Creators on the Couch – Allen Dunford – The Herald Transcript

Creators on the Couch – Allen Dunford – The Herald

Anthony: Hello and welcome to capes on the couch. We’re coming to get counseling. I’m Anthony Sytko.

Doc Issues: And I’m Dr. Issues.

Allen: And I’m Allen Dunford. Am I not a host?

Anthony: I mean, I was literally about to say, and here with our recurring third co host on, on the show for, I don’t know, eight, nine times. I’ve lost track at this point.

Allen: So I ran 11 Kickstarters, so I’ve probably been on here for maybe nine of them.

Anthony: Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I was going to say it’s, it’s gotta be up there.

In total, but Allen Dunford, ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the show. You sexy beast and a brand new father. Yes. Pappy. You are a dad. Congratulations. Yeah. Thank you so much. As he sits there and sips his coffee in the evening at nine o’clock at night. Yep. Yep. Eight 30 and he’s drinking coffee.

That’s that’s fatherhood. If ever I saw it. Yes. Yes. So let’s, let’s talk very briefly about that. And then that’s, your latest creation, or at least the, the one I would, I would hope to say you’re most proud of.

Allen: This is the only one that’s not on Kickstarter.

Anthony: Not yet. Anyway, depending on how, how she sleeps to the night and be like, listen, please, please take my child.

I am taking bids. I don’t know. Although I don’t know if it would be Kickstarter, my eBay. Maybe, or like a GoFundMe kind of deal.

Allen: Yeah, no, it’s a, it’s wild, man. You know, she’s she’s a month old and it’s just it’s crazy. Right. So granted she’s she’s living the life that. I think that we all want to live, you know, she just wakes up, eats, shits herself and goes right back to sleep.

So, I mean, that’s pretty cool.

Anthony: I mean, depending on, you know, where I was in my late twenties, early thirties I’ve, I’ve certainly had nights like that. I don’t know that it’s sustainable as a lifestyle, but.

Allen: And people make it work every day, but

Anthony: I’m sure they do. And then they end up having to go see doc because they have other issues that they’re dealing with.

Allen: And then I’ll be studying them in a health disparities.

Anthony: Exactly. Yes. Then, then there’ll be part of your, your doctorate thesis. Yeah. Oh, man. Well, that’s, that’s fantastic. You know, and, and doc and I are both the father of daughters his much, much older than mine, who is not terribly much. Well, she’ll be two in June.

We just converted her from a crib to a bed because we found out that she could exit the crib on her own and. Made and crossed the chasm to the changing table, which is close to a foot across. Just looked on the monitor one morning, couldn’t find her in the crib. Turn the camera over there.

She is sitting on the changing table, just cleaning herself with wipes, just talking to herself. So now she’s got a mattress on the floor, which unfortunately means bedtime is that much more, that much more difficult. Well, I mean, it’s, it’s safer. I mean, we’ve got a toddler rail up or she’s not just, she’s got a Okay.

You know, she, and she’s got much bigger than

Allen: I just imagined like I want like 1920s jail system where she just has like a tin can that she just runs across bars, you know?

Anthony: No, but she does come to the door. She will open up the door when she’s, she’s done napping or, or if she’s not quite asleep yet and she’ll just crack it open and just kind of stick her head out.

And wait for someone to come over and see her. And then she’s like, hi, daddy. Hi mom. And I’m like, Oh my gosh, you’re so cute. This is the only thing keeping you alive right now. You need to go to sleep. You need to go sleep. My beautiful little. Angel slash terror. So so speaking of beautiful terrors and nightmares you obviously have a long history of working in comics with a bit of a horror and a humor bent to them, but we’re here to talk about the Herald.

First, anyway, we’ll get to some other stuff that you’ve got in the hopper, but the Herald, the Herald is the new Kickstarter, and we’ll have links to that in the show notes. But this one seems to be pretty straightforward. There’s not a ton of humor. At least as I can see, not, not in the, the wacky zany sense of like a pocus or, or, you know, a grandma chainsaw where there’s that deft mixture of horror and comedy.

This one plays it much more straight in terms of the, the horror and the, the, Sci fi demonic stuff. So I guess what first question is what led you to want to tell this particular story?

Allen: So obviously I have to give a big shout out to Ruben Moco who this was his brainchild, right?

And he had this huge idea that he wanted to tell like his version of a, of like a Clive Barker spaghetti Western, right? And he reached out to me because. I’m assuming 12 other people said no. So he came to me last When all resources were exhausted and we kind of pieced together this story and what’s great about this I feel like Ruben and I we’ve been talking about the herald for like god A year now something crazy like that because we wanted to get it right and This this story because I don’t want to give anything away.

Obviously this thing’s going to be about five issues But It follows a wanderer in a old west setting that’s trying to retrieve This box that was stolen and it’s kind of plagued him throughout time so it’s I don’t know. It’s it’s one of those like things where I I you guys know me. I I love the occult stuff I I think that is just so fascinating and and such a a cool world to to build in there’s so much lore and rich culture to it that you can build off of And I just love the fact that we mixed it with a Western.

Anthony: Yeah. That was one of the things when I was reading it and looking at the, the setting and the theme, I was like, okay, from the first page, it kind of grabbed me and I was like, all right, I’m, you know, I’m intrigued. And then there was another sequence. And again, I’m trying not to speak about it too much for, for not spoiling it, but in terms of showing the You know, you, I, well, you mentioned it.

So I feel it’s safe to kind of talk about through, through time.

Allen: We actually have those pages on the Kickstarter as a preview, just because like, listen, embrace the weird, right. Let people know it’s like, Hey, this is what you’re getting, getting yourselves into.

Anthony: Okay. All right. So, yeah. So, so since it is on the Kickstarter, you know, the guy’s like in the old West and then he’s like, I remember the last time I was dealing with this and we see he’s in ancient Rome or ancient Greece and.

It’s like, oh, okay, all right, I’m, I’m here. I get it now. Got it. Got it. All right. Cool. Cool. Let me keep going with this.

Allen: Yeah.

Anthony: Definitely enjoyed that. I’m getting kind of a like a ghost rider vibe, but like, like a phantom rider more. Oh, less, yeah. Less, you know, like Johnny Blaze and more just like Phantom Rider.

Mm-Hmm. in that sense of, you know, the wander. The guy going from town to town in the old west and he has seen some things. Yes, he will make you see some things and go through some stuff if you don’t be nice to him.

Allen: Yes. So, and that’s what’s cool about it too, because like we wanted that mysticism element with this.

We, we wanted, again, you know, we, we kind of like what we did with Pocus, like Pocus is a Faustian tale that we wanted to make our own. Grandma Chainsaw is a slasher That we wanted to make our own. And Horus. Saturday morning cartoon that we wanted to make our own and then you can tell it You know, it’s like, oh, hey, this is coming from these guys, right?

This is is no exception either just because Like yeah, it doesn’t have that tongue in cheek humor, but it’s going to be situationally kind of like it’s situationally dark humor Right. We have a couple deaths in it that you can’t help but kind of chuckle at just because of how ridiculous and over the top some of them are.

And a lot of the situations that we have in here are inspired by, you know, Ruben said this before about the Westerns that he used to watch as a kid. And it’s just kind of cool to see how we pull from that. And the unique thing about this book is, is how it’s done. And Ruben really challenged me as a writer.

And I hate him for it. Because he, you know, Ruben is the artist on this too. And he knows where he wants it to go. So he draws and colors the book first. And then we go in and write it. Oh, wow. Yeah. So he has the story beats done. So yeah, Ruben presented all 25 pages of issue one of the Herald. And he’s like, you ready?

And then we just sat down one evening and he already kind of had an outline of what he wanted. And then we just went in and just plug and played what we thought would fit versus what didn’t fit. You know, of course we made edits and everything like that, but. This is really cool because now we have a even better idea of where we wanted to go for issue two, three, four, and then how we’re going to end this thing.

And yes, we do answer all the questions. So it’s not one of those where we don’t really leave anything, you know, of course, there might be some stuff that’s left up to interpretation. But with this, we really wanted to tell just a straightforward narrative and we do get to find out what this guy’s mission is and really who he is and why he’s doing this.

Doc Issues: Yeah, that’s, that’s impressive to, wow, to, to have the visuals even because I have to admit when I’m reading something, my brain works backwards. I, maybe that says too much, but basically, I will read something, get an image in my head, and then see if what I’m imagining matches what I’m seeing on the page when it comes to comments.

No, it’s why I love novels, it’s why I love reading certain things, and then later on getting some sort of physical interpretation of that, be it a TV show or movie or whatever, because sometimes it’s exactly the same, sometimes it’s like, whoa, this is way off what I would have thought. So, so for the input.

As the writer to hear that, like that, yeah, that absolutely fascinates me. So thank you for bringing that up.

Allen: Yeah. You know, again, like my, my favorite part about this this whole book is that, God, this is gonna sound like. You know, this is going to sound crazy, but my favorite part about this book is that I’m not needed.

And what I mean by that is, is how Ruben drew this thing. He was really meticulous with it because he wanted it to feel like it was from that time period. He used flat colors, some sketchy lines. And, you know, even whenever your stuff is shaded, you don’t actually see like a full shadow underneath someone.

It’s a block underneath it. Lights, same way. Again, it feels applicable to something that you maybe would have seen drawn. During that point and each page can tell the story itself and you know That’s just kind of a testament to how he drew the thing And then we just went in and filled in the blanks for where we thought.

Hey, we might need to You know punch it up here so we can tell the story a little bit more

Anthony: Yeah, it’s it’s just a really cool, you know process. Very you know marvel method of of the way that Stan Lee and jack kirby used to work together on It you know, comics and, and telling stories is, it was a very collaborative effort.

I don’t know that it was ever a situation where Jack just went full bore and drew everything before presenting at the stand, but then again, neither of them are around, so we can’t really ask them what they did and how it worked. But yeah, that’s, that’s really cool. And, and again, you know, credit to Ruben for coming up with the visuals in his head and just kind of laying everything out and, and giving and trusting you with that authority and freedom to put in some of the words to, to.

You know, help tell the story now, is that going to continue? Is that format going to continue for the rest of the book or?

Allen: Unfortunately, yes. Unfortunately, yeah, it’s tough, man. That’s fun though. Like for real, it’s, it’s a good break, right? Because you know, when, whenever you’re doing stuff like this and, you know, the, the artist on this one is the co creator and this is just his process.

It’s It’s crazy, right? And again, it’s challenging and I really, really like it. He’s already shown me some pages from issue two, and issue two is it’s gonna be fun. It’s one of those things where And I think I’ve said this to you guys before, too. And, you know, some other people may obviously see it differently than what I do, but for, for me personally, issue ones are hard because how much information do you give versus how much do you let your world build?

And then how much action do you want to go into to keep the reader enticed to go to your issue too, or. Will they even care enough about your characters if you skimp on that a little bit, right? So I I have a tendency to overthink my issue once a lot but again, I I think it’s kind of worked out so far with With how I like to try to do my pacing and everything and you know again Ruben and I we just kind of hit it off with this

Anthony: Awesome. That’s yeah, like I said having having read the the first issue. I really You know i’m i’m intrigued to see where it goes. And I want to know, I guess it’s just, obviously you’re describing, it’s unlike how you’ve done anything. And it’s very unlike how I imagine a lot of people you know most comics these days are, are written.

Unless you’re somebody like a Daniel Warren Johnson who just, writes and draws most of his own stuff. So i’m just i’m still trying to wrap my head around this from a from a conceptual standpoint.

Allen: Like always shout out to dave lenz Who’s lettered in design all of the books i’ve been on?

He he really did so great with this book, too.

Anthony: Yeah Yeah, like I said you know, the lettering and, and just from the, the perspective of writing the that flashback scene that we get to, you know, the ancient again, I can’t tell if it’s, if it’s Rome or Greece, but the lettering there Has that, that different font of the, the very angled that kind of is, you know, like, I hate to say like a cheat, but it very evocative of that time period with the, with the angles on the letters.

And yeah, and just the, the palette is a total shift from the West to the Ancient, then back to the West. It really does clue you in that it’s, it’s very different and distinct. So yeah, again, full, full credit to Ruben for, for that. Doing all that work. Just Nelly. Oh so tell us a little bit about the Kickstarter and some of the, the awesome stuff that you’ve got going on because it’s been, it’s been a minute since you’ve had kind of the launch of a new universe.

Allen: So the the kickstarter for this one, we wanted it to be just pretty straightforward.

There’s the the add ons is everything that you see on the campaign And we actually have four different covers for this one So we have rubens cover his cover a which obviously I love all the covers here but rubens was whenever I saw that thing, I was like, all right That’s that’s the cover we needed for for this thing to kind of tell so much of the story and then we have a cover B is, I think it’s Bram Revell.

I think it’s how you say it. I hope I’m right. If I’m wrong, I’m so sorry. And then cover C is by a, an artist I’ve never worked with before. His name is Brian Bilondo. He is he’s pretty cool. I’d like to try to get him for a couple books if he’s ever, if he ever has any availability.

Anthony: As Allen takes the tongue out of his cheek on that.

Allen: And then yeah, so then we also have an exclusive holofoil cover on here. And then we also have all the other covers in metal as well. So then one of the other things too, that, that Reuben is doing, he he’s letting you be drawn as an outlaw in four by six print.

And that is that’s my stupid face on there and the one and debtor alive.

Anthony: Okay. I think I think I may have asked for that. You’ve done good. When? When I backed it, I don’t remember. I was a day one back. I was like a minute. One backer. Allen texted me as like the Kickstarter just went live. Like I literally clicked the link.

Allen: Yeah, literally you texted me after I hit, like I hit go live and then you texted me.

I was like, oh, that’s ironic. .

Anthony: Yeah, you texted me, you know that oh hey, this is, this just went live. And I was like, oh, sweet. And then I see the thing day one backer and I was like, well shoot, I got this. I backed it like within minutes. Yeah.

Allen: And again, we’re super happy with this. It’s, it’s a cool thing to see this be our, you know, this is our number one, right?

And it’s always great to see how your issue ones do. And it’s also more important to us to see just the just the response from people because, It gets to a point where we are doing so many different types of books and just the, the turnout for, for this one in a new universe, a new style, a new type of storytelling, yeah, it’s just, it’s great.

And I can’t wait for you guys to see what we’re doing coming up.

Anthony: Yeah. I mean, again, I, I. Add this on to the list of fantastic issue ones that you’ve got a solid track record. And we’ll get into some of the, the future stuff that you’ve got coming up in just a bit, but issue one, as you said, is, is difficult to pull off.

You have to explain everything. You have to world build, you have to introduce characters, and you’ve got to have enough to draw people in and get them coming back for issue two. Hinting towards the arc or the big bad or whatever, the MacGuffin, whatever the thing is, you have to fit all of that into 20 something pages.

Allen: Yay. It’s it’s a blast.

Anthony: It’s easy. It’s comics. Comics are for children. You know, I mean, you’re basically writing kids, kids books here. I mean, with pictures.

Allen: Yeah.

Anthony: So yeah, easy peasy lemon squeezy, as my son likes to say. So, all right, so the Herald is, is still live. The Kickstarter is still live.

It, it ends. May 11th at 10 AM, Saturday, May 11th. So, okay, cool deal. All right.

So let’s move on to another new story. Well, we’ll stick with the new universes and this is final girl next door. Super excited about this one. This one. hews much more in the, the horror comedy vein.

Doc Issues: I was going to say, this is you. Yes. This is me.

Anthony: Yes. This is, this is all you. Did, did Will work on this one?

Allen: No, no. I, I was, I was, I did solo writing on, on this one.

Anthony: Okay. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Final girl next door. Very much as I said that, that mixture of Homi Homi car , it’s, it’s a long day. Yeah. Comedy horror. Yeah. Ho that’s, that’s it. I’m, I’m ho Yeah. It’s, it’s like, it’s like dramedy. I mean, dramedy is, is an accepted genre.

Why isn’t ho or Harmony. I don’t, would it be Harmony? That one. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe, maybe not. Maybe. Okay. Yeah. Maybe we’ll just stick with the Harmony. Sounds like Homily. Yeah. So so final girl next door, tell us kind of what led to, to this one.

Allen: So again, I think You know, last ditch effort to find someone.

So Mike had an idea that he approached me with, Mike Tiener from Bad Bug, and he said, hey I want you to put together a story for me that involves a girl who’s the survivor of a slasher. And all the slashers that she survived start to come back for her again. And I said, I got you. And then that’s how this came up.

So you know, I’m telling this thing in a weird format, but it will make sense as the book progresses. Each issue because there’s four slashers all together that are chasing her. In each issue, you kind of get the origin of her first run in with each slasher. And it makes sense to what we see. Happen in the issue.

So this one’s been like a blast to write. Because again, like, like you said, Doc, it’s it’s me. So this is kind of like, just second nature for, for this one to, to come about. So, this thing has been this thing’s been wild, man. And I, I can’t wait for you guys to see, but yeah, so, the final girl next door follows the story of a girl named Kate, who survives the slasher, and she’s the final girl.

At the beginning of the issue and then we cut to Five years later and another slasher is after her again And I don’t want to give too much more away from there But of course we really do want to play off the girl next door stuff because we have a Guy named Todd who lives across the street from her who wants to get with her because, hey, she’s the shy girl next door, but little does he know what he’s about to get himself into.

Anthony: I was definitely getting a vibe of the Evil Dead remake with Jane Levy. And that, that sense of kind of like what, what she would be like I know she doesn’t necessarily look like Jane Levy, but like if If you were to continue the story like five years after that evil dead story Yeah. With Jane Levy.

Yeah, I hear you. And what, you know, what she would be going through and how she would be. And then I think this one would really be you know, a, a prime opportunity to kind of get into some of the, the trauma and the, the psychological stuff. Not that we, you know, we don’t talk about some of the. The psychological issues of some of the other characters, but this one I think is really Primed for that type of a discussion.

Allen: I actually, mentioned that in the issue You know, anthony, I think you said you had a chance to read it so You know at the at the end of the issue you know Kate kind of has a I don’t want to say a monologue because I don’t write long enough to have a monologue But she kind of you know is talking to todd and she tells him You know, she’s gone through this so many times and she tries to keep everyone safe, but it’s the same thing every time, right?

So I I really I I am going to play up on that on the next issue While also still having fun like i’m not gonna trauma dump on people

Doc Issues: No, there’s yeah I I didn’t get a chance to to read it in depth yet. But There’s a couple of panels where it’s just really obvious. All right. I get the point in terms of experience and what, and what that trauma can do.

I’ll say both for and against, because it’s not as if she’s a total recluse from what I can tell it’s, it’s that, well, I’ve got to survive some way. Yeah. You know, she has, at this point, she’s got systems in place. It’s not all like, just all random. Oh, oh God, how am I going to figure this out now?

It’s like, nah, come at me, come at me.

Allen: Wanted, wanted her to be a total badass, right? And each issue we find out how she became a total badass to get us to the Kate that we have currently, who is just ready for anything. You know, and I, and I love that idea of kind of running, running with that principle and the killers that we get to chance to see in this are all so fun and so unique in their own way.

And I just really like, it’s, it’s great because the first, the first one you get to see is Chef Death and it’s just a French chef that is just killing people. And unfortunately. I, I think I’ve peaked in this, this because I, I make the, the dumbest joke that I’ve ever made for a killer. And I, I hate, I hate it because I’ll never make anything like that again.

And the killer that we get a chance to really see in this one, he’s called the taxidermist and he’s a taxidermist that drives a taxi. The end.

Anthony: I mean, I love it. I love it. It’s fine.

Allen: Oh, God.

Anthony: What’s what’s wrong with that?

Doc Issues: What happens when the guy from taxi driver decides to, you know, Yeah, you know, and then and then comes to, you know, Take your pick Sarah Connor or Ellen Ripley’s house. Yes. Yeah

Allen: And again, you know this thing I I love embracing the tropes and playing off of that stuff And this this one is definitely no exception from that.

So I just can’t wait for everyone to check this one out So this one’s definitely coming soon. The the book’s already completed you know the my fine friends here at capes on the couch got a chance to Have access to the full full first edition Issue all 25 pages. And yeah, I, I, I think you guys are going to like it.

Anthony: Yeah. So now is this one is this one a mini or is this going to be, you know, potentially an ongoing or

Allen: this one’s going to be five issues. Okay. Yeah, because again, don’t want to overstay the welcome. Right. If this one, like, I don’t know, we, we might be able to do an arc to. But how I have everything set up for it, I think five issues is solid enough to tell the story that we need to, to find out why these slashes are coming back and all this stuff.

Anthony: All right. All right. And when is that one going to go to Kickstarter?

Allen: Yeah, I think that one will probably actually be here in probably about Three weeks to a month maybe if not sooner. So just keep your eyes out. i’ll send anthony the link. So all you all you couchers. I don’t know. What are you what’s your fan base called?

Anthony: We don’t really have I don’t think I was gonna say I don’t think we ever actually get the papers Couchers.

Doc Issues: Oh god I don’t know if I like any of these.

Anthony: Yeah, I, I don’t I love our, I love our fans. I’m not sure. I love these titles. Yeah. I just, I just call them, you know, our fans.

Allen: So, all right. So Anthony will send out to the fans. Yeah, let’s just go with that and just leave it at that. All right.

Anthony: So so I think we’ve covered the, the two new ones. And now let’s talk about what you’ve, you’ve also got coming up some trips back into some favorite universes of ours.

And we’ll start off with the Grandma Chainsaw finale.

Allen: I’m so sad. I don’t want it to end. Like obviously whenever it goes live, I’d love to come back on and do a full episode of it. Where we get a chance to talk about it and I would even be okay with a spoiler filled episode because you guys will have a chance to read the full first issue or the full fourth issue So we’ll have a chance to have the whole series together because we won’t be coming back for another issue on that Because it’s going to be done.

But yeah that the book is almost finished and it makes me so sad because Everyone on the team is just absolutely in love with this series, but we don’t want it to ever stay its welcome. And that has been our mantra ever since this book was made.

Anthony: And for, for fans of, of the show and for fans of me in particular if, if you have any strong feelings about Anthony Sytko and perhaps a negative fashion, or maybe you’ve been annoyed by me or whatever the, the case may be Let’s just say this, I was going to say, there’s some, there’s some catharsis here for you in this one.

Allen: This part’s no secret. On grandma chainsaw number three, we had an option for four or five backers to get drawn into the book. Anthony took us up on that. And he told me to do my worst and and and they did

Anthony: And they did yeah, yeah, wow

Yeah, and it’s so funny dude. It is

Doc Issues: i’m glad i’m I’m very glad that you made it your pet project.

Allen: Yeah, it is, you know. Yeah, yeah, that’s meow some would say.

Anthony: I know and you know, I, I’ve seen the manner in which I died and I’m not going to be a pussy and complain about it.

I could sit here and caterwaul all day long, but

Allen: it really scratches the surface of what this book’s about.

Anthony: Yeah. Yep. You’re really going to want to dig your claws into this one. Capes on the scratch couch.

Allen: Are you boxing up your emotions right now?

Doc Issues: No, no, no. I just. You know, I have to be, be very careful.

I, I, I don’t know. There may be something in my throat, you know, it feels like a hairball.

Allen: So you are perfect after all. Yeah.

Anthony: All right. I think we’ve littered enough puns throughout this past 90 seconds.

Allen: Oh boy. Oh, gosh, this one’s for the Patreons for no, but for real though,

Anthony: people are gonna be sitting there going. I paid money for this.

Allen: Yeah. It’s going to tank now. No, but grandma chainsaw number four, it’s, it is the last one. This one will have the the trade paper back on there. So I know that some people like to wait until.

The series is completely done so they can go ahead and get it from start to finish without having to wait. But, but yeah, we, we cannot wait for you guys to check it out. And can’t wait to come back on here to, you know, do a special episode with you guys for a whole series overview for it because it’s, it’s it, you know and we’ll definitely give it to you guys before the before the show launches or before the Kickstarter launches.

Yeah. Like I said, yeah. After that we’re, we’re going back to Pocus and we cannot wait to get back into that world because we left issue five off with such a huge cliffhanger. Yeah. So we’re, that one is because that one was a hard choice for us because we wanted to go ahead and do Pocus six after Graham off three, but.

We were all talking about it. And we’re like, it’s just one more issue. Like, and I’m not saying like, let’s just get it over with. Like we’re trying to rush through it, but it’s like, let’s just, let’s just do it. Right. Let’s go ahead and just finish this series out. We’ll get back into POCUS.

Anthony: Now, is it going to be POCUS or is it going to be HORUS, HORUS and HELL?

Allen: Yeah, it’s going to be POCUS POCUS 6. POCUS 6. Okay. POCUS 6 proper. Yes. POCUS, yeah. POCUS, HOCUS issue six. And then then it will be HORUS 3. And then it’ll be Pocus 7, then the conclusion of Horse and Hell for Horse 4, and then Pocus 8, which will wrap up that arc for Pocus.

Anthony: Okay. Nice. All right. Yeah. So you’ve, you know, kind of plotting the rest of this out throughout, I guess the rest of the year, probably any, even into 2025, I would imagine.

Allen: Probably at this point, probably. Yeah. Because I think Pocus 6 it’s going to be a good one. And Brian is really, he’s excited and I know how Brian gets, so he’s really going to push himself with this one more than he already does with everything.

Anthony: All right. I mean, you always you always managed to find these, these fantastic creative teams and, and.

The, the collaboration that you have tends to bring out the best in everybody and everybody constantly is, is stepping up and bringing their A game. And you were mentioning earlier about how Ruben kind of laying everything out made you really step up your game with the writing. And I think that very similarly, when, when you’re, Coming up with these stories whether it’s Brian or Kit or, you know, whomever that you’ve got doing the art on it, they really bring their game because they want to represent your words as best as they can with, with the art.

And and then once those pages start coming in and you’re like, okay, if, if they’re giving me these really banger visuals, I really have to step up my game on, on the, the writing standpoint. And it’s so just, it’s continually escalation.

Allen: A hundred percent I would, I would be, I’d be a fool and a liar if, if I didn’t say and admit that their art inspires me, right?

Like you know, for Final Girl Next Door, whenever Kit sent His sketch is back for Kate. Yeah, that like, I, I didn’t even, you know, he, he drew an eyepatch on her and I didn’t even plan that, but now that inspired me to tell the story about how she lost her eye in the coming up issues. Right. So it’s, and it’s stuff like that.

Like Brian, whenever he’s drawing stuff I’ve gone back and changed the whole script, like a whole, like eight pages, because there’s something that he drew. I was like, this, this is better than what I wrote. So now I have to make this fit. And take out something and put this in. So it’s just, it’s little stuff like that, right?

Let, let your team really inspire you and then you can be the best creator that you can be, especially for them, because it’s, it’s easy to get stagnant with this. I mean, especially like, you know, with Brian, like we we’ve done so many books together. Right. And the run issue six of something, and I don’t want him getting bored.

So we’re always trying to push ourselves to make sure none of us get bored.

Anthony: Yeah. I don’t know. Anybody’s getting bored, working on any of these stories from a writing or an artistic standpoint, I was going to say, I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t think boring would come into play.

Allen: Well, thank you. I appreciate it.

Anthony: Yeah. I never think, oh God, I got to slog my way through another one of these books. It’s usually, it’s like, what kind of crazy shit am I going to see now? Yeah. Where is this going? I have no idea where this is going to end. And I’m okay with that. I’m, I’m in, I’m ready for the ride and I’m just going to enjoy every minute, every page of it.

So, all right. So we, we covered the Herald. We covered Final Girl. We covered Grandma and, and Pocus. What’s going on with Deacon, is it Deacon Dan’s? Famous chili.

Allen: Yeah. So we’re, we’re going to be tackling Deacon Dan after this next arc of Pocus is done because we really want to finish telling this story here.

And then we we’ve already have the first eight pages done of Beneath the Lighthouse and we’re still cooking on one Sunday afternoon, which that will be our first graphic novel. So

Anthony: Right. I forgot about that one too. I, you know, I, I remember Deacon Dan’s name is chilly just because again, the name,

Allen: Oh, it’s the best.

We’ll never think of anything better.

Anthony: The name just, just, you know, brings me in. So I’m like, Oh, I, I gotta, I gotta read this. I can’t wait for it.

Allen: Oh yeah. No, we can’t wait to tell the story of Deacon Dan either, but we just really want people have been asking us for, for POCUS and I get it. I want more POCUS too.

Anthony: So I can’t wait for you to POCUS with more POCUS. POCUS.

Allen: God, I’m leaving.

Doc Issues: Oh, this is, this is amazing. I didn’t initiate the pun that went too far.

Anthony: I didn’t know there was such a thing as a pun that went too far. We did 90 seconds of cat jokes and that was all fine. I make one pocus joke and you’re like, all right, I’m out of here.

Doc Issues: Please understand, though, I’m used to people groaning. So when someone else experiences it, I’m like, Oh, I’m off the hook for once. It’s not me.

Anthony: Good times. Good times. All right. So as I said, we’ll, we’ll post the links in the show notes, Allen, for the folks that haven’t listened to the prior.

7, 8, 3, 11 times you’ve been on the show. Where can people find you on the internet and tell them subscribe to your newsletter and all that jazz?

Allen: Yeah, definitely. Newsletter is one of the best things to do it. We promise we won’t bombard you with stuff. We only really send out updates if we feel like it’s necessary.

If we have a new project that’s coming up and it’s the top hat studios. substack. com. And you can just follow us on, on Kickstarter. To you know, it’s under Allen and Will, or you can search one of our titles. No one else has been dumb enough to name their, their projects, what we’ve named ours. So we’re pretty easy to find on there.

Anthony: Excellent. Excellent. And again, you can go back and check on our website, capesonthecouch. com for all the prior episodes where we’ve had Allen or Will or both. And as I said, they, they have their own subcategory on the website. You can just, no, I’m serious. That’s Allen and Will just because y’all been on so many times that it’s just, all right, you get your own category.

Like we’ve got Marvel, we’ve got DC, we’ve got heroes. We’ve got, you know, Batman rogues. And then there’s all the Allen and Will episodes. As I said, you can find all the episodes that Allen and will have been on in addition to all of our episodes in general on our website, capes on the couch.com.

We are on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok at capes on the couch. We have not yet had an opportunity to formally announce on an episode, but we will be doing a panel at Shena Con in June at in Parsippany. We will be. Using the Baccano panel that we unfortunately did not get an opportunity to present at Puchikon because we had to back out last minute for, for illness on that one.

But ShenaniCon is a similarly anime themed convention. And I said, well, we’ve already got, we’ve already done the legwork for Baccano. We’ve watched it. We were all set to present. We might as well just use that one. So so we’re very much looking forward to that. We don’t have a date yet. We don’t know if we’re going to be Saturday or Sunday.

We don’t have a time, any of that. So as soon as we have that information we will certainly pass that along and share that on our social medias. We’re also communicating to do another live event. I’m not going to name any details yet, but we’ve, we’ve gotten positive feedback and basically just asked us, you know, Oh, give us some dates and let’s figure out, you know, what we can do.

So we will have that announced as well. And we’re continuing to submit for panels and getting guest appearances and things of that nature. So. All good stuff in the works. And as I said, if you’d like what you hear on this episode first off, get your head examined. Um, no, I say that I say that with all, with all jest and love.

But if you like what you hear,

Doc Issues: So that’s why I’m here. Okay. I just wanted to make sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Anthony: If you need your head examined, that’s why doc is here. But No, that’s right. The, the disclaimer says quite clearly is not your psychiatrist. He’s not your therapist.

But we’ve got a patron. If you like what you hear, you can subscribe and unlock additional material, uncensored stuff, early access. There’s a whole back catalog full of good stuff there. So you can check that out. We have links in the show notes for that. So Allen, again, from the bottom of our hearts, we appreciate you taking the time.

Special shout out to Ruben who, who dropped into the chat. He didn’t get an opportunity to really say much or do anything on camera, but he was here for part of the recording. So thank you to Ruben. We’ll have the links to the show notes, go support the Herald on Kickstarter. And and then we’ll, we’ll have the links for final girl next door and, and everything else you’ve got in the works as we continue.

So doc, before we close out. Anything you want to add?

Doc Issues: You know, it’s, it’s, it writes itself. You gotta admit that because just be careful because you know, you might have this cute girl next door, but they may actually just be a herald for a grandma with a chainsaw. Womp womp. And on that note Allen.

Appreciate it as always. It’s good chatting with you, buddy. And you’re welcome back certainly anytime. All right.

Allen: Love you guys. I’m sure I’ll be back.

Anthony: I’m sure you will too. For Allen Dunford and Doc Issues, I’m Anthony Sytko. Thanks for listening. We’ll see you next time.