Interview: James Cross, Co-founder of Cross/Rogers, on Witch's Night Out and The Gift of Winter

Earlier this week I mentioned that the awesome holiday TV specials Witch's Night Out and The Gift of Winter are now available on their first official DVD releases. This news was brought to my attention by one of the partners of the production company that owns the specials, Cross/Rogers Productions. Cross/Rogers co-founder James Cross was nice enough to allow me to ask him a few questions about the specials, how they came to DVD after so many years, and what fans can expect in the future from Bazooey, Small, Tender, and the rest of the gang.

Brian: Witch's Night Out and The Gift of Winter have only been available previously on VHS for a brief time. What were the hurdles keeping it from release on DVD before and what led to their long-awaited release now?

James: To answer your first question was Jonathan himself.  He just simply stopped and moved on to other expressions of art. He's a true evolving artist. Never knowing the cult following these cartoons had and the impact that it had on people that had seen them, me being one of those kids in 1978.

Brian:  How did you become involved with the creators of the specials, Jonathan Rogers and Jean Rankin?

James: It all started when I was 7 back in 1978, when I turned the family TV on and saw the cartoon Witch's Night Out for the first time. It changed my life forever, and at that moment I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to become an animator and make cartoons just like this. I drew all my life, but at that moment sitting on our living room floor eating a Swanson TV dinner ( YUK!),  it was very clear.  Over the years I did searches on John trying to get a lead but I was always one step behind.  It was simply to thank him for making this little cartoon that I watched at least 10,000 times since the tape came out in 1986 that I still have but is worn out.

Finally, he showed up under another name online (Jonathan Rogers), and I was able to contact him and thank him for being a help in my 20-plus years in animation. At this time I was a director and had worked on many shows, Web sites, and games.  Surprisingly, he emailed me back and over months we talked almost everyday and a partnership was formed based on my enthusiasm and drive to make things happen. The man just simply believed in me and I believed in him.  Jonathan is one of the most colorful and real people I have ever met. What you see is what you get. Hard work was quickly coming ahead as I, with help from great friends, was able to restore the films from the original stock while finding distribution for both specials.  It was clearly one of the hardest but rewarding quests I've ever had to this day. I became a detective, putting all the pieces together to bring these classics back to the world where they belong.

While doing this, Jonathan and I started coming up with new stories and ideas for more stuff, as well as a plan to make these cartoons into a franchise for viewers to enjoy for years to come. Cross/Rogers was born.

Brian: The official Web sites for the specials have development images for a possible new sequel. Is there any news you can share about this?

James: Just that things are about to get pretty lively around the Cross/Rogers camp.  We are taking steps very lightly and putting all of our ingredients into the pot to make great food for viewers. Stories and ideas that have meaning and getting back to family entertainment the way it was back in the day. The Gift of Winter and Witch's Night Out have deep meaning of the holidays.  We are taking that same formula into the new projects we are creating but pulling forward the characters, making them living breathing people.

Brian: The Gift of Winter first aired in 1974 and Witch's Night Out in 1978. What is it about these specials that can appeal to audiences today?

James: They are very honest films. They are us. Whereas you have projects today that center around a popular character from a movie, these people are your next door neighbors or family members.  Everyone has that Aunt Malicious in their family--I know I did, two of them (LOL)! The animation is real. I say that because it was animated straight ahead not using in-betweens. Just free expression of the artist. Animation back then and still today, in some films, you do the first drawing, then the last, and one in between, and then you fill in all the others drawings. That didn't appeal to John, who was and still is an expressive artist.  And to top that off, they animated straight to cels, no rough (WOW!). There are guys today that would pass out if they had to do that. Very hard to do while keeping the expression of the character going.  Raw honest animation and the brilliant writing from Jean and John made these shows timeless. The voice talents and the music have a rhythm to it. The voices almost sing to you when they talk.. The jokes are not dated, and the human emotions are understood to kids and adults, making these classics perfect family films.  

Brian: Animation has changed dramatically since the 1970s. How would a new special take advantage of these advances, or would a new special stick to more traditional methods of animation?

James: Well as you know, animation is ever evolving. I see nothing wrong with that whatsoever. It has kept me in the game for over a decade. It is the artist behind the technology that makes a film good. John and Jean had limitations and were able to make a masterpiece.  Even Gift was brilliant in the execution. We will stay within the boundaries making it the Cross/Rogers style, but of course using today's methods to push the creativity forward. Our worlds will be deeper, but the stamp of Witch's will be there 100 percent.

Brian: Are there any plans to release any other previous Rogers/Rankin projects on DVD in the future?

James: Yes!  We are building a empire that our families will be able to pass down for years to come. We both are 100 percent family men. Things will come out over the years, but building a strong foundation is the main focus right now. Putting the classics out was a big leap in the right direction. People are getting familiar with the cast and fans are passing the word.  It is no longer a cartoon that fans remember back in the day, but here, in your face!  The next step is to carefully push things out that keep the feel and growth of the franchise giving people food for thought.  We have lifetimes.

Brian: Finally, each of the characters has their own unique personality. Do you have a favorite?

James: I love them all. They remind me of people I knew all my life. If you think about it, we are all of them. That's what John and Jeans attempted to do.  Sometimes I have my Rotten days and most of the time my Bazooey days.  I always liked Small. I drew him all the time as a kid.

James: Thank you very much.  This would never have happened if it wasn't for the fans. We all kept these cartoons alive.  I love the fact that people pour their hearts out every time they talk about these cartoons online.  They remember exactly where they were when they watched it.  It made all the hills and valleys I went through bringing them back with Jon worth it. This by far was a perfect storm to make this happen.  It is all about the fans. If you have a strong fan base, you will automatically pull others in. You can't push aside that foundation to try and get new ones. But if you honestly express yourself, fans old and new will know it's the same formula.   Cross/Roger is for the family, by the family, and we thank you from the bottom of our hearts.    

Thanks to James for taking time to share this wonderful news about these beloved specials. I can't wait to see what Cross/Rogers has in store!

You can purchase Witch's Night Out here and The Gift of Winter here. Thanks!

Virtual Comic Con: Tony Trov and Johnny Zito, creators of Alpha Girls

The fifth and final day of Virtual Comic Con is here! We close out the event by talking to Tony Trov and Johnny Zito, creators of comic and movie production studio South Fellini. Tony and Johnny discuss their various comic series, their new movie, and baby mammas.

Brian: You've published five comic series with various publishers such as Red 5 and Image, and also published directly via Comixology. Do you approach publishers differently from one another, and have you learned different things about publishing from dealing with multiple companies?

Tony: Each project is unique so it kind of gets started in its own way.  But in the end we look to get the comics into as many platforms as possible.  We want to be on-line, in phones, floppy issues and graphic novels.

Johnny:  The only thing we know for certain about comic book distribution is that everyone reads comics differently.  We want to get our stories into as many people's hands as possible.

Brian: With Moon Girl, you took an obscure public domain character created by Gardner Fox/Sheldon Moldoff and managed to both keep her true to her roots in the 50s, yet also modernized her well for today's audience. What were the challenges in doing that?

Johnny: We wanted to work on something super hero based because of Rahzzah, the illustrator of Moon Girl.  His very realistic, painterly style lent itself to making incredible seem credible in a cinematic way.  So we started looking for something in the public domain, something that had roots in the shared past of super hero comics.

Tony: Moon Girl took a lot of inspiration from books like Marvels and New Frontier.  Super heroes seem to function best when they're recontextualized to that 1950's setting.  So when we stumbled onto Moon Girl these ideas all came together at once.

Johnny:  The comic is about social unrest in America in a time after a great war.  There are some parallels to the world we live in today.  Everyone is looking inside themselves, flush with possibility, trying to decide the kind of future they're going to build together.

Tony: All five issues will be collected into a graphic novel this year.

Brian: Carnivale de Robotique is the only all ages comic South Fellini has done. Did the story itself dictate that direction, or did you decide first that you wanted to try an all ages series and go from there?

Tony: We self-published Robotique for Indie Comic Day or Skip Week, some special event where all the big publishers were not going to have any new releases.  So a lot of us independent folks put out books on our own.  We called comic shops and solicited the comic ourselves.  And we got lucky, the stores were very supportive of the event.

Johnny: It's a four-part comic about Wendy the nanny droid, who runs away to join the robot circus.  And she kind of finds her way in the world by persuing her dreams.  We tried to tell a fairy tale from the future and Mark Fionda brought some gorgeous water colors to the mix.  I think the comic is still very adult but the images hide the subtext.

Brian: DOGS of Mars has often been compared to Alien for obvious reasons, but takes a unique approach with its art,  in suggesting rather than explicitly showing the creatures and most of the violence they cause, and also in the color scheme (only black, white, and shades of red). Was that your idea or did the artist conceive of that approach?

Johnny: We met Paul Maybury, the artist on DOGS of Mars, at San Diego Comic Con in 2010.  All three of us had shuffled through DC Comics digital imprint and come out the other side looking to work together on something genre.  We talked a lot about Japanese gore core, war movies and real world robots.  Paul came up with the red color scheme based on the submarine lighting and the traditional tones of Mars.

Tony: DOGS isn't really about the monster.  It's about the people the monster is trying to kill.  There are obvious allusions to Aliens but the Lord of the Flies-style breakdown in society is what's really terrifying. Friends are turning on one another and rivals are the only people you have left.  Trapped at the edge, these people have to give up their humanity if they want to survive.

Brian: Your latest project is the live action film Alpha Girls, about a satanic sorority. Judging by the trailer, there is a definite 1970s grindhouse influence. What is it about the horror films of that era that resonate so strongly with audiences today?

Johnny:  I think we were really inspired by Suspiria, Heathers, and Evil Dead. These movies served as the visual vocabulary between people creatively involved in the project.  These are the films that get you excited to make something of your own.  There’s an energy and excitement on screen that translates so well because the people making it love what they do.

Tony: Alpha Girls was going to be a comic book originally.  We got really into the sorority/coven idea ourselves and after a few weeks it was like, hey… I think we can make this. There's a universal appeal to the horror genre because it's about revealing a hidden world that we all secretly believe could be true.  How did all those people get rich and famous? The devil did it.

Brian: All of your work, up to and including Alpha Girls, features women characters guiding almost all of the story, yet South Fellini consists of two guys from South Philly. Why has featuring women characters in the forefront of your projects been so crucial creatively?

Johnny: They told us to write what we know.

Tony: We love our bad-ass mothers very much.

Brian: If Alpha Girls is a success (and I hope it is for you), will movies be the main creation of South Fellini going forward, or will comics still be a creative outlet in the future?

Johnny: We wanna make all our comics into movies and all of our movies into comics.

Tony: For all of the Baby Mamas, Baby momma momma’s and Baby momma’s mommas of the world.

Thanks Tony and Johnny!

Alpha Girls will be screening at the Trocadero in Philadelphia next Wednesday, October 3rd, and in Washington, DC at the E Street Theater next Saturday, October 6th. For full details, click here.

Here's a glimpse of what you can expect from Alpha Girls (NSFW). And yes, that is who you think it is as the priest!



And with that, we wrap up my first-ever Virtual Comic Con! I want to thank all of my guests who have made this a great event: Jeff Parker, Shawn Aldridge, Joe Rybandt, and Tony Trov and Johnny Zito. I couldn't have done it without you!

Most of all, I want to thank you, the reader, for taking part. I hope you enjoyed my version of a comic con. Please let me know your thoughts in the comments sections or at phillyradiogeek@gmail.com. I definitely want to do this again next year--perhaps more than once.

It's only fitting that I close out the con with news of a horror film, because it makes a perfect segue to my next blog event--the Countdown to Halloween! It's a mere three days away. I have tons of great stuff to share with you, so please stay tuned. It all starts Monday, October 1st. See you there!

Virtual Comic Con 2012: Shawn Aldridge, writer of Vic Boone

Day 3 of the Virtual Comic Con is upon us. Today, I talk with Shawn Aldridge, writer of Vic Boone: Malfunction Murder.

Shawn lives in Portland, Oregon, as do many comic creators, and has published his series Vic Boone with Philadelphia-based comic publisher 215 Ink. I asked Shawn about his inspiration for Vic, how he balances the various genres that blend together to make the series enjoyable, and his views on comic creators relationships with publishers.

Brian: Where did the ideas behind Vic Boone come from: the former daredevil turned private eye, the mixture of old school noir and science fiction, Vic's destructive personality, etc.? I know your father was a big influence on the series.

Shawn:  It was my uncle who was the biggest influence on the creation of Vic Boone. Growing up, I spent a lot of time around him. He'd watch anything that had science fiction or fantasy elements no matter how bad it might be. The classics like The Day the Earth Stood Still and Forbidden Planet were a part of his childhood and by extension became a part of mine. He was also responsible for my love of comics. He'd bring over a stack every couples of weeks and leave them for me to read. 

The initial idea to mix noir and science fiction came one night when I was looking through some 60s pulp novels I had. Two covers, one science fiction, the other a tough guy pulp, just happened to be juxtaposed in a way to spur the idea of mixing the two genres. Not the most original idea, but the first spark seldom is. I think it's how you expand it that makes it yours. For me that came from the question, What if all those early science fiction movies had actually happened, that they weren't Hollywood fiction but were historical fact?

With that world in place, I knew it would only be as interesting as the character who walked you through it. Enter Vic Boone. Making him a private eye seemed a good way to set up situations to put him in, but I also wanted there to be something unique about him. His being a former motorcycle daredevil seemed to work on a few different levels and played into the themes I wanted to explore. I view Boone as this guy who is always trying to prove his worth in a world where the worth of a human is slowing fading away. He firmly believes that good ol' sweat and grit can trump any amount of technology. To him technology is a crutch that will eventually turn you soft.

Brian:  Do you see any of yourself in Vic's character?

Shawn: There's probably a little of my own personality that comes through in Boone. I can definitely be a bit of a smart ass and we both share a love for vintage motorcycles. Oh, and we both have bad knees. haha.  But I can safely say I don't have the destructive personality that Boone has, nor have I ever had a bad thing to say about a robot. 

Brian: Humor plays a big part of the Vic Boone experience, yet it never undercuts the action and the dangerous situations Vic finds himself in. How do you find the right balance?

Shawn: That's a tough one. It's probably a mix of trial and error and experience gained from those errors. What I try to do is approach the scene first and do what I think best serves it. Does a joke take something away from this scene? Is this bit here a bit too serious? Once I lock in the scene, I pull back to see how it fits into the overall story. Is it necessary? Does it flow with the overall mood of the story? Of course, you never know how well you pull it off until the reader reacts to it. 

Brian: Artist Geoffo has a unique take on Boone, simple but very expressive. How did he come on board the project?

Shawn: I actually lucked into Geoffo on a message board. I posted that I was looking for an artist. In the tons of response I received, his art just seemed to fit what I was looking for the best. I loved how he framed panels and action and really understood subtle facial expressions.  

Brian: How did you become involved with 215Ink as your publisher?

  
Shawn: I had answered an ad they posted about taking submissions for writers and artists. As part of my samples I sent in the original 8-page Vic Boone story from Zuda [DC Comics' former Web-only outlet featuring creator-submitted comics] . Andrew, the main guy at 215Ink, fell in love with it. One thing lead to another and Vic Boone found a home.

What appealed to me about them was they're a great creator-friendly company. They're really behind the idea of creator-owned comics and trying to expand the readership and diversity of comics. There's a good group of talented creators over there and that ain't a bad thing to be a part of.  

Brian: You're outspoken on creator's rights on various social media sites. What would you like to see happen to comics creators that isn't happening now?

Shawn: I'd like to see creators given some sense of security by the industry, a bit of hope that when the jobs dry up and they're down on their luck someone will be there to help out. We shouldn't have to hear about creator x being penniless and struggle to pay hospital bills. We shouldn't have to crowdfund someone's life. I'm not sure how we accomplish that. Perhaps we could give a cut of the hundreds of millions of dollars generated by blockbuster superhero movies to Hero Initiative?  

Brian: Would you ever entertain a work-for-hire offer by the corporate comics companies?  

Shawn: Oh, definitely. I'd do a Mr. Miracle and Big Barda series in a heartbeat. As much as I love working on creator-owned comics, I also love paying the bills. haha. I think the thing you have to remember when doing work-for-hire is that you can build all the sandcastles you want, just know the sand belongs to somebody else.

Brian: Finally, what other projects do you have in the pipeline, or what would you like to create in the future?

Shawn: Right know I'm knee deep in the next Vic Boone graphic novel and a Vic Boone anthology. The anthology has me really excited. I've somehow convinced some extremely talented people to jump in and do they're take on Vic Boone. I've read a handful of the scripts so far and they're all brilliant. I've got a few pitches I'm lining up also. One is an all-ages book called Kid Gloves. It's about a boy with gloves made from Merlin's robes. There's one I'm doing with Jim McMunn called Mr. Zero. It's best described as a 60s whiteploitation comic. I'll also have a short in the upcoming FUBAR Vol 3: American History Z that's put together by Jeff McComsey and Fubar Press.

Thanks Shawn!

You can find Vic Boone: Malfunction Murder through 215 Ink's digital comics apps.

Interview with Chris Sims, Writer of Dracula the Unconquered

Today is a red letter day for the blog, as today I feature my first-ever interview!  And I couldn't be happier than for it to be with comic book blogger and writer Chris Sims!

Chris began writing about his love for and review of comics at his Invincible Super Blog while working at a comic shop full time.  He later was inspired to begin writing his own web comics with some like-minded friends, who together formed their own comics line, The Action Age of Comics, which produces such high concept titles as The Chronicles of Solomon Stone, Woman of A.C.T.I.O.N, and my personal favorite, Awesome Hospital. In addition, he also continues to write about other comics for AOL's comics news site, Comics Alliance.

Chris is also the inventor of the Nerd Hat.

Chris is here to talk about his latest comic, Dracula the Unconquered, premiering on Halloween.

Brian:  This isn't your first time writing about a vampire (Solomon Stone), but now you're taking on the most famous one of all.  What is it about Dracula that makes him such an intriguing character, and do you plan on doing something different or unexpected with the character?

Chris: Ha!  Well technically, Solomon Stone is a half-vampire, half-wizard skateboard champion.  It might seem subtle, but trust me, it makes a big difference in how you approach the characters.

As for Dracula, what really drew me to him was the fact that there's been so much done with the character in pop culture.  In America, Bram Stoker's novel was in the public domain since it was first published, and as a result, there have been so many interpretations, reinterpretations, reimaginings, and sequels that he's become one of those characters that works in any sort of story.  You can do a serious take, you can do comedy, you can put him in a castle on the moon, and it all makes sense because he's gone so far beyond that original story.  That pop culture aspect is really what I love about him. 

At the same time, that makes it hard to do something truly new, but you don't often see him as an all-ages adventure hero, so hopefully I'll be able to put my own spin on it.

Brian: Most of your previous work, such as Solomon Stone and Awesome Hospital, have been very funny, but the solicitation for Dracula The Unconquered makes the project seem a bit more serious. Is that correct, and if so, why take a different approach now?

Chris: It  wasn't until halfway through writing the first issue that I realized that by giving Dracula a teenage girl sidekick -- an English one, no less -- I was basically writing the "serious" version of Solomon Stone, but that's kind of what it ended up being. 

That said, there are still scenes that I think are pretty funny about it, even though it's not strictly a comedy like Awesome Hospital, or a parody like Sol.  I really have no interest in writing something that's completely dour or humorless, and while Drac's first and foremost an adventure story, I don't think action and comedy are mutually exclusive.  I've described it before as Indiana Jones starring Dracula, and if you go back and watch Raiders of the Lost Ark, there are moments in that film that are absolutely hilarious. 

When I think about the comics that I really love that are coming out right now, there are guys like Jeff Parker, Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente.  These are guys who never shy away from putting funny moments in their stories, and it never detracts from how thrilling the action is, or the danger their characters face.  It just makes a more well-rounded story, and that's the feeling that I'm going for in Drac:  A fun, solid, entertaining comic.

Brian: You've previously spoken highly of Marvel's Tomb of Dracula, and Steve Downer's design seems a bit reminiscent of Marvel's version of the character.  What is it about that series that was so captivating, and will we see hints of those elements in DTU?

Chris: I don't think I'm blowing anyone's mind when I say that Gene Colan's version of Dracula is far and away my favorite visual of the character.  He captured that monstrous haughtiness so well, and that moustache!  Dracula just doesn't look right without facial hair. 

So yeah, Tomb of Dracula is definitely an influence, specifically in the idea of Dracula traveling around the world and dealing with villains that are even more monstrous than he is.  Also, I can't lie, his whole attitude, that crazy pretentiousness and absolute disbelief that anyone would ever dare to stand against him, it just cracks me up.  It's set the tone for how I think of Dracula speaking just in general, so there's a lot of that arrogance in my version.

Brian: What can we expect from Dracula's assistant Thalia?  From the looks of her on the cover image with her sly grin, she seems to have a few tricks of her own up her sleeve.

Chris: Thalia has her origins in me feeling like I needed a viewpoint character.  I love Dracula as a character, but he's also an immortal sorcerer who used to be King of the Vampires, so if you're following him as a protagonist, that can be pretty hard to relate to.  At the same time, I didn't want her to be just a prop to have thing explained to her, which is exactly what I was parodying with Minxy in Solomon Stone. 

Mark Waid writes a comic called Ruse that I love, it's a big Sherlock Holmes-style Victorian mystery series, and the detective's assistant, Emma Bishop, is such a great character.  She comes off as smart even when she's next to this super-genius, she's really quippy and active in the story.  She's great, and since there was a Ruse mini-series coming out while I wrote the first two issues of Drac, I really studied it and tried to reverse engineer how he made this lady sidekick so compelling in her own right.

Brian: I loved Ruse!  I instantly saw Thalia as the Emma to Drac's Simon when I first saw the image.

Chris: I actually asked Waid about it and he told me that he just never has one character tell another something she actually knows.  As simple as that might sound, and as much as I'm aware of it from my absolute hate of sentences that begin with "as you know..." it was a really good piece of advice to keep in mind.  When you ditch all that unnecessary exposition, you have a lot of room to work in actual character stuff.

To be honest, Thalia does end up getting a lot of things explained to her and she is in need of rescuing in the first couple of issues, but I've tried not to have those be the things that define her.  She's really fun to write, because for all of Dracula's arrogance, she's meeting him at his absolute low point, and as much danger as she faces, there's a lot of eye-rolling on her part.  After he read the script, Steve Downer pointed out that it was interesting that I'd given Dracula a teenage girl sidekick, because he has this predatory history towards young women.  It wasn't something that I'd considered at first, but once he pointed it out, it became something that I've had in my head.  If you're going to have Dracula as a hero, that's something that probably needs to be redeemed.

Brian: The solicitation also states that the events in Bram Stoker's novel "may not have gone down the way Harker & Co. wrote about them." Does this mean we'll see Dracula in a more positive light?

Chris: It's not so much that Dracula was a good guy during the novel as the "heroes" were trying to make themselves sound more heroic than they actually were.  Before I started writing, I read through Leslie Klinger's The New Annotated Dracula, which is an excellent resource, and the thing I really came away with was that I really just did not like any of the main characters, especially Harker.  Even Van Helsing just comes off as this bumbling crackpot professor who's always suggesting transfusions from random-ass guys to help out vampire victims!  It's hilarious!

So there are certain events in the novel where the "Good Guys" made the wrong assumptions, but all of the actual events happened.  Dracula was still the bad guy, he was still coming to England to eat people.  One of the things that gets addressed later down the line is that Thalia's a librarian and she's read Dracula.  So that stuff's going to come up.

Brian: Tell us more about DTU's cocreators, Josh Krach and Steve Downer, and their contributions to the book. They both have experience in multiple aspects of comic creation (Josh as a letterer and writer, Steve as an illustrator and colorist). What roles will they play in the making of DTU? I believe Steve is illustrating issue #1.

Chris: Steve and I first worked together when he colored Woman of A.C.T.I.O.N., a comic I wrote that Chris Piers drew, and while he makes his living as a colorist, he's an amazing artist as well.  We've been wanting to work together for a while, and a few years ago, we even talked about doing a story about an immortal character so that we could skip around from place to place, so when I decided I wanted to do Dracula as an adventure hero, he was the first guy to pop into my head.  He's been amazing to work with, and he even made a call about the way he wanted to draw something in the first few pages of #1 that changed the whole layout of the first seven issues.  I think people are really going to love what they see out of him.

I've known Josh for several years, and again, he's great.  He's been the letterer on Awesome Hospital since we started, but he's another one of those guys that's talented at everything he does.  He's a great writer -- he does a webcomic called Troop Infinity that's darn near perfect as a kids' adventure comedy, and he's written an upcoming AH short as well -- and he's even pretty good at drawing, too.  Like Steve, he's been an excellent collaborator, and when I sent them my plots for the first arc's worth of stories, he made a few great suggestions that made my job so much easier.

Brian: 'Fess up Chris.  This is just your way of counterbalancing all the Anita Blake comics and Twilight products, isn't it?  Next you'll write a witch comic to cancel out Tarot: Witch of the Black Rose.

Chris: The only way to fix bad comics is to make better ones.  You have to try, right?

Brian: You've been involved with comic creation for awhile now through your site the Action Age of Comics.  Are you happy with the progress the projects available there have made, and what can we expect in the future?

Chris: It's weird, because even when my schedule's so packed that I'm barely sleeping, it never really feels like I'm doing enough.  I'm just impatient, I guess.

In addition to Drac, Awesome Hospital is still going every Tuesday and Thursday, and Chad Bowers and I have our first graphic novel coming out next year from Oni.  I wish I could tell you more about that one, but for now, that's all I can say.  Plus, you know, there's my day job over at ComicsAlliance every day.  And one day... maybe not this year, maybe not this century, but one day I'll be able to put out Solomon Stone #3.  It's got succubus pirates.

Brian: Finally, and this is an important question: does Batman prefer beef barbeque or pork barbeque?

Chris: Oh, definitely pulled pork.  South Carolina Mustard-Based sauce has the delicious sharp taste of justice.

Dracula The Unconquered makes its debut October 31st, and will be available for download in cbr format for $1.  Check out the official site here.

Thanks Chris!