Bradley Golden - Second Sight Publishing! Mississippi Zombie!

Bradley Golden – Interview

[00:00:00]Melissa:  This is spoiler country and I’m Melissa searcher today on the show. I’m excited to welcome comic book creator and founder, CEO, and president of second sight publishing Mr. Bradley, golden and Marcus. Welcome to the show.

Bradley Golden: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Melissa: Thanks for being here. How’s everyone doing tonight?

Bradley Golden: Oh, well, can’t complain.

Melissa: Awesome. Well, for those who don’t know explain so what’s your relationship. You both are involved in a second site publishing. How, how does that, how are your roles and how are you guys connected?

Bradley Golden: All right, Molly, last time. I’m the CEO and publisher publishing. I’m the one that pretty much started pretty much the guy who gives the final word on beans.

If it was kind of [00:01:00] like the one that, you know, A’s though the one at gills that was final say saying on certain thing. Yeah. I only government, but even when it runs the show.

Melissa: Nice.

Bradley Golden: My official title is the COO the chief operating officer, but I also am the, a publishing manager and the submissions editor. So I really do think you have a lot of the day-to-day things. I deal with the creators and Recruit. That’s a big thing for us is us being a new company and building a foundation.

We wanted to bring in some solid creators and we feel like we’ve built the roster of some of the best indie creators out there.

Melissa: Yeah. And what inspired you all to create this publishing company? And what’s the meaning behind the [00:02:00] name of, is there a deeper meaning to second sight for you?

Bradley Golden: Well,

the, the name came from loaning people to actually give any creations a second. Look, this don’t. Local, the comic, we even see a boat. That’s not your norm, like from Marvel image or DC or any of those bigger companies, you know, the little companies can tailor inspiring stories, just like those companies came in.

You know, we have a lot of other towns, other companies coming out like AWA they’re a nice pub, just coming out, go and get scout, you know?

It’s just like those pregnant

just don’t want passes on

Melissa: the shelf. Yeah. And, and you started out mostly with horror titles. So why horror to start with, and then what made you want to open up to doing other genres like sci-fi and fantasy?

[00:03:00] Bradley Golden: Well, I mean, I love Harlem. You know, I grew up watching holler. I grew up reading home. So actually they really go up Reno. I grew up reading superhero stuff, but like I said before, I love art. So I decided I wanted to make a horror book. Then from there, the reception was really good. So I’m like, if I can do it with this little, what can I do with another book?

Which is cold blooded. And from there, we just put everybody together. The staff started copy off of it, and we actually thrive with an audit press with those particular books. So from there, I’m like, why not open up the company? I’m just a little bit more and let people who have are appealing South by tails or appealing to grow tails, come in and tell their story.

So I’ve started to do different inference.

Melissa: Oh, cool. That’s [00:04:00] awesome. And when did you start the company?

Bradley Golden: The company has just started back in 2016. Out of the basement of my mom was

Melissa: nice.

Bradley Golden: We got, got picked up by a sign comics in 2018. They, they were short, short, lived. I sent a pitch to Ben done from an audit prayers to be featured in their magazine already.

Then it got picked up. I showed them my other stuff and they liked it. Then from there, I just been working with my company called pups with Antarctic press. And from there I kind of branched off. I started modeling all the things we just got to deal with diamonds. Right.

Melissa: That’s awesome. Yeah, I read that.

That’s really cool. Congratulations. Now you’re also a writer. I mean, [00:05:00] obviously that’s probably how you started, as you were saying before, you decided to have your own company. So what kind of stories do you like to tell as a writer? Like what, what do you, I need the horror genre, but like specifically, like what types of stories are really important to you?

Bradley Golden: Splash, but I’d love for those comics on the shelf. We have horrible books. Yeah. But there that the, you know, supernatural, the thrillers, a lot of thinking has to go into it. The nineties lashes you, you knew what, what was Connie? What she was going to get. That’s what those are. Outcomes, stories, allies, terrible.

What kind of stories I want the company to bring to you?

Melissa: Yeah. And, and what types of things do you think are are missing from, you know, that the industry right now in comics that you hope to acquire, you know, in your submission process,

[00:06:00] Bradley Golden: we’re looking for, well, To have some new to push questionnaire for. We was busy as comics that are very diverse.

You can tell though, a superhero story, you can tell a Sapphire type story where the guy goes and try to save the world so many times, but to actually make it different and make it stand out. It has to have something that’s quite different from the norm.

Melissa: Yeah.

Bradley Golden: And those are the type of stories that we’re looking to publish.

Melissa: Awesome. Yeah. And I feel like that’s something that is starting to become a little bit more prevalent. But. W, you know, there’s still a long way to go. I mean, when you look at comics like you know, a better route and on the stump and black that that’s still something that is not as accessible. Are you hoping to kind of make that more mainstream and, and bring that more to, to readers?

Bradley Golden: Absolutely. Absolutely. That’s [00:07:00] one of the models here. Second sites, you know, we, we have with the most a and the future of indie economies where their players deployed diverse tails on just going away from the norm way from work has been done before and a new stuff.

Melissa: Yeah, that’s great. So tell me about some of the titles that we can expect.

Like, what are you really excited about? That’s coming out in 2021 that we can, you know, be on the lookout for.

Bradley Golden: Well that was going to be in reviews was already, isn’t going to be right now is a trade of Bible on the Lake, which was published to not express as single issues.

Melissa: Oh, nice. Oh, that’s awesome.

That looks great.

Bradley Golden: Oh, the lady coming down. And a marble to

Melissa: Alex

Bradley Golden: ice cream, ice cream, [00:08:00] who kills people, makes ice cream toppings different, realized craniotomy and feed them to the neighborhood kids.

Melissa: That’s scary.

 Bradley Golden: H worse Mark is have the other books to show. H we have lady freedom, the low chores coming down the line. And when we hear a book of Lexio, there’s this a whole assortment of books all over with different takes on the specific journey with their ear.

Melissa: That’s cool. Yeah. And and now with the, with the diamond preview, like that’s really cool.

How, what does that mean to you? I mean, is that just going to up the game for you guys with, with that?

Bradley Golden: It has definitely a up for us, you know, it meant a lot. To so many people  me, Mark, is that the creative teams there’s, you know, working alone, their [00:09:00] titles are, that’s one thing that we strive for when we I actually brought those people.

There was to give them that mainstream distribution so that they can get their voices and their stories seen by the masses. So it even diamond was a huge thing for us.

Melissa: That’s really cool. Yeah. That’s a great step in the right direction. And and, and Marcus take us through you know, the submission process a little bit.

Like what how do people submit to you? What’s that process like and what do they need to have, you know, prepared before they do it?

Bradley Golden: Well, it, depending on the the book that the creator is submitting to. For example, the Mississippi zombie , which we started was actually published the starting last year in may.

So zombie we’re looking specifically [00:10:00] for zombie stories that occur in the state of Mississippi. The hence the title of the book, Mississippi zombie for other anthology in print second side publishing presents, depending on what theme we’re doing. Like the last book was the harvest of harms. So we were looking for horror stories, which we were accepting eight page completed stories.

As far as book publishing we have a four man committee consisting of myself, Bradley Larry spike, Jerell, and Peter Brewer. And we read through the books and by consensus we decide then if it’s something we want to publish or not,

Melissa: Okay. Great.

Bradley Golden: Our whole goal is Bradley stated [00:11:00] is because we all are independent creators in our own.

Right. We understand that one of the biggest things as independent creative, that you can get. Is the mainstream exposure. You know, we are promising these guys. They’re going to make millions of dollars, but what we’re telling them and what we’re able to accomplish with our deal with diamond is to get them that mainstream exposure that a lot of the guys have been working

Melissa: for.

Yeah, which is, yeah, it’s difficult to do in an indie market. And what are some of the challenges that you face as far as, you know, being indie versus traditional?

Bradley Golden: Well, the biggest challenge is the fact that the traditional companies have characters that have been around for generations. So they have a generational fan base, the grandfather, the [00:12:00] father, son, and uncles, and whatnot.

I’ll gravitate. The one character, you see a whole family of people wearing Batman stuff or Spiderman stuff. Whereas with the independent guy now you do have some people who have longevity in the game. They’ve had their characters out for at least 10, 15 years, sometimes even more, but that’s few and far in between.

So it’s the recognition of the characters is, is. Hard to talk to someone about a character when the creator himself lives and say, Texas may be very popular in the state of Texas though, because he hadn’t gotten that exposure. Someone in North Carolina, they know about the book with the nation comics, people in North Carolina, people in California, people in Texas, they all know who Superman is.

Right. Yeah. That’s, that’s the biggest challenge. And that’s [00:13:00] why the mainstream distribution becomes important.

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely. And, and as creators yourselves, and you’re also running a company, so you’re wearing many hats all the time. I, you know, how do you balance all that? Like setting aside, you know, your creative time to work on your own stuff, and then also like nurturing new creators?

Bradley Golden: Well, that’s it’s a sacrifice. Rarely now we’re just talking probably a month ago saying how going into 2021. We’re going to have to take turns, setting aside a week to try to work on our own projects because we spend most of our time doing business. But once again our company this is what we signed on to do.

As far as providing these services to the creators, because we do understand that as an independent creator, you wear many hats. You have to be not only your own editor at [00:14:00] times, but you have to negotiate with your printer. And there’s just a lot of different things that you have to do

Melissa: and umbrella did you, did you want to add onto that?

Bradley Golden: Oh, no dove markets here. You know, it’s definitely a work in progress for us, you know? But like you said, about a month ago, we have gotten a plan together where we can take a week or so out of the month. Now we’ll take turns and, you know, work on certain projects that we personally have coming up.

Melissa: Yeah,

Bradley Golden: but most time is, is, is, is the company, you know, getting books out, you, none of the creators, you know, the whole man,

Melissa: how many, how many artists do you have signed so far?

Bradley Golden: Right now we have

seven, about 10, 12, but we also have in the company. That [00:15:00] deals with artists deal with colors. They have their own stable of artists. So we go through, what do we use?

Melissa: Yeah. You can kind of contract people out and, and sort of find if you don’t have it, then you’ll find another company that can maybe outsource. Is that kind of how it works for like, Hey, they have a cool artist that I can utilize for this.

Bradley Golden: Yeah. I mean, for the move forward. Yes. But a lot of the the books that we bring in have teams already attached to them now.

But if they do need an honors, we do have a guy, like I mentioned before, that has his own team of artists and colors and letters who we work with exclusively to get things done.

Melissa: Okay. Yeah. And then with people you can, you’ve worked with before, so you can rely on them. And I mean, you tend to kind of when you find so many, like you kind of keep them around, right?

Like you, you want to use them again because they, you work well together and you like them.

Bradley Golden: Oh [00:16:00] yeah. Oh yes. It’s all about the quality and dependability. That’s the big question. I mean, the bivalent, dependability is part in the world, but if they’re not dependable deadlines,

Melissa: Yeah, absolutely. You have to treat it like a business, you know, you can be creative, but you also have to definitely like show up on time and do the work for sure.

Now broadly. What are you working on specifically for your, for your own work? Do you have anything you can tell us about a new, you know, book that you’re working on that we can anticipate in the coming future?

Bradley Golden: Yes. I’m actually working on three things. Another Thailand, four things I’ve had to call Sony, which is my take on child’s play. Another one called these damn kids, which is my take on cheered another corn a story for Mississippi’s zombie analogy and another title. That’s like a blade type deal.

Call that data among us. Very

Melissa: cool. Very cool. So yeah, you definitely my core. I’m guessing I’m sensing [00:17:00] a pattern here. Yeah. What, what’s your, what’s your favorite horror movie?

Bradley Golden: My favorite horror movie. Believe it or not is it’s not Friday 13 or, you know, nine, 11 streets. And like that it’s an old movie called the changeling.

Melissa: Oh yeah. That’s a creepy movie. Yeah.

Bradley Golden: That’s not it, you know? Yeah. Yeah, 1970 movie.

Melissa: That’s cool. How how, when did you know that you wanted to be a writer? Like, were you doing stuff when you were a kid or was this like later in life?

Bradley Golden: Actually I won, I didn’t know that I wanted to be a writer to later on, but what got me into comics was I had a very, very bad speech impediments.

I didn’t have any friends. My older oldest brother worked for the local grocery store. He would bring me books on comics home, and they actually helped me re let me speak. Oh, wow. [00:18:00] And so I kept reading comics that income is growing up, you know, until I come to the realization that that’s something I wanted to pursue as a career.

So I went to college for art, graduated with RD. I don’t know what happened between there and now trend grass from doing art to actually writing. But yeah, that was highlight the whole thing, how I actually got into it.

Melissa: Oh, that’s cool. So you’re an artist as well as the writer. That’s awesome. So do you do do you ever do your own art for your own books or do you like, do that?

Keep that separate. Okay. All right. Cool. And in what was, what was your inspiration? As far as comics, I mean, I know we’re reaching back here, but what was your favorite comic book when you were a kid

Bradley Golden: Astro, stadi, Astro city? Then, you know, Garth in his preacher, I was feeling that, but when I was young beyond it was [00:19:00] X man.

Melissa: Yeah, mine was silly. Mine was Archie, Archie, Betty, and Veronica. I used to buy them in the grocery stores.

Yeah. I was like a girl growing up in the eighties. So,

you know, that’s an interesting thing to do. That

Bradley Golden: was pretty good too.

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, I’m not gonna, you know, age any of us here, but, you know, it was, it was a lot different, you know, growing up eighties, nineties, whatever just, you know, the accessibility to comics too, you know, as far as like, especially as a girl, you know, you’re not really encouraged to read comics, you know, so I didn’t really get into it until I was in my, my twenties on, I start going to comic cons and I had friends that worked in comic book shops and, you know, the industry’s changed a lot.

I mean, it’s stayed the same in many ways, but. I feel like there’s so many more types of comics that you can, you know, get into now and like yourselves, you know, you’re bringing an aspect of that for people. Unlike just the [00:20:00] usual, just like you were saying, superhero comics and stuff like that. So you know, how important is that to you to kind of, you know, carve your, you know, Mark into the industry?

Bradley Golden: I mean, it is very important. The goal for this company, like I said before, was to, is to be diverse and original. We don’t want the same old superhero tails. No same, Oh, our tails that scout you bought or doing something different. So what are some things that has not really been done in common? And that’s the, what to me was the 90 slasher type type stores

brands at all.

Melissa: Yeah. And would you say, do you think Selma’s had a big influence too on that.

Bradley Golden: It is, it is.

[00:21:00] Melissa: Yeah. That’s awesome.

Bradley Golden: Actually came from a movie we watched called shotgun.

Melissa: Mm, yeah. Yeah. That’s an oldie, but goodie, right?

Bradley Golden: Oh, yeah,

Melissa: yeah, yeah, no, there’s so many good ones. I mean, you know, I feel like I was having this conversation the other day where I think a lot of the older horror films were done so much better than a lot of the newer ones, you know, that, that the ones that come out now or a little bit contrived, I think, and you don’t

Bradley Golden: have the same things.

That’ll get same thing, you know? Yeah.

Melissa: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Bradley Golden: Oh, no.

Melissa: Yeah, no, exactly. I completely agree with you. It’s just like, you know, one of my favorite horror movies is the shining and There’s just like a different feel like you were saying, then the ones that come out now, they seem, I don’t know if they’re overproduced or are too catchy, you know, but, but those, the old horror films are great.

I think it’s awesome that you guys [00:22:00] are trying to re recreate that feel through comics, you know?

Bradley Golden: Yeah. I mean, to go back to the question about the horror movies in the field. Everything is too computerized or right now making the eighties and in the nineties, they didn’t have all that, you know? Yeah,

Melissa: absolutely.

Okay. Yeah, for sure. Well, what’s what other exciting things can we look forward to from second site for 2021? I know you guys got the diamond previews. You know, are you, you said something about imprints possibly coming out, like give me all your promo stuff.

Bradley Golden: Okay. Normally let Marcus handle it. The upcoming stuff. That’s the submission manager, you know, I mean, I don’t really see things until they get approved and the three step process, when the last process that step for the books come, come to me and I be like, all right, now, so this what [00:23:00] we got so I can add it to our print schedule.

Awesome. You know,

Melissa: Marcus take it away.

Bradley Golden: Oh, well, besides what we’ve seen come out in the January previews. Next month we will have a blow torch by Alfred page coming out as well as chance by alphabet. We have a Jonathan Hendricks frictional night also, which will be coming out and Carla good decades duplicate.

Melissa: Hmm, very cool.

Bradley Golden: Well, fairly where it looked for that, that if you’re a fan or ever was a fan of the nineties image books. That lineup chess blowtorch they’re right up your alley over Alfred page. That’s. That was one of his favorite periods in the nineties. [00:24:00] So his books have that there, that type of book nonstop action.

That’s

Melissa: cool. That sounds really fun. Yeah. You guys have a lot of content coming out. I’m really excited for you to see what, you know, how your readership is just going to grow. I think, I think this was just like the beginning for you guys, you know, the, the tip of the iceberg, as they say I think everyone needs to keep an eye on, you know, second site.

Bradley Golden: Well, one thing that that we aren’t trying to do is to lock ourselves into. One thing, I mean, we, we are a hard company. That’s what we started on, but at the same time, we have some very strong Saifai top titles. We have strong superhero titles, you know, we, we are brought in creators such as Ramon Govea who was the writer for the incidentals from lion forge [00:25:00] of we bought a, his own create our own properties, all CHRO control, delete as well as menagerie.

And just also kick-started a menagerie declassified anthology. So, you know, for science fiction things. You know, we have titles like that. We’ve signed people like Handel Consolo and his blood stall and chromes, which is something that is just, just totally different, totally unexpected from a hard company.

So that’s something else to be looking out for. I mean, leave, we have a lot of stuff down the pipe and a lot of other surprises that. Oh really going to make people say, Hey, these guys are serious. It wouldn’t be doing.

Melissa: Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think people are starting to already kind of pay attention, you know, cause you’re putting out good work [00:26:00] and you’re requiring, you know, more and more artists and creators and, and for people.

So, so basically, you know, for our listeners, you know, if you, if you want us to submit what’s, what’s the website address?

Bradley Golden: They can submit to [email protected].

Melissa: Awesome. Perfect. Well, that sounds great. I’m really excited for you guys. I’m really happy you came on the show tonight. We’re going to, you know, try to promote you as much as we can too, because we love to support indie comics.

So thank you for being here tonight. Absolutely. So, yeah, everyone check out all the great titles that second site publishing and go support indie comics. And don’t forget your local comic book shops too. They also need love right now, especially right now. Well thank you, both Bradley and Marcus for coming on tonight.

Yeah, come back. Anytime. Anytime you guys want to promote something, you got a new title coming out. If any of your artists want to come on and promote themselves [00:27:00] as well, just let us know. We’d love to have you all on.

Bradley Golden: No problem. We’re going to take you up on that.

Melissa: All right. I hope so. All right, everyone.

Thank you so much. Have a great night.

Bradley Golden: You too. You too.