchesters, your Liverpool, and that would be equivalent to your Sydney’s, your Brisbane and your Melbourne Leeds is probably a Newcastle.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:19:30):
Oh yeah.

Mark Abnett (01:19:31):
Maybe a bit bigger. I mean it’s definitely bigger, but

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:19:37):
I know what you mean by population and so forth. Yeah,

Mark Abnett (01:19:40):
Yeah. So Thought Bubbles basically in this town of five thousands just north of Leeds. And so the whole, it takes over the whole town for the weekend and this massive convention centre. So people come in for the day and they go away and everyone who stays there overnight will be the people like myself and all the pros I guess. So not pros and bums like me. So yeah, it’ll be interesting to see how many people at that point will be travelling has certainly marked a few things up. I know you guys had, was it the Brisbane one or the Surface Paradise one? Recently

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:20:21):
We had the Gold Coast one. I don’t know how that went. I missed that one. But the Melbourne one as well has been on just a couple of weeks back, I think. Was Sydney on this weekend or the weekend coming? I can’t remember now.

Mark Abnett (01:20:37):
I say that the Armageddons in New Zealand seem to be ticking over. I mean, God, you guys have, I mean apart from Melbourne, you guys have no idea how weird shit’s been. It’s been an interesting year and a half.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:20:54):
Yeah. Oh yeah. Very

Mark Abnett (01:20:56):
Hopefully things, some normalcy resumes, but there’ll be a lot of be more fist bumps and masks and stuff like that. So which is hard when you’re at a table, you obviously want to engage people and if you’re wearing a mask and we’re not sure what the rules will be by that point, hopefully there’ll be masks off. But I think a lot of people just have the choice just to leave it on because yeah, it’s still pretty prevalent and it’s a matter of getting, they’ve just opened up to people under 40 to get their first shots now, so that’s still going to take a while. Yeah. But it’s good to see things turning a corner and people won’t get back out there and stuff, so should be an interesting convention.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:21:44):
Yeah, hopefully. Because a question for you, can you see that?

Mark Abnett (01:21:51):
I can see it. Sigma Studio seems familiar,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:21:55):
What seems familiar? Yes, yes.

Mark Abnett (01:21:57):
My take on Kickstarter fatigue personally, it is interesting. It’s finding the timing. So like I said, I put one and two out in very quick succession. I’m probably going to, as I have for the next one, August, the one after that will probably, so I’m hoping everything will be fulfilled by the end of June. So everyone should have everything in their hands by June, and that gives a month and a half gap to the next one. Whereas last time I just went, as soon as that last parcels in someone’s hands, I went bang and launched issue two. So I think you do need a bit of breathing room, a bit of space. The expectations are different for Kickstarters, but it’s been interesting because I had a lot of new people jump on board to support this who’ve never had a Kickstarter before. So they were like, well, why don’t I get the whole story and why don’t I get issue two now?

(01:22:55)
Why won’t I pay? Why don’t I just wait till you’ve done the whole thing and then I’ll get it? And it’s like, well, I might not actually have enough money to get to that end if we don’t do these steps. I had one mate said to me, well, you’re not a charity, you’re doing all right. No, you don’t understand. This isn’t a charity you actually get for what you pay. The only thing is Kickstarter now do have a big flag warning that goes up and says, none of this is guaranteed. So if you’re a first time Kickstarter back out and you see this big warning come up after you back something, you’re like, what? But I have to say, so I have to go out and especially there’s people I know like, look, no, you trust me, it’s done. This is just the way to collate all the information and get it out there. So yeah, there’s been a few, it was unusual. I got some pushback from some people. I didn’t understand the whole process of Kickstarter and whether they couldn’t figure out whether it was like a GoFundMe, but it’s like, no, no, you select a reward tear and you get something sent out to you. So there’s been a bit of me trying to explain that to people. Fatigued side of things, I’m a bit fatigued or yelling into the void on social media a lot.

(01:24:07)
I do enjoy these experiences talking to people and whatnot, and it had some really good conversations and some bad ones as well been, it feels like you’re always pimping, but the problem is, and I think I shared this the other day, I saw someone else, this, I should bring it up on the phone here, but essentially myself and all the comic creators, there’s a reason why we’re always talking about it. And it’s because we don’t have massive publishers behind us. We are our own. Exactly. So here we go, this is it. The publishing world, aside from major houses, lacks the money to heavily promote books. Authors have no choice, or creators have no choice but to do it themselves if they want their work to succeed. So when you see an author constantly mentioning their book, that’s usually why it’s not vanity. Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

(01:25:07)
This isn’t because I do like doing this, but we don’t do it just because we want to talk ourselves up. We do it because we want to get the books for people’s hands. We do it because I believe the reason I created this land and my other comics and stuff is because I would love to see the book sitting on a school library shelf or in a bookshop as an evergreen project that can be picked up forever. One thing that this land does that, I don’t talk about it a lot, but it touches a lot about on Maori history and Maori, the Maori language, and it’s ever an issue one, that it is an issue two and three and four and five, but it’s like in a lot of the rings, how they have Elvish or asterisk for example, they actually have Latin, the Pirates speak, Latin swear words and all that sort of stuff.

(01:26:03)
There’s a lot of books that I read growing up that did have foreign languages, and I thought, I came to the conclusion if it’s a future New Zealand Maori, the Maori language would be an integrated part of that. So there’s some bits in here that are a little bit bilingual. You’ve got your caption boxes which explain how it is what the word is. Tiki is children, and I think that’s the first panel and that’s there. And I never mentioned if TKI is mentioned again, we don’t say children again because you’ve picked that up the last time otherwise. And at the start of the book it says, I’ll read it actually, our journey begins within a reborn world of Al Toyota and New Zealand. Within these pages, you will encounter a land that has embraced its past but also created something new. You may be unfamiliar with Taleo the Maori language, but if you’d like to enhance your enjoyment and knowledge with the correct pronunciations, please use maori dictionary.co nz and you can type in the word and you can hear someone speak it. So we never had that. Oh, nice. So we never had that growing up. So it’s not doing it to,

(01:27:22)
The reason is in the book is because that’s what this future world would look like. I’m not banging a drum about making sure I’m not shoving it down in people’s throats. It’s there to enhance the world and enhance your enjoyment of the story.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:27:42):
And it’s part of the story.

Mark Abnett (01:27:44):
So it’s something I probably should talk about a bit more, but I don’t. But it’s something that’s a big part of the world, building a big part of the story and where it is. And I think one day if this book can sit on a shelf somewhere, it can be an asset for someone to learn something new and have a great reading experience. Yeah, there it’s

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:28:11):
Cool.

Jerome Castro (01:28:15):
Well, as for your team, you’re using the same team from issue one, right? With issue two?

Mark Abnett (01:28:21):
Yeah. Issue 1, 2, 3, 4, and five. We’re all at the same team. So PR Deis, who I believe he’s worked with Sigma two studios

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:28:29):
Pr.

Mark Abnett (01:28:31):
So PR has worked on Wordsmith with Steven Cox, and he has drawn all 140 pages, all five issues of this land. So with the exception of that variant cover that we threw up before, everything is his work. Awesome. A lot of the designs, tribal designs and Maori logos have been done by people with Maori ancestry who have all been commissioned to do that. All the character designs have been done by New Zealanders or people with Maori ancestry. So PR has been given the tools and is absolutely ran with it and from issue to issue, it’s just been absolutely amazing. And to see Lizura is the colorist and she works on books for Scout comics, dynamite. I think she’s done some image stuff. She’s a writer in her own right as well, but her colours are absolutely amazing and eye popping and yeah, just absolutely. Yeah, they

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:29:36):
Are. They’re awesome.

Mark Abnett (01:29:37):
Yeah, so I mean, one thing I did, I came to Melbourne in 2016, I think it started of 2016 for my brother’s wedding. So yeah, I’ve got a brother in Melbourne and a sister in the Gold Coast and they’ve all got kids and stuff. So my brother, they’re both married and us Kiwis, we get everywhere. So I went to All Star comics, I went to Mini and I spoke to people and then I went to Singapore after the wedding and went to this heaps comic books, shops in Singapore. It’s really good. And I spoke to all the owners and I said, look, what’s popular, what are people into? And they all said Manga and Kids books. So whilst it is not a fully manga or Fully Kid book Child Kids book, it has those influences. Kids can read this and adults can read this and get a lot more out of it as well. The Mango style and the cartooning style of PR is there, and it’s different from his style in Wordsmith as well. So you see a lot of it is a lot more tighter in American style. Joe Madira, which this is actually a battle chase’s homage cover as well, which I should share that on social media at some point. I forgot about that,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:31:03):
That’s why I recognise it.

Mark Abnett (01:31:04):
Yeah, just the formation of everyone’s standing in the,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:31:07):
The formation of it. However, everyone’s standing here,

Mark Abnett (01:31:09):
Big bag hiding in the, so there’s a lot of those influences. Joe MAD’s a big influence. Steve sro Drew Cable when I was this one. Yeah, so Steve S Gross who drew this, he’s a big influence on me and a lot of the design work we based around Joe Mad, Steve Scro, he did the matrix design stuff as well with Jeff Darrow with the Wilky Sisters now. Yeah. But yeah, PR was absolutely brilliant. And at one stage he was doing, I think he was doing two pages a week because I was funding it all out of my own pocket. And then last year we ended up going down to maybe what two pages of Fortnight being what it was and income and stuff. But we got there so it didn’t launch issue one until the whole book was done. So there’s a consistency there. And Lizel obviously on the Colours is brilliant and we’re not changing that up.

(01:32:17)
And Hassan Al does the letters and Hassan does stuff for Image. He does stuff for Image Dynamite. Yeah, he’s a top draw Letterer. He is a pro. And he also edits a book called a magazine, digital magazine, which is more of a comics review and analysis called Panel by Panel, which is absolutely outstanding. It’s like you get through three pound, six Australian dollars, you get something like 130 pages of comics analysis and review. Really well done and certainly has changed the way I think about some comics. Really good. And he also does a strip panel naked. So if you Google on YouTube strip panel Naked, it’s a breakdown of a comics page, whether it be colouring or lettering. And he is a clever, clever chat and it’ll go, oh my God, I never saw that. And that’s why that happens. Well worth looking up, especially if just getting into it. Yeah, I’ll

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:33:22):
Have to look that up.

Mark Abnett (01:33:24):
Strip panel naked. Yeah, it is definitely worth having a look. But yeah, PR is just an absolute superstar. So at the moment he’s still doing a few sketches and stuff while he’s busy working away on, I think he’s working away on wordsmith number four for Steven.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:33:45):
Oh, nice.

Mark Abnett (01:33:47):
Looking

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:33:48):
Forward to that as well.

Mark Abnett (01:33:51):
So yeah, you can see he’s done this. You can definitely tell he’s using a different style for me than he did to the Steve. Oh

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:33:56):
Yeah. Very different. Very different. At

Mark Abnett (01:33:58):
One point he was doing three or four books a week because I don’t think anyone’s in a position where they’re marble, where they can hold an artist down for a month and play them for a month’s worth of books at once. But yeah, progressively. And that’s what you’ve got to do when you’re making a comic. You’ve got to, with your collaborators, you’ve got to have a level of trust and you’ve got to make sure the timeline works for everyone. There are a lot of people who do Kickstarters and they put a Kickstarter up and there’s only maybe the first three or four pages done and you might not ever see the end of it. And I’m a bit over that. I’ve had that happen a lot. I I’ve had that where big creators have done it, Rob Feld, and no one’s ever seen the end product or they have, but it hasn’t been exactly what they were told it was going to be or it was published elsewhere first. And when it comes to kickstarts, you want to underpromise and over deliver basically. And it helps if you have majority of the work done, it doesn’t always work like that. But if you don’t have your own track record built up, then people aren’t going to be, if people don’t know, you definitely need to get the work done first and unless it’s an absolutely amazing product or story and it’ll blow everyone away if you don’t have a track record, you’ve got to have the work done pretty much.

Jerome Castro (01:35:36):
Yeah, that’s true.

Mark Abnett (01:35:39):
But yeah, what else do we have to talk about fellas? I’ll let J go and then I’ll have a go.

Jerome Castro (01:35:48):
Well, if anything, I might as well comment that whenever I look this land, and I’ve been trying to figure this out because since the first time I’ve seen this land and until now, I was thinking of a specific art style that it, it’s been been racking my brains for a bit. And I remember that style is similar to Michael DiMartino. Basically this land’s art style is mature avatar, the last Airbender.

Mark Abnett (01:36:27):
Yeah. So that’s definitely one of the influences, which is quite funny. So there’s a couple of things that come out. So this story, the plot and everything was written before I’d actually watched Avatar. And I know avatar’s been out for years and years and years, but I was like, oh my God, that’s so interesting. So it’s interesting to see influences of the art style, and I know PR will agree, there’ll be stuff there that’s influenced him because what happens in the story of this land as well, people of certain areas of New Zealand, so New Zealand’s quite a vast geographical landscape. You have your golden beaches in the north island, you have your Southern Alps in the south island in the middle of North Island. You’ve got boiling mud pools in all sorts. And the idea was what if this land mass rose even further from the earth and a godly power seeped into the people and basically the powers and energies of the people of these areas reflected those areas.

(01:37:20)
So Auckland for example, has a thousand dormant volcanoes. If the continent shifted, those volcanoes are going to go up and smoke. So Auckland is now axe land, which the people who survived there was only a hundred thousand survivors out of a population of 1.5 million. They had the ability to manipulate heat and fire and flame, not unlike Avatar, but a little bit different. So Helma here, for example, she can’t wear clothes, so she’s actually covered in larva and clay and she can make her own symbols and stuff with that. She can’t have a facial tattoo because her skin is too hot and would burn off any ink that would put into it. So she uses clay to mould and shape her clothing and things like that.

(01:38:13)
And that’s interesting where a little bit of the avatar stuff comes in. Other stuff that we say, if you’re into Avatar, the last Dan Bender, Moana meets the X-Men is another line I use. And Moana has been interesting because it’s really funny with Disney plus and seeing, I don’t think a lot of people actually saw it in cinemas in New Zealand, Australia they did, but globally they didn’t. And it’s interesting to see it always being in the top recently most watch thing, which blew me away. It’s a good story, but a lot of people don’t know Polynesian culture around the world. Maybe a bit of Californians do. I would imagine Hawaii and Samos and stuff like that

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:38:57):
A little here too.

Mark Abnett (01:39:01):
And the British, the people in the UK have a fair idea of Maori and Pacific culture through rugby and stuff like that. But it’s interesting to see people starting to identify and recognise these things, which is great. There’s a nice byproduct and I think the timing’s there for this story to really, really do well. But I would say PR is very, he’s also a little bit Joe mad, a little bit Berto Ramos as well, touch of that, not as exaggerated. But yeah, he’s very good at doing whatever style best suits the story. You can tell it’s still him, but he’s definitely, this is definitely different and then what he does for W Smith and stuff. So yeah, that’s the cover for issue three. It might be a few tweaks to that by the time we’re finished. And that’s a Kai looks awesome. That’s a Kaiju fight underground. Nice.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:40:08):
Just what you need.

Mark Abnett (01:40:09):
Absolutely. But I won’t spill too much for you. You have to read issue two. Did you get your digital downloads? Did they turn up?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:40:17):
Probably. But I avoid reading them, so I like to read the physical.

Mark Abnett (01:40:22):
Yeah, absolutely. Me too. It’s a good one. And one thing that was good because of PEs art, because it’s so clean and clear, what’s also difficult with Kickstarter is to try and find unique and original rewards because a lot of times I’m going to probably put, I’ve got a couple more pinups to come in the next couple of campaigns, but by the end of it, you’re going to end up with 20 bloody 30 pinups and stuff like that. So we’ll be slowing those down. One thing we’ve done because of P Art, couple of these colouring books, which has been

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:40:58):
Fantastic. Yeah, the colouring books is awesome. That was an awesome idea.

Mark Abnett (01:41:01):
So we can use some of the pen apart. We can use some of the story art. Oh, that’s kind of a spoiler. Is that upside down? Yeah, that’s up right down. And they can also, because they’re out of context, there’s no word balloons or anything, there’s a lot of stuff here that it’s a teaser, it’s a preview for the rest of the story as well.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:41:27):
Oh yeah, cool.

Mark Abnett (01:41:28):
That doesn’t come to issue five, so I can’t wait to see Liza’s colours on a lot of these as well.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:41:43):
Nice. Back

Mark Abnett (01:41:44):
To it. So yeah, colouring books. So we’ve only got enough for two and in some cases there’s a couple of panels on there and whatnot that, so they serve as sort of like an adult colouring book slash kids colouring book as well, and all sorts of people have been using it and it’s also pretty much a teaser for the rest of the series. So that’s been a great option. Nice. We booking pins are another one that people do love. So we’ve got our Aha comics logo, but we’re also, I’m looking at it possibly releasing a pin set of all the tribal designs and you see a little bit of it on the back there and in the cover. Oh

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:42:23):
Yeah, cool.

Mark Abnett (01:42:27):
Things like that because small enough to mail and bits and pieces as well. And I’m a bit torn on the can cosy, the beer cosy, so might be doing one of those. I’ll have to have a think about it because it could be for a soft drink. It doesn’t have to be for a stubby or a beer, but

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:42:47):
Yeah, exactly. Sorry, I was just going to say, I’m just going to fire one last question at you before we go with you. Were saying before with getting your structures right and everything like that for the comic, is there any piece of advice that you’d give to an up and coming writer other than that?

Mark Abnett (01:43:11):
So I’ve worked backwards as in I have, what are my restraints? How many pages do I have to tell this story? Right? Start there because it’ll make you a better writer if you have that framework set up right? I have a four page story. Okay, and what do I need to tell in this story? At the bottom of each page, there needs to be a page turn or a reveal. Is it going to be a digitally distributed story? Then you won’t have to worry about a page term sort of thing. Maybe the last panel on each page. How is it going to be distributed? Is it web turns? We just scroll all the way down? You don’t need those page turns. So you have to understand the context of how you’re developing, how you’re presenting the story. So if it’s a four page short story, you’ve got one page on the front, you turn it and you’ve got a double page spread. So you don’t necessarily need a page turn on your left hand size page or pages your even pages because people’s eyes will already look at the next two pages, right? So for example,

(01:44:26)
So you see here, when you turn the page, you see this happens, but you already see this no matter what, you’ll always glance at this page. So you don’t need a reason here to go to here. It’s little things like that. It depends how you present it.

(01:44:47)
Do you with the story, sometimes it’s better. You’ve got all the backstory and set up. Maybe just throw them straight in the deep end. If it’s a short story, start off with a bang. All this stuff has happened and then you might reveal that in your story. 26 words per balloon, don’t, four don’t have more than four word balloons per panel. It all depends on the size and structure obviously. But I would do 26 to 30 words per balloon max because if you look at some old Amore stuff, that is every shit, there’s a couple of writers who overdo it, but they’re known for it and that’s their style one action per panel. Or you can have say, issue two here. There’s multiple actions happening in one this panel, but they’re all doing one thing at the same time. They’re all striking or whatever. They’re not doing multiple things in the same panel.

(01:45:58)
Pay your collaborators if you can pay ’em upfront. If you can’t do a deal where maybe when every page comes in, you pay them for that page so you deliver the work, I’ll give you the pay or half pay for that page beforehand before you start the rest of the pay afterwards. You won’t know. It’s about collaborating and understanding a partnership and what works best for both people. Do trial pages for people. We did a trial story for this land and that actually ended up being incorporated back into issue one. There’s four pages. I did a five page short story with PR and a couple of other artists and I paid them all for that stuff. Those other artists, their work will never come to light, but it shows for me that I’m professional and I wanted their best work and I valued their work. And people will put their best foot forward if they know they’re getting paid for it rather than if there’s any money at the end. We’ll see. Unfortunately, artists work fricking hard. It takes a day or days to do a page in some cases.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:47:12):
Yeah, exactly.

Mark Abnett (01:47:13):
You cannot as a writer, expect them not to get paid. No. Yeah. And yeah, that’s where I’m, yeah, I’m here. My dogs here.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:47:32):
Say hi. Oh, nice. Oh, look at that. What? See part of the show.

Mark Abnett (01:47:38):
How’d you get up here? Hey.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:47:41):
Yeah.

Mark Abnett (01:47:42):
Thought the door was locked.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:47:43):
Yeah.

Mark Abnett (01:47:45):
Yeah, that’s pretty much me. Yeah.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:47:47):
Cool. Well, yeah, we’ll have to leave it at that. Thank you very much for coming on, mark. That was great answering questions there and getting it into your head a little bit and telling us a bit about this. No, only a little bit. We don’t want to scare people off or anything. Absolutely. Thanks for telling us about this and thanks for telling us a bit about this land. I’m looking forward to issue two. So I haven’t read the digital, so I’m looking forward to the physical. So yes, so I’ll find out what it’s all about then. Oh

Mark Abnett (01:48:21):
Yeah. But hopefully it should be there by the end of the month, actually.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:48:28):
Ninth. Oh yeah. Cool.

Mark Abnett (01:48:30):
Hopefully. Yeah, if

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:48:32):
Same. Oh, it depends on the post as well.

Mark Abnett (01:48:35):
I don’t even know if they’ve put it in a plane. I don’t know if they’re a slow boat or what it, it’s been very inconsistent post globally. I think someone in California got theirs before New York by about three weeks. Go figure that one out.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:48:54):
Yeah, that’s a bit of a weird one.

Mark Abnett (01:48:56):
Services quite, quite

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:48:58):
And a bit random.

Mark Abnett (01:49:00):
Yeah.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:49:02):
Yeah.

Mark Abnett (01:49:03):
Thank you so much for having me on, guys. Really appreciate it.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:49:05):
Yeah, our pleasure. Thanks for coming on. Thanks. And we’ll let you go back to your, I think it’d be about lunchtime.

Mark Abnett (01:49:14):
Yes. 10 to 12.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:49:16):
10 to 12. Good stuff. Well, you enjoy your lunch. Thanks for coming on and see you next time.

Mark Abnett (01:49:23):
Cheers guys. See you, mark.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:49:25):
Cheers. Hey Jerome, that was fun. Yeah. Yeah, that’s fun. Now what we’re meant to do with the end of the show is go over some comics that we’ve read and I’ve been really Slack and I’ve read none. So I’m going to put Jerome on the spot and was wondering if you want to tell us a little bit about Chime?

Jerome Castro (01:49:50):
Yeah. Okay. I’ve been reading Kyara number one by, yeah, by a good friend of the show. Hayden Perel and Kimara number one, for those who haven’t seen Hayden’s guesting from CCCX is basically about the story of Ellie. The basic story of it is she’s been having these recurring nightmares for the longest time in her life, but there’s a reason why she’s getting them and organisations are trying to get at her because of these nightmares. And the entire story is basically her looking to get rid of these nightmares. While these shadowy organisations are want more of these more, they want to

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:50:46):
Use them,

Jerome Castro (01:50:47):
They want to use them, they want to use them for their own purposes. It’s quite a great read. Hayden was, the story is really, really straight. Hayden did a good job steering the ship properly, and the art itself is crisp. And I totally recommend people reading this comic book. And I think two and three are on the way soon, as far as I remember. Very soon.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:51:21):
Yeah, very soon. They’re either out already or they’re coming out very soon. I can’t remember which. If Hayden’s in the audience, let us know.

Jerome Castro (01:51:30):
Yeah.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:51:33):
But yeah, so yeah, I’ve read this one too. I have read this one, but a while ago it was a good book. You sort of left wondering what exactly these nightmares are about. I’ve got my theories, which I think Jerome’s got his theories. I don’t think they actually, we kind of overlap, but we kind of don’t. So we’ve got a little bit of a difference of opinion there. So that’s the cool thing about the story. You get to interpret what’s going on and I’m looking forward to two to find out if my theory or drones or both of us are wrong and both of us are right or what the story is. But it was an interesting read, that’s for sure. And I am looking forward to number two and I’ve just got to learn to correctly pronounce it Mira instead of Mira, which I keep doing. Well, I think I’ll just leave it at that. We are almost on the two hour mark. So thanks Jerome. It was a pleasure being with you again tonight. Tamara. Thanks. Yeah, they’re out already. They’re out already. I’ve just got, hang on, I’ll just share that up on the screen. Dave said they’re out already. I wasn’t sure if they were out already or not.

Jerome Castro (01:52:43):
Yeah, so find them, find Chimer to entry and see, unlock the mystery from one, two entry.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Syddall (01:52:52):
That would be my mission now to find out where to get them and get them. Cool. Thanks again, Jerome. I’ll just get onto the right page here. I always seem to have troubles doing. Have a great night, everyone out there. Thanks for joining us. We had a great time tonight on our first two hour show, and look forward to seeing you next Wednesday at 7:00 PM Australian Eastern Standard Time, which is our new time from now on as we have two guests every week. So I look forward to doing that more. Jerome, have a great night and everyone else there, have a great night everyone. Thanks again. See

Jerome Castro (01:53:29):
Yous. See you guys. Cheers.