Dust Pirates On Kickstarter Now!

Kevin Cuff and Tony Gregori

[00:00:00] Melissa: This is fire country and I’m Melissa searcher today on the show, I get to chat with the creators of the new comic book series, the dust pirates with a writer, Kevin puff an artist. Tony. Grigori welcome to the show.

Kevin or Tony: Hey, thanks. Thanks for having us,

Melissa: Melissa. Thanks for being here today. How are you both doing?

Kevin or Tony: I’m doing well. I’m Kevin guff. Yep. I’m doing well as well. Nice.

Melissa: Good. So, who came up with the concept of this story? Was it all together? Or one person was like, hi, I have this great idea.

Kevin or Tony: It was kind of a amalgamation of things. Tony and I had started chatting after Tony was a guest. On Bob and I’s podcast, which is called the word grows.

He was a guest promoting his book at bulk comics, deuce of hearts. And afterwards we started talking and Tony had just seen if I’m remembering this correctly, [00:01:00] if I’m, if I’m wrong at any point, Tony, feel free to feel free to correct me shape of water. Right. And you had said. Okay. And you said you wanted to draw like cool fish people.

And like, so we S we started trying to Tony and I, at that point started, started trying to come up with cool ways to get Tony, to draw fish people, but in just a non-traditional sense. So where you wouldn’t normally see fish people. So, that’s when Bob came in and we all started throwing ideas around and we came up with the idea of a dry land.

And two pirates who are actually based on historical pirates, trying to save this dry Atlantis from it itself essentially, but ecological devastation and a cruel water Tyron.

Melissa: Okay. Very cool. And had you had any of the three of you in combination work together before.

Kevin or Tony: Did we, have we had done anything prior to that?

No, I don’t think so. We talked, we’ve talked all the time about doing stuff together because we’re good friends, but I think [00:02:00] this is the first time we’ve actually gotten to work together. We’re working on other stuff together. I did do a, I did a short in the ninja nuns, anthologies that Bob Kevin and Chaz penguin so I did get to play in their sandbox for a little bit.

I’m

Melissa: fine. Okay, cool. Well, and you mentioned that they were based on real life pirates. I was going to ask you who were they based.

Kevin or Tony: The two parts in question were black Sam Bellamy who was the richest pirate captain in history. And he was the captain of a boat called the WIDA. Gentlemen, gentlemen pirate.

It was called yes. He was known for his his kindness, his kindness and then Hendrick Quinter, who was also a pirate. Ooh, my life too. Who served on Sam ship the WIDA and they were, we decided to base them on these two real life fires because Sam supposedly drowned off the coast of Cape Cod, which we used in the story of the book in, in a, in a weird way, and then Quint or escape drowning in the, and that.

Particular incident there’s an, a storm, but [00:03:00] he was hung later on for piracy. So we, we decided like, what if their lives were different? Like what if this is what happened to these two guys instead? Yeah.

Melissa: That’s such a fun concept when you can like take a historical figure, especially a pirate and you know, But your own like twist on it and stuff.

I did the same thing with Henry Mainwaring for one of my books and he was like a noble men, turned pirate, turned back nobleman. It’s a very interesting story, but it was fun to like play around with I’m an attorney. Yeah. So take me through the premise of the dust pirates. Like give me your, you know, your brief elevator pitch, so to speak.

Kevin or Tony: The elevator pitch for the dust pirates would be it’s pulp. So it’s, it’s in the vein of things like flash Gordon or Starlight, or even things like star wars. It’s got a Pope feel to it, but we wanted to give it a fresh coat of paint. So we wanted to do it new and like more woke with like different kinds of characters having to [00:04:00] say, like, there’s not a day, it was in distress per se.

Like there would be in like a flash Gordon movie or, or like there was in the, in the first trilogy of star wars. There’s no lake. Like damsel in distress type of

thing.

Kevin or Tony: No, if anything, she’s an instigator. I’m not. Save your on the pirates. Yeah. She saves them. Yeah, because she keeps them from drowning.

So she puts you off, just does it to help her own end because she needs them to, so she’s smarter than the pirates too. So that’s our, our, one of our heroines. I, you seen us she’s, she’s the, she’s the brains of the operation. And then we wanted to have like a buddy kind of thing going on between the two carers where you knew that they were actually really good friends and that.

They have been traveling together for a while. And these guys like their friendship has really have each other’s backs. And it’s something that was very important to Bob and Tony and I, when we were, we were doing this as like that, that relationship has to really show and shine through through everything these, these guys are doing.

So pretty much the elevator pitches to bumbling kind of. Clunky [00:05:00] pirates, try to rescue Atlantis from a tyrant who is taking the water from the people.

Melissa: All right. Interesting. Now, Tony, what drew you to this project from like a creative standpoint? Like, you know, made you want to, to, to create art for

Kevin or Tony: it?

Well, like Kevin said, I, I, well, it was on a Merman kick, so, when, when they approached me back in 2018 about working on. They, they brought up this idea and I was, I was all about it. I love the pulp north stuff. I love drawing adventure and action is, is always something that I enjoy doing. And I feel like I’m pretty good with expressions and and humor.

So the instances where it pops up in the story, I feel like I’m able to really capture that. Yeah, it was just a fun. Fun world of design, just from, from the the Atlanteans themselves to their armor, to, to the landscapes, to the pirates. The pirate designs I basically took from paintings of, of the, the actual pirates.

There’s some, if you Google the Sam Bellamy and Hendrick, Quinter, you’ll find some, some images of them, of paintings that were done [00:06:00] of them. And yeah, and I kind of ate those and kind of took those designs and ran with them. And it’s just lot fun to do. I liked the idea of having the butter. Almost like the buddy, like lead the way.

Yeah, buddy cop, buddy cop thing. And you know, it was just a lot of fun. I, sprawling adventure is something I early was aching to sink my teeth into. And this, this definitely satisfies that. I’d say you, you killed it on those designs and stuff. Cause you, cause not only did you. You said you ate them, but I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit.

They’re counting because I feel like you, you took what was there and then made it your own and like, and well, beautiful oil paintings. And I’m drawing with pen and ink. So that’s a little more crude and. And it’s, it’s able to be reproduced for 80 pages and how many panels? A lot of panels,

Melissa: a lot of panels, very modest.

Well, I mean, definitely if it’s crew than it probably fits for the story, and I don’t think that can be replicated because I’m sure you have your own distinct style, right? [00:07:00] Well,

Kevin or Tony: for this some, you know, usually I work with brush with a brush and then for for dust pirates, I brought in the quilt.

And some pens to get more of that. Oh, that, that, that kinda classic five, five ghosts. I think it was the book image made that crystal Liam drew like that, that was the vibe I was kind of going for. And he uses, I know he uses a quail on a brush, so I kind of brought the equivalent to the equation to kind of fit that like the classic fifties, sixties.

Comic look because that’s what they use a lot, predominantly it quills and brushes. So it’s just a different

Melissa: line. Yeah. And it probably puts you in the mindset too. I mean, you know, using a Quill and you can kind of transport yourself back to in an era where that’s what they eat. Right. I haven’t

put

Kevin or Tony: a little feather at the end of it just to like, make me feel.

I turn off all my lights. I put oil candles or lamps all over the place. You put your rings in and started speaking like a pirate to like Bob.

That’s quite the

Melissa: scene. From a, from a [00:08:00] writing standpoint, what were, you know, aside from the historical figures, what were your creative influences

Kevin or Tony: in, in this story? Particularly, we wanted to do something like, like we said, like a buddy cop kind of thing. So, one thing that has always been an influence on me has been empowerment and I.

And I’ve always loved that particular comic. Since I was a wee lad like to that book. And so it it’s always been something I wanted to kind of play with, but like w w what’s the chance I would get to do that with, you know, Marvel character. So we just try to invent a world. There, these characters can’t do the same things as those characters, but we could have some sort of the same conversations that two friends would have and, and give the audience a chance to ease, drop on these conversations that these two guys would have and what that would be like.

And they’re constantly kind of at each other, but they always have each other’s back. So yeah. As you see through the book, like they’re constantly verbally quipping at each other or like, or, or [00:09:00] making jokes at the other one’s expense. But then when, when it comes down to the action parts of the book, they rely on each other to get through the tough spots.

Yeah. Yeah. I’d agree with

Melissa: that. Yeah. And for the collaboration, how does that work? Do you just kind of go back and forth? Did you present a certain amount of pages to begin with and then have him draw? I mean, how does that.

Kevin or Tony: We did full script, but every, every time we do the beginning of the script and we’re pretty as far as like panel descriptions pretty slight, like there’s not a whole lot, there are other panels, scriptures, a lot of that, a lot of the visual, like I would say almost all the visuals are Toni.

Like, we, we basically just he’s. Director. And he runs the camera. We’re just going to come in and write the parts of dialogue and the like, we’re basically telling them what reactions they would have, so he knows what to draw, but then he goes in and does all that. And then when we, and looks at the dialogue and knows what faces to draw, so it was a full script.

But everything had like the caveat [00:10:00] of if something you feel like something. You could do something better or this doesn’t fit what you’re trying to do, like go ahead and do what you want to, and we’ll just change the dialogue later. Okay. Yeah. I mean, generally speaking with writers you know, if I’m working with friends like Kevin and Bob we’re friends and we text and we can call each other and talk about ideas.

I generally, if they ask, like, how do you like your scripts? I prefer to have as least amount of direction as possible. Only if. You know, for the story and I’ll make sure I highlight it, but like, as far as like, you know, I don’t, I don’t really need somebody to call the camera angles or, you know, give me an overlay of everything.

Cause that’s kind of like my job and that’s what I enjoy doing anyway. So, yeah, but I mean, yeah, it was pretty like Kevin said it was pretty, pretty open collaboration. Like I would generally, like, I don’t, I don’t just go straight to inks. I would go layouts and pencils first just to make sure we’re on the same.

Just to make sure that, you know, there’s no problems or issues, right. As far as the storytelling and then it’s, you know, if ever we’re all in agreement, then I just go forward and sorry. And the other good part of that is that [00:11:00] if he has ideas for dialogue or things that he would like to see in their heat, he’s not afraid to come to us and say, Hey, I’d like this in there, because this, I feel like this is something that we’ve mentioned.

That was really cool earlier in the story that I wanted to draw more of. Can we do more of this? And, and vice versa, if there’s something else that he did cause like he did these crazy cool designs. When we were first starting this thing of like Xyzal wars who’s the tyrant and his like castle.

And then like the way that the ships look and how an average Atlantean looks and like why their gills are closed. He had like all these really cool things that we’re going to put at the back matter of the book. Yeah. And, and I was like, oh, we just need to see some more of this. Can we do this again?

And he’s like, yeah, I can do that again. Or we, we go back and forth on that stuff. With what we would like to see him draw more and what he would like to draw more. And he also has ideas for like dialogue and stuff like that too. We’ve we’ve used some of those too. So it’s, it’s a complete co collaborative process.

[00:12:00] Melissa: Yeah. And what was your favorite scene to write and for your Tony, your favorite scene to draw.

Kevin or Tony: My favorite scene in the book that Tony drew. Cause I think he nailed it right on. And and it was because technically we started this book before Bob and I did metal shark, bro, and it’s just coming out now.

So, my favorite scene was the book is. Relatively serious has got action happening. And then the pirates decide they’re going to board the other vessel and they get a salmon. Quinter get aboard the other vessel. And before that, they’re having a conversation about how, how, like brave the crew was. And Sam is basically telling Quinter that they’re fine.

They’re going to like full through. They’re going to be pirates and they get on board and then they start fighting. Sam’s like, I only have one question that they’re fighting and he’s like, what’s that? He’s like, where’s the crew. And then they’ll turn around. And Tony did it perfectly like behind them, the other Atlanta, the Atlanta ones that are trying to learn how to be parts are waving at them on the other ship.

Like, Hey, we’re [00:13:00] over here. Like, that’s cool that you guys are, you’re doing a great job, man. And it, it, it’s perfect. That’s exactly what the scene calls for. I love that part. I mean, I love drawing the whole, cause right now we have 24 pages that are, that are finished. Drawn colored and lettered. And then the kickstart is for, for us to produce the rest of the book, which is an 80 page graphic novel.

So out of those first 24 pages I probably, my favorite thing was a double page spread, which basically shows how them, how the, the pirates got to Atlanta when their boat capsizes off Cape Cod and they, they spiral through like, a funnel essentially under a underwater. And so like this.

Under CD pyramid and they end up in Atlantis and that’s the whole sequence. It was fun to kind of lay out and draw. And also the giant monster fish was always fun. This is cool. Yeah. There’s that scene with the giant monster fish that kind of plays a role in the entire book and his, the introduction of this fish.

And that was a lot of fun to draw. Okay.

Melissa: Awesome. Now what are some of the, cause I think I read that [00:14:00] your, you tackle something. Real life issues. But you know, it’s a fantasy, you know, era, it’s a fantasy setting, but do you have any parallels that you draw from like present time?

Kevin or Tony: Definitely when we were doing it, like the thing that was conscious in our mind was like I said, it was 2018, so like, Trump was weighing heavy on everyone’s mind and especially ours, the three of our minds.

And we wanted to kind of. Illustrate, what we felt was like the separation in the country through like, A fantasy lens. Like how would that look if this were Atlantis and the divide was with water, because that’s their most precious resource, which you would imagine the Lantis has plenty of water, but not our Atlanta’s it’s, it’s dusty, it’s dry like there’s canyons of coral.

So like the one thing they don’t have a lot of is war. So like how do we, how do we illustrate that, that, and the separation in the people. Through this tyrant and the the ruling class kind of holding all the [00:15:00] water from the average everyday person. So, that was the struggle with the real life kind of implications we wanted to put into the fantasy.

Melissa: Okay. Now tell me more about the Kickstarter itself. When is it when is the diamond, how long do we have left for it? And what are some of the cool tiers and rewards that, you know, people can have.

Kevin or Tony: We have 20 days left and there’s plenty of really cool tears still left. Tony decided he wanted, he was going to do commission tier, so you can get some original Tony Grigori art, which I have some in my house myself.

So one of the pictures of the commissions in there as one of mine. So, there there’s that and those that. What are the higher level tiers, but like it’s totally worth it. I can tell you as a, as a Tony Gregorio art holder, that I would, I would definitely commission 20 to draw just about anything.

I have, I commissioned you to do some crazy stuff. Yeah. And so that’s, that’s one of my favorite ones. A glow in the dark enamel pin [00:16:00] that can be added to any tier because I’m a giant child. And I think glow in the darker pins are yeah, it’s in Atlanta, Atlanta, and skull and crossbones that I designed.

Yeah, that’s awesome. Actually, I, and in the glows in the dark, so, and we also have all the, we have five, five variant covers that are all beautiful from a Leanna Kangas, Jason. Caitlin Smith, Joe Mulvee and Mack shader. And yeah, they’re all different. They have their own vibe, you know, like Leanna’s is colorful and it focuses in on your scene of the water MEJ and then Mick shader did like drew Struzan influenced like movie poster.

It looks like it could be like from like a 1980s action. That’s

Melissa: awesome. Yeah, Liana Kingus is one of my favorite artists. She’s just fantastic. So

Kevin or Tony: I love her color, like the way she uses color and weight, it tells a story without ever even look at her permissions.

Melissa: Yeah. How did you go about picking like the artists for the variant covers?

Did they come to you? Did you [00:17:00] sit around and like discuss in depth?

Kevin or Tony: It, it was weird because Tony and Bob and I all discussed things discussed just about everything, about the Kickstarter before we decided to do it. So the covers we started getting about a month before we were going to kickstart the book.

So we Ana had worked with Bob and I on the ninja nuns book that we did earlier. And she had done a cover for that. So we decided that, you know, she, she said, you guys just have to ask me to do more covers again, cause I like doing covers with you guys. So we did. And she said yes. And so that’s how we got Leon on board.

Jason Copeland, who did the giant fish cover? He’s a good friend of ours. And he always does really great monsters. Cause he, one of the books that he, that he drew was called kill all monsters. So we were like, he did Jason. He instantly said, I want to draw this big monster fish that I read about in the book.

I want to draw that. If Jason’s off on a draw monsters, you know, it’s going to be great. So like there’s no way I was going to say no to that or Bob, and he’s going to say no, or it’s gone. He was going to say no to [00:18:00] that. We knew it was going to be the magical when he got done. And then Matt tater has one, he’s an Eisner nominated artist for sword daughter.

So like, Mack has just a online friend. So like, I was like, Hey. Have you ever done anything with pirates or anything like that before? He’s like, no, but I would love to. And I said, well, here’s a PDF, like take a read. If it’s something you like, like w w w would be interested in doing a cover, then we’ll do it.

He read it. And he, he messaged the next day and was like, I would love to do a cover. Can I do this? And I was like, well, this is crazy. Cause you almost want an Eisner, so you can do whatever you want to Mac. So that’s kind of how that went. And Kaitlin, we picked her because she has a, like a fantasy now a fantasy series that she does.

Like she does all the art and all the writing for, and it’s called the plume bloom and it’s fantastic. So, we’ve seen it before and I’ve seen the art for it and I was like, you know, Like give her a chance to [00:19:00] like stretch your legs to do something cool. She’s like, I’m really jealous. Cause I have a, what she said was I really want to do this.

I’m really jealous. Cause I have a cool pirate story. I’m waiting to tell him, like you guys are going to get to yours first.

Melissa: So every writer has a pirate story, like living in the sight of them. You know what I mean? Like one of those dreams. Just playing in that world.

Kevin or Tony: I went back and rewatched all the parts of the Caribbean movies recently just to get like your mindset to draw are all pirates again.

And it’s just so much fun. Like even the bad parts that carrot B movies are fun. They’re just, yeah.

Melissa: Yeah. Is that one of your favorite, would you say like pirate franchises or films is

Kevin or Tony: there, is there as in there only one pirate franchise, is there more.

Melissa: I think, I mean, there’s older ones, like from back in the day or island or

Kevin or Tony: something.

Yeah. I’m trying to think of the name of the movie. It’s like Gina Davis and the guy who was envisioned quests were in a movie. I forgot what it was called. Is that it kind of cut through

Melissa: Islander

[00:20:00] Kevin or Tony: and it’s not actually a bad movie. Like if you could sit through it, it’s it’s not terrible. Yeah. I watched like, I mean, I just wait and then I got a vocal, the kick I watched like the bounty and then master commander, the perfect storm and anything that took place on a boat like virus.

Was just like a really bad like nineties horror movies and it goes in it doesn’t it like this guy has a Baldwin has Dallas suddenly it turns into a sideboard it’s crazy and watch ghost ship, which has mud in the soundtrack. So it’s a classic

Melissa: one of the theater. I remember that movie. It was, it was bizarre.

Well, yeah. It’s so you probably have to do a lot of research as well, like knowing the different parts of a ship and what everything’s called. I mean, did you spend a lot of time doing that

Kevin or Tony: on a boat? I’m from Florida. So I kinda I’m familiar with, with boats, I guess, like we’ve lived on a boat for like half of my childhood.

So I’m used to [00:21:00] boats. Outside of having sea legs? Yeah, I had to do a lot of research. I looked up the wider, the wider. Is it the wider, wider? I definitely researched that and broke it down a plank by plank and restructured it. Cause essentially in our book, the WIDA gets sucked through this vortex and then it, half of it gets destroyed, but then they put it back together with them.

Yeah, land technology and then dried up coral. And what have you. So if you look at the shift that’s in the, in the preview pages, it’s basically a magnet a combination of the WIDA and then like all this Atlanta and crystal technology and coral. Yeah, but yeah, I definitely like, I posted on my social media the other day, some designs from it.

I broke down like the cabins and, and how everything works and the, just the functionality of the entire ship. And then the entire like universe, basically, like, I was kind of amazing. Well, cause when we first saw it, I was like, God, he put a lot of thought into this. Like we didn’t even Bob and I didn’t even put that much thought into it till then.

And then that [00:22:00] made Bob and I have to like bring our, a game to the writing because I was like, man, there’s no way with these designs looking like this that we can like, just kind of like, yeah, I want it to look functional. You know, like it’s so far out there. I, I want to at least a part of it to look like.

Like not believable because it’s flying on a magic crystals, but like no functionals,

Melissa: so to speak, we want it to make sense, like for your world. Right. Cause like, even if it’s not real, it still has to have like a set of rules. Yeah, exactly.

Kevin or Tony: Excuse me. Cause like, you know, I have to draw it all the time. So I kind of have an idea about how things would look and work.

Melissa: Yeah. And then making sure, like correlates to the writing and it’s all consistent. You don’t have people going wait, they can’t do that. They instead of, yeah, yeah.

Kevin or Tony: A lot of back and forth, you know, I definitely, I’m not somebody who just like, I know some artists like where they work with people and they just want to be left alone and they don’t want to collaborate or, or [00:23:00] touch base with their collaborators is to get feedback.

I’m not that way here. What the writer of my collaborators have to say, because you know, there’s a lot of great ideas there and we can, you know, find gold.

Melissa: Yeah, definitely. Now, how many issues is this? Just a standalone or do you have a serious plan out?

Kevin or Tony: It’s 80 pages and that’s just a standalone, you know, graphic novel.

Bob had read pulp from Brewbaker and Phillips and had decided that like, we need to do an 80 page story, which, which was fine. At first dust pirates, it was actually longer. It was actually like 125 issue. Yeah. It’s five issues, but we cut out all the fat from it when we decided to come back to it.

And like, Ran it by Tony and he was still cool with like, the basic idea is still there. We just cut out, like, unfortunately to make it 80 pages, we had to cut out some of like the world building and stuff like that. But like that is just not necessary to tell the story. So, I mean, some of it, I think we do enough of, I mean, I think [00:24:00] we, you get the gist of why things are the way that they are and how things work the way they work.

And you know, we, we could, you could explore more and explain them more if, if we have the time, you know, if we did more, even in the future, Just to tell this story, I feel like we did all we needed to do. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And when you, like you have you watch a movie, like, you know, like mad max fury road, like you understand the Morton Joe controls of water, and then.

You don’t need to know how he controlled the water. Like it’s just right, right. He has it, he grabbed it. You got it. Like,

Melissa: yeah, the complete arc. And then so are you, you know, toying with doing future stories in the same world?

Kevin or Tony: We’ve talked about it, but the way that this one ends not to have to give any spoilers it’s possible that we could do, or, but I think we’ve already talked about working on something completely different.

The three of us [00:25:00] On a different project after 20 finishes up some other stuff he’s got planned to do. Cause he’s got other projects he’s working on. Tony’s got a ton of other thing, Tony Tony’s in demand. Really? Yeah. He did the worst dudes for dark horse and now they, everybody be everybody to be on that.

Tony Grigori are

Melissa: shaking

Kevin or Tony: his head with his, with his humbleness, but it’s

Melissa: true. Anything. So what do you have in the works that you can talk about? Anything you want to plug.

Kevin or Tony: Yeah. Well first the dust fires Kickstarter, right? Well,

Melissa: we will post a link.

Kevin or Tony: No worst. Dude’s the worst season. Number two comes out July seven. Right. Or Aubrey Sanderson, Laverne. Cause it’s, you know, colors, tailor, Esposito and letters and I’m drawing it. That’s a five issue series. And then I have another Kickstarter for a book that I did call star week.

The first issue got kickstarted earlier in the year. And the second issue is going on Kickstarter in August. That’s completely finished. It’s a colored letters, drawn, everything it’s ready to add up. And that’s what the writer, Alex Wilson. And then I [00:26:00] have another Kickstarter end of the year with it. It was just stuff that like, you know, over the quarantine and yeah, previous to that, I kind of just drew for two years and didn’t really have anything come out.

So like it’s all coming out at once. So stuff that I drew over the last two years is kind of just. All seeing the light of day at once. Yeah. So, I mean, some people might think that, oh, you can do is draw all the time. And it’s like, I do draw all the time, but also like there’s so much stuff I draw on that no one’s ever seen or will see or won’t see for another couple of see, I wasn’t lying.

He had a bunch of Tony kind of recording artists.

Melissa: You’re right. That’s good to be busy, you know, especially nowadays, well, you know, before I let you go, just tell me really quick. What’s your, what’s your podcast about? I, I have not checked it out yet, but I’d love to.

Kevin or Tony: Bob. And I do a podcast called the word bros, and it’s basically like a interview format podcast where we talk to other writers and other comic creators.

And we basically talk about everything from ice cream to [00:27:00] pro-wrestling to making comics. And the reason why we decided to do that is because we feel like. The, the thing with comics is a lot of people want to know about the people behind the comics. Like w like, why are you making this kind of comic?

Like, why do you write horror books or, or for whatever reason they want to know about the creators of their favorite comics. And they want to know more than just, you know, about the comics they want to know, like about the person creating the comics. And if you have a connection with that person creating the comics you, you feel invested in there.

Creative development and their futures. So that was a reason why we kind of started to do it that way. When we do our podcast and we asked it would be, it would be strange questions for like a comic podcast. But the reason why we asked them is because we want the audience to like, get a genuine connection with these creators that are on the show and, and like follow them and follow their works and stay with them as their career continues to grow and change.

Melissa: Love that that’s a great idea. I [00:28:00] mean, yeah. Cause a lot of podcasts are very similar. You know, when you’re listening to interviews online and it’s like, okay, the same questions and you know, I think we try to do that a little bit here as well, you know, just to try to get some different types of responses because yeah, we’re, we’re all like so layered people, you know, it’s fun to like learn more about them.

Kevin or Tony: And you need the structure. So I, I like, I don’t mind like podcasts that are asking a bunch of questions. Every time we go on podcasts, like, it’s, it’s always a bunch of fun either way for me. Right. But but we, when we were going to do it, I was like, I don’t want to, I have a podcast where it’s like question and answer, like type of thing, where you asked the same questions to different creators.

Cause it’s like, You have these standard questions you ask, because that’s just not who Bob and I are like Tony, you know, I’ve been, I’ve been a guest on a podcast to lose three times, I think, three times. So yeah, I think like, yeah, I enjoy it because you just don’t talk about process. And I don’t know, like, I guess some people enjoy like listening to people talk about process and I get that.

You can take a lot from that, but [00:29:00] also it’s kind of boring to me. So like, After a while just to hear, but like, this is how I do what I do. It’s all right. Let’s let me know about this person and what’s right.

Melissa: Well, you have like two kinds of audience, right? You have the, the reader who just wants to hear fun, cool stuff about you.

And then you’ve got like the aspiring writer. Who’s like, I want to know your process so I can replicate it. You know,

Kevin or Tony: you know, process to like everybody, you know, there’s so many different ways to get things done. So like, to me, I’m almost, I’m more interested in the journey and like how they got there.

And what, like what, you know, to me, like the artist, the life that they live feeds that feeds their art. So I want to know, like, where did you come from? And what’s your backstory. Yeah, family or whatever you, whatever people are comfortable sharing in

Melissa: the dark with candles on the dark pen.

Kevin or Tony: Yeah. And just talk and buyers are

Yeah. I gotta swab the deck, [00:30:00] but that’s because like, I think the funny part about it is when it comes to things like process and things like that everything’s different. Like my whole world changed when I found out there was no like standard way to script the comic. I was like, are you kidding? Like, there’s, there’s so many different ways you can do it.

And there’s no wrong way. It’s just a, it’s just a love letter to your artist. Basically. That’s the best advice I ever got from an artist was from Riley Ross. And I was sitting with him one day and he was doing, I was watching him do a bunch of commissions and and I was like, man, he had like a S toolbox, almost like a tackle box full of like pens and markers and all these interesting mark making tools.

And I’m like, make man, he’s like, I’m like, what tools do you use? He’s like, he’s like, man, just use whatever you can to get the job. Then I was like, yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I used to be so beholden to what, like a brush, I’m just going to use a brush and real artists use a brush. Like now, you know, I’ll use a pen or I’ll use it a Quill, you know, or I’ll use a Sharpie.

And I kind of think that equates to everything and not just [00:31:00] comics, but like life. Right. That’s so true. Do to get the job done. So if you’re writing

Melissa: sure. I wrote on a napkin with lipstick once was I didn’t have a pen. Yeah. That’s pretty

Kevin or Tony: awesome. When I was a bartender, I would like, you know, I was a bartender trying to break into comics and I would just take the Bev naps, like when it was dead or slower on a break.

And I would just do it all page layout. You know, gesture drawings just to like, be doing something. And it’s, sometimes I look at that like, oh, that’s cool. And I take that home and then incorporate whatever idea I had into what I was doing.

Melissa: Nice. That’s a creative job too. Where are you at a mixologist or where, you know?

Kevin or Tony: Well, I was, I was, yeah, I was in south Florida and San Diego for a while bartending and it was pretty much like high volume turn and burn fix stuff. Or it’s like nightclubs. Oh, God, you’re just like gravity, three bottles with each hand and making long islands two hands and, you know, just having people screaming orders at you and then, but also at jobs, right.

You’re more of a mixologist or you have to learn [00:32:00] like a bunch of like fancy boutique drinks and stuff with like a lot of muddling and a lot of like interesting ingredients and presentations, but you’re not a mixed Scientologist where you’re like flipping over the counter and like jumping on people’s couches.

Right. Okay, shake that cocktail up like that on a Tom cruise,

Melissa: the truth comes out. That’s really your inspiration. Isn’t it.

Well, you guys have been great. Thank you for coming on and entertaining me and telling me all about stair you’re awesome series so that the dust pirates on kickstarter.com. Everyone should go back. It, you got 20 days left. Thank you for coming on.

Kevin or Tony: Thank you for having us. Thank you

for

Melissa: having us anytime.