[exciting dramatic music] [exciting dramatic music continues] [exciting dramatic music continues] - Hello and welcome to "Comic Culture".

I'm Terrence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

We're at Heroes Con 2024.

For the "Comic Culture" team, Heroes Con starts days before the convention begins.

We test our gear, pack the truck, and then drive to Charlotte to load in and set up our space.

The loading dock is always hectic as vendors bring in hundreds of thousands of comics, plus toys and memorabilia.

Fans line up Friday morning waiting for the start of Heroes Con.

At the "Comic Culture" booth, we were ready for three busy days of conversations with comic legends, aspiring creators, podcasters, and fans.

First up is Hall of Fame Wrestler turned graphic novelist, Arn Anderson.

Arn, you are at Heroes Con, and you are here because you've got a semi-biographic comic that you're talking about.

So can you tell us about your comic?

- I'm very pleased to be here, number one.

All of you guys that are a part of this culture, thank you for having me and my son, thank you.

We have been doing these now for a couple of years, and just to people watch is a lot of fun.

I wrote one book years ago in the 90s, and kinda cut it off as far as my career was concerned in that period, but obviously I'm still around 42 years, and still going strong in the business in some capacity.

- So your other line of work is professional wrestling.

You are a legend in the world of professional wrestling, and your comic is about your experiences.

- It's partially true.

It's a story of my life in comic book form, and I couldn't figure out how they were gonna do that.

If I was going to do an autobiographal, autobiography, excuse me.

I wanted it to be a real one.

Mother had five husbands.

Alcoholic.

Kept bringing husbands home to my grandmother's house who was raising me, my grandmother and grandfather, and it made for some harrowing nights, and I wanted to include that in just as something that might help somebody else out there that's going through the abuse.

And then I started seeing some examples of the work and how it was, how well it was done, and I just said yeah, you're making the right decision right now.

Just make it fun, don't make it dark, dreary, but tell the truth, and that's what I try to do.

- I had a chance to look through, and it is, there is that fun in there, but there are some of those stories that make you say, "This is a real story."

- It absolutely is.

And, like I said, if it helps one person get through the day, it was the right decision to make to include that part in.

Some people would say it's a little bit of a downer, you don't wanna hear that, well, maybe some people out there needed to hear it.

Maybe it helped.

- The world of pro wrestling is sort of like the world of superheroes, but in real life.

So the similarities between the storylines that you might be going through as part of the iconic tag team, where when you're in the ring with someone and you're working out that story, and the audience is watching it the same way they'd be watching a Marvel movie, or something like that.

Did you find that that experience as a storyteller in front of an audience helped you as a storyteller for the graphic novel?

- Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And this whole thing about cartoon, and wrestling being real, and or is it fake, or is it real.

Cartoons, I've got abs.

[laughing] And in the comic book, they just kinda like, seemed like to me, they just mesh.

It's like the alter ego wrestling personality would be in a comic book.

I got a full head of hair at one point.

Never had a full head of hair.

Thank god I didn't need it for anything.

But I don't really know how to put it, but wrestling is as real as it can get for those wrestlers that get over.

Does that make sense?

Those that are successful, I can convince you that everything that I've done is 100% legitimate, and you will believe it, and it's not by hitting you harder, or dropping you on your head.

It's basically just telling a story that's easy to follow.

If we're talking and wrestling fans are there, they don't know who they like and who they don't, and I bump you in the nose, what are you gonna do?

Well, you're gonna slap the [censored] out of me.

Knock me on my [censored].

The moment I skirt away from you on that, guess what?

I like you, I don't like me.

And that's what we do.

That's the storytelling.

Physical situation that you have somebody that you hopefully really don't like for whatever reason, his mannerisms just point you that way, to a guy that you wanna see do well.

Hopefully that's what we got in the comic book.

- And if the folks watching wanted to find out more about it on the web, is there a website?

- One True Sport.

This is a new, it's got the "Horsemen" merchandise, it's got a lot of the, it's got my Twitter involved.

There's a bunch of guys that have joined us on that new network, Magnum T.A., Greg Gagne, Jake the Snake.

Got some people that are joining us, and we're starting to build, so you can get all the information you need there.

- Well thank you so much.

- Thanks for having me.

I appreciate you.

[casual upbeat music] - Arn wasn't the only indie creator hoping to connect with the thousands of people attending Heroes Con.

Bell Horan was helping reintroduce fans to a classic fantasy comic series.

Bell, you are a third generation comic book professional.

So what's it like working the booths, and being at conventions, when you're helping out the family business, so to speak?

- It's not the type of family business that is typically associated with that phrase.

More so we think of a mom and pop shop.

- [Terrence] Or the mafia.

- Yeah, there you go.

But with comic books, especially indie comic books, where what my father's publishing is not very family friendly, it's toeing a fine line between having your children help out and not showing them inappropriate material.

Now that I'm an adult, it's a little bit different, and I'm eye candy, so I get to bring people in, and get them talking about the book and sell some product.

The book I have is "Poison Elves".

This is issues 1 through 20.

We just reprinted these in a Kickstarter that we've done.

Drew Hayes was the artist and writer of "Poison Elves".

He published the first 20 issues by himself, until he and my dad kinda met up before the internet through exchanging letters, catalogs and whatnot, and as my dad was trying to make his own publishing company, the two of them said, "Huh, I think this is fate", and took each other up, and "Poison Elves" became one of the biggest series under Serious Entertainment, so it's really good stuff.

- Kickstarter?

- Yes.

- It's daunting because you're asking people to invest money into a project, but it's also rewarding because you know that those people are interested in something, and they're sort of giving you that seed money.

So when you're working on a Kickstarter, is it something that the convention group is really gonna help you out because you're making those connections at the cons, or is it something where you're just relying on word of mouth and social media outside of the conventions, and this is a great opportunity for you to introduce it?

- For us, we hadn't actually been to bigger cons in at least a decade.

Serious has definitely been in a more retired mode, so we really relied on social media.

The biggest thing that actually I think got people very excited was my dad and I called through his old mailing list, like back in the 90s, that old mailing list.

Came up with this beautiful postcard saying, "Hey, Poison Elves are back in business, we're gonna do this Kickstarter."

Threw a little free sticker in there, and mailed those out all over the place, and that really got people buzzing.

"Poison Elves" has its own associated Facebook group, and the Facebook group suddenly came back to life, and from there, our first Kickstarter was funded completely in, I think it was, like, 15 minutes.

- [Terrence] Wow.

- Yeah, right now we're on book number two.

Both of these Kickstarters have also made projects we love on the Kickstarter front page.

Book number two was funded in less than five minutes completely.

So yeah, the community was excited.

And here at the convention, I've actually been getting to meet a lot of the people who backed book number one, which is really cool, because me and my dad, we're running this by ourselves out of his tiny rural home.

Just seeing people go, "Ah, I just got my book one a couple months ago," it's been really special.

- If the folks at home are watching and they wanna find out more about "Poison Elves".

- Oh yeah, yeah.

- Where can they find you on the web?

- DrewHayesPoisonElves.com.

That's our actual website.

And at this point, if you just Google "Poison Elves Kickstarter", we're gonna come right up in those search results.

- With so many comic fans attending, you can see why Heroes Con attracts so many small publishers.

I met Carl Choi at last year's Baltimore Comic Con, and was happy to see this new publisher in Charlotte.

You are the publisher of 247 Comics, and you're at Heroes Con, so as a publisher, somebody coming from the west coast, what's it like coming to a convention for business purposes, but what's it like coming to this convention, which is so comic centric?

- I mean, as a business, as a publisher, I think we have a very clear objective.

At the end of the day right now, it's interesting times in the industry.

I think there's times where there's a lot of opportunity for innovation.

Some of the systems that's been around are actually not working and being challenged.

Although some of the IP that is loved are actually coming back in big ways.

And then lastly, I do feel like there's a lot of opportunity for kind of a innovation in the creator ecosystem as well.

So you're seeing a lot of folks kind of breaking off doing their own thing, you're seeing a lot of new publishers coming up.

You're seeing a lot of new types of businesses, especially in the comic art world.

It's a place full of opportunities, and I'm just trying to capture what I can for our group, yeah.

- So right now it's the third day of Heroes Con.

Yesterday, I heard it was another record-breaking day for them, so at your booth, what was the buzz like?

- We actually don't have an official 247 Comics booth.

Our whole thing is that our creators are the leads for our endeavors.

So Justin Jordan, who's the writer of our latest book, "Zero Ghosts", has a booth here, as well as Micah Myers, who's a letterer of the same book.

So I'm jumping between the two booths, and our agenda is really just engaging folks, and teaching them about comics and what we're doing, and when I say teaching, there's a lot of really engaging and letting them know the time and effort we're putting into this book.

It's actually our first book that we spent about four years putting together.

And we printed an ashcan, limited edition, and we give it away for free.

And our ask is just a promise to read it and then send us some feedback.

And so that's been great, because people love free stuff, and I could guarantee you, it's gonna be the highest quality freebie you'll get in this convention.

- Now the last question is if the folks watching at home wanted to find out more about 247, where can they find you on the web?

- Easy.

247Comics.com.

It's 2-4-7 Comics.com.

Definitely check it out.

We have free comics online.

Always the latest.

We have free previews.

We always love Ashcan Editions, and so we give ashcans for audience to read, and we always ask for feedback.

That's all we ask.

So every month or so, we'll drop a new book, and it's free, and you'll be surprised how much of audience feedback we take, because for example, you're familiar with "Evermind", which we had dropped last year when we last met.

And we had a very relatively successful Kickstarter campaign, and then leading up to that, we were giving out these ashcans, and we had so much feedback, and some of the ones obviously are just, you know, "Go on, yay!"

But the stuff we actually really want are the critical ones.

"This did not make sense."

"Wait, you had a misspelling there."

That's great, 'cause that's another layer of eyes from the community, that's the folks we're trying to grow with.

And so what we did is we actually added three new pages to the actual published book, as well made some new edits and re-colored some of the pages.

And so because of the audience feedback, we even gave them special thanks, taking their input.

And so yeah, we want all the feedback as possible, but 247Comics.com, 247 Comics HQ across all our social media, is where you'll find us.

Please follow on Instagram.

- Well thank you so much.

- Yeah.

Thanks Terrence.

- Thank you, Carl.

Conventions are a great way to get young readers into comics, but for Tyler Reid, Heroes Con was all business.

Tyler, you are without a doubt the youngest fan we've had on "Comic Culture".

So I'm wondering, you're at Heroes Con, what are you doing here today?

- I'm selling my book, "The Odduhsy".

It's Homer's "The Odyssey", except a parody with my comic character.

- That sounds pretty cool.

So you read Homer's "The Odyssey", and were inspired to come up with your own take on it?

- Yes.

In fact, I really like graphic novels, 'cause I like to see how much they can put pictures out of words.

So I've read the graphic novel, Useborne Comics, or Usborne Comics.

I've read that rendition of "The Odyssey", and I just really liked it, and it inspired me to make this.

- So you're at the convention, you have a table, and you're selling your book.

Have you had a lot of folks coming by asking questions about it?

- I've had a couple people.

I made a sale.

And then I also had a person from the National Cartoonists Society come by my table and take, or not take, I gave him one of my books.

[Terrence laughs] Because he said he wanted to review it and put me in the National Cartoonists Society.

And I would be in the 27 and Under Club.

- That's fantastic.

So I see that you brought your dad and your brother here.

Is this a whole family affair?

- Yes, my grandparents are here as well.

- And you're all three days selling your book?

- Yes.

- So if the folks watching at home wanted to find you, is there a spot on the internet that they can look for your book?

- I have a website, I'm on YouTube and Instagram.

My website is DuhComics.squarespace.com.

My Instagram is just Duh Comics, and that's the same with my YouTube channel.

- Cool, well thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- It's a seven hour drive from Pittsburgh to Charlotte, but that's what the founders of Comicsburgh did to engage with new readers.

You meet a lot of interesting independent publishers at Heroes Con, so I've got two of them here.

I've got DP and I've got Grant, and tell me about the comic that you're promoting.

- Okay.

Well we got several.

One is called "The Theme of Thieves", it's a high concept time travel mystery.

Kinda like "Lost" meets "Quantum Leap" meets "The Wire".

About two teens traveling through time and trying to solve a mystery of why people are disappearing in the present.

We also have "The Edge".

It's about a powerful drug that could either make you real powerful or go insane.

And we have "Heroineburgh", which is actually based in Pittsburgh.

It's about Pittsburgh female superheroes, so it's a cross between like "Teen Titans" and "Justice League".

And then we also have?

- "Beowulf".

This is my main comic book.

This is the guy you probably learned about in high school but reincarnated in modern times as a 30-something slacker, and his sidekick is a cat with magic powers who's based on my real life cat.

I also do a comic book anthology called "Memoirs of the Morbid".

This is EC style horror.

By EC style, I mean "Tales from the Crypt", "Vault of Horror", that sort of thing.

And I have another comic book that's just about to come out.

It's called "League of Cryptids".

The idea behind that is that cryptids have been living here for thousands of years, and they're ancient aliens who are here to protect Earth and humans from outside forces.

- So you're from Pittsburgh.

What makes you, I mean, besides the fact that you're trying to get some fresh eyes on your comics, what makes you, goes into the decision to come down to Charlotte, North Carolina to Heroes Con to do this, when maybe you could try the web, or you could try a local con?

- Well, the good thing about doing cons is that it gives you a chance to meet people face to face, you know.

When you're doing stuff online, you still have that connectivity, but a lot of person to actually physically touching them, talking to them, getting that information, getting that connection and everything live is such a really great thing.

And we've been doing this for a few years now.

- Yeah.

- Traveling around the different conventions, just talking with folks and just having the whole vibe of the comic community.

Heroes Con is one of the bigger ones that we have done, and for us to travel seven hours, which is, coming from to come all the way down here, we had a really successful year last year, 'cause it was our first time doing that.

This year, it's been awesome so far.

It's one of the bigger cons.

It seems like it's a really good focus on comics, you know?

That's one of the bigger things.

A lot of the other stuff we've done has been more pop culture based, where it's been a bunch of celebrities and stuff.

This has a bunch of different comic celebrities, so it's been a really good boon for us so far.

And meeting everybody.

Including you guys.

- If the folks watching at home wanted to find out more about the comics that you're making, as I said, its Comicsburgh.

So where would they find you on the web?

- Comicsburgh.com.

Keep it simple.

We're all over social media @Comicsburgh, so you just wanna find us on Twitter, Facebook, TikTok.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- Thank you.

At Heroes Con, you'll find creators, podcasters, publishers, and even printers.

In Brandon Bloxdorf, I found all of them in one person.

So how do you sort of get into the business of printing?

Because that seems like a very specialized field, and I understand you work with a lot of the folks in Indie Alley.

- It's kind of crazy altogether.

So Comics Wellspring is the company I work for.

We're an independent comic printing company.

We have a father company as well.

But essentially, they print for a lot of the creators here.

We're very indie supportive.

And they hired me on a few months ago to start up a podcast to kind of highlight indie creators and elevate them a bit, and talk about the struggles and rewards of making comics.

And it's extremely difficult.

Everyone knows that.

You go through some hardships.

So we bring these guests on, we talk about their struggles and their journeys to inspire other comic creators.

And through that, just built a really good connection, and they brought me on as their marketing director, since the company was bought out, they're going through some transitions, and they thought what better way to connect with our comic book community than bringing someone who makes comics and publishes comics on their own, and they brought me on and the team of Apollo, Alex Batts and Max Flowers.

And so now we're running their marketing, their programing, their social media, and we're here to connect with all of our creators that we print comics with.

We're here to highlight them.

And so I just love being able to also make my own comics, and I do "Teenage Babylon", and I also have a Punk anthology with some other anthologies as well.

And it all kind of blends together in some crazy sort of way.

- I'm gonna ask a very technical question, because printing comics seems like it is difficult.

I mean, I would imagine that there's a lot of cost involved, there's a lot of logistics involved, getting files and stuff like that.

So I'm also imagining that the modern technology, the fact that you can do things where you're sending files electronically to a printer, does that help the process along, or is it still a lot of we gotta look at the proofs, we gotta do this and check this out?

- Yeah, I mean, that's something we've realized as a company as well, is that that entire process is kinda different for everybody.

We're actually working on a brand new website to make it easier for people to understand the file formats, how to make things faster for pre-press, how to get books to production faster.

Because what we've encountered is that everyone kind of has their own way of doing it, and it's not very uniform, so we'll go back and correct things, we'll go back and edit.

The intake process sometimes takes a while, because not everyone's well-informed on that file preparation process.

And we actually have a brand new show coming out in the next couple weeks called "Understanding Ink".

And "Understanding Ink" is Max Flowers talking about file preparation, about how to submit your files quicker to get to pre-press faster and help the production line faster, and help make our entire systems flow a whole lot better.

So we're trying to educate people, we're trying to make, making comics, that nitty-gritty aspect of it, really just come into the light, because it seems like a dark, mysterious cloud that everybody is like, "Well, I thought I did it correct," you know, "I thought I did bleed, I thought I did the trim right."

And not everybody does.

I've done my own books and I sent it to Max Flowers to design, and he's like, "You're close.

Really close, but let me touch this and this up."

And so we wanna make that easier for everybody so that, to answer your question, we're basically here to educate, and over the next couple months, you'll see a lot of the outpour from us.

I mean, that's what our shows are about.

Inspiring here to inspire creators to keep making comics, 'cause we know it's difficult, and it can get hard, tabling's tiring and difficult.

Share stories.

"Spilled Ink" is about I don't know how to draw as a writer, so I have comic creators come on the show teach me how to draw every single Thursday night, and so it's a fun live drawing show.

And then "Understanding Ink" will teach you those nitty-gritty aspects of formatting your comics, making your comics, like how to do little aspects that everyone does differently, but how do we find a uniform way that anyone can utilize at that point?

- So if the folks at home wanted to find out more, where can they find you on the web?

- Find ApolloCityComics on all podcast platforms, on social media, especially Instagram.

Follow Comics Wellspring on YouTube.

Keep up with our channels.

Follow us on social media as well.

We have a lot of content coming out.

Yeah, just Google us.

Looks us up on any social media, and we'll be there.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

Thank you.

- [Terrence] Eli Schwab is a podcaster and the publisher of Cosmic Lion Productions.

- I've got a big group of our creators with us today.

We've got like six people, three tables over in Indie Island.

And my goal is just to really show everyone the amazing work that we've done, and all the great comics that we have, and I just wanna turn everyone onto the work that I see as this amazing, fresh take on comics.

So I just want everyone to see what we're doing.

- So comics are a, it's a great medium, because there's so many different directions you can go into.

So what would sort of be the flavor of what you're doing?

- That's a great question.

I try to combine flavors.

I try to have as many flavors, and that's the point.

I don't want to see, I don't want to have a house style.

I want that every voice that we amplify, I want it to be different and new and exciting, and just bring something different, you know?

So the voice is creativity, the flavor is new-ness.

The flavor is delicious.

And it's just fresh, new, and different.

- And I'm imagining, too, you're dealing with these different creators, and you respect what they bring to the table, and you allow them to do what they want.

But at some point, as a publisher, you've gotta sort of be the boss.

You've gotta make sure that the deadlines are hit, that the books are out in the stores and whatnot.

So how do you manage that side of a creative to be a focused businessperson?

Because Indie Isle is full of indie creators who may have a second job.

- Yes.

Everyone does.

It's tough, and I try to mitigate it by not having too many set in stone things.

You know, try to give everyone the freedom to create the best thing that they can without too many rules.

But when you have to snap down, I think I try to establish myself as someone who likes to have fun and is understanding and caring enough that when I really need to clamp down, or when I really need to drop the hammer, they're just like, "Oh, whoa."

I did not expect that, but heard.

Heard, you know?

So like, just try to keep the communication up, and then drop the hammer when its needs.

- At this point, I guess I'm the old guard, or part of the old guard.

My comic window was mid to late 80s to sometime in the late 90s.

And what I used to read, and what was popular with people of my generation is different from what's popular with people in your generation, and people who are the younger readers, so what have you noticed in changing those flavors, and that readership, and how do you lean into, maybe lean into, what the younger audience is excited about, or what your current audience is excited about?

- I try to have everything, again, like I said.

But you know, manga's real big with the younger audience, and so we started to work with a young lady named Ro Higashi.

I don't know if she's young, but she's a lady, for sure.

But you know, so I know that manga is big.

And then another way is we're working with some younger creators, too.

One of our most successful guys over here, Morgan Herron, he's 19.

He's a freshman in college.

And he's got two issues out.

He's the one that's cranking issues out, even though he's like full-time student, and his mom's here with him.

I mean, so having the younger creators to speak directly to those younger fans has been really helpful.

The manga is just fresh.

But you know, it's been interesting trying to market what I see as older, like our generation, comics.

Or have this new book we're doing with creator Matt Howarth who's like, was in Heavy Metal with Moebius and Druillet, and did Turtles work, and has done digital work, and trying to market that to the new audience where they don't have the touchstone of like, they don't know Heavy Metal, they haven't read the Mirage Turtles stuff.

You know, they think the Ninja Turtles are just a cartoon.

They're not.

It's a comic.

[laughing] But you know, so that's part of the fun, but truly, picking up manga, and then having the young creator has really helped.

- And if the folks at home watching wanted to find out more about you, where can they find you on the web?

- You gotta go to CosmicLionProductions.com.

And we have a store there, we have links to all our videos, podcasts, vod-casts, and just everything's there.

- Thank you so much.

- Thank you so much.

- That's all the time we have for this episode of "Comic Culture".

I wanna thank you so much for watching.

We'll see you again soon.

[exciting dramatic music] [exciting dramatic music continues] [exciting dramatic music] - [Announcer] "Comic Culture" is a production of the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke, giving broadcasting majors professional experience and on-screen credit before they graduate.

[exciting dramatic music continues]