Interview – Thomas Hall and Daniel Bradford

This last weekend I took a look at Blacklist Studios’ Robot 13: Colosus! comic book (reading post here) and found a fun, beautifully-illustrated first and second issue. The creators of the series, Thomas Hall and Daniel Bradford, were willing to take a little of their time to answer a few questions for me.

www.battlegrip.com – Thomas, how did R13 come into existence? Did you and Daniel put your heads together and come up with a concept and story together, or did you already have a story in mind and then meet Daniel? The credits list you as “story” and Daniel as “art,” but is there a pure divide or just a fuzzy divide between the two tasks?

Daniel – “Tom’s credit as “story” includes the mega load of research he puts into the book. Much of which doesn’t even make it into the book or just isn’t terribly obvious. Outside of the book, however, his credits include PR, accountant, management, sales, etc.”

Thomas – “Daniel and I have been working together on projects for over 6 years now, so one project has kind of flowed into the next a bit. In the case of Robot 13, Daniel had a design for the character and some basic ideas about what he wanted to do with him and we tossed around ideas from there. Once we had a basic direction, I did a lot of research and started giving Daniel stuff to work off of and it kind of grew organically from there. Plot wise, there are times I write something that doesn’t work out visually or gives Daniel a different idea so we try to keep things open as we go along to accommodate that. Our goal is for the best end product to get into people’s hands. Who came up with what isn’t that important, but I have to make sure that all the changes we make will lead to something that makes sense down the road.”

www.battlegrip.com – When creating an issue of the comic, Thomas, do you generate rough plots for Daniel to thumbnail or do you give Daniel a page by page script — with panel placement and visual recommendations — that he then follows?

Daniel – “More so rough plots / scene descriptions with some visual recommendations. The panel layouts, flow and pacing are basically up to me to figure out. Along with some fine tuning according to Tom’s requests.”

Thomas – “I break down pages, but not more than that. Some script writers detail every panel, but Daniel and I know each other well enough by this point to trust what the other person brings to things. I’m totally cool with however he wants to break up pages and he lets me run with the plot and storyline.”

www.battlegrip.com – The credits list Daniel as the artist. Does that include lettering and coloring? Who handles preparing the files for print?

Daniel – “My duties on the book include cover art, logo design and placement, copy placement, interior art, colors, letters, and file prep.”

Thomas – “Yea, everything visual on the page is Daniel. He’s the whole Blacklist Studios art department right now, and I think it makes the book that much more impressive in my mind. How many people can do a whole book and make it look like that?”

www.battlegrip.com – Have you guys seen a significant savings by printing the comic in China ? I saw on your site that there was a customs delay that held issue two back a few weeks; did you save enough in dollars by printing in China to make delays like this worth the cost in time?

Thomas – “If you look at the quality of the printed book, it’s impressive. To get a book that looks that good and print it so we can afford to sell it through comic shops, we had to either print in China or somewhere outside the US . It’s kind of sad to say that, but it was the only affordable solution. When you have a book that retails for $3.99 and you only get back 40-50% of that and also have to cover shipping books to stores and promotions and appearances and everything else associated with running a business, it’s tough. Daniel and I aren’t working off a trust fund or the lottery or something. The funds to start Blacklist came out of our pockets, so we had to find a way to do everything at professional quality without losing our shirts. As for the delays, I take responsibility for that in the sense that it was my call as to when our announced ship date was supposed to be. I was too optimistic and didn’t take into account that problems can occur. Next time, I will take that into account.”

www.battlegrip.com – How far along on the comic are you guys? I noticed a panel from the third issue on your blog; is the entire third issue complete and just waiting for funding or are you guys still working on finishing issue three? And how many total issues are expected? I’m not completely sure if R13 is a mini-series or intended as an ongoing series.

Daniel – “Issue 3 is getting wrapped up.”

Thomas – “Issue 1 is almost sold out and we have sold half the print run of issue 2 already, so the book is doing well. We have funds to print the book once Daniel finishes the pages, which are almost done. And Issue 3 will be the end of the mini series, but not of the overall story. There will be some closure to it, but this mini series is the launching point to do more mini series with Robot 13. I think this will be the best issue yet, and I think you’ll be eager to see where it will go from here too.”

www.battlegrip.com – One last question: Thomas, you mentioned on your blog that old Frankenstein movies were one of the influences behind R13. Is this is primarily a “created turns against his creator” influence and, if so, should we expect to see Robot 13 encounter his creator in an upcoming issue?

Thomas – “The original novel Frankenstein was a big influence, and that led to incorporating some influence from the early movies. The main theme that resonates though all those stories is the question of what it means to be Human. In those stories, it was communicated as Science and how far we should allow Science to push the envelope. If we could create Life, should we? What constitutes Human Life? Is it wrong for people to mess with such things? That is part of what makes Frankenstein still relevant, because it brings out ideas that we still wrestle with today. Yes, you will eventually see the people who built Robot 13, but that’s only part of the mystery. We hope to dig a little deeper with this book, and we will see how that is received….”

If you’re a comic fan I recommend giving Robot 13: Colossus! a shot. Ask for issues one and two at your local comic shop, or hit the Blacklist Studios website and order the issues online.

Thank you, Thomas and Daniel, and good luck with Robot 13 and the rest of your plans for Blacklist Studios. And don’t forget to get King on shelves! I wanna see what you guys do with that concept.