Milestone Forever #2 comes out later today, and whoops, it happened there, too. Click through for the quotes. Read them? Okay, now look at this one again:

“Sometimes I suspect that we build our traps ourselves, then we back into them, pretending amazement the while.”
—Neil Gaiman

Whoa! Neil Gaiman! That’s a good one, right? The thing is, it’s from The Sandman #75… a book wholly owned by (wait for it) DC Comics.

So! Let’s recap. DC Comics pull quotes from Milestone Forever #1 and #2 because they didn’t want to get sued. They wait until the book is at the printers to let the writer (and owner of the work) know, preventing any changes from being made. At least one of the quotes they pulled was from a property that they own completely, it being a legacy character and created pre-Vertigo. It’s the latest in a long line of shady, but legal, moves they’ve made regarding McDuffie and Milestone, and possibly the last, considering that McDuffie has no announced DC work coming up.

Were they gonna sue themselves? Is that it? Was Karen Berger gonna run across the hall and whack Dan Didio with a shoe if a quote from The Sandman made it into a comic that isn’t from Vertigo?

Or is someone at DC a petty, childish, scummy, shell of a human being? I don’t know who, nor do I have any ideas, so I’m not dry snitching here. I honestly want to know: who’s dicking around McDuffie? ’cause at this point, beyond of a shadow of a doubt, somebody up there is a firm believer in Industry Rule #4080: comic book people are shady.

I could go on and on and pile insult upon insult, but you know what? This situation should be clear to anyone with half a brain and half a shred of basic human decency. Someone there is prizing beef over money, and someone up there is mighty stupid. End of story.

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For a while, I was trying to keep up with every black character in mainstream comics. After a few months of reading about Bishop try to murder a toddler, DC Comics screwing over Dwayne McDuffie, John Stewart not appearing ever, and Cyborg being stuck in Teen Titans Hell, I was officially burnt out.

I was suddenly faced with a dilemma, though. When it comes to mainstream books and black people, you’re generally gonna be SOL. At the same time, I’d carved out this niche as a “race blogger.” I felt like I was supposed to be paying attention to all these characters. That’s the conscious thing to do, right? No. Absolutely not.

Here is the thing. If you’re supporting black comics by purchasing books from Marvel or DC, you’re not supporting black comics at all. They do what they do, and sometimes they do it well, but they are targeted at one very specific audience. Tom Brevoort has owned up to this in a refreshingly frank blog post. If it doesn’t make dollars, Marvel and DC will not do it. If it does make dollars, Marvel and DC will definitely do it, no matter the consequences. Don’t believe me? Ask Dan Didio about Milestone sometime.

I don’t say this out of malice or as an insult (well it is almost definitely an insult, but play along with me here)- Marvel and DC are businesses, and businesses are in the business of making the most amount of money with the least amount of risk. Branching out from that core audience, the audience that largely pays their bills, brings with it a certain amount of risk. Big Two fans are notoriously conservative, with new story developments often being met with suspicion, cynicism, impatience, and sometimes even outright hatred.

So, here is a basic fact: you cannot support black comics just by purchasing books from Marvel and DC. If you want to support black comics, actual black comics, you need to shift your focus from the characters and the ridiculous idea of company loyalty to the most important part of any comic: the creators. Characters are secondary at best. Creators are the engine that make the car go and they deserve more attention than they get.

Pay attention to black creators. You need to be checking for Dwayne McDuffie, Kyle Baker, Daimon Scott, Jeremy Love, Khari Evans, Jay Potts, Brandon Thomas, LeSean Thomas, Doc Bright, Julian Lytle, Ron Wimberly, Denys Cowan, and Trevor Von Eeden. Look up black webcomics and graphic novels. You need to get on Google and look up the people who actually make the comics. You need to buy the Milestone reprints, the Bayou trade, get the Brotherman trade paperback, and read some Keith Knight. Pick up things like Nat Turner or buy works that black people had a hand in.

Adjust your point of view. Supporting black comics means listening to black voices. Where before we had to live with what we were given, no matter the quality, it’s 2010 now. Over the past few months, I learned that if you want black comics, you can find them. Creators can go straight to the web now, publishing their books with a minimum of financial investment and bringing the good stuff directly to the people. “Breaking into comics” has less to do with hoping Marvel and DC look your way and more to do with simply doing it for yourself these days. And that’s a good thing.

I did a lot of reading for research for the pieces this month. Being a part of the Glyph Comics Awards helped in part because it exposed me to brand new works. I’d like to thank everybody who suggested black creators or books to check out– that was super helpful. I couldn’t write about everything I read, but I’d like to think that just knowing it existed informed my writings over the last month.

Change the way you approach black comics. It’s 2010. We should be off holding characters in higher regard than the people who make the stories run.

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It’s a while later now and we’ve got more Miranda Mercury on the horizon. I wanted to catch up with Brandon as part of Black Future Month because this guy deserves the attention. Miranda Mercury has a great blend of action and character, and “Not Dead Yet” is sure to be a treat.

All images here feature words by Brandon Thomas, pictures by Lee Ferguson, and are from the first few pages of The Many Adventures of Miranda Mercury #295. Look for the new joint later this year in the form of three over-sized issues and, fingers crossed, more later. Check out Brandon’s website, his blog (which is the home of his long-running Ambidextrous column), and follow him on Twitter as @mirandamercury. For some fun, check the script to #297 and look at some of his notes on other books.

Buy Miranda Mercury: Not Dead Yet when it comes out.

The Image boom, no doubt. When my father took me to my first comic shop, Spawn #1 was one of the books in my very first stack. That initial Image explosion, coupled with anything Spider-Man or Batman related properly introduced me to comics, and I’ve been here ever since. No matter what else adolescence got me into, I never abandoned comics for any real period of time. Have probably only gone two weeks without a trip to my local shop, and the only thing that ever changes for me are the specific comics I’m reading. I love the medium, I love the characters, I love the possibilities, and it was only a few years in that I started to leave behind thoughts of being a successful novelist, and get really serious about some day writing comics for a living.  
 
The first book of yours I read, after following your columns online for a while, was the issue of Robin you did. It had good action, but its biggest strength was in the character work. I noticed the same thing in Miranda Mercury- plenty of action and clever bits to bring people in, and then strong character work to keep them in their seats. What draws you to that side of storytelling, where equal importance is given to action and characterization?

Well, thanks for saying that—in both of those cases I really knew and understood the motivations and thoughts of those characters. Miranda is obviously my baby, but in the case of Robin, I probably own almost every comic appearance of Tim Drake, both in and out of costume. Chuck Dixon was the person that convinced me to really consider writing comics professionally (in a one hour seminar at a Chicago Con I attended) and I think that was always one of his greatest abilities—to successfully blend action and character.  

I mean, I love the big crazy action as much as anyone, but character is what matters. Every movie, comic, or television show that I’ve ever looked to as an inspiration has ultimately put character in front of all else, and that’s the kind of writer I aspire to be. If you strip away all the pyrotechnics and the great shots, if there’s nothing underneath it, then what was the point? Any of us can point to dozens of things where we wish more attention was paid to actual story and believable character motivations, and you know, I think there are enough examples out there of people who were able to do both. And the action stuff tends to be easier anyway.     

I just wanted to work on something that was challenging from a storytelling perspective, and was the kind of book I’d want to read every month. At the time I started developing it, I’d finished up my small stint at Marvel and didn’t feel like there was anything else in the pipeline there. My prospects in comics seemed a little limited, and I think Miranda was something of an emotional response to that. Something that was designed to have no conceivable limits and push me into directions I wasn’t fully comfortable with as a writer. The mandate is that anything goes, and any idea, or genre, or tone can be seamlessly worked into the narrative of a particular story, make absolute sense for those 22 pages, before the book transitions into something completely different in the following issue. Miranda was a project that was all me, because as much as I loved my God Complex book, it initially came out of my Luke Cage Epic proposal, and only feels like a partial extension of me.  

Miranda Mercury is for that kid whose life was irrevocably altered by seeing Star Wars on VHS for the first time several years ago. The big extensive sci-fi project that I promised that kid I’d do one day. I didn’t really intend for it to fill a void in the market, but in this universe and history we’re creating around her, a black sci-fi heroine should feel almost commonplace and like the most obvious thing in the world. Knowing where Miranda comes from, and who her grandfather is, and what her family has been doing for decades, it’s obvious to everyone in the book that the name Miranda Mercury is supposed to mean something. Now comes the task of convincing “comics” of the exact same thing.  
 
You’ve had a long, hard road with Miranda Mercury, but you’ve managed to keep the majority of the creative team intact. The title of the relaunch, “Not Dead Yet,” works on several levels when you consider that fact. What kept you from throwing up your hands and calling it quits?

It’s hard to even say, man—equal parts stubbornness and foolishness, I guess. After ten years pushing at this, it’s going to take a lot for me to just walk away from everything. I can safely say that Miranda Mercury is the most “important” thing I’ve ever created, and the response to that first issue was fantastic, and exactly the sort of thing we were all hoping for. That said, getting to that point was arduous, and this book has been encountering (and outlasting) resistance since the moment we initially started submitting it to publishers. Either people just didn’t get it, or were unnecessarily afraid of it, but the book being published at Archaia in the first place was a huge victory, so the title going on an unexpected hiatus is really keeping in tune with how it’s been for us since the very beginning.  

We find unexpected opposition and/or some other disaster that threatens to completely cut us down, and eventually, we find a way through or around it. That’s been the deal since we started this in 2005/06, so as frustrating as the process and the delays have been, we’re confident it’ll ultimately pay off for all involved. “Not Dead Yet” is the perfect phrase to describe this book, and the aspirations of a lot of us working on it.  

I do write things out full script, but Miranda Mercury is a true collaboration between Lee and I, so he usually knows exactly what’s going to happen in the stories before we even get to that point. We talk on the phone and trade e-mails constantly, not just about the book mind you, but he’s contributed a lot more than the book’s pencils—story ideas and titles, cover concepts, marketing ideas, etc. He’s fully invested in all this, and deserves just as much credit (or incredible blame) as I do.       
 
I can’t think of a comics creator who has had such a long-running and frank column as your Ambidextrous. It’s pretty interesting, in part because you’ve done a lot of “growing up,” for lack of a better word, in the public eye. What prompted you to begin, and most of all continue, Ambidextrous? 

Well, I got started because I wanted to break into the industry and thought writing a column would be a great way to not only speed that along, but to journal a process that I mistakenly believed would take no longer than a year. Then, I’d continue writing the column for as long as possible, detailing my exploits as I (hopefully) made a name for myself in the business. I was 21 and like most 21-year olds, thought I’d had everything clearly figured out.
 
I’m still at it almost 10 years later because throughout this whole experience, it’s the one thing that’s all mine. I never imagined that I would write over 300 columns, or what I could possibly still be talking about, but like I said before, I’ve been in this since ‘92 with no breaks. When I started the column, I was in halfway through college and obviously had no idea what I was embarking on, or how long it would take. It was all very simple in the beginning, and has proven anything but. For better or for worse though, the column really documents almost a decade of my life both personally and professionally, and provided I can get where I want to go, it’ll all have been worth it in the end. And somebody can come along and see that it’s possible to get into this often-insane business…and hopefully they’ll be able to do it a little faster with all my mistakes posted up for all to see.  
 
On sort of the same tack- I know you changed the way you do your Stackology column at the top of this year. How has being so visible online changed how you approach pitching, creating, and writing about comics? 

Actually I think leaving Newsarama has made me considerably less visible, but I haven’t noticed too much of a difference on a professional level. The column has certainly opened tons of doors for me, but at this point in my career, the best thing I can do is get some more good work under my belt and out to the masses. I think I’ve proven that I can certainly write passionately about comics, and about wanting to create them, but I don’t want that to be what people ultimately remember about Ambidextrous.  

Breaking into this business is impossible, and if you want it, you might have to put in five to ten years of incredibly great experiences, demoralizing defeats, false starts, etc. before you get where you want. But if you can hang in though and keep yourself focused, you have a great chance of making it. My boy (who is a fledging actor) always says, “One day…this is all gonna be a funny story.” Hopefully, that’ll be the case with Ambi, and this seemingly endless quest of mine. 

What kind of research do you do when writing scripts, whether for Miranda Mercury or other works? Do you wing the sci-fi, depending on the tried and true “If it sounds good, if it makes logical sense, it works!” or do you really dig in with the various science and engineering blogs before putting pen to paper? 

Yeah, in Miranda, if it sounds cool, it’s good to go. Don’t do much research in regards to the tech stuff, but I do consciously ignore almost every other sci-fi comic out there, which is a shame because there seems to be some great ones out there. But I don’t want to be influenced by anything more than Star Wars, which is the main reason I ever wanted to write in the first place. Grant Morrison wrote this great line in the first issue of All-Star Superman, “Only nothing is impossible,” and that’s the sort of vibe I want people to get from the series, that you never know exactly what or who is coming next.  

For everything else, the internet has put so many potential sources at our fingertips, and I’ve found it indispensable when you’re researching other comics, and characters you’re not terribly familiar with. Books, movies, magazines, are my usual stalwarts for anything that’s slightly more based in reality. But yeah, most of that Miranda stuff is just getting made up…   

Oh, absolutely. If enough people support the series, then there are many more stories to tell. Even though this first mini-series is all about Miranda’s impending death, I’m sure everyone out there realizes that in comics…death is never quite the end, is it? If the market will support her, we intend for Miranda to be around for a very long time, and I’d like to make the project a staging point for a host of other series that I can gradually introduce.

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The Ecstatic

Black history, as it was taught to me growing up, was more limited. The picture that was painted for me portrayed a very poor, down-trodden, and miserable existence. An existence punctuated by regular lynchings, scarred backs, and burning towns. We learned about Martin Luther King, Dred Scott, WEB Du Bois, the high points of the Harlem Renaissance (pretty much Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston), a little bit about the Great Migration (black people moved, the end), a little bit about Malcolm X as Boogieman, and maybe a little something about Marcus Garvey, if the teacher was brave. Black history generally stopped with the death of Martin Luther King.

The problem with this teaching is that you don’t get the whole picture. The idea of blacks as victims is left reinforced and ingrained in your head. It turns life into warfare, a constant struggle for life, liberty, and happiness. Due to that, you miss out on hearing about the other parts of black history. The dapper dressed gentlemen taking their lady friends out to cut a rug, the kids in the ’60s who were born into a brand new world, and the normal folks making a normal living. Black is never normal.

It’s fair to say that we’re in a new age of comics now, one that allows for comics that I would’ve never found when I was a kid. Take Aya for an example. I can go out to the store and buy a hardcover book about a black (strike one) girl (strike two) living in the Ivory Coast (strike three) who is basically living a soap opera (you’ve been out for ages kid, get out of here). Back when I was trapped in the bad old days of Wizard and superheroic speculation, the weirdest thing I read was Frank Miller’s Sin City, a book with no capes, a lot of actual curse words, and a healthy dose of nudity. Nowadays, if I want to read a soap opera starring a girl in Africa and her friends, I can do that.

I never saw that kind of thing when I was a kid. Black folks in comics were generally sidekicks or supporting characters. They were Ron Troupe and Robbie Robertson, or Luke Cage and Bishop. Born and bred in misery, but managing to struggle above into the light, or simply there to dispense useful advice or be the token negro in an otherwise all-white cast. Sometimes both. Sometimes neither.

In Aya, you’re looking at an all-black cast in an all-black city. They come in a range of shapes and sizes, they talk funny, they dress funny, and they are instantly relatable. The antics in Aya are natural, ones that many of us have gone through. It’s no different than Inio Asano’s solanin, which portrayed mid-20s ennui through a Japanese lens. Despite being from a different culture, despite being set on a continent that is generally portrayed as being war-torn, AIDS-ridden, and horrible, Aya shows that some things are universal. The words might be different, but the emotions and actions are the same.

The deeper the penetration of more diverse voices in comics, the better, as far as I’m concerned. I love Unknown Soldier, and I like Luke Cage, but those shouldn’t be the only stories we see. Sometimes it’s nice to read about some kids hanging out at their local equivalent of Makeout Point, or reading about Jack Johnson, or anything other than the stories we’ve all heard a million times. Black character vs racists? Boring. Black character educating a kid on good music? Bring it on. Hero with a dark past, darker skin, and a bright future? Yeah, whatever. Talk to me about that cool cat in the fedora and designer glasses from the ’40s.

The highlights of black history, and therefore the highlights of the black story, are made of hate, murder, atrocity, and overcoming adversity. That’s what we focus on, and that created a situation where there simply isn’t enough actual living. You get the poison, but you never see the antidote. You don’t get the full 360 degrees of experience, and you’re left with something incomplete. On the flipside, black is beautiful, and that doesn’t just mean the skin tone. It means the entire experience. All of the hurt, all of the pain, and all of the love. Aya captures that.

Marguerite Abouet and Clément Oubrerie’s Aya series embodies Black Future Month to the fullest degree. It takes an angle, an approach, to black people that’s rarely seen and then knocks it out of the park. These are good books, and their unstated political position can be summed up as “we are people, too.” There is a lot that is foreign to American audiences in Aya. However, there is more that is universal to all peoples, and Abouet and Oubrerie put it right there on the page for you to consume. Aya, more than any other book I read while prepping for this year’s Black Future Month series, is the future. It’s a sign of marvelous times.

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His style is something like modern pop–something you could describe as “ripped from the headlines” if it wasn’t just slightly ahead of the curve. Bright colors, bold design, and slick composition make up his Guns’n'Honey series, while his figure work is part-manga/anime, part-superheroic style, and part-something else. We’ll call it Future Pop. Right now, you can check his website or his webcomic Ants. Click any of the images in this piece to be taken to his Flickr account. If you see him at a con, hit him up and get on his list for art. You won’t regret it.

Yeah, man, I’m getting old. It’s all mental though. When I was little, I wanted to be an “everything scientist.” I can’t tell you what that is, but then I saw the original weeklong Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon. That got me hyped. I started drawing really back then. I could draw a perfect copy of the cartoon-style Turtles. I also used to watch this show called Secret City on PBS. It was like a personal art class everyday. I used to tape it. I loved to watch Bob Ross, all the landscapes and happy trees.

I didn’t fall in love with comics or anything until X-Men #1, which I think is one of the best superhero comics ever made. Jim Lee was gully on that book. The opening with the training to this day looks beyond what I can do to me. I was hooked on X-Men from that day. I had all the trading cards. My first comics were DC though. But, comic books wasn’t my thing until 12. Before that, the comic strips were my thing.

Another thing that got me into art was popularity to a degree. I wasn’t an athlete or the smartest or the best looking, but I could draw the best. And as a kid, being the guy that could draw a Ninja Turtle was some juice. Even girls liked them. The schools always pushed me, like them kids who could play basketball and stuff. I never felt like the ostracized fanboy, I guess ’cause I liked video games and sports. I think that helped my art, I try to stay with what’s current, what’s poppin’. 

Your style is pretty distinct. If I had to describe it in terms of genre, it’s like “retro future pop.” Your style brings throwback designs, trends, and styles into the future, updating them for the modern day and adding a splash of bright color into the mix. I’m thinking specifically of the Jubilee picture you did a few years back and your Guns’n'Honey series. They aren’t in a typical pinup style, but still manage to work extremely well. How’d you develop this style? 

Well, my mom died in the summer of 2006 and I didn’t draw for a couple of months. I was watching some videos on TV and it got me thinking. My friend gave me the line “guns and honey” and I started drawing a cute woman from a picture and she had a gun. I changed some stuff that I didn’t like. I did another one and another.

Those are the first Guns N’ Honey. Kind of just experiments and getting my feet wet again. Then I started thinking about what I was seeing in rap videos. The things you see the most are women, usually objectified. They also, most of the time, talk about violent acts. Rap also has a need to boast about things, particularly fashion–Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent, Louis Vuitton, all of that. So I mixed all that up, but instead of men with guns, like others have done before, I used women. But I wanted it to look like a fashion spread you’d see in Vogue or V.

I used design elements and typography to set apart my pieces from the most. I want to use bigger, coloured, zip-a-tone style shading. I started taking lyrics from songs I listened to. I got “Talk to the Cannon” from Weezy on that Dedication 2 mixtape. The piece made itself. I found the reference on my computer that I knew would work, changed some things, had my colourway set, and laid out the type and bam, it was done.

Over time I started trying to make them look like old genre movie poster or pulp novels. Robert McGinnis is a big influence, but so is Hype Williams. I’ve also always wanted to get into fashion illustration since I was really young. So, this is, in a way, me just doing stuff on my own for myself.

I’ve been told I draw the type of girl I want. I don’t know about that, but I do try to draw women that look strong and dangerous, but not all naked for any old reason. Not every woman has huge breasts, and, you know, a woman with a B-cup and a t-shirt on looks good too. I also like taking poses of men and flipping them with women, like Malcolm X’s window picture and James Bond’s Quantum of Solace newspaper ad.

So, you could say that my style is from consumption and regurgitation. It is pop culture because that is where it comes from. What’s funny is that I couldn’t draw a female without copying from a comic book until I was like a senior in high school. I sucked at drawing women until college. Now, that is all I draw.  

It’s 2010 in America. We’ve got a black president, Luke Cage is running the Avengers, and Jay-Z is one of the biggest entertainers around. Black culture permeates the fabric of America at this point. We’re inescapable. I know you read a whole lot of comics, probably more than I do, so I’m curious: are you happy with where mainstream and indie comics have ended up with regards to black people? Is there anything you wish you could change? 

I think with all this progress we’ve gotten in the real world I think comics is at times, especially the mainstream books going backwards. I like Bendis’s Luke Cage; I like how he’s so important right now. But a lot of other characters are like missing, or like Bishop in the X-books: made insane.

And random hair growth bothered me too. Brother Voodoo grew the quickest dreads ever. Cloak magically got a perm, then got thin dreads, too. Cloak had a close almost baldy the last time we saw him.  Firestorm is just used for tragedy in Blackest Night, Mr. Terrific got shanked in JSA. I don’t know what is really happening to most black characters in DC. A big Green Lantern event and John Stewart has really done nothing. Like, he is the most known GL right now. Not Hal. Not Kyle. Heck, Guy has some more buzz in actual use than those two. Now, that will change once the movie comes out, but JLU still comes on Saturday nights on CN. So, John is still that dude.

I think they really don’t have any creators that know how to write black characters, or really even minority characters, well. So they don’t. The writers who do kinda get driven out. I guess it’s because the middle of the country won’t buy a minority book (that includes women too) but that won’t change if they won’t try.

I think even when a creator like Morrison will make some minority characters, the creators don’t use them and the fans complain about them. I want a Manhattan Guardian book with a Newsboy Army co-feature. How come no one pitched that? If someone did, why can only Morrison do it, why did the editors pass on this? That pitch writes itself. Shoot, I have a whole one in my head. One for Mister Miracle, too. Maybe you don’t even publish it as a regular comic, try another way and market it somewhere else. They don’t promote any of this stuff in other places that an audience that might buy it.

I can’t really speak on indies. I buy a couple and it’s so diverse in terms of content that I can’t say “There are not enough blacks in indies.” Then people might say, “Then look at this and this,” and those books might sell like 1k copies, but it’s out there. Webcomics are also out there and they cover everything.  

Webcomics are the new indie comics, the place where aspiring creators can make their name without having to go through a major publisher or sign over any rights. Your Ants has been going for several months now. Do you want to do print books or are you going to continue to make headway on the web? Do you want it to stay digital? 

I want to stay on the web. I don’t want to print. It costs too much. My mind might change, maybe for shows, but I don’t plan to print until I can do some comic strip style Treasury books. Like them big Calvin and Hobbes joints, where it had the watercolour cover. That is what Ants will come out in.  Maybe if there is enough demand one day. I’m more pumped about doing something for the iPad. 

Man, I consume a whole lot of stuff. I’m trying to see most of the movies nominated in the Academy Awards this year. I’m about 65% there. I won’t see most of the foreign films, I know that.

I’ve been watching some good TV. Mad Men was great this year. I think that is going to influence me. I have some plans. I’ve also been re-watching The Wire and I think you can tell in Ants, by little inside jokes in Ants. HBO is always holding me down; Big Love is great this season. The new show on HBO, How to Make it in America is going to be the new thing, like THE hustle show. Aspirational for young folks in this recession. Just watch.

On music, I just got onto Jay Electronica. Man, he is good. Exhibit C is the best hip hop/rap song last year. Lupe is doing some good work. I’m glad Mos Def is steady putting out verses. Shoot, I think people are seeing my stuff. I think that new Rihanna video for “Hard” looks like stuff I draw.

I’m also reading One Piece, thanks to you, and now I’m hooked. Naruto is still my favorite thing to read and Bleach is still good.

I think this will be the year of Drake and Kid Cudi. They are going to get bigger. I’m loving the return of fighting games. That’s the genre of gaming closest to my heart. The fighting game was like the first real social gaming. You had to go out to play and even when you had it at home you had to have people come over to test your skills. Then everyone goes out to the arcade to battle. 

You’re given a blank check and complete creative control. I don’t necessarily want to know the idea behind it (though if you can share that, dope), but what’s your dream project look like? What format is it in? Is it something sized oddly like Wednesday Comics? Something that’s just ideas on the page, James Jean’s Process Recess? A multi-volume epic that puts Homer to shame?

Well, I do plan to do a story where each released chapter will be called a single, and some singles will have a B-side. And arcs will be called “EPs” and the whole season will be an “LP” or Album. And when I release it, it will be like an old vinyl album with the liner notes you pull the book out of with a record look on the cover. So each season will be like a slipcase. With dope art on that. With an unlimited budget I’d make a movie and an animated series. All my stories will have endings to a point. The story is essentially a mashup of Kung Fu/Wuxia stories with modern urban culture and rap music, and I mean rap not hip-hop. I’m talking 8Ball and MJG, Jeezy, Wu-Tang, Lil’ John, Swishahouse, and stuff like that. I’d also have every season have a series of mixtapes to go with it, like a real one with real DJs and artists. I’d make it the hottest comic book of this era. 

Also I’d draw a Little Nemo sized hardcover of Peter Pan. I’ve wanted to do a like a comic/storybook thing with that since I was in college. All set in today’s time frame.  

Do you want to work for Marvel and DC, or companies like them? What are you aiming for, as far as a career in comics goes? Are you a hardcore “Maintain creative control at all times” guy or are you down for work-for-hire? 

I’d work for the big two, I don’t think I can do what they like and my storytelling needs work really. I also don’t want to do most of what they want. Or the fans either, at least the LCS crowd. I don’t want to draw Batman, Superman, or Spider-Man. I don’t want to draw the X-men people love a lot. I liked Generation X and X-Force (old version). I kind of hope that one day I can do little side projects with their characters like Paul Pope did with Batman Year 100. I like the characters no one else does, like Jubilee, Dazzler, Hawk, and Dove. I see potential in them. I think the older I get the less I want to play in their playground. Maybe if I would’ve broken in 5 years ago I would care. Vertigo seems like a cool place. They do interesting projects, yet are still mainstream. Like a comic book Miramax before the Weinsteins left. 

One thing I dig about your style is that you draw actual clothes. A lot of comics types have generic clothes that they’ll pull out– a blue boy’s shirt, a pink baby tee for the ladies, and jeans that look suspiciously like spandex with a belt on top. The stuff you draw looks like things people might actually wear. Do you follow fashion or people watch? What makes something cool? 

Man I follow, but not super close because I’m broke. But yeah I keep some mags in the crib like Complex, GQ, W, and some others. I look at sites and ads for clothing. Videos have stuff in them I like. I look at people a lot; I bet people think I’m a weirdo. I was never that big on spandex, it just doesn’t make sense. Like, does anyone like to wear that much of it? You know some leggings on women can be really dope, but usually what I see in comics is kinda lame. Most of really cool looking gear is on the streets and runways. I want people to see my drawing and almost be able to dress up as them. Like these could be photo spreads on a billboard in SoHo or Times Square. And whoever is styling Rihanna, I think we share the same astral plane apartment, cause I’ve thought up some of those looks. 

For your money, what are the comics or creators that people need to be checking for right now? Do you have anyone in mind as being the next big thing? Is there somebody toiling in obscurity who deserves major buzz? 

My friend D-Pi, he’s been dope for a long time now. I like Brandon Graham a lot. Corey “Reyyy” Lewis is really dope, his work has a serious energy. Harvey James’s work is excellent. Marcos Martin is probably one of the best artists Marvel has and he’s not pushed to me at all. My friend Mike Norton has been doing solid work for years and I think he’s not getting the shine he deserves. He’s not late. EVER. A friend of mine, Dave Wachter, is doing a great western webcomic called The Guns of Shadow Valley. It’s really dope.  And I think the western fans need to really look at the big manga-ka, I think they are ahead of us in terms of serialized pacing. Like a whole new level. 

What’s your process look like? I want to say that you work with pencils, blue line, and then inks, but you also do post-production and design in Photoshop. From idea to sketch to finished product, how do you work? 

I kind of go from a note or a line I heard or read, and then I sketch it out really small. I then blow that sketch up and draw it out in blue pencil. Then I scan that and print it out on some Bristol in a light magenta or cyan and go to inks. So, by reading this you can see I like draw one piece like 3 times. Then I scan it, and go into Photoshop and start to colour it. I don’t plan my colours out, but I have an idea of a scheme in my head when I think it up. Sometimes I have more than one, like colourways for Nikes. That’s how I think. I then work out the text and the layout and add some wear or texture to the piece and it’s done. I have a bunch of different ideas that are still in the sketch stage and I plan to start painting a few this year. You know, to get my artist game up. 

Do you have anything you want to pimp for the future, any projects we should be watching out for? What’s your plan for 2010? 

Well, this year I plan to start up the Bud Wonder and Tony Gogo webcomic. It’ll have the whole original single issue I printed in 2006 and all new stories. The site is up now, but I’m working on the final design and plan to have a real launch around spring.

I’ll be the artist spotlight in the May issue of Heavy Metal. It comes out the last week of March. That really surprised me.

I have been working on a Zuda pitch called Crush City for a while now, but I might not go that route. It might be too much fire for that crowd. We’ll see.

I might put out comics like Weezy mixtapes this year. I’ll be making more Guns N’ Honey so check the site for those. Hopefully, I’ll get an Artist Alley table at NYCC, I’ll also be at CGS Super Show in March, maybe Baltimore and maybe SPX. So far, that is all I have planned for the Twenty-Dime. Oh, keep reading Ants! There are no plans other than finishing up the Eggo Asgard Saga then it’s back to just regular old talking mess about the world.

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