D.G. Chichester (Dan Chichester)

Drew [00:06:00]: Every time I think I gotta do another interview with you, I gotta let him talk about his own work. Because I still laugh about when we interviewed, and you asked if you could promote your own stuff, and I flat out said no — because I didn’t know. And then Leo brought it up later. And I realized after the fact, but it felt weird acknowledging it. But when Leo brings it up, you’re like, did you not have a good time? I had a great time. He didn’t sign my book. I talked to him about the Amalgam Universe and he was like, no one talks about that. Everybody starts about Daredevil.

DG Chichester [00:07:33]: It’s true. There is one guy who is such a devotee of the Amalgam Universe. He’s got an incredible collection of art — he’s gotten people to do [name] — as in, he had a binder about this thick of all the original art he’d gotten done by artists recreating those characters. And he was doing a Christmas card project, which I thought was very ambitious, where he was going back to the original creators on the Amalgam stuff and having them do Amalgam stories for Hostess cupcake ads. So if you remember those ads — Spider-Man swinging around and taking cake from the Green Goblin or something. In his head, he wanted this for the Amalgam guys. He’d gotten Mark Waid to do one, and a bunch of other people. I just said, I can’t wrap my head around it. You’re better off going elsewhere for this, or if you can wrangle Scott McDaniel into doing it, more fun for you. But I’m not your guy.

Drew [00:08:51]: It’s like what you said — why would I do this thing I’m not passionate about? You have it and then you see it later and you’re like, this is not mine. Everybody has their limits.

DG Chichester [00:09:25]: Exactly. This guy had been in touch with me on and off through the years. He was always very cordial and very nice. He was offering to pay. It wasn’t like trying to get something for free. But there’s that thing about knowing when to say no to projects you’re not passionate about — or things that would be a burden on your time when you want to put that time elsewhere.

[Transition to Hellraiser discussion via Kari showing her puzzle box replica — approx 00:09:52–00:17:20]

Kari [00:09:52]: Howard Chaykin just recently reached out to his fans and is doing very specific commissions. Someone tried to blackmail him with some of his naughty stuff and he’s like, “Do you know who the fuck I am?” So he was like, if anybody wants some naughty commissions done, send them my way. And I had this three-paragraph description of something from a story I’m putting together that was supposed to be in a Cthulhu Mythos spicy book — kind of tentacle, but not quite. Tesla’s involved and weird porn and all this stuff. And he was just like, “This is way beyond the scope of what I feel like doing right now.”

Drew [00:10:58]: Howard Chaykin is the wrong person to blackmail. I met the man. And what you should do — since he’s gonna be at TerrificCon where we’re gonna be — you should bring that rejection email and have him sign it. Just frame it. Have him write “Dear Kari, fuck you — Howard Chaykin.” I’ll be like, darn.

DG Chichester [00:12:02]: Well — Elliot Brown, who’s a great guy and was responsible for much of the technical illustrations in the original encyclopedic guide to the Marvel Universe — he had designed this fold-your-own Hellraiser box for us, you know, when we did the original book. A giveaway to stores. And it was like a proper set of instructions with tabs and glue, and the last line was “go to hell.” And they made us pull it at the last minute because it’s Clive Barker’s Hellraiser on the promo thing, so we had to change it to “Have a nice trip” — which maybe was worse.

DG Chichester [00:16:23]: The thing is, they never expanded upon the universe in the movies so much. You know, everything was there for them to open it up and make it this bigger platform. But Hellraiser becomes synonymous with Pinhead. And then it has to be there on the poster, every single time. Even in the reboot — you’ve gotta have somebody with pins in their face, whether it’s a Doug Bradley ripper, a female priest, or whatever it is. They’ve done themselves a disservice over the years by not expanding that to where “hell raising” means any number of these [cenobites/story types]. That’s their own —

Drew [00:17:11]: But you know —

[Approx 00:17:13–00:27:15]

Leo [00:17:13]: Before we move on from that — just, I know it’s not Pinhead and it’s nowhere near close — but did you read Batman: Dark Patterns?

DG Chichester [00:17:22]: No. I haven’t. Should I? Was it good?

Leo [00:17:24]: It’s really good, but the — what did they call him? The —

DG Chichester [00:17:33]: The Wounded Man.

Leo [00:17:34]: Wounded Man. Yeah. He has nails driven all throughout his body. He can’t feel anything because his nerves are dead.

Drew [00:19:32]: So you know, I love that during your run of Daredevil, you did the armor — the Daredevil armor. It didn’t have the greatest reaction. And then when it kind of got some distance, it came back and it was a popular book. People were like, wow, this is great. Like, do you remember when Daredevil was, like, not gloomy? And the current Daredevil run — Saladin Ahmed’s run — he’s wearing it again.

DG Chichester [00:20:40]: Yep. I think it’s the ultimate redemption arc — so long as in that current run, they don’t utterly destroy it again, which is what they did after I was removed from the book. They literally destroyed it. They spent an entire issue having, I think, Warren Ellis cut it up with scissors or something. Comical because it was supposed to be this tough material. And then they just put it away. They removed it from continuity. So I sort of see the Hasbro toy, the Black Armor mini series I do with Neto Diaz, and now the fact it’s appearing in the regular book — like, the ultimate redemption arc.

Drew [00:21:23]: I’m so glad we’re going to have Saladin Ahmed on later in the year. And I was just like, I opened the book and I see a John Romita Jr. cover, and it’s the Black Armor. Like, what? And I’ve read the book and I’m like, oh my god.

DG Chichester [00:24:04]: Well, here it is. My prom tux I never got rid of.

Drew [00:24:31]: His regular duds were messed up. He just — hey, I still have this.

DG Chichester [00:24:42]: That was the original impetus for the suit anyway — the original one got destroyed, and he said I can’t go back to the red jammies, I need something tougher. So they’re playing off the same themes. I heartily approve.

I did see the John Romita Jr. cover, and I did get a laugh out of that. When we were doing the Fall from Grace story in the first place, he was concurrently doing the Man Without Fear series with Frank Miller. There was a group interview where they turned it over to me and said, “Dan, tell us about this new costume.” So I go on this enthusiastic rant about biomimetics and what it’s made of — and I look up and I just see John looking at me, and he’s like, “What are you smoking?”

Drew [00:25:52]: [laughs] Nice.

DG Chichester [00:26:13]: I sort of set it up in the Black Armor series in my mind — that it would be available to him. Hence that Melvin Potter had fixed it for him. So I always figured there was another version he had somewhere. Now that they’ve got it back in continuity, maybe they use it again before thirty years go by.

DG Chichester [00:27:09]: They got my number if they ever wanna take a walk down retro lane again.

[Approx 00:27:19–00:30:10]

Kari [00:27:40]: I was so sad because last year, you got booked ahead of time to another con before you got invited to TerrificCon where all the Daredevil people were. And it was like — well, I guess I’m not going to any Daredevil panels because Dan’s not gonna be there. So what’s the point?

DG Chichester [00:28:01]: And then that all got torpedoed anyway because I went on vacation about a week before that was supposed to happen, and my wife had an injury five hours into our vacation. She broke one foot and sprained the other. We had to fly back across the country — we were in Seattle — and then I had to cancel the show in San Jose. And then Mitch, who runs TerrificCon, was like, “Well, do you wanna come up just for the day to be on the panel?” And I just couldn’t. Her injury was too fresh. But I was told Ralph Macchio said nice things about me, so that matters.

Drew [00:28:51]: Ralph had wonderful things to say about you and other people who couldn’t be there, but who contributed to that great legacy of the man.

[Approx 00:30:10–00:37:10 — embedded in the Axel’s Infernal lead-up]

Kari [00:30:52]: I’ve noted a lot of the horror authors — you guys and creators in general, I’m gonna say, because it shouldn’t just be writers since a lot of the artists dig deep too — you guys, I occasionally have to actually look something up, which I’m not trying to brag, but I’m a pretty fucking smart, twisted chick who studied a lot of weird history and religion and all that kind of stuff. And having those little nods — like, in Axel’s Infernal, Sammy the truck is Samael.

DG Chichester [00:31:12]: He is.

Kari [00:31:16]: All of these little connections you drop in, some of them are for a lot of people, but some of them — people are looking them up asking: is that real, or did he just make that up?

DG Chichester [00:31:34]: Yeah. And some of those are that too. In the first issue, the old guy that she rips the pearls off — that’s Ed Warren. Named after the Warrens, the famous couple from Connecticut who investigated the supernatural. And then Clancy, who is in the second issue — the cook — is named after another supernatural investigator or spiritualist. So there are things you can sort of populate through there quite well.

You should read — if you ever get the chance — the Marvel Age interview on Midnight Suns where it was me, Chris Cooper, Howard Mackie, and Lynn Kaminski. It’s probably one of the best interviews about the genesis of Midnight Suns. There’s some great touchstones of when we were all super jazzed about it.

I could tell you the one moment when we all knew it was gonna fall apart. In a subsequent group meeting where we all got together to plan the next big event or crossover — we all pitched some crazy idea and the reply from editorial was, “That’s too sci-fi horror.” And we all looked at each other and were like: you do know what we’re writing here. Right? We’re creating a book called The Midnight Suns with a demon on a motorcycle and a chemically induced vampire and a bunch of other vampires and an evil book from hell — and it’s too sci-fi horror. The massive disconnect between what we thought we were doing and what editorial was then looking for was just so vast that you sort of knew the writing was on the wall.

[Approx 00:34:00–00:37:28]

Kari [00:34:14]: That was my favorite thing — you had a friend who approached you because you happened to hit on something from an ancient text that had only recently been translated, and access to it was so limited that they were so surprised you did it. And you’re like, “I made that up.”

DG Chichester [00:34:14]: Sometimes you pee into something. Yeah. Maybe you pee into something.

Kari [00:34:17]: Your brain knows where to go. You just wove around past the barriers and hit on the exact right thing to do.

DG Chichester [00:34:49]: I think for me, as time’s going on, that’s a much better, freeing attitude. I would always do my research, but sometimes I would try to hew too closely to the specifics of it — whatever character’s name it was, which might be really great in the original Greek but you can’t pronounce it at all — and I would still be very devoted to it. Now I think if you just sort of fuel yourself up on a bunch of influences and then run with it and be damned if somebody calls you on it later — don’t stop the momentum just because that isn’t the exact thing the Aztec hell did. Does it feel good? Then let’s run with it.

DG Chichester [00:35:52]: And honestly, it doesn’t matter, because no matter what you do, somebody’s gonna hate it and somebody’s gonna call you on it and say, well, that’s not right. So you may as well do something that you’re just feeling right about and let it take over from you — because then you’re kind of onto something.

Drew [00:36:55]: James Gunn, when he was starting to work on Guardians of the Galaxy — he had written a pitch, and a fellow creator said this is okay but not great. Like, you’re writing it like you think Marvel would want it to be. What would you write it as? Gunn did his pitch in like an hour and the guy said, “I would see this movie. That’s the movie you should make.” And as we all know, that’s what he went with.

DG Chichester [00:37:08]: That’s a perfect way to put it. You can second-guess yourself out of anything by trying to conform to a different system. Keep it within the sandbox, the playground, whatever — but do it your own way. That’s where the best results are gonna come from.

[Approx 00:37:28–01:14:00]

Drew [00:37:28]: So let’s segue to Axel’s Infernal. Thank you for giving us a script. Reading yours, I knew exactly the references. The way you were describing the diner was just fantastic.

Kari [00:38:20]: Oh, we have a quote from this script. “Penalty two — objection. Neon Hog Slop — creepy. Like the kind of diner truck stop you’d think twice about actually wanting to get something to eat in. But not Addams Family mad. More Devil’s Rejects. Rob Zombie worrisome. Flies, smears, stains, smells. If there’s a place for it, there’s a sign on the wall. Therefore: behold him a full long spoon, that shall eat with a fiend.”

Drew [00:38:53]: And then they called it the Titty Twister from From Dusk Till Dawn.

DG Chichester [00:39:02]: I should’ve dropped that in there. And “Neon Hog Slop,” which is the name of the diner, is actually an anagram from that quote. If you rearrange it, it becomes part of what Kari just read. But I did not call overt attention to it.

DG Chichester [00:42:33]: Let me do a little preamble for folks who don’t know exactly what we’re talking about.

Axel’s Infernal will be a five-issue series. It’s the story of Percy Cross — a bit of a drifter, a bit of a grifter, not a very good person when we first meet her. She’s going to get shanghaied into something called the Underworld Transportation Authority, and become a co-driver, a trucker, along with a veteran driver named Virgil Schiff.

What the Underworld Transportation Authority does is deliver different parts of hells — hells, plural — to Earth. Because the conceit is that there is not just one hell. Every culture in fact does have a hell. There’s an Aztec hell, an Egyptian hell, a Mesopotamian hell, a Japanese hell — all with their own mythologies, all with their own demons, all with their own sufferings. There’s a Barker hell somewhere, but we’re not gonna touch that IP.

There’s a belief system behind them. If you believe in that hell, you’re a big dog. Dante’s Inferno runs the mall down there. But if you’re less known, you’re slipping into oblivion. So what those hells want to do is get themselves to earth so that people will believe in them more. The more they believe in hell, the more metaphysical energy they have. So these truckers have been press-ganged into service.

The chief dispatcher for North America is Necros Terminal — the guy with the flaming head. And the chances of them getting out of this are slim and none. But that’s Percy’s mission: to get herself the hell out of this and hopefully become a redeemed character.

It’s a big world. This is something Carl Waller, who’s the penciler and inker, came up with — the conceit — a long time ago. It expands out beyond this storyline to many short stories, other big stories, and there’s an ultimate conclusion. I know where this ends, which is pretty cool.

DG Chichester [00:46:29]: While we wish we’d done the story a long time ago, I think I would have approached this much differently — with more tropes in mind — if I had done it at that point in time. This allowed itself to come to life and bring itself along. Because Percy is such a wise-ass character — she’s got sarcasm and grit and self-service — it needed that very hard moment to turn the key on getting this started. So Necros grabbing her and putting her through what he puts her through was organic but also very integral.

Drew [00:47:29]: When I was reading it, I kind of imagined Virgil being played by Kurt Russell around Big Trouble in Little China. He’s charming, he knows the score, he’s got some edge to him. He’s the perfect guide — “these are the rules, I don’t like them much less than you, but let’s make the best of it and maybe pick up an apple pie on the way.”

DG Chichester [00:49:01]: That’s very encouraging to hear. This is a very insular world that hasn’t really been shared widely. Especially the second issue, which really gets into the mechanics of how hell — these hells — work and how the UTA, the Underworld Transportation Authority, works. I think it really brings it to life. Carl’s done extremely powerful work. He’s hitting so many notes — the weirdness, the fun of it in some cases, but then the ferocity. So it’s good to hear that we’re not just fooling ourselves.

DG Chichester [00:52:41]: That first issue — the big spread — Carl had kind of vapor-locked himself off because it was such a big deal. The first version was perfectly serviceable, but it was not the book. It was like, “oh, it’s a truck and there’s hell stuff,” and it was very limited and ordinary. So when he sent it to me, I said, “Well, I saw Fred — ” and his first words were “it sucks.” I said, “Well, then what the fuck did you send it to me for?”

He knew it wasn’t what it should be. So I rewrote the spread to open it up — added more detail, threw more things there. At first I’d been narrowing it to give him as much license as possible, but instead I fire-hosed a bit of what it could be. And then he went to town. When he sent it to me the second time, I said, “Well, welcome back to the book, Carl.” That’s not a negative on Carl in any way — he’s doing yeoman’s work — but sometimes you can second-guess yourself out of stuff.

Kari [00:55:39]: It shows what a great relationship you have with your artist — that they’re willing to say “I’m stuck, this is what I got, let me know.” And you can tell them.

DG Chichester [00:56:00]: Right. If you’re collaborating with somebody, you have to have that open exchange because you will always get stuck. You’re always gonna get stuck in something, and you need to use that partnership to draw something else out. I don’t know where to go with this. And sometimes that person will push you in the right direction or validate something — “this doesn’t feel right to me.” “You’re right. It doesn’t feel right. So fix it.”

DG Chichester [00:57:02]: The funding number for Axel’s Infernal issue two is going to be lower than the first one, probably by quite a bit. So we’re more likely to fund. And Kickstarter will push you up in the algorithm a bit more once you fund. I’d like to do something within the next month and a half or two months at most.

Everything is done from a creative standpoint. Carl has totally finished it — fully illustrated in black and white. Wes Wong, the colorist, has colored about eight to ten pages — almost halfway. Wes is very fast. Pat Rousseau, the letterer, has indicated his availability. So no one’s gonna have to worry about whether this book will be done. It’s only a matter of execution — meaning printing. With tariffs and whatever’s going on with the world, printing costs are going to be different, but we’ll figure it out.

[Approx 00:59:37–01:16:25]

Kari [00:59:37]: I’ll introduce you at some point to Carissa Grant. She has 103 add-ons to her current 47-tier rewards on her Kickstarter — she has plushies, stickers, magnets, metal pins, metal cards, neon metal covers, coins. She has anything. She puts out the most add-ons. And yes, I do have metal trading cards. I prefer them because they aren’t gonna break or bend. But it depends on how much you’re going to charge. With Carissa, I’m building a room when I get a house of all the stuff I’ve bought from this woman.

Leo [01:02:00]: For the trading cards, I love them for the art. But for the metal ones — it’s tough to see the art on them. So maybe think about how the metal could be used as a storytelling element. But if you come up with a cool design, have it as, like, a chase — throw them in so many packs.

DG Chichester [01:06:38]: Yeah. You know, at its most crass, I’m just asking you to buy my comic — which I am. Let’s be honest. But you’re also asking people to invest in building this world with us. And in that co-conspirator sort of way, you want people to feel like they’re getting something for what they’re putting in.

Leo [01:06:38]: And it’s something you’ve already invested in. So many Kickstarters, you’re worried about — will they finish? The book isn’t even written yet, they’re looking for an artist. With your stuff, it’s already just about ready to go.

DG Chichester [01:07:01]: Yeah. That is a big point. The first one, when we launched, it was all done. It was only really waiting for the money so we could print it and pay Wes and Pat. We had already paid them — we were kind of recouping our costs, actually. So this one — shut up and fund this Kickstarter. There’s no risk that this is not a comic that will happen.

[Approx 01:16:28–01:35:00]

Drew [01:16:28]: Risk was a fantastic issue one. Where did that come from? What was the idea?

DG Chichester [01:16:49]: This was a great summer for me. Then Demetrios Zaharakes, who is the publisher and editor of Black Box Comics, came up and said, “Hey, remember me?” Because I had sadly ghosted this guy several years before when I was heavily into advertising work. He had been starting Black Box and had recruited Scott McDaniel, and he had wanted to recruit me. His first pitch was something about a psychologist with an edge on people. I just couldn’t wrap my head around it — not because it wasn’t a good angle, just because my headspace was occupied. But fortunately, Demetrios was broader-based and came back when we saw each other in person and said, “I’ve got something new in mind.”

His pitch: a bookie, an odds maker, who has some kind of telepathic power and can see into people’s minds — so she always has the edge on them in terms of odds. Heart of gold, but a little seedy. She’s gonna get pulled into some kind of heist, hijinks ensue. I thought about it for about a week, maybe two weeks, and it had morphed in my mind to: what if we push this into the future? What if it’s a cyber thriller? What if instead of telepathic powers, she’s got some kind of AI instance in her head?

And what if that came about because of a horrible event we call “the Melt” — where a bacteria gets released from the Arctic, meant to solve the climate crisis, and instead causes this ancient bacteria to melt people. A sort of flesh-eating disease. The only way people can recover their mobility is by grabbing off-the-shelf technology — in the future, everything’s got a little bit of AI in it. So you grab an off-the-shelf appliance and turn it into a new arm. It’s shoddy, a bit makerspace-hacked-together, but it gives you what you need back.

Well, Ruby Chance — our main character, that bookie — she gets an extra boost: an AI in her head that actually talks to her. That’s the Risk persona. And while it was a much different idea than what Demetrios originally put forward, he embraced it. And while this property is owned by Black Box, I’m the co-creator on it, which is nice to have.

Manix Francisco, the artist, made it look like this incredible cyber book. Super sleek, dystopian. The future’s got a lot of problems. But he gave it this whole sheen that was not what I expected. Once you saw it, you kind of learned to embrace it. It actually gives some aspects of the story a more hopeful spin, which I quite enjoy now. That’s a thing I love about the comics process — you get that back-and-forth you don’t always expect.

DG Chichester [01:23:00]: Before the Melt happened, Ruby had been developing an algorithm to predict strategies. She was starting her own software company, and the algorithm was called Risk — she was planning to sell it to businesses and make a mint from licensing. So she had created this whole thing. When the world went to shit and she had to get augments — her own arm had to be replaced, part of her face, a bit of her torso — for some reason, that activated this algorithm in her brain. She had been an odds maker before, on her own, sort of as a side business to finance her software company. But when the world fell apart, she couldn’t depend on the business world anymore. She couldn’t sell Risk — couldn’t pursue those goals — so she had to fall back on odds making to make a buck in this very troubled world.

What nobody else knows — and makes her seemingly unique — is that her AI isn’t just “the arm functions.” She’s got a persona inside her head that gives her the ability to see ten strategic angles on any situation and really predict the odds. It also gives her some control over her autonomic body functions. She can control how fast her heart beats, how much oxygen she takes in, what her adrenaline levels are. So she can physically get a little bit of an edge on situations as well. That will itself evolve over the course of the story.

Kari [01:30:03]: Are we going to see more of the people who the Melt affected who couldn’t afford upgrades? Is that chunk of society — the ones who live on the outside of things — is that going to be relevant to the rest of the story?

DG Chichester [01:30:20]: That’s a primo question, and I’m glad you’re asking it because it says to me you’re intrigued by the world. Absolutely — in the next issue, or issue three at most, we’re gonna meet Ruby’s mentor, the one who sort of taught her all about odds making before the Melt. That particular person either was too far gone in the Melt or couldn’t afford any fix. And so we’re gonna meet her, and there’s a whole sub-society of “the melted” who never could get the fixes or didn’t get them in time. They sort of exist on the outskirts of this society — disfigured, disabled. But because of what this person means to Ruby, she still keeps up a relationship and will in fact draw some good counsel from that woman when they meet again.

DG Chichester [01:31:44]: In our timeline, this happened like seven years ago or something. If a child has been born since then, those children will be whole — but everybody else is damaged goods because of what happened. Everybody was affected in one form or another.

Kari [01:32:27]: If you were born okay after the Melt, but you have the chance to upgrade yourself better than human — are you gonna do that? Are parents gonna do that with their children?

DG Chichester [01:32:48]: While the augments were just meant to stabilize and get people mobile — I need to walk, I need to be able to grab things — we do touch on the idea that once people realized they could get these augments, maybe they want upgrades. Maybe I want legs that run a little faster. An arm that can punch through walls. So that’s a choice people start to make because they’ve got replacement parts anyway — may as well have the tougher one. Which creates its own inequity.

Even Mal Corvax — the antagonist, what we call the primes, the oligarchs, the people who still have money even in this broken world — his augments are fancier and slicker. But it’s still screwed up. I’d rather have my eyes than have this Cylon fixture — no matter how sleek it looks, it’s still an intrusion on my self.

Leo [01:34:22]: Unless you’re Geordi La Forge, though.

DG Chichester [01:34:25]: Yeah, exactly. And then he ultimately scrapped his. He’s like, I don’t need these anyway.

[Approx 01:34:39–01:38:38]

DG Chichester [01:34:40]: [Responding to Kari’s pitch interest] My one rule with people is respect. If you ask me for my opinion, I will give it to you. I’ve been down the road where I’ve said that, and people actually don’t want my opinion.

Kari [01:35:33]: The only reason you ask for someone’s opinion is if you actually want to know it. And if you aren’t doing what needs to be done, you need to know that.

DG Chichester [01:35:48]: You say that as a creative and mature person who wants to improve their craft. I cannot tell you the number of times where somebody has said, “Well, I really like your thoughts on this” — which really means they want you to praise it and say, “You’re God’s gift to writing.” There are people who do not want to hear anything else.

When I first wrote Axel’s Infernal — the first proposal — I sent it to my very good friend Greg Wright, who’s an accomplished creator in comics in his own right. His first three reactions were: one, this is great; two, this should be an HBO series; three, fuck you for coming up with this before I did. And then: stop trying to impress people with how fucking well read you are. Just like that. Written just like that.

Because it was a problem. Your things are out of order. You’re burying your lead. He was ruthless in tearing it apart. Yes, there’s something good here, but this doesn’t work, and this doesn’t work, and this doesn’t work. And that’s what you have to be accepting of and want — because somebody who has creative sensibilities you trust is gonna give that to you unabashed. There are people who do not want to hear that. They want: oh, change it to Baskerville instead of Times New Roman.

Kari [01:37:44]: And Baskerville is a better font.

DG Chichester [01:37:52]: Baskerville is a better font. But you have to be — I consider myself a very tough critic of my own work. And I was afraid to send Greg the actual written issues of Axel’s, and he’s read all five at this point. Because I was afraid he was gonna say this really sucks. And if he said it really sucks, I would have to know it really sucks. There’d be no escaping that. But you have to be okay with that. You need somebody like that in your creative life. And you have to be accepting of it.

[Approx 01:38:49–01:44:25]

[Four giveaway items drawn from viewers: Axel’s Infernal #1 to Wolf/Wolfdojo; Axel’s Infernal prize pack (poster, holographic sticker, script) to Tom Dog; Daredevil Black Armor collection to Jar Jar; Street Writers/Street Riders to Corpse Garden Chronicles.]

[Approx 01:44:36–01:47:21]

DG Chichester [01:44:36]: There’ll be four more issues of Risk — Risk #1 comes out tomorrow. If it’s at your store, awesome. If not, tell them to order it. If you can’t get it from your store, go to blackboxcomics.net — you’ll find it on the home page. You can order issues one and two directly from Black Box, and probably subsequent ones.

I will be at Dragon Con in Labor Day weekend. If you follow my newsletter at storymaze.substack.com, you’ll find upcoming appearances there first. And on social at DG Chichester pretty much everywhere.

From Black Box Comics, toward the end of the year, there will be a second series — a second limited series in the sword-and-sorcery genre. I’m switching gears as much as I can, and it’s looking pretty phenomenal.

Kari [01:46:17]: Keep us posted. Anything you need thrown up, we will advertise the shit out of it because we love it.

DG Chichester [01:46:10]: I really cannot thank you enough. You guys are so enjoyable, and very gracious in letting me come on here and talk.

[END OF EPISODE — approx 01:47:21]

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