Welcome to another episode of Diner Talk! This time we have travelled to Boston, to hang with former Nexus employee Ben Morse, and Tim Stevens. Along the way, we decided to get some work done and meet up with a group of guys who are starting a small comics company called Foongatz! So, please, sit down here with us in the basement of the Dunkin Donuts in Boston, Mass. It’s not a diner, but Boston’s kind of uncivilized like that.
JAMES:Welcome everybody, we are sitting here in Boston, Mass – in the basement of a Dunkin Donuts. That sounds a whole lot more interesting than it actually is. We are sitting here with not only members of the Nexus staff, but Foongatz Studios, and as always the beautiful Danielle O’Brien.
JAMES:So, why don’t we start with everybody giving their name – say who you are.
BEN:Ben Morse, Editor and Chief of The Nexus (editor’s note: memories… light the corners of my mind)
ALEX:Alex Drinan, cocreator and writer for Foongatz Studios
BILL:Bill Gallagher, co-creator of Foogatz Studios, and all around Foongatz man.
KEVIN: Kevin Wilson, web and media guy.
RON: Ron Smith, co-creator and artist.
TIM: Tim Stevens, staff writer and bagel eater.
DANIELLE: I’m not introducing myself.
JAMES: ..and Danielle, who’s always with me. So let’s get going. Which one of you guys started Foongatz.
RON: It started with a story that Bill came up with.
BILL: Right, a long time ago, Foongatz is something that has been in my family for a long time, you could say. Sam was my dog, and in 3rd grade I had to write a project. It was the first time that I had to write whatever I wanted. So my mother said I should write about something I liked. I liked my dog. I liked dinosaurs. I liked Back to the Future. So I melded them all together and I came out with this crazy story about Sam, where he goes back in time and meets this dinosaur and goes back home with this dinosaur as his pet. Then, I won an award for it, so I had to read it over the loudspeaker. I thought that was it, but then everyone the next day was asking what happened next with Sam.
BILL: So when I was a little kid, I had a hard time going to sleep, so as I would be going to sleep I would try and figure out what happened next – and that was how it began. Sam’s world built around that real basic concept and now it’s blown up to where we have over 100 characters, and we have the Life and Death of Sam. Other characters have their own storylines that could be turned into other comics. It’s this massive thing that’s been working in my head since the 3rd grade, and as I got older Sam got older to where it’s developed.
JAMES: From the website, you can tell that it goes through the ages and how Sam has grown up in design, very cool.
BILL: I was influenced by Star Wars, Spiderman, and Star Trek. All of that can be found in Sam – it’s a new twist on old school stories.
JAMES: Okay, so how did you get all of these guys involved?
BILL: Well, Alex is my neighbor and I went over his house – I had thought I was the only geek in town. I met him and found out I wasn’t alone. He liked comics, and we would shoot the shit and finally I told him this idea. Al started giving me new thoughts about it, and we’d sit in my basement and came out with these crazy stories instead of going out and meeting girls and doing the things normal guys do. We had another kid, Jesse, who we would all just sit and bounce ideas off each other, and Sam turned into this humongous thing. It was great that I could talk to someone who knew and could see everything that was coming out of my head. Sometimes, the things I say don’t come out the way I want, but Al was able to translate it – so it’s great. Then down the road, I was working at the Stop & Shop in the produce section, and I met up with Ron Smith, and I forget how the conversation came up, but Ron was doodling something and —
RON: Actually Tom, our co-worker actually told me that you did a lot of the same thing with creating – so now there is actually a character based on Tom. One of the mechanics, so we met up and I showed Bill my stuff and he told me about his.
BILL: So we came up with this unique, human-earth based story, and I had this crazy thing – so we came up with this unique way of bringing the ideas together and you won’t be able to see the whole thing for another seven years. We have years worth of stuff waiting in the wings. Everything that’s in Sam is part of our lives. Like, one of the characters is based on a dog that lives down the street named Chach. It’s such a good name, Chachi. So we have these different things, where everything in the book has a deeper meaning to us than making up words.
JAMES: We have the preview right here – is issue one out?
BILL: Issue number one is in the works.
JAMES: Finished?
BILL: It’s in production. We have this first story arc. A 12 issue arc. It’s complicated since it’s our first time doing it – so we’ve made rewrites and Alex who is our writer, and he has the hard job of trying to translate this into something that makes sense that people want to read.
KEVIN: The one big part is that they are looking at the entire story, so they have to make it make sense. They want it so you understand what’s going on now so you get it later. Sometimes you’ll watch a movie and you’ll go, ‘Hey, they didn’t do that an hour ago.’
BILL: So we’re mapping out the timeline to make sure everything makes sense. The story’s been revamped like ten times.
JAMES: So the story already has a beginning, middle, and end.
BILL: Oh yeah, then there are the spin-off stories.
JAMES: So, Bill and Ron, you two. You put the stuff together and then give it to Alex for the final scripting?
BILL: Yeah, we have weekly meetings about how we want Sam to go with the stories. Actually, Alex and Ron both write while we all just shoot ideas off of each other, and together we all are creating this entire universe. The Life and Death Of ‘Universe’. We realize that there was something before and there will be something after, so we have to be constantly thinking of where each of the characters came from, what planet, what’s that planet like.
ALEX: It’s sort of like Tolkien. Tolkien built the world, and then put the characters in the world and followed their path and wrote down their storyline. That’s kind of where we are at. We built the characters, and now we want to build this world that the characters live in and get it to work together, which is harder than creating the world, and then putting the characters in it. That’s the idea.
JAMES: Now what kind of comic influences do you have?
ALEX: It all started up again a couple of years ago, when I got back into comics. Bill and I used to collect comics when we were younger. Mostly Spider-Man, Spawn – we loved Todd McFarlane and the artists from back then. We got away from comics for awhile, and then a couple of years ago I was in college and the Spider-Man movie was coming out and it just happened where we fell back into Spider-Man – I started reading Ultimate Spider-Man, but just because I was into Spider-Man at the time I grabbed it and fell in love with the whole thing all over again. I started following Brian Bendis and started reading all of the stuff that he was writing, and it was sort of him and reading his interviews that made me say ‘Wow, this is something I’d like to do, getting into the creative end of it.’ So I called up Bill and said ‘Hey, what do you think about creating comic books, let’s say we bring Sam out of the basement’ and so Brian Bendis is probably the catalyst of this whole thing.
JAMES: What other books do the rest of you read?
BILL: Actually, I’m not reading anything right now – I’m so busy with life. Alex is the comic guy.
ALEX: I have about 20 to 30 I’m picking up nowadays. All of the Ultimate titles, the Spider and X-Men books, the new Avengers series by Bendis. Some of the Wildstorm books – Sleeper, and Y: The Last Man. I read Warren Ellis. There are a lot of writers I follow and anything they do I’ll pick up, Ed Brubaker.
JAMES: So you guys are sharing the writing tasks, who’s doing the art?
BILL: Basically me and Ron. I’ll come up with the sketches and stuff, and Ron comes up with the characters with me.
JAMES: When you go to the website, there are a bunch of different styles. You see all of these different art styles. Some is very late 90’s very liney with little details, and now it’s got a much cleaner style.
KEVIN: More animated style.
JAMES: Exactly. So how long have you been working on, since the rebirth?
BILL: About three years of talking, three years of work, and since July or so we’ve been treating it like a full-time job for us.
JAMES: When are you hoping to have the first issue out?
BILL: Spring, early Spring.
BEN MORSE (former Nexus employee): What kind of distrubution are you guys thinking about? Are you thinking of it as a local comic or a national distrubution?
BILL: We’re hoping national – we’re hoping that Image would pick it up. If Image doesn’t pick it up, then we’ll self-publish and do it locally and slowly. We want this to let us take Sam into movies, and games and we want to go full blown.
BEN: So the target audience would be a younger group?
BILL: Yeah, it’s younger – the opening scene that we did just a couple of days ago, anyone who likes Lord Of The Rings, Star Wars will like the opening. Then it kind of shifts to where a younger audience would be able to understand it better. It’s a mix.
BEN: It’s the kind of thing you want kids and adults to read then.
BILL: Oh anyone can enjoy it, yeah. Now later we want to have a spinoff of ‘Draxio’ and he’s more of your badass, and his storyline is geared to more older teens.
KEVIN: It’s not teen, and younger, like a Power Rangers – it’s not the same every single time–
RON: It’s just going to be entertaining, we want kids to see it and go ‘Hey what’s that?’ but we’re not writing it to be alienating to older fans. The later stories, as it gets further on, it gets grimmer and darker a little bit mroe adult.
BILL: It really turns into a soap opera, like Sam has a life that we come to watch. He ends up having kids and it gets really interesting.
RON: So the idea is that when kids start reading it, by the time we’ve finished, they’ll be adults.
BEN: When we were talking earlier, you said everything has a meaning, so what is the deeper meaning of the whole story? I mean without giving anything away. The moral. Like with Spider-Man it’s “With great power comes great responsibility’. Do you guys have a tagline like that?
BILL: Time is a written thing – people believe in destiny, and what happens is that there are greater powers playing chess. Sam stands outside of time, and he’s the ‘X’ factor. It’s hard to explain. Everybdy has a destined path, we know what each of these characters will do, with Sam – he is the random factor that nobody knows what to expect from. I’m doing my best to not really give the whole thing away, there are alot of secrets.
KEVIN: Have you ever read Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time series? The way that the fabric of time is woven is a great pattern, and Sam is the person that when he moves, all of the fabric bends with him.
BEN: So if you could convey a lesson it would be to say, “You gotta do what you want to do. Live your own life. Be a catalyst for change.”
BILL: If someone says that you have to be this or that. It’s that you can change things and do what you want. Sam, in this book, has the ability to change things and make them right. I would love to explain more, but it would give away what makes the story interesting down the road.
JAMES: Are you guys thinking about doing the convention season? Travelling around with it?
BILL: We just opened up at the Boston show, and then we’ll open it to shows soon.
JAMES: How was the feedback?
BILL: Excellent feedback.
KEVIN: The plan is to have that first issue ready to go for Wizard World LA. We want to have everything in full swing by then.
JAMES: Great, so what do you guys do in your day jobs?
ALEX: I work part-time, 3 days a week for a special investigations portion of an insurance company. On my days off: the writing and development.
BILL: I’m the graphic designer for a newspaper, and I plow snow for the city and do whatever I can to make money. I work on Sam constantly.
KEVIN: I teach at a local boys and girls club, doing design in graphics. Photoshop, AfterEffects, Video production. I also work at a deli.
RON: I’m a graphic artist for a small firm outside the city, and I also work part-time at the Apple store.
BEN: Hey, Tim, what do you do?
TIM: I work for FedEx Kinkos as a customer representative.
BEN: Good job.
TIM: So how do you guys feel it is balancing the day job with the the creative comic work? How do you make it work?
KEVIN: It’s a very, very upset girlfriend. That’s the reality of honestly having to work on getting a comic off the ground.
BILL: Or ANY business. Especially when you are creating a whole universe, and you have to sit down and BE creative, and that’s why it runs slow – because life gets in the way.
RON: Anybody who you talk to who has had any success in getting a comic out there, they always say that it takes 40 hours at your day job, and then 40 hours at your comic. It’s the only way it’s going to get done, but that’s why it takes so long, because you have to do all of that and focus it so you have a product at the end of it.
BEN: Did you guys have any kind of mentoring or success stories?
RON: One guy that I’ve been following is Raven Gregory who did ‘The Gift’. He followed a path that he succeeded on, and I see us trying to get into something like it, where he started self-publishing and writing and artist – he self-published the first 6 issues and then got picked up by Image around issue 10 and it seemed to work right for him. There was a challenge for him to get it done – a lot of people said that he would give up. He got rejected by Image 2 or 3 times before they took him in. It’s a financial burden too to self-publish. To do it successfully for that long.
JAMES: So are you guys sharing that expense? The preview book is a great job, but I’m sure it cost some.
RON: We got a helluva deal on that because of where I work using the digital printers.
JAMES: Change gears, if you look on the preview book, and on the website – who are these girls. We have girls in the book, but no girls with you.
BILL: Yeah, they’re the Foongatz girls, they’re at home making their outfits and shit. No, seriously, they promote – Pam is Alex’s girlfriend.
ALEX: Yeah, we got together when we both shared the same job. She’s been one of the most supportive ones, she helps with the editing. She’s from New York, to there is a bit of tension there with the Red Sox winning.
BILL: Then we have Illeana, and she’s my girlfriend – we’ve been together about a year. She’s a talented graphic artist herself, and designer. Then Lisa is my sister, and she’s a dental hygenist. She does our teeth. Then we have Kate —
KEVIN: Kate is my girlfriend, we’ve been together 4 or 5 months, I’ve known her for a couple years. Ron’s girlfriend is in Playboy so we couldn’t put her in there.
JAMES: Serious?
BILL: No.
(At this point time, everyone makes fun of me for falling for this. Ron seems like a very nice guy and I wouldn’t have been surprised if he dated a Playmate – somebody’s gotta.)
JAMES: So, where did you get the name Foongatz?
BILL: It’s something I’ve been saying my entire life from my Italian heritage – all of my relatives talk Italian. We tried to imitate them, and the punchline would always be ‘FOONGATZ!’ So one night, we were trying to come up with the name for the business and Ron said ‘How about Foongatz Studios’ and we liked it. Then the logo came out and it’s really cool.
RON: Plus it’s fun to say and it’s memorable.
KEVIN: And if you do a search for it, we’re the only thing that’s gonna show up. You’ll get a bunch of links and they’re all us.
BEN: When did you guys start putting the website together, because for a group that doesn’t have their first issue out, you guys have a really nice website. Honestly better than some of the bigger companies out there.
BILL: Kevin is really talented at the web design, and the great thing is that we added so much that isn’t even up there yet. We just started it up in July, over the summer, and on October 1st we released the first batch of it, we have lots of surprises and we just haven’t had a lot of time to update it.
KEVIN: It took us the longest to come up with the navigation style, but once that was done, the rest of the website came together. You go to the website now, and there are 7 or 8 flash animations with character pictures and maps with text – the contest page, the galleries are up. This is all done at 2 or 3 o’clock in the morning. Then we have the newsletter that goes out once a month that brings people back to the site. A lot of people wanted to see animation, from what people have said to us, so we’re putting a lot more Flash animation.
BEN: You guys have a message board, do you get lots of traffic from that? And if so, where are these people coming from? How’d you get the word out?
BILL: We’re trying to put the word of mouth out there, get people to join the site and keep putting things up there to have people keep coming back. Hopefully, we’ll have a small community.
RON: We’re hoping through the conventions and shows, it will bring more traffic.
KEVIN: We’ve been going to the local comic stores and we let them know where we’re going to be. Hopefully that will bring some traffic in before the show. Now before the first show, we’re getting 1,000 hits a day, which means each time a page is refreshed it counts as a hit. That was pretty decent considering. After that first show, I haven’t checked it, but it’s probably closer to 1200 or 1400.
JAMES: That’s very respectable considering. It’s also a very interactive site. So, is there anything you have planned before the first issue comes out?
KEVIN: One of the concepts of the website is that it’s treated sort of like a ‘0’ issue. Something that will lead right into the first issue of the comic. That’s what the whole ‘Datamatrix’ section is, it will be all the backstory that will lead directly into the first issue. There are some areas that we’ve left out of the initial list, that we’ve purposefully left out so we have things to add in later. What’s going to be coming up soon is something called ‘THE VAULT’ which is all of the art that we have from the beginning. 20 years worth of material, so we’ve gone through it and we’ll have the different eras of the work. It will be like a DVD extra, where you see everything came from.
BILL: Like how the characters came to be.
KEVIN: Yeah, and also Ron is working on a 3-D rendering of the opening city, where the first story takes place, like a virtual reality tour of the whole city’s points of interest.
RON: And these things are to supplement the actual story, and may not really appear in the first parts of the story, but to immerse yourself in the world.
BILL: We have 3D ships we’re rendering. It’s designed. It looks awesome. We can’t show it, because it’s supposed to be a secret at the beginning.
RON: So we’re trying to get people interested by telling them about all of the cool stuff and not giving all of it away. So people will be surprised when we show it.
JAMES: As soon as you finish the first issue, are you going to publish it immediately or are you going to try and have a couple of issues under your belt like a buffer zone.
KEVIN: If we can get the first one done, we are going to get it printed so we have it to show people. We might not send it for distrubution, but we will at least have it to send out to publishers to see if there is interest.
RON: We can even do a print on demand, do a small run.
BEN: Have you gone to the local stores in Boston to see if they’ll carry you guys.
ALEX: There has been a great reaction from stores because they know how hard it is to get started, and they will at least hand out the preview books, but we haven’t gotten to the point where we have figured out a percentage – but there are stores that are more than willing to carry it. Even if it’s us driving the books to the stores that have said they’ld carry it.
JAMES: Now you said you had a deal worked with the print company, so are you going to do the first issue full color? Or are you going to do full color cover and then a black and white story?
BILL: It’s gotta be full color. We have a lot of colorful characters, and lots of colorful action. It has to be full color or else it isn’t as good.
BEN: You know we’ve gotten this far into the interview, and we really haven’t even talked about what the story is about. We’ve tiptoed around it, but do you want to tell the folks reading this interview how the story starts out?
ALEX: The story picks up about 30 days after Sam wakes up in an alley with no memory of who he is or how he got there. All he knows is his name. He doesn’t know where he’s been, so the people that find him, they take care of him and set him up in an apartment to try and help him figure out who he is and to get a sense of his life back together. Meanwhile, there is a big conflict going on with the main organization that is headquartered on this planet, called the ‘Alliance of Shipping Federation’. What they are is a giant intergalactic corporation.
BILL: A giant trucking company.
ALEX: They’re the company that linked together all of the planets, by shipping goods and transporting people. They’re the ones that hold the galaxy together. This character, Rankor appears and starts attacking all of the ships, hijacking the cargo and killing people. Nobody knew where he came from, or what his story was – just that he was trying to take control of the Federation. He gives them the ultimatum that they could give everything to him now or else. So, the Alliance decides to not give everything over to this crazy guy, so they recall as many of the ships as they could and are forming a new security wing to the Federation. Training their personnel to fight against Rankor’s armies. Where the story picks up, is a couple of days right before they release this new security fleet to fight Rankor and it takes it from there. Sam gets wrapped up in the whole thing. In the second issue you start to see how he gets involved.
JAMES: So you say that you have this cast of 100 characters. Do each of these designed characters have a place in your universe? Or are some of them that you came up with and you want to wedge them in there, or do all of them have a placement?
BILL: 90% of them have full stories and histories that are waiting to be told. They’re just hanging around in the box waiting to be let out. So, yeah, most have a purpose. Some just came up as cool drawings and later on became something more.
RON: Dracio was just a neat looking character, for example. Then a year or two years ago, we figured out who he was in the story – and now he’s a major central figure.
JAMES: Do you find that, since many of the characters came from people in your lives, a drawing comes and you go ‘Hey! That’s a friend of mine’ or do you meet someone and go, ‘I want a character based on him.’
BILL: Here’s an example. There is this guy, Beebo is Bronto, the dinosaur guy’s, brother. Beebo is an alterego to my cousin Sal. So we gave him this nickname Beebo, he has curly hair, and he’s a big guy – so, Bronto has a weight problem. We always thought Beebo was Bronto’s brother – and I wanted to make Sal into a character. He was someone I saw and wanted to turn into a character, so he looks similar to Sal.
BEN: So when you guys make it big, you aren’t worried about lawsuits from your family?
BILL: Well we don’t really insult anybody TOO bad. I think that most people will be happy. Like the guy down the street, he was a hero to me, his name is Steve, and he’s a big hero in the story. He’s become this huge legendary figure in the story. He’s the first guy that made a trucking transport, so he’s a big important figure. The real guy, Steve Powell was my mentor playing baseball and growing up, so when it was time to do this character, I thought of Steve Powell and that’s how it came about – the hero stature and all that.
JAMES: It doesn’t translate well on tape, but it’s funny to watch as Bill keeps looking at Alex, to make sure that he’s allowed to SAY these things. You guys are very secretive about the whole project, it’s fun to watch.
BILL: See, I have a bad time with giving things away. Usually, it happens that I can’t say the words I want to say because my brain is scrambled, so it’ll come out and I’ll say the wrong thing. That’s why Alex told me that if we did this interview I wasn’t allowed to talk.
KEVIN: We actually were going to get Alex a buzzer so he can just beep Bill when he starts talking.
JAMES: Alright, so alot of your influences come from your lives, do you have any other outside influences – television, books, whatever, that you’ve drawn from?
ALEX: With TV, I’d have to say people like Allen Sorkin, Joss Whedon – his work on Firefly kind of led me in some ways. For comic writers, guys like Ellis, Brian Vaughan, Bendis. A lot of the old Chris Claremont stuff.
BEN: Did you ever read the Jack Kirby, New Gods?
RON: I have not.
BEN: I think it would give you a lot to work with. It’s like the comic equivalent of Star Wars, good stuff.
RON: I always draw back to the old anime, you know like Starblazers, Battlestar Gallactica. Things that just were outside of reality. Things were just out there and totally creative and you had to just imagine.
JAMES: So is this the only project running right now in Foongatz?
ALEX: This is sort of the springboard, the one that is the most developed. There are two other secondary series that we are working on. One is Ron’s that he brought to the table a while back. Another is a story that Bill came up with on his own that will all go up under the banner and they all tie together. If you read Ron’s story, and then you read Bill’s story you wouldn’t think that they all connect together. They do, though. About halfway through Ron’s story when you realize that it all ties together with this story about all of these crazy animal characters.
JAMES: How long are you looking for this to run? Do you have a time table?
ALEX: It’s hard to say.
BILL: We could do 7 or 8 movies with it, and there is lots of little stuff in there.
ALEX: If we were to go and do major story after major story, we could easily go five years. If we were to stop in between and tell the character stories, and then eventually spin off and do other smaller stories about characters – we could get spend our lives working on this. We do have a set course of how things are going to happen and how things are going to end?
BEN: Have you ever read CrossGen? It’s a similar set-up.
ALEX: I liked how all of their books started to tie themselves together.
BEN: Well… they didn’t do so well so be careful.
ALEX: I dug Sojourn, my girlfriend read the detective one. Meridian was her other favorite one.
JAMES: Three out of four of you work in design – what kind of design background do each of you have, or did you just sit there one day and decide you could do it.
ALEX: Yeah, I Just drew when I was a kid. I don’t have any professional training, just a couple classes in Adobe Illustrator – everything is just stuff I picked up.
KEVIN: I loved the art stuff, but realized I couldn’t make money doing this – so I did something stupid, I went and got myself a degree in Broadcasting. By the time I was a senior at Emerson, we were hitting a lot of the computer crossover – the power of the computer was hitting us. I finished all of my senior work before I finished my Junior year and I dedicated myself to doing editing, linear and non-linear editing and then moved into learning Flash and Illustrator
RON: My beginning was this whole thing. I can trace it back to visiting my Aunt and my cousin had a picture on his wall and when I asked who did it – he said that HE did, and it was the first time I realized that someone can do this on their own without picking it up on a newsstand. It all goes back to that one day.
BEN: Are you guys considering doing animation for this?
BILL: Oh yeah.
BEN: If you had your pick, anyone in the acting world could voice these characters – any ideas? Because Orson Wells WAS in the Transformers movie.
JAMES: He was as his last role. It was one of his best – that and Citizen Kane… we’re done.
BEN: It just goes to show you, you can get anyone.
ALEX: You guys watch 24?
JAMES: Yeah.
ALEX: The guy who plays Palmer.
JAMES: Wait wait.. don’t talk about the third season – Dani and I haven’t gotten that far, so you’re not allowed to ruin it for us.
ALEX: I’m on the second.. so it’s ok.
(At this point the entire conversation breaks down into discussions about box-sets, favorite shows, and Joss Whedon. With more than three people talking, it’s impossible to decipher what’s going on. My apologies to Joss Whedon.)
BEN: From what I see, this is a very personal project for you guys – who would you guys want, past or present to call you up and say ‘Yeah, I want to work on this book’. What guys do you want working on your book?
ALEX: The story that Bill came up with on his own, somebody who would be good for that is a Robert Kirkman or Sean MacKeever, as it’s kind of a comedy team thing.
BEN: Well list them off, some people actually read our site.
RON: Oh, the entire team from Fifth Element, I think it’s the exact same style. The colorful characters, it’s perfect.
KEVIN: What’s so great is I see this whole concept, our whole thing as being used as a video game. The way the character starts off normal and grows more powerful and gains things along the way. When I went to the guys we were talking about coming up with ideas for a video game down the road and then we switched – taking all the focus away from the games and more into the website.
JAMES: Okay, why don’t we go around the table with each of the guys and if you have anything else you want to say about the whole process.
ALEX: I think I’m ok.
BILL: Good. Nothing..
KEVIN: It’s not just a comic. It’s a whole experience to get you involved in a universe more than just reading. If it’s animation, or a short game, or polls on a website. We’re trying to be more than a comic.
RON: The main message I want to get with this interview, is that the story may have heroes and villains, but when you look at the whole six or seven arcs, some of the characters you love at the beginning take drastic turns later on. Some that are quiet in the beginning get thrust into the front near the end.
BILL: Nobody’s safe.
ALEX: Oh yeah, people die.
KEVIN: If you watch Whedon, he wasn’t afraid to remove a character. If someone hurts their arm in an episode, the next episode they have the sling on. It’s all about the concequences.
BEN: See we’re not at a bar, so I can’t ask mine and Tim’s trademark question. We always like to ask the person we’re interviewing—
TIM: Yeah, we usually would point out some guy sitting at the bar, point someone out and ask, “Hey.. can you take him? So… the guy upstairs… who served us our coffee..”
ALEX: You’re a black belt right?
BILL: Yes, I can actually kick anybody’s ass. Seriously, anybody. COME ON!
And that… my friends, is another Diner Talk. If you liked what you read, please go check out the Foongatz boys at Foongatz! Comics. We at the Nexus want to thank them for taking the time to talk to us and wish them the best of luck on all of their endeavors.
This is James Hatton with the crew, saying ’til next time – see you at the Diner.
