TERROR in the TRAILERS
NEW TRAILER
So far TERROR has been a HIT with everyone and the signs ups keep coming in! DO NOT MISS this book! Sign up today!
Tons of work getting done on TITT as well as other books of mine that I can’t wait to share with you here on the substack.
IN OTHER NEWS:
A book I wrote LADY ALCHEMY is back up on Indiegogo and already gaining new backers! Do not miss this awesome and very personal book conceived by the great Lady Alchemy herself. Based on her real life, mixed with fashion, off-beat art, spiritual and supernatural horrors, this book also teaches you actual alchemy. It doesn’t get cooler than that. Check out LADY ALCHEMY: MUTUS LIBER
I wrote a fun one-shot for the BLACK AND WHITE 2: MAN vs. MACHINE. It’s part of the supplemental book called BLACK AND WHITE: HIGH OCTANE! The campaign is doing amazing so far. Do not miss it!
The campaign GODLIKE is also blowing minds at over 200K! I’m writing a sweet one-shot for the supplemental book on this as well! Check out GODLIKE: THE ROMULUS SAGA here!
I did this cool cover concept by cutting each figure out from our character design sheets. It almost looks like it was all meant to be together doesn’t it? This is definitely a creator advice moment: Hire someone to do fun a character designs that convey story and recycle those designs in cool ways to make covers, posters, t-shirts, whathave you. What ends up happening is the money you spent kindly paying an artist for their designs, you are now getting back by making multiple products. Set yourself up to sell and make more than one item with things like covers and character designs. I feel like these amazing designs Monika Maccagni did for us are the gift that keeps on giving.
ON LADY SATAN’S NAME
A few people have brought up to me that they’re concerned about the character LADY SATAN in my book. They think her name and her imagery glorifies Satanism or the occult. I’m glad people brought this up because I directly address it in the book. Further, it let’s me get to be an old timer and sit ya yunggin’s down for a historeeeeee lesson. Let’s talk LADY SATAN.
In my book I thought I was being clever by having Lady Satan named by wartime headlines demonizing her. I loved the idea that she embraced the evil sounding name to strike fear into her victims. Or maybe I had just forgotten my research, which shows that back in the 30’s this was the case already. The classics were way ahead of me as usual. Gotta love’em.
So Lady Satan is not a name she came up with to sound cool or talk about her love for all things demonic. It’s a headline moniker made up by her enemies which she embraced. As for her magic, in TITT, Lady Satan is a gunwitch, telekinetic, mystic medium, with a special ability to make you face your worst sins. She knows that dark magic comes back on you tenfold, and isn’t a fan of Satan or shady side of the occult. She’s just a good (albeit mouthy) witch scorned getting revenge on Nazis with her telekinetic gunplay in our story. She uses some pentagram imagery for branding only to strike fear into her enemies but it ends there. In fact, just read the script. Lady Satan has just used her magic to pull poisoned blood out of Black Terror:
I gotta admit, I’m really glad my idea of having Lady Satan named by the headlines was already done in the original 1930’s version of her. I love getting to match the classics in cool ways like this. So all hail Lady Satan! You’re going to love her.
BRAND NEW CHERRY FLAVOR, 2021
Starts off like it has a plan and a hardon to bring us a dark twisted take on Hollywood via David Lynch style storytelling. It’s compelling enough: A Hollywood producer claims to see the talent in a young Brazilian filmmaker and has her come out to LA where he essentially steals her movie and she befriends a witch and curses him proper. I’ve dealt with bad guys and movie contracts before so I definitely wanted to see how it played out. From there she works with a witch to curse him and fuck over his life. Tons of mystery is set up. Sounds good right? It is for the most part… at first. By the end it falls in on itself like fuckin jenga. Too many loose ends are solved by killing people. It’s just witchy bullshit with way too many puke / gross things being eaten just for the sake of being disgusting. Not scary. More funny and nonsensical. I felt a sense of having wasted my time by the time the show was over. Like I had been had at a carnival game. Some kind of dopey slight of hand made me think this show had real substance when it actually just has deus ex machina and some realllly unsatisfying storylines. This show claims to be horror and uses some tropes from it but the scares aren’t there. It has some cool horrific ideas yet the visuals fall short on style and impact.
BATMAN: ANIMATED, 1998
This book changed it all for me. And even cooler? You can legally read and download it here!
When I studied this book it showed me the power of character design. Moreso, the power of simplicity of imagery. I grew up on highly detailed, realism based animation of the 80’s. When Bruce Timm brought in this style of Batman it was considered very risky at the time, yet as history proven it was nothing short of genius.
The work that went into Batman the Animated Series is brilliant and worthy of study. I just didn’t expect it to influence me so much that to this day I’m designing my characters with the lessons from this book in mind. They’re engrained. But this book has it all. Sections for each villain and the design process behind them. Even a section on how they were censored by the show. If you want a book that highly influenced me and still does to this day, this is it.
LEARN IT, LOVE IT, LIVE IT.