Leigh Chalker (00:26):
Good day and welcome to Tuesday Chinwag, the second episode of 2024. My first, and for those of you that do not know me, my name is Lee Chalker. I’m the creator of the Australian Independent comic book Battle for Bustle, published through X Studios who sponsor this show. Now, for all of those people watching across now a Julie Simulcast live stream across X and Aussie verse, if you don’t know either of those channels, let me tell you about ’em. So anyone watching on Aussie verse that doesn’t know about X down the bottom there on your screen, there’s a little yellow line going across. Now it’s got addresses. Alright, so X is a community. Comex have got Australian creators there, a network of varying people throughout Australia bringing comic book artists, creators, publishers, shopkeepers, all together in one place for you to find them. All people of interests, similar interests and love for the medium.

(01:34)
Now, feel free to like and subscribe. Now, the other channel that we are broadcast across is Aussie verse. Now, if you’ve never heard of Aussie verse, you can find their address across that little bottom yellow lighting line. And they are the home of Australian pop culture and comic books. They do live streaming interviews with Australian creators as well. They do video drops halls, they promote omnibus, they promote look, a myriad of things. Man, it’s quite amazing the amount of content that is on Aussie verse, Aussie verse, A group of individuals that also share a love of all things comics, all things entertainment. And I’m very, very happy and honoured and grateful that comics and Aussie verse allow Chinwag to be broadcast across both channels. The best thing you can do to support both of these super important channels is to like and subscribe anything anywhere you can find them, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube in particular, because every time you like and subscribe these channels, that helps the algorithm.

(02:56)
Now, I’m no mathematician. I don’t really understand the technicalities of things, but the more likes and subscriptions you get, the more shows get higher up these little levels and they pop up on your screens and you see ’em and they’re there in front of your face. And who knows, you may not have time to watch ’em right there then, but they’re there. They’re in the back of your mind and you can come back to ’em later and you can still support people. Alright? Because it’s all about past, present, and future. And right now we are in the present. So let’s enjoy the moment. Tonight’s chinwag is super, super duper special for me because I’ve got the opportunity with Shane. It’s a com X studio special. So basically what X Studio is, amongst other things that X do, which I’ll explain to you in a moment.

(03:50)
The X Studio is the publishing side of x. Shane, who is the publisher down the bottom there, you know him as Ciz, he is everywhere. Hello Shane, how are you? Good to see you now. Basically X publishing publishes battle for bustle and everything that I do X publishing also publishes Mr. Aaron Mack and his comic book Gods Among Men. It also publishes Max Ferrata, Stella Lands, Peter Wilson, who should be joining us a little later on with his current Kickstarter foes and a whole myriad of super talented people that over the course of the next 12 months, if everything goes according to plan in which it will, you are going to get absolutely bombarded by beautiful, wonderful comic book content. And I can definitely tell you that it’s coming. Alright? It’ll start off as a little trickle and then it’ll be a wave. And before you know it, it’ll be a tidal wave chasing you down.

(05:02)
Comex will be as many comic conventions this year as it possibly can, also represented by the people being published in the studio system. Now, a little thing about Comex that I’d like to talk to you about as well, I don’t really get on the socials much of late. I sort of like to just keep to myself and touch, but there was a conversation perhaps a month ago on one of the Facebook feeds that caught my attention and there was a question raised about does Australia have a one stop shop that supports Australian comic books? Now I found that a fairly decent question. What surprised me is some of the answers caught me off guard. A few of them knew of Comex Shop, which sponsors the show, an Aussie verse, but some of them may have had their information a little wrong. So I’d like to personally clear that up with you.

(06:17)
The Comex Shop is not just for Comex Studio published comics. It is open to all Australian comic book creators publishes independence mini comics. Anything anywhere that you want to find an Australian comic book from anyone in Australia is available at the comic shop. Now, at the moment, there are over 100 titles in the shop, which has a flat rate of $9 anywhere in Australia. Now, that’s not for one comic book. That’s as many comic books as you want to buy, alright? So I’m not telling you to go and buy my comic book, I’m not telling you to go and buy anyone’s comic book, but just buy someone’s comic book. So I wanted to clear that up for you, all right? Because I love Australian comic books and I just really felt an urgency to clear that up with you. Okay? So I’m glad we’ve got that out of the way.

(07:23)
The next thing I do want to talk about, and I’m very sorry for the long introduction, but I wasn’t here last week due to some infrastructure issues with Internets and stuff due to the cyclone. But the beauty of community, for those of you who are just touching base and watching through Aussie verse or watching Chinwag, and this involves Aussie verse as well, is communities are a beautiful thing. They bring together like-minded people that sometimes think that they’re alone in the world, that no one else understands them and no one else shares their interests. Well, I can tell you across Comm X and across Aussie verse, the doors are open for you to bring yourself and feel free to be part of the community of like-minded people, creators, people that love comic books, and there’s people in this community that are from all walks of life.

(08:20)
And it’s a beautiful thing because you can meet anyone you want. I’ve had the opportunity to meet people that I read as a little boy that I never dreamed in my life that I would ever have the opportunity to meet. And I have the utmost pleasure to call them mentors and friends now. And I was scared to walk through that door too one day, but once upon a time. But it’s probably the best step I’ve ever taken for myself personally, and I’ve met some wonderful friends. In particular, I would like to say a big shout out to a great mate of mine, Mr. Rob sped last week when it became apparent the technical issues were going to, let’s say scuttle the first episode back of Tuesday, chinwag for 2024. I sent out a call to my brother and he took it up and he was nervous, which is fair enough because I get nervous on these shows too.

(09:21)
But he came in and he did an absolutely amazing job. The man has nerves of steel because for as many of these shows that I’ve done, I have never ever been put in a position of having five minutes at the opening of the show simply by yourself. Amazing to be honest with you, and full heart, grateful, love from a fellow man, SPIE and anything you need, mate, you know where to find me. So let’s rock on. Alright, so tonight’s show, I am here with a couple of dudes that, well, we want to talk about some upcoming issues. So look where we’re at is that there will be Peter Wilson and a few others pop in later on, but I max, forgive me Mr. Ferrata just for, oh, here he is. Here’s the, oh, well we’ll get to it. Pete, you just, because this is the beauty of chinwag. Chinwag is fluid, this is the live stream, this is what happens. So you’re lucky, I like to talk. So this is how it is. But we will come back to Peter because technical, there’s something that I’m used to now after last week. So hopefully you’re safe down there and it’s just a matter of pressing the right button. So now Mr. Max there? What’s that?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (10:43):
I’m just going to interrupt. We got a lot of comments while you were talking, I didn’t want to bring up while you were doing your intro. Okay,

Leigh Chalker (10:49):
Comments are welcome.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (10:51):
Yes. So we’ve got the hang on that’s saying hi to Dave. That’s a yeah.

Leigh Chalker (10:58):
Hello mate.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (10:59):
Good day to all.

Leigh Chalker (11:01):
Hello Richard. Hello Peter. Hello. Dave di

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (11:09):
A lot of Hello, Jackie, another one, Peter.

Leigh Chalker (11:14):
Good day mate.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (11:15):
Kerry celebrating the comeback of Lee.

Leigh Chalker (11:17):
Hello Kerry,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (11:20):
We’ve got and

Leigh Chalker (11:22):
Good day buddy.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (11:24):
Rob O’Connor.

Leigh Chalker (11:25):
Hello Rob. Man, they’re flooding in.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (11:29):
Yeah, they were they, that’s why I thought I’d interrupt.

Leigh Chalker (11:32):
That’s right mate. Pick up those Aussie comics at a flat road. That’s the way, Peter. Yes, and we want you on Aussie verse. That’s exactly right. Omni Bow. Good man, you chuck those comments up. Alright, go. Sp, keep those comments coming. It is a fluid show. My goodness Lee, that was very succinct and well expressed introduction. Well done. Thank you very much Danny and it’s nice to see you back on the show, mate. What are you talking about, Chalker? You could talk the leg off a chair. Neil, I’m pretty sure there’s a few three and two legged chairs around the place. Might suggest that you are correct with that comment Mates and Nick May, how are you bud? It’s great to see you. We’ve got the random Facebook user. Hello random Facebook user. It’d be lovely to know who you are. Hello Bey mate. That’s right.

(12:25)
I’ve taken on the ego this week of Minty Gordon. It’s a long story, but if you like for the rest of the evening you can call me minty. So anyway, I’ll go into that another time. It’s a long story, but keep those comments coming and we’ll get to ’em as best we can. Feel free to ask any questions to the artists, the creators of the comic books and chinwag is fluid, so let’s rock and roll. But before we get to somebody, I want to say hello to Mr. Peter Wilson. Hello my friend, how are you down there?

Peter Wilson (13:00):
Happy to be here at last. Sorry about the technical difficulties.

Leigh Chalker (13:04):
Don’t you worry about technical difficulties, mate. These are the things that happen. So Pete

Peter Wilson (13:13):
Organised, ready to go for 40 minutes?

Leigh Chalker (13:16):
Yeah, I’ve been ready to go since last Tuesday, mate, I’ve got stamped out of the way there. So Pete, I was going to come to you first, but what I’m going to do Bud, is I’m going to shoot to someone that I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting this before tonight and I have had the pleasure of meeting the artist on his comic book. So to the entire Aussie verse universe and the, well maybe I should have just said the entire Aussie verse, Aussie verse universe. I dunno, who knows? But we’ll roll with that. And to the comics people, I’d like to introduce you to Mr. Aaron Mack, the creator of Gods amongst Men. So how are you Aaron? How are you going buddy?

Aaron Mak (14:09):
Good, thank you. Wow, that was an excellent intro.

Leigh Chalker (14:14):
It’s spinning. Well thank you for that. I have a lot to say. That’s probably why the show is Aply named Chinwag Mate. What happens generally Aaron, is that I come in and I boom for about two hours and then for the rest of the week no one sees me. So I burn myself out, man. I’m like one of those, I’m not a sleepy planet, but I’m one of those stars. It just explodes so well what do you do? So Aaron, my man, let’s talk about God’s amongst men. You take it away, talk to us, talk to the people, what is it about?

Aaron Mak (14:51):
What is it about? So first off, I’ll jump in and say, so what’s among men’s a unique situation? It’s basically it’s by myself and my brother Josh. So together we are the Mac Brothers team. Basically he and I have worked together for a long time other than being blood related, he’s the original ideas guy and he comes in with all these crazy concepts and then I look at his chicken scratchings and I go, all right, let’s turn this into something sort of accessible to people, God’s among men. I guess I’ll start with all the key, the buzzwords. It’s a socially disruptive true story and it is a naco noir. I think that’s a good leaping off point. Don’t you think?

Max Ferrada (15:44):
Noir, did you say

Aaron Mak (15:45):
Naco noir? Yeah, we came up with that term just because you keep hearing things like Neo, I love the idea of noir. It’s sort of this mystery. It’s often dealing with dark subject matter. And I kept hearing neo noir. I was like, what does neo noir mean? Is it just new? No. So because of the subject matter, we thought narco, no, it’s got a nice alliteration, it’s got a nice ring to it, narco short for narcotics, and it dives into a lot of really sort of the underworld elements.

Leigh Chalker (16:25):
Well Aaron, it interested me because I actually happened to catch I think the first maybe eight, 10 pages of it when it was in black and white and what? Well, from my perspective I gravitated to it because look, I won’t drone on about things, but in my history, safe to say, alcoholism and drug use was a fairly common thing. So I could definitely gravitate with a lot of what you were trying to put across in that. So what caught me off guard was that it was very succinct with the message it was trying to get across. Man, I liked it because I thought it was ballsy. I hadn’t really seen a comic book like that in a long time. Direct and from I guess a street level man, you sort of from the experience, my own experience and others that I’ve seen in that sort of way. Yeah, it struck with me, man. So I mean, I don’t want you to go into too many details and have knocks on your door and it’s the old boys with spotlights and shields and stuff. What prompted you to go down that road mate and not do something a little fluffy, you know what I mean? Or superhero or something to that effect because it’s pretty boom, it’s in your face.

Aaron Mak (18:17):
Well, it’s funny you meant because other than God’s among men, we actually have another project that’s a little bit fluffy. It is still superheroes, but Gods Among Men was actually, it’s been a story that me and Josh have been working on for over a decade actually. It went through many sort revisions and everything, but this was a story we really wanted to tell and just because of the nature of our experience with it, it was sort of that case. One thing we did make sure to do and because it is a true story, we even put a little disclaimer, but we said names and everything are changed. But for the most part we really wanted to capture that feeling of there’s all these little sort of idiosyncrasies even in those first few pages that you read that things so specific that people kind of go, it’s too specific to not be true.

(19:16)
Some really bizarre, they say truth is stranger than fiction and life sometimes writes itself the story. So Josh and I kind of worked together where he would have all these notes and everything and that’s where I’m a big fan of films and narratives and things like the three X structure and all that jargon, but we really sat down to go, how do we craft this on a page by page basis and issue one to go, we know that everything as a whole is quite, it is got all these crazy really confronting elements and stuff, but it was a case of like how do we then make issue one? How do we bring it to you in this 22 page package?

Leigh Chalker (20:00):
Yeah, yeah. Well that is the next question I’m going to ask because probably, I mean obviously the subject matter was something that sad to say, but I have to be honest resonated with me from my experiences in the past. But the other thing that I gravitated towards it as well is your artist Mr. Ben Sullivan. Now I have had the pleasure of knowing Ben for a few years and I have actually worked on a project with Ryan Valour and Rob Lyle called Ring Around the Rosie, and I had the great fear and luck of inking the portion of Ben’s pencils and when you ink someone’s stuff, it is Gary and it’s lovely to hear from you mate. I hope you are. Well.

Aaron Mak (21:02):
Thank you Gary.

Leigh Chalker (21:07):
You get to know someone quite well and when you in their artwork in that stream, and I was very happy that you came across Ben because he suits your story 100%. So I guess where I’m going with this is how did you find Ben

Aaron Mak (21:30):
The mystery? First off, I just want to touch back on something that you said. I’m really glad that you felt that there was this resonating feeling with it and that you people who have any kind of experience related to that can see this additional level. I’m really glad that you saw that Ben. Ben is an interesting story because it’s funny, I’ll jump ahead a little bit into saying that when I first contacted Ben, that was just before he stopped being active on Instagram and that’s how I messaged him. So I just caught him in that little window. Lucky, so lucky, so fortunate I guess because obviously at this point in time now we’re still sort of this first appearance on Chinwag, so thank you guys very much for having me.

Leigh Chalker (22:26):
My pleasure.

Aaron Mak (22:27):
But a couple years ago we were really fish out of water. Nobody knew us, we had nothing under our name, no credentials or anything. So when we decided that God’s among men we wanted to be a comic book, we were like, all right, well what’s the first step we need? We need an artist. So I remember going to a comic fair in Melbourne called the Yarraville Comic Fair,

(22:52)
And I went around sort of just talking a whole bunch of people trying to get a read, just somebody, just get a couple of names. And it was actually, I was at the EE booth and I had a word with Gary Della and that’s where Gary actually, he showed me, he said, oh, I told him a little bit about what we’re trying to do and he said, the guy you want is Ben Sullivan. And I was like, okay, cool. I’m like, I didn’t know who he was, I didn’t know anyone. I was just walking around all and everything like hi, but he said the name Ben Sullivan. And I was like, okay, I now have to hunt down this elusive Ben Sullivan. So first thing I did was just typed in a Google Australian artist and Ben Sullivan and a great little segue promotion. The comments artist directory came up.

Leigh Chalker (23:45):
There you go.

Aaron Mak (23:46):
It was perfect. It suited the needs that are young little ego, not even that young a few years ago, but

Leigh Chalker (23:55):
Little okay on this show. You can be as young as you want to be, man, I’m only 25, so

Aaron Mak (24:05):
Young sophisticated dudes,

Leigh Chalker (24:08):
We’ll roll with that. I like that. I like you, Aaron. You can come back anytime,

Aaron Mak (24:15):
Ben, we’ll get along just fine, young, sophisticated.

Leigh Chalker (24:18):
That’s right.

Aaron Mak (24:20):
But yeah, no, I found his profile, saw his Instagram and that’s what I’m frequently wasting my time on. But I messaged him, gave him a very brief pitch and he said, yeah, I’d love to catch up. So we had lunch, I kept trying to buy him food and he was like, no, no, it’s fine. I was like, please, lemme get you a coffee, it’s fine. And what was meant to just be like a quick half hour, I thought maybe an hour I’d allocate. We ended up spending something like almost three hours just talking about, it starts with a pitch. One thing that we love Ben for is when Ben likes something and he sinks his teeth into it, here come the questions he’s asking about this, he’s asking about that next thing you know, we’re actually starting to develop it even further. That’s why the meeting just ran on for hours and then next thing you know it was like, oh, it’s almost like five and at the go. And pretty much from that point on, it’s just been this really interesting me, Josh and Ben together as sort of the core team, really bringing it to life, seeing his art, bring these scenes, actually seeing them bring them into reality. It was, it’s just pure magic,

Leigh Chalker (25:36):
I would say. That is a lovely way of describing it mate. You obviously seem like you’re in a lovely little creative cocoon there and you definitely got one of the great, I think one of the great comic book artists in Australia. The one thing I love about Ben is I had a crazy idea with SPEDs one day and we were doing Ring Around the Rosie and it was only going to be eight pages and there’s a whole other story, but basically I was drinking in those days and look, even though I’m sober, I still come up with crazy ideas. But I decided that bey, should we get Ben Sullivan in and Ben’s very busy and we were both a bit and then oh mate, send him a message and next thing you know he’s ringing me one night and yeah, it was a strange one.

(26:41)
It was like, no, I think about 7 31 Saturday night and I’d had a few, don’t you worry about that. And the most beautiful thing was man is we never even spoke about the pitch of Ring around the Rosie. What we spoke about was absolutely everything else meant. And after probably the two or three hours that I spoke to him on the phone, much like your experience, I knew within myself, no, this dude’s cool man, he’s different, he’s seeing things different. So congratulations with Ben there bud. And I can see you buzzing there dude. So Aaron, I’m going to don’t think I’m rude my man because we will come back to you. Do feel free to ask questions of anyone on this panel. Do keep the comments coming, anyone at home, we love interaction with people. If you have any questions for Aaron, send them through.

(27:45)
Hello sk, how are you mate? And there he is. So SK is another great Australian comic book creator out there. He’s a busy little bee and it’s first time me seeing Aaron and two mates. So buckle up and we’ll get to know him a bit better because we’ll come back to him about Gods amongst men as well. So I am going to welcome Peter Wilson back. Hello buddy. I hope you’re going alright, I’m coming back to you Pete, we open the show with your man, so we’re going to just keep going around the screen here. That’s great. It’s fluid man. This is how it’s, yeah, my brother. Alright, so I am now going to Omni Bow Peter Wilson Bow because we’re coming to that because that’s a Kickstarter happening right now and it’s rocking man. And if you like donuts, go and bite his donut. You’ll know what I’m talking about when we get Max Ada, the Man you are the creator of Stella Lands, which is a comic Comex Studios comic book.

(28:56)
Now Stella Lands was a very successful comic book I believe is up there in the top sellers of the studio at the moment. I don’t see the numbers, but I have to give Youku those man for promoting yourself prolifically because a lot of people and creators out there don’t realise that it’s not just the difficulty of putting a comic book together and navigating the map of script and artist and some people aren’t writers and creators themselves would have to go out there into the world and that in itself is difficult. But the next step that is difficult is self-promotion and it’s a double-edged sword. And mate, I’ve got to give you a thumbs up to that because you’re leading the way way. There’s plenty of posts I see up on Facebook. Hello Alex, how are you buddy? I wish you were here tonight mate, I miss you. But before I get back to you, max, I tell you what the text Alex before, because the man can talk, I tell you in live, but I mean his texts are intensely long, man, and it’d just be easy to have a phone call. But anyway, Alex, glad you’re well man. We’ll catch up with you soon. So Max mate, your epic, epic stellar lands is gearing up for its second issue. So the floor is yours my friend, fire away. What are we waiting for and looking out for? What can we sink our teeth into?

Max Ferrada (30:27):
Alright, so as the pledgers of the previous issue, no, the first issue of stellar lands followed a superhuman character code named an Eliza real name Daphne, as she embarked on a mission on a remote Frost Moon to gather intel. And in the process ran into hostiles, which complicated her goal and that resolved and in a way gave an entree to a bigger universe. Now that universe continues in the second issue. All the characters are different, the premise is different. The story is self-contained, but it’s taking place the same time as issue one. That’s what the universe of stellar lines is about. It’s everything isn’t happening chronologically, it’s happening co-term, it’s happening in some alternative at the same time. But they will providing we hit all eight issues, they’ll collide in one epic boss battle on the ninth issue. And who knows how long that’ll take maybe a few years, maybe several decades. But it’s just something that when you have an idea, you’re almost powerless in its fall in its flood.

(31:59)
Like Charles Bukowski said, it just comes out of you in a flood. You have to let it come out of you or let it in a flood or let it die in you. And this idea does not want to die. It wants to come out in a supersonic boom. And that is why at this point I’ve already got all eight scripts completed in rather quick succession. And I’ve got the second issue already in the throes of lettering, shout out to SK Sigma Studios who just commented. Now in this particular issue, we are focusing on a base like life within a future military base because again, this takes place in a very distant future sci-fi, quasi dystopia. There are some really admirable things, very harmonious, utilitarian and egalitarian things about this universe. But there’s also undeniable dictatorships that happen in this universe. So depending on your perspective, it’s a utopia or a protopia. And what’s happening right now is that we go into the details of life in a military base on a moon that is essentially occupying another civilization. Now the complication occurs when the human soldier forms a relationship with an alien local, and this sets into narrative motion, a series of decisions which culminates in a dilemma, which I hope I’ve written well enough to be extremely emotional. And when you think about it, that’s what a person is, right? There are the quality of all of their decisions put together.

(33:59)
That’s what makes a person and making decisions oscillating between we know what’s right or what feels right. That’s another major scene in this particular issue now. Yeah. Well, can I continue or should we?

Leigh Chalker (34:16):
You may continue, mate. The floor is yours. Go for it. Chin is fluid mate.

Max Ferrada (34:21):
Alright, yeah, well yeah, well I like that. Of course the Asian part of me is very structured and we need to colour this box and that box, Aaron knows what I’m talking about. So yeah, this fluidity is I need to take a chill pill sometimes. I’ve been told that before, but anyway,

Leigh Chalker (34:45):
Just you bud. You just do.

Max Ferrada (34:48):
Yeah. Great, thank you. So the two main influences of this comic book. Now I do read, do read super human superhero books, M-C-U-D-C-U. But in general I consider myself to be just a general reader. I love, love, huge mammoth, sexy, big novels like the Corrections or the Recognitions or the Lord of the Rings or yeah, stuff like that. I’ve stopped and started infinite just so many times since I was a teenager. I’ll finish that one day. One of the main influences is a very intimate comic book, decidedly un superhero. It’s called Blankets by Craig Thompson. It’s very intimate and it’s just grab my heart very, very warm. And most of the panels are intimate, two person encounters. And it could be argued that the story is simple, but the emotions are not because Craig, the protagonist in this semi autobiographical rendering, he does verge on a lot of grey areas and comes out of it with just alarming clarity, I have to say.

(36:14)
And the intimacy that was created there definitely made a lingering impression. And I guess when you’re looking at the second issue of stellar land, it’s less the kinetic content of a superhero comic book and more the emotional content of a whole book of a novel or of a novelization. And yes, there’s a lot of politics in it. I do have a background in politics and it all plays a role. There’s an allegory here going on with the sort of imperialism that takes place in the Asiatic parts of the world, a military base in a country that doesn’t want you there. It’s a song that’s been sung since the Cold War and that’s another very similar to that I attempted to put onto the page. And Shane, we have a video, right? I was going to ask you if you wanted that. Yep. That we can show then right now. Yeah, well I’ll just say that quickly that this video glimpses this particular universe and the particular relationship between the human soldier and the female alien who is a denizen, a citizen of the land that is being occupied and the whole political infrastructure that surrounds them and in a way sort of makes them the play things of the institutions that are there. So with that, can you, let’s go.

Leigh Chalker (38:52):
Very nice, very nice. Now Max, the way you were talking about your comic book, mate, we have spoken a few times in the past and excuse me, the one thing that I do remember speaking to you about is our love of the television show, and that was called The Wire

Max Ferrada (39:13):
Is Understatement

Leigh Chalker (39:15):
Is the greatest television show that’s ever been made. So there’s my plug for the evening, mate, Stella Lands. When I read issue one, and I’ve spoken to you a few times about things, if anyone has seen The Wire, it would be fair to say that that is also what you are thinking of. How each season in the Wire was based on a particular section area

Max Ferrada (39:44):
Of

Leigh Chalker (39:45):
The city of Baltimore. One was the police, one was the education system, and that’s how Stellar Land seems to be moving to me from how you’ve articulated it. Is that a fair assumption?

Max Ferrada (39:58):
Yes, absolutely. David Simon, the creator of The Wire, I think he’s God, he’s incredible. He’s amazing. He is in a sense, the wire ruin television for me. I mean, yeah, there are great shows you could throw me Your Game of Thrones and Your Last of Us. And while they are incredible in their own right, the Wire, the detail Sociological Tapestry is so rich, every rewatch I find something new and find something in equal shares, inspirational and disturbing

Leigh Chalker (40:43):
And possibly the two greatest characters ever to grace the television screen in McNulty and Omar

Max Ferrada (40:50):
Omar,

Leigh Chalker (40:51):
Man, if none of you watching have ever seen The Wire or have no idea what I’m talking about, quite honestly, man, do yourself a favour. It’s a rocking show and it’ll catch you. I’ll just leave it at that. But McNulty and Omar, man, hey, I wish I would’ve come up with those characters. They are awesome.

Max Ferrada (41:16):
Well, in a sense, David Simon didn’t come up with those characters. These are characters

Leigh Chalker (41:21):
On real life. Yeah, he was a Baltimore newspaper dude

Max Ferrada (41:25):
In his beat, but he wrote the much, well-received Homicide Life on the street, which also was adapted to a television show. Yeah, institutions is definitely a huge part of what makes Stellar Lands, stellar lands. Whereas The Wire looked at the city of Baltimore, I’m looking at the how war ripples out. I’m looking at a particular galactic war and how it influences people who are fighting on the front lines, people in the military basis, how it’s dealt with in covert top secret missions, how it affects the citizens in another issue. And there’s also, if we get to issue seven, there’s going to be one issue that deals with the politics and there’s going to be no action scenes in that. It’s just going to be guys in Suits talking. And I hope we get it that far and I hope it gets read, but I would be completely remiss if I didn’t tackle the political aspects of Galactic War and I believe that and or did that before I did and did that quite well. But I’m hoping there are other examples that are bad. If there are political sci-fi entities out there, please leave them or in the comments or something. I know, what’s the show? The Leviathan Wakes, it was turned into a TV show, the expands. Yes, I know the expands is like that.

(43:01)
I couldn’t get into it. I should give it another go. Yeah, and Battlestar of course, that’s another one. But yes, politics does play a huge role in much the same way as it did in dwi.

Leigh Chalker (43:13):
All right, now mate, I was watching your Aussie verse stream last evening and Omni Bow, what do you got? I tuned in for the Spie and stayed for the lack of SPEDs. I’m pretty sure if we send the message out, wave heck on the cheek mate and then duck back to whatever he is doing. Mate, there was a question that came in last night because Shane couldn’t be there to answer it. So while we’re talking about Stella Lands too and I just thought it was appropriate to bring it up now, if that’s all right sis, don’t freak out, man. It’s not like you don’t have to stand up or run around or give presents away or anything like that. But one of the questions that came up last night was is to paraphrase, does Stella Lands two have any variant covers? And Max wasn’t able to answer that.

Max Ferrada (44:25):
I didn’t know what variant covers was.

Leigh Chalker (44:28):
Sure. Then there was another comment that came up, maybe blank covers. If you don’t have, I’m just throwing it out there and keeping you in the loop. So while we are chatting about this stuff, have you considered variant covers for Stella Lands? Because apparently variant covers are like pocket a

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (44:49):
Big thing. Yes, at this point I have not heard of anything that could be used as a variant cover, but still Lands is another month or two away at least. So it could happen. Cool. That’s something a max to discuss. I guess

Max Ferrada (45:09):
It’s something that Max needs to research.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (45:13):
I can explain

Leigh Chalker (45:15):
This is the beauty of Chinwag because now we’ve moved out of interview phase into office meeting phase and I guess we’ve sort of, this is how it is. So yeah, I’m edy too, Alex, don’t you worry about that. So I’m glad that everything’s working out for you Max, and I’m looking forward to Stella Lands and I certainly hope it’s a huge success for you, man. I know the hard work that Ciz puts in behind the scenes as well. I mean, mate had eight issues written, that’s a hell of a job too. I have a lot of people out there think of comic books as art and artist first. There is in my opinion, writing, editing, publishing, all the work that goes on behind the scenes is just as important to lay the foundation for the artist to put down what your vision is. So I certainly hope you do get to see that vision through mate. And I know there’s a lot of people out there on the Kickstarter notification too. What did you say last night? You’re up to 112. Something to that effect.

Max Ferrada (46:33):
We started off at 109 and by the end of we were at 113. So yes, we had come scripts. Yeah,

Leigh Chalker (46:42):
Yeah. Very good, very good. So now just so I can get back to Aaron briefly and don’t think that you’re being left out of the crowd here because Peter Wilson’s going to be next bud, but I’m coming back to you and Max I will come back to you because this is just what I do. I zigzag, it’s just how my brain works man. Aaron, now your Kickstarter for Gods Among Men and Your Brothers and Bens, that is up on the notification section of Kickstarter, isn’t it? So anyone can jump up there and press to get notified. And there you go. There’s the address g.com, X studio. So anyone that’s interested, that’s correct, get in there, press notification. If you don’t know what the notification means, it means when it’s launched you will get an email alerting you to the launch and telling you what the campaign is all about.

(47:41)
It’s just a friendly little reminder just to jump on board and support a comic book creator across all boards. Even if you can’t support financially people doing Kickstarters or other comic book artists, please like share the links, put it out there into your family and friends and your streams because this all creates a web. You never know who’s going to see things pop up on their internety webby things and all their socials and stuff like that. And it all helps. It all creates a strong foundation for Australia comic books, which is what we are all here for and part of. Alright, so Aaron, when are you thinking that your comic book is ready to rock and roll, man? What’s your tentative date?

Aaron Mak (48:40):
So we’ll be looking at the moment, we’re looking to finish up production by early March, hopefully sooner as of last week Ben sent through the final page and it is just, wow, he just knocks it out of the park every time. And I have to make a special mention. Ben’s ink work is just, oh man, it’s beautiful.

Leigh Chalker (49:09):
Yeah, yeah. Hey Aaron, are you the man that receives the mail or is it your brother?

Aaron Mak (49:18):
So I’m primarily the sort of, I guess the mouthpiece. That’s why I’m very chatty.

Leigh Chalker (49:24):
I mail as in the envelope full of Ben’s artwork because if you’ve got some Ben artwork up there and tucked under that desk there, I reckon there’d be some people out there wouldn’t mind checking out a little bit of Ben Sullivan. Goodness man. Just for the people at home used to be a bit sneaky.

Aaron Mak (49:48):
I really wish I had a couple of his original artworks soon. Trust me, we, Josh and I are the number one right in the front of the queue to get our hands on those. I mean, I’ve got only a couple of digital images for now they’ll have to do. I’m not sure if I’ve sent that through, but yeah, look, we’re really excited. Look at the moment we’ve sharing a couple of little things on Instagram and obviously once the Kickstarter goes live it will show a little bit, but right now you can get a bit of a sneak preview on Instagram to see a bit of Ben’s beautiful artwork and what it’s done.

Leigh Chalker (50:24):
Beautiful. What’s your Instagram handle bud?

Aaron Mak (50:31):
It’s just at Ian Comic one word.

Leigh Chalker (50:34):
Okay, everyone keep an eye out for

Aaron Mak (50:36):
That. Wonder if I can type that

Peter Wilson (50:39):
You Yes, spell, that’s Cian.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (50:41):
Put it in the private chat and I’ll put it up on the screen.

Aaron Mak (50:45):
Yes. Beautiful. I will do exactly that Ian comics

Leigh Chalker (50:49):
And then we can launch that out there in world

Aaron Mak (50:53):
Look

Leigh Chalker (50:53):
At. Very good, very

Aaron Mak (50:56):
Cool. Awesome. That’d be great. Yeah, I mean because we are first in the queue to get Ben’s up.

Leigh Chalker (51:04):
Yeah, yeah. There might be a battle on for you down that way mate. I tell you there’s a lot of Ben Sullivan fans out there, so there’ll be Gold man. And there’s your Instagram handle right there everyone. So it’s S Nation comics, jump on there, check out some Ben Sullivan artwork, check out some God among Gods among men. And Aaron’s going to be with us for the rest of the show and chilling out. So there you have it. All right now Max, I’m going to leave the two of you gentlemen up there on the top shelf for the moment and I’m going to zip on down here to a great old mate of mine down here. Mr. Peter Wilson, who has currently got a, well I would say a rather hugely successful Kickstarter. He is kicking some bum man and that is the address right there. It is foes.com x studio. Now fo I heard Max describe it, which I thought was fairly apt last night on the Aussie versus live stream was its spy versus Spy on Crack. Did you say Max? Describe it accurate? Yeah, yeah, no it was a good one. I chuckled at that. I thought, well it’s pretty good. So we’ll talk to the man in a second. The super talented Mr. Wilson and that’s

Peter Wilson (52:33):
Gone on issue too.

Leigh Chalker (52:36):
I first came across foes with Presents issue one, which is another Kickstarter that’s going, which we’ll get next to Comex presents and noirs up to issue four. And Pete has partaken and done covers and brought foes about in the first three issues. And the Kickstarter here and Pete will go into it in more detail, is a deeper, more fleshed out version of the story. Is that not correct, Peter? Over to him, very true.

Peter Wilson (53:12):
Fire away. If you’ve already read the original FO run from presents, they’re still going to get your money’s worth if you get this issue, there’s a lot more to it. You’ve got whole new pages, scenes that were in. Presents are now twice as long. The art is a bit more refined as is the case I’m sure many comic artists can attest. You go back to the first panel compared to the last panel, it’s a bit stiff. You’re not as familiar with the characters and how they move. So it was also a real nightmare to look at my old stuff and think, oh, I put that out in the world. That’s not good

Leigh Chalker (53:55):
Dude. Is that because just the question because look, I’ve been guilty of the same and not really spoken to you about that sort of topic. You’ve been prolific over the last I guess two years. You do a lot. It’s not only foes but your body of work. There’s, you’ve done Cirus, which is another comics studio, comic book, you’ve got that story going. You do a lot of covers for people, you do a lot of pinups posters. I mean you’ve got mini comics that you’ve done in the past and all that. So your heart is in obviously beautifully in the comic book medium itself. And with I guess the community and Comm X community really picking up and everyone becoming friendly, there’s little matey challenges like, oh I can get it in bed all buddy buddy stuff. No one’s bleeding over here. Maybe into some ink every now and then, but we’re all mates and it’s good to have challenges to improve yourself and things like that. Is that feeling of when you went back to FOS one in the early days, was that because you had noticed like, wow, I’ve taken such a massive step with how I’m feeling as an artist and a writer that you had to go back and have a little, I better stitch some stuff up here, man. Definitely

Peter Wilson (55:31):
Both with art and the actual storytelling aspects, I noticed things like pacing was a bit off, particularly with issue one. I kind of had to info dump a lot just to get to the fun fight part. And that did affect it as action, action montage, info dump that comes out of nowhere, slows everything down, then the fight picks up. And that bothered me almost as much as the rough are. And so it felt good to know, okay, I can see improve on this, but also realising in two years time I’ll look back at issue one and go, I can’t believe I put that out.

Leigh Chalker (56:15):
I would think that’s a good thing, man. Does anyone want to be the same as yesterday? I dunno, I don’t. I want to keep growing. So that’s a good attitude to have.

Peter Wilson (56:27):
It’s something I tell, I work with a lot of kids, I do disability support and a lot of them like comics and art and they like to be creative and I always tell them, don’t be perfect, just be as perfect as you can be this time and you’ll just get better. Never. Don’t wait to put out a perfect product. Don’t wait until you’ve got the best of the tools. Just do what you can with what you’ve got. And if you can say you’ve done the best job, you should be very happy with yourself.

Leigh Chalker (56:51):
Yes, agreed man. Yeah, pride in your work because if you are chasing perfection, I’m sure it’s something that we’ve all chased, at some point you’re going to be chasing that thing forever, man. There’s no perfection. And if you do find perfection, what more is there? Isn’t that the point of it? It’s the journey mate. So I dunno if I want to reach the end that quickly. So I’m happy to keep plodding along and searching man and digging stuff up. But I’m glad you feel the same way, Pete. That’s why. Well, we’ll talk about it later, but I’m actually going to let the world know tonight, Peter, if you are okay that you and I are partaking in as well, that only a handful of people will know, but we’ll get to that mate with foes. It’s your first Kickstarter

(57:51)
And this is a question that directed at you, Peter, but for Max and Aaron as well. Because Aaron, this will be your first Kickstarter, max, this will be your second, but I sort of maybe go back to how you were feeling before the first one launched, man. And if anyone, I guess if anyone’s nervous or feeling a bit well biting their nails and they’re not sure about things, how did it feel those nights before you got there? And Aaron success will come for you, my brother. Don’t you stress about that? But for Max and Pete to hit that like, oh wow man, we made the funding and stuff like that. What was that feeling like to know that your work, your passion project was like, man, it lives really that feel?

Peter Wilson (58:46):
I was reasonably confident when I started because I knew I was in good hands. Shane had done Kickstarters, he had heaps of good advice and a lot of other people came to me with really good advice and help. And I knew it was at the point where I couldn’t get it any better. The copy I’d written, the layout I designed. So I thought at the very least it should just hit its goal and I’ll be happy. So when I woke up the next morning and I had gone past my goal within 24 hours and then the next day got projects we love and it just kept going and going was really surreal. My ego had a very unhealthy boost.

Leigh Chalker (59:27):
Well mate, it’s credit for job well done mate, and hard work. It’s a beautiful thing to see people succeed I think. And success comes in all different levels, mate. You know what I mean? Everyone’s got different goals. Some people want to buy a house, some people want to own a dog, man. It just depends on the individual and people. Their success is what is to them and I’m very happy you are successful and all of you. So Max, how did you feel brother, that first day Stella Lands came and Yeah,

Max Ferrada (59:57):
Well we didn’t exactly hit the pledge goal in 24 hours, but we did in six days, which is still pretty quick. And when it happened with such rapidity, you’re not really given a lot of time to process. And at that point, all I’m any trepidation or anxiety is just around that general feeling of you’ve made a sand castle, now the ocean’s going to take it.

(01:00:28)
The grains of sand are just floating away. And the audience, what I was able to contrive as an audience, it’s now in their hands and I don’t think I’ve completely let go of the parameters and ownership of Stellar Land, but with every issue, with every pledge goal met and with every title that we sell on a con or on the Comex page, it’s like, yeah, it’s like setting something free and now it’s no longer yours. They do whatever they want with it and yeah, it’s all part of the lifespan of a comic book of any art really. Yeah.

Leigh Chalker (01:01:32):
Can I bring back to a point we spoke about earlier in the shop? It certainly is Dave Dyer a great reward for your hard work, Peter and I want to mention we spoke earlier or I did about self-promotion. Now for any, I guess while I don’t want to put you on the spot max, but it’s just these are topics that come up in and one thing of the things that I like about Chinwag and one of the things that I like to do my best to get across is to help other people learn man and know what to expect with things. I don’t see the point in people being gatehouse keepers man. Do you know what I mean? Help. It’s assist help people. Did you find that, you just mentioned that we’ve had Pete say here’s kicks. I mean you have different funding goals, so let’s take into consideration some factors.

(01:02:41)
Some people want a certain amount, some people want this amount. What I was getting to before about some people want a house, some people want a dog, is that everyone has a different goal and a different rate and level of success that they want. And that is essentially what I was getting at. So if anyone was offended by that analogy, I did possibly not make that clear enough. And I don’t want Shane to get any nasty emails tomorrow saying Take that seller off the air and we want Ed back. Alright. It’s just not that argument on the head Now, he was very good last week and it scared me

(01:03:25)
Because Max, I guess what? Because you West Stella Lands came out, Pete has had some time to do promotion with the Friday night drink and draws and he’s come on Chin Wag and he’s got his artwork out there and stuff and things build up and they flow for Pete with Stella Lands as a cat owner. I dunno how to take all of this. Well, you can get a cat, Alex. Okay man, do as well. I love my girls. What I’m getting at is when Stella Lands came out and it was pretty much like, boom, here’s Stella Lands Kickstarter ready to rock and roll. Did you find, because I guess to a certain extent, it wasn’t until it came out that you really kicked into gear with the promotions in your live stream and all that sort of stuff. Looking back on that, would you have taken a little bit of a different approach to the self-promotion side of the release previous to Stella Land’s issue one?

Max Ferrada (01:04:39):
Yeah, I think that this is a very common sentiment, but yeah, I probably would’ve intensified it a bit more depending on which promotional platform that you’re using. Us comic creators, we tend to sleep on TikTok, we shouldn’t. TikTok is the throw everything you have at it, people scroll, watch your video and keep scrolling and never see it again. That’s not necessarily a liability because then you could do what sticks. You could just, your promotional material doesn’t have to be great, doesn’t have to win a booker. You just put anything up and see what flies and then whatever that is, you can transpose into another promotional platform and stuff like this. These live streams and something that I’m not entirely sure how they affect pre-launch, but during launch, especially during that dreaded valley between the beginning and the ends of the campaign, that’s the interaction is at its lowest. But I find with stuff like this, and you’ll probably see it reflected in your various Kickstarters that it spikes, you get more interaction. And it’s just a shame that there aren’t more platforms where we can wag our respective chins, so to speak. So if anybody out there is thinking of putting up a live stream, I will be your first guest.

(01:06:31)
I’m an introvert and I don’t like to really go out that much. But for your endeavour, Ola Claudia, I will. Yes.

Leigh Chalker (01:06:42):
Alright, now, Omni Bow Gade to Claudia as well, and Omni Bow said, hit that like button. So the like buttons, we are not just talking about one specific like button, we’re talking about spell lands, we’re talking about God amongst man. We’re talking about X Facebook and YouTube. We’re talking about Aussie verse YouTube and Facebook and Instagrams and all those sorts of things. It is so important for you to do that because it just helps build the community and get it into more people’s faces. Max is a hundred percent correct. There are, I guess not as many live stream shows out there in the world that I know of, but every one of them are important. If you can support any of them. There you go. Andrew Law, art, got to cut through the algorithms. It’s all about beating hearts and waving flags, man. It’s all about that. So it’s what you got to do, unfortunately. But fortunate for some, you’ve got people like me here that don’t really mind making an egghead of themselves. And I don’t mind having any yarns, especially on a Tuesday night because guess what? Tuesday’s at the Chin waggon, there’s my plug. So anyway, just zipping. But thank you very much for your answer, max. I hope that helps some people out. And Aaron, maybe it’s food for thought man, just to keep on plugging away and doing some promo stuff.

Max Ferrada (01:08:12):
Live streams, man, find them.

Leigh Chalker (01:08:14):
That’s great. Taking

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:08:16):
It in like a sponge.

Leigh Chalker (01:08:18):
That was awesome. Beautiful man. Beautiful

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:08:22):
Step in there, Lee. Oh, sorry.

Leigh Chalker (01:08:24):
You’re alright buddy. No, you finish. There’s a lot of people out there in the community, Aaron, that other than the five of us sitting here, that will help you, man. And the one thing that I have learned, my friend, is just reach out and ask a question. Say hello. And you’ll be very surprised by 99% of them how friendly and how quickly they respond and speak to you about anything you want to know and share their knowledge. So I said,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:08:52):
That’s his guy. He’s a prick.

Leigh Chalker (01:08:57):
Well, we’ll probably have to edit that out. Oh man, we’re on the live stream, but lucky no one here said it. Come on man. No self deprivation man. You’re the bomb.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:09:09):
I know, I know. Well, I just want to jump into a bit of a production meeting here with Max with some comments.

Leigh Chalker (01:09:16):
Dan,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:09:16):
What’s cover or I’d buy the crap out of a Dave Die cover.

Leigh Chalker (01:09:22):
Who wouldn’t

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:09:24):
Actually like this one? A director’s cut script included as a bonus. How’s that for a level? That’s pretty cool. Okay, back to you, Lee, since your show and all

Leigh Chalker (01:09:35):
That’s all right. S it’s everyone’s show, man. It’s the fluidity of the chinwag. So Peter, what was the idea man? Coming back to you, you’ve got some excellent stretch goals, right, that I’ve looked at. You’ve got trading cards, you got, dude, I have to say, and mate, there’s a wicked F cover that’s pink. I dunno what they call, but it doesn’t have, there’s two variances of it. There’s one with the FO’s logo on it and there’s one without, and it’s a pink cover and it’s cover, they call it it. Virgin. The Virgin cover. Dude, that is beautiful. That that was all

Peter Wilson (01:10:23):
Scissors idea.

Leigh Chalker (01:10:24):
Yeah. Yeah. I loved it. If anyone right on the money. Yeah man. If anyone wants to see that and it hit me. I love that thing, man. Go and check it out because it’s right there. Pete, what are you hoping, man? You want to get around to some comic book conventions and spread the foes word this year and do some things like that What’s your plan?

Peter Wilson (01:10:56):
I would like to do another convention this year. I think especially now that I’ve got foes, I have a harder time selling my own stuff. The last convention I did, I did with fellow Comex at dha, and it was so much easier to plug his stuff because he’s such a nice guy. He doesn’t want to seem pushy. So he was quite contently. But I’d get in people’s face, be like, look at this badass chick de Sean Drew. This is my man right here. Come on, buy his stuff. How cool is he? And he’d blush and it was a lot of fun for me. But then they the same

Max Ferrada (01:11:28):
At Supernova. Yeah, he’s great. Not a talker. But yeah, his work speaks well.

Peter Wilson (01:11:34):
He really does. And then people would see the presents covers with the first characters or my cover. What’s this? Oh, it’s just some silly thing I did. It’s kind of funny if you want to check it out. And then Sean would look at me. Where did the salesman go? I’ve got the first one under my belt. I’d like to go back and try it again. And my big ambition for the year is to get FOS two out by around this time next year.

Leigh Chalker (01:12:02):
Yeah, that’s a lovely idea, man. I certainly hope it doesn’t stop because if anyone out there as well. Now Pete was also the creator of a little comic book series called Crimson and Rascal. Now Crimson and Rascal is a great comic book. I’m not really sure how many copies of that are still out there, but if you do like foes, see if you can rustle up some of those comics. I would recommend you to check them out too, because I

Peter Wilson (01:12:36):
Believe it’s still some of the comic shop isn’t there, Shane?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:12:39):
Yeah, I’m just having to look to see how many I’ve got Two, not one as in issue. Two.

Peter Wilson (01:12:46):
Yep. I don’t think there’s any of issue one left, but issue one is really more of an issue. Zero. It was a very rough, it was my first one when I get them reprinted. Issue two will be the new issue one anyway.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:12:59):
Oh really?

Peter Wilson (01:13:00):
Yeah. Anything I thought that would, I should have done that ages ago. But speaking of the trading cards, the proofs for them came in yesterday since Dave dies watching.

Leigh Chalker (01:13:15):
Beautiful. That’s his

Peter Wilson (01:13:16):
Card. That’s from his drink and draw years ago.

Leigh Chalker (01:13:20):
Hey. Says you want to pop that up, man, big. Come on, Pete. Hold that. Beautiful. Dave died. Image up.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:13:27):
Oh, that’s

Peter Wilson (01:13:27):
Awesome. I have the original A three one up on my wall right now.

Leigh Chalker (01:13:33):
I’m

Peter Wilson (01:13:33):
Very happy with that. I did these two back when I first conceived of for in the hopes that maybe one day I’d have trading cards.

Leigh Chalker (01:13:45):
There you go.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:13:46):
I remember those. It

Peter Wilson (01:13:47):
Was really cool to see them.

Leigh Chalker (01:13:48):
And how long ago did you do those, Pete? Because I love a lot of these ideas aren’t just, and creations aren’t just done overnight. These are things that just stayed in creators minds and stuff for a long, long time. When did you start thinking about doing these things?

Peter Wilson (01:14:07):
Gee, it would’ve been close to about maybe a year before I met Shane. Lauren Marshalls.

Leigh Chalker (01:14:18):
Who is Lauren? Yeah. They

Peter Wilson (01:14:19):
Didn’t put yours for the proofs Lee. They kind of just picked them out. But you’ll have a book card in the set.

Leigh Chalker (01:14:25):
Oh, thank you Ed

Peter Wilson (01:14:26):
Kiley. Let’s make a comic ba.

Leigh Chalker (01:14:29):
Ah, nice. Yeah, that’s cool.

Peter Wilson (01:14:32):
So I had the premise kicking around for a long time and the first few pages of issue one were created over and over again. I could never quite nail it until I had the dread of the deadline for presents issue one,

Leigh Chalker (01:14:49):
Those pesty deadline. I don’t like those things. Hey, so we learned, so we learn. No, no, I didn’t. I had a little hissy fit about my deadline. One more

Peter Wilson (01:15:09):
Because he’s watching. Here’s Alex’s card. Oh,

Leigh Chalker (01:15:12):
Sorry. There we go. Alex Major, the oh oh seven World Traveller of the comics community. He did that in all of us put together. There we go. Now Pete, the premise of foes to villainous individuals fighting over a donor. Now the question, what flavour is the donor?

Peter Wilson (01:15:49):
I think it’s probably meant to be strawberry, but the flavour is just pink.

Leigh Chalker (01:15:54):
Okay, so with you leading towards strawberry, what originally and what don’t you like about Strawberry Donuts that made you, did you go to a bakery in the hope that there was a strawberry donut? One day you had a hanker in for a strawberry donut and the little fella behind the counter went, oh, we just sold the last strawberry donut out. And you were like Strawberry Donut and did a comic book on it. Or what’s the evil link behind the dough mate?

Peter Wilson (01:16:30):
I remember when we came up with it, it was with my friend Robbie, who’s done a couple of streams here and there he is, got a kids book out at the moment, and I was telling him about this idea I had of a demon and an alien that hate each other. And it was his idea to say the first thing they fight of it should be something utterly stupid. So just how petty and arrogant these characters are. And that stuck with me. And then it was just, I probably just ate a donut the next day and it clicked because I really love pink donuts. They’re my favourite.

Leigh Chalker (01:17:03):
So that was

Peter Wilson (01:17:04):
Life imitating art.

Leigh Chalker (01:17:06):
Yeah. Well that’s the best way you write about what you know, mate. I guess to, I’m surprised I haven’t written a comic book about just a giant cigarette. But anyway, I’m not sure how entertaining that’d be, but I’m sure I could work something out maybe. Yes. Anyway, moving on. Peter, I’m going to leave you there for a moment, my friend, if that’s okay. But as with Aaron and Max and yourself, feel free to jump in at any point. If people are watching and they have questions, please feel free to fire off your comments. So keep an eye on them. Si. But Ciz is going to have to do two things at once when he’s ready.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:17:51):
Can do that?

Leigh Chalker (01:17:53):
Yes. Yes. There you go. Alex. Righto boss. The brand that with Carrie, the Loving Beating heart of Comex Network, the man that brought the community together over the years and has brought many friendships together and lots of people from varying walks of life and all corners of the earth and you’ve attracted them to what you have created here, mate. So let us talk about what your plans are, what obviously you’ve got with Foes and Stellar Lands, God’s amongst men. We have also 40 hours left on the first Kickstarter of the year, which was the Comex Presents Issue four and Comex Noir issue four. Give them a plug, mate.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:18:58):
Yep. I will bring up the link for them if I can find them. There they are. Cover my Face. Excellent. Yeah, so that is the Link two presents, number four, Kickstarter. I think last time I checked it had about 40 hours to go, like Lee just said. So that’s less than two days, so get in there. We won’t be printing a lot of stock outside the Kickstarter, so if you want this, you need to get it on the Kickstarter. There will be a few in the shop afterwards or a few for conventions, but not many. We’re going to keep that number down and just, it’s a Kickstarter thing,

Leigh Chalker (01:19:50):
The people across like Aussie verse and stuff. And even people that are tuning in tonight, like on the Comex for the first one. What is Comex Presents in Comm Xir?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:20:07):
Funny you should ask that. Yeah, pretty much what it is at the end of the day. Well, we can go wind back a bit here just to stretch it out a bit.

Leigh Chalker (01:20:20):
Absolutely.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:20:21):
Comex was formed to help promote creators and creators, creations, and as such we went through many different ideas on how to promote the different creators and artists and writers and all that sort of stuff. And one of our first ideas was a calendar. So we got 18 artists to draw eight. Oh, it’s like you knew what I was going to say. Well, it’s actually behind me, and although it’s not August of 2021, it is still time for foes. If you can see them up there. Yes. That’s the picture behind me. What

Leigh Chalker (01:21:03):
Will be an issue one, by the way?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:21:06):
Oh, cool.

(01:21:08)
Yeah, so after a successful calendar and it supported all these artists and got ’em together, the question was asked, what else can we do to help promote and support the community? And someone said, well, why not publish short stories to help publish stories that otherwise wouldn’t be published? So presents was born, and then from that people said, what if we want to do black and white stories? So then Presents Noir was born, so then they came out together and that’s been the tradition since noir and presents coming out together in each Kickstarter. This is the fourth one, and I guess I was going to, what do you call it? Pronounce this. No, announce. That’s what, oh, God. Announce.

Leigh Chalker (01:22:07):
Well, at least we know you can announce, pronounce, announce correctly. So I like it. Present

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:22:20):
Five will not be limited to four stories in presents and four stories in presents new art. There will be a limit. I’m still trying to figure that out, but it will be a trade and the first half of the trade will be the colour stories. Second half of the trade will be the black and white stories, and we’ll fit however many we can fit in there without the book getting too big. And so we can take on board as many stories as we can because Presents four was meant to be released early last year. It is even in the URL for the Kickstarter that it’s for our birthday celebration from last year. So it’s pretty old and a lot of people have written stories for five. If we limited it to four, that’s pretty unfair.

Leigh Chalker (01:23:09):
Yeah, mate, can I ask you a question just in case people don’t know, maybe to clarify something with you while we’ve got the boss here, but if you want, you can zip me down the bottom. No one needs to see my head all the time.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:23:24):
I like going behind words,

Leigh Chalker (01:23:28):
Whatever, like Wilson, home

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:23:29):
Improvement. There you go.

Leigh Chalker (01:23:32):
Yeah, there you go. Oh Pete, you look cooler, man, with that yellow thing across your face though, man, you look like, I don’t know, lucky Ro maybe type character. I dunno. There we go. Yeah, I like it. Hey, now with the presents and noir, as you said, it was originally set up to provide, and Comex is about providing new up and comers as well as established creators to have a platform to promote their comic books and even get their comic book printed because if anyone has ever had a comic book printed, one of the most exciting times of my life was seen and holding my very first comic book in my hands. And that was a day of great joy for me, except for the fact that I got home just in time to stop Lloyd from peeing on the box and one that doesn’t know Lloyd Lloyd’s my sidekick, who occasionally pops his head up here every now and then, and it’s a whole other story about that day one, I’ll tell you one day, but for anyone that may be watching on Aussie verse or Comex or watches this tomorrow or watches at any point and they’ve got an inkling, they want to tell a little story mate or they want the start to lead to a big story, you encourage these things, don’t you, mate?

(01:25:06)
This is essentially what the comic studio is there for, isn’t it? Is to help people get it off the ground because we all know how bloody hard it is to get a comic book together printed out there in the world. It’s a lot trickier than what you realise. Hey man,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:25:25):
Yeah, well, presents and presents new art. The whole purpose of that was the fact that getting a whole comic done is a massive feat and sometimes too much for someone just starting out. So the other reason for the presents was so they could get something that they can hold in their hands and say, I made this with only eight page story. So that was the other purpose for it. There’s two of my favourite things about that is when I did Cirus, I got to hold my own comic in my hands. My second favourite thing was someone else getting really excited about their present story and holding that story in their hands for the first time. That was awesome. When that first happened, I can’t remember which credit it was, but they were so excited and I was just like, well, I made that happen. So yeah, so it’s a really cool thing to happen and I’m just seeing a, oh, hang on

Leigh Chalker (01:26:28):
Jackie. Thanks

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:26:29):
Jackie. Sausage

Leigh Chalker (01:26:31):
Sizzle is the man

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:26:33):
But Fourth Rock. I wish we could get out

Leigh Chalker (01:26:37):
There for that.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:26:39):
I wish we could one day it will happen. I just dunno when that day is. I’ve heard so many good things about PCAF. I don’t know. I think there’s a way to say it, but I’m not going to try. But I’ve heard many good things about it and I really want to go there. There’s a few others as well that I’d love to get to.

Max Ferrada (01:27:04):
Is that a convention?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:27:06):
Yeah, it’s a convention. Yeah. I don’t want to describe it incorrectly, but it’s indie it. It’s not your supernova, which no offence to your supernovas in your ComicCons, which are more cosplay cons, but we won’t go into that and still sell a lot of comics there. Don’t get me wrong. There’s still a lot of comic fans there. It’s just they seem to cater more to the other side.

Max Ferrada (01:27:38):
Partnership for carbon accounting financials.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:27:41):
I don’t think that’s the one.

Leigh Chalker (01:27:47):
Well, yes, so that, oh, here it is.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:27:51):
Perth Comic Art Festival. Sorry, I didn’t want to, there we go.

Leigh Chalker (01:27:59):
Shout out to the carbon joint. Yeah,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:28:03):
Yeah, good. You guys,

Leigh Chalker (01:28:04):
You got a freebie there. I’m not sure what you sell, but carbon,

Max Ferrada (01:28:10):
It sounds like environmental auditing, but yes, Perth Comics, arts Festival. Nice.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:28:16):
Oh yeah,

Leigh Chalker (01:28:17):
Very good.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:28:18):
Lead into next. But yes, siz is going to Melbourne Supernova this year.

Leigh Chalker (01:28:23):
That’s right. So speak about that with Mac up there.

Max Ferrada (01:28:28):
Are you going, Alex? Will Alex be going?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:28:32):
Not that I know of.

Max Ferrada (01:28:34):
All right. We’ll see if

Leigh Chalker (01:28:36):
Man,

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:28:37):
He’s, he didn’t tell me. He’s a little bugger.

Leigh Chalker (01:28:40):
Alex is oh oh seven of the Comex community. Man, that dude turns up anywhere. He’ll proceed himself with his little pink rabbit that chews a carrot, all the cartooning and all that sort of stuff. We love you, Alex. Huge thanks.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:28:58):
I just want to throw out there huge thanks to Brad who made the flight possible. If he hadn’t have told me about the special that was going on, there’s no way I could have gone to Melbourne, Brad Daniels that is, and of course Aaron here, who’s going to show me around Melbourne and Josh

Leigh Chalker (01:29:17):
Take good care of you and feed you well. Yeah, yeah, I like that. And spread the Comex word. I like it. Sis, what have you got coming up for the rest of the year, man? Because you’ve got a fairly low, I’ve seen the track list of the 2024 Comex album and yeah, it’s not a single album, man. It’s a double album. Well, I could read them

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:29:46):
Out. I’ve got them here in front of me so I don’t miss any. They’re not in order of any sort except Presents is at the beginning because it was fresh in my head because I’m doing a Kickstarter for it. But yes, presents four and you are four as you know, because that’s happening right now as we speak Foes. One by Peter Twisted Fate, one by Josh Elliot. He’s the writer. Jason, someone is the artist. I really should have written that down as well, but I’ve only written the titles down God’s Among Men. I wonder who, that’s all he does that S Land two. That doesn’t sound too familiar.

Leigh Chalker (01:30:33):
Yeah, they’re familiar to me. Yeah, B

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:30:36):
For B. What’s that all about? 4, 5, 6 A B for B trade. Oh my God. Then we’ve got the soppy tune guys doing a collection.

Leigh Chalker (01:30:49):
I know who is this? Who is this sloppy

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:30:53):
A couple times? Who is this sloppy? But then we’ve got no Man’s Land number three.

Leigh Chalker (01:31:02):
Very good.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:31:05):
So we’re looking forward to that. We’ve got Battery Hen two by Ryan V,

Leigh Chalker (01:31:10):
They these

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:31:10):
The people who aren’t here. So I thought I better actually say their names. Hundred

Leigh Chalker (01:31:13):
Percent

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:31:14):
Lizza, Ray one, remastered, Lizza, Ray, two Remastered, Lizza Ray three, Duchenne Silver is going off this year. Those remastered, he’s redone the art, he’s recalibrated the layouts and so forth. So they will all be 1, 2, 3 traditional comic size. And he’s rejigged the art of course, and made it a bit better and done some tough stuff to it and so forth and so forth,

Leigh Chalker (01:31:44):
Because for anyone that didn’t know the previous versions of the Liza Ray comics were done in a slightly bigger format. And as Shane would know, the slightly bigger format adds a little, because comics are never easy. You get different size acid proof bag, you’ve got different size envelopes and things like that. So Dhan has brought it upon himself to bring everything back to a standard size comic book with additive help

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:32:15):
Collectors help collectors, because most collectors have standardised comic boxes to store their comics. So he’s trying to bring it back to what collectors would be after. Although he still buy his other ones, they’ll be rare as hell. So that’s for the other type of collectors and stuff that’s worth money. Then we’ve got RIS

Leigh Chalker (01:32:41):
Available at the Comex Shop nine flat rate, man.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:32:45):
Oh yeah, there is only a few left too of one and two. I’m not sure. I think you Chance said I’ve got the last of them, so I don’t know. I’ll check with that though. Don’t quote me on that. So CREs perceptions number two that’s coming out this year. Hopefully it’s me holding that up, not the artist. So yeah, that’s my fault. That will have Karen Jack cover

Leigh Chalker (01:33:17):
Beautiful

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:33:19):
Shane J story one Duncan Print, vicious Story two, sorry, Kerry’s got a nickname for a and I almost said that. And of course Ben Sullivan and Hayden Sparrow with their continuing story as the third one. So yeah, that’s coming along great. So I’m really happy about that. Then we’ll have presents five that I talked about earlier. Then this young gentleman came to me and asked if I could help him publish a book these calls, Camelot one. So he’s working on that as we speak, and sometime this year we’re hoping to publish that and do a Kickstarter for that as well.

Leigh Chalker (01:34:10):
Awesome, awesome.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:34:12):
His name is Jonathan. I don’t need to keep him secret. I dunno why I did that. And sorry, Jonathan, your last name. I don’t want to murder it and butcher it and just put it through the shredder so I won’t try. And then we’ve got Outlaw by Stu Thornton.

Leigh Chalker (01:34:34):
Very good

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:34:35):
So far. Then there’s some other stories, so I won’t list them.

Leigh Chalker (01:34:41):
Yeah, yeah. Wow, man, that’s a big year. Now, I’d also like to add that Comex is not, tonight we’ve only talked about the studio side of things. There is also the live streaming side of things, which Chinwag is a part of as well as Aussie verse. But on the Comex site, the Comex network, you have your Friday night drink and draws. You have the Aus Comex show, you have the blank comic book drawing pages with I can Never, let’s make a comic book. Let’s make a comic book. Hey, I’ve been talking about let’s make a comic book all night and then you actually got to bloody get that phrase right.

(01:35:38)
But anyway, I’ll chastise myself later or send those emails and I’ll get back to you accordingly. But there’s all the live streams, you’ve got other shows that are coming up. And the most encouraging thing about what I love about Comic X and Shane and Kerry’s attitude is the openness to give people an opportunity to do these things. Comic books, live streams, like in my case, I had never done a live stream before in my life. I just wanted to be a dude that sat in his studio and did a comic book. And then one day decided I had a chat to sped and Ciz and realised that I wanted to talk to my mates a bit more and thought, I guess it was self-indulgence to a certain extent. You know what I mean? But maybe someone might find that interesting. I had no idea what I was doing.

(01:36:45)
Look, to be honest with you, I still don’t now, but I just talk enough jive, man that I can probably swing a bat, you know what I mean? And maybe hit a run every now and then. But Shane gave me a go and that’s what became Tuesday. And over the course of the last 18 months, Tuesday, chinwag has become just as important to me as what my comic book creation is because it has just brought me closer to the community and people that I’ve wanted to meet, like-minded people, people of all varieties. And I find that quite inspiring to be amongst people that are so driven and so passionate about the medium that I have loved since I was a small boy. So if you have one of those goals or you have a thought, man, do you know what I mean? Don’t listen to anyone that tells you not to do it.

(01:37:42)
You won’t get anywhere if you listen to them, man, just do it. Follow your initiative, your intuition, your instinct, whatever it is. If that’s what you want to do, then have a crack at it because plenty of time to lament a lot left in regret. So don’t do that. Have a shot. And from my perspective, thank you very much Shane, for opening the door for so many people and their opportunities. You’ve got Peter, you’ve got Aaron, you’ve got Max, you’ve got myself, you’ve got all those people there on that double album list of Comex. I’ve got the list right there. Yeah, you’ve got Presents five, which as Shane just said is open up to people for show your stories, reach out to Shane. Shane is one of those people. Shane’s one of those people that you can reach out to. This is the community. Everyone’s available if you want to have a go. You know what I mean? If you want to learn, I mean God, man, we’re all still learning.

(01:38:42)
That’s just the cycle of things. So just reach out, change the man to go for. So that’s my thoughts on Comex and I’m looking forward to the rest of this year, man. It’s going to be rocking, man. I feel like high quality content, people have got a good vibration. There’s lots of energy going on. Shows are pumping Aussie versus pumping. I feel like just talking, I mean, man, now that my beard’s gone, I’ve realised how little of chin I’ve got. So maybe I should stop talking like a top, like a nose. Maybe I’ll have to call it runny nose or something like in a year’s time, who knows? But now enough of me, GI and on about my appreciation of the Cox World, mate, are there any comments? Is there anything anyone else would like to say before we start? We’ve got a question show down far away. Very straightforward question three this year.

Max Ferrada (01:39:51):
Well, it depends if this is successful, but Stellar Lands three has already been written and that is based around monuments and art salvage and rescue. Because whenever it’s been covered in a lot of documentaries and George Cloy did that one movie, what happens? How do we protect cultural assets within war zones? We don’t want to see Picassos burned. And I took this priority and set it within an intergalactic universe, and that’s the institution that will be covered there as I attempt to spread my tendrils in a very wire like fashion. But of course it all depends on the success of Stella Lands too. And yeah, hope Beyond Hope we’ll get both issues out. Yeah, this year and I’m working with a great team, the artist Ben, the Colorist Wilson and the Letterer, Steven. They’re all very talented, but they’re also very quick. So if anything happens on that front, yep, we’ll let you know. The art for two has already finished. We’re already within the lettering phase. And yeah, the art four three has not started. I’m putting together a lot of references.

Leigh Chalker (01:41:19):
Okay, very good. Very good. So going to, before I go into a ramble to bring the show to a close, what I do like to do at the end of a normal chin wag for anyone watching for the first time, there’s a lot of loneliness spent being a creator and sometimes at 2:00 AM in the morning. You know what I mean? When you, I’m alarmed by your lack of beard,

Max Ferrada (01:41:49):
The universe is

Leigh Chalker (01:41:51):
Mate look, if I have a Kickstarter, Dan Robbie, I’ve actually saved Slithers of my beard because so many people have sent me emails as to the concern that I decided to just save little shavings for you. So I thought I’d overbought and I’ve actually got 467 small bottles of beard full. So that’ll be on my Kickstarter if I overdo one in the future as a stretch goal. And you know what? Even if you don’t want one, I might just send you one. Anyway, the concern for my beard, thank you very much and greatly appreciated. It’s definitely a lot more salt than it is Pepper these days, but that’s what it is. Thank you for watching, Robbie. I haven’t seen you for a while, mate, and I do hope you’re well and I hope your book’s going well too. I do like to thank you, mate. We spend a lot of time by ourselves in the deep recesses of our mind and the dark rooms and caverns of our studios and our houses at all hours of the night, wondering if these things will work. But internally, we have some insane drive that no one else can explain. So I’m going to ask your answer to Aaron. Why do you do it to yourself?

Aaron Mak (01:43:21):
I don’t think it’s up to me. It’s funny. That’s actually something I’ve been thinking about and I actually realised that when I was talking to somebody who was not doing any of this stuff and I said, I just couldn’t see myself doing anything but this because to me, that’s kind of telling myself I’ve given up and I’d rather kind of suffer and it’s like do it or die trying. So I think for me it feels like it’s not up to me, it is just the way my soul is pulling me in that direction. And so if you’re going to do it, you may as well enjoy every step of the way.

Leigh Chalker (01:44:05):
Absolutely. Sounds like you’re on your path, mate. So very well done and nice answer. I like that one. I like that indeed. Max, why do you do it to yourself?

Max Ferrada (01:44:19):
For the chicks, for the no, like I said before, we’re powerless. We’re basically vessels of our own creativity. Now, Bukowski said it best, but I know I keep holding him, but let it come out of you in a flood or let it die within you. And yeah, like Aaron doesn’t have a choice. No one has a choice. If it’s in you, it would be criminal to let it die in you and you have to create it. Yeah, you have to make it happen.

Leigh Chalker (01:45:01):
Well said. Well said. Si. Why do you do it to yourself?

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:45:09):
I’m an idiot. Oh, hang on. Sorry. Carrie came up with an answer. Why do I do it? I’m a bigger idiot. Oh, she said because I’m an idiot and she’s a bigger idiot for following me.

(01:45:30)
No, because we love you people and what I might do, I’ll take this as an opportunity to list the people in Comex studio that I love helping because they’re in Comex Studio. There’s me Siz, there’s Chris Keble White, which does a lot of our production. Peter Wilson, who does so much bloody work for Comex, it’s not funny. Oh my god, this man should get a medal. What is that Siz doing? Make a bloody medal for God’s sake. We’ve got Alex major, we’ve got Aaron Mack, Josh Mack, Duchen Silver, Jonathan Easton Hearth. I’m going to try your name. I hope I got it close. Lee Chalker, you might know him. Max Ferrier, Ryan Vela Shade, and j Stu Thornton, Josh Elliot, Lily Bra, and of course Kes and Doug.

Leigh Chalker (01:46:26):
That’s a fine list.

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:46:27):
That is why I do it, to help those people

Leigh Chalker (01:46:31):
I think, and

Shane ‘Sizzle’ Sydall (01:46:32):
Everyone else in the community for that matter, not just the people I publish.

Leigh Chalker (01:46:35):
That’s a lovely answer because the number one thing that anyone can do for someone is to help and assist people. I think that’s the number one thing any of us can do for anyone. So just be purpose. Thank you for all your work, Jane, and all your efforts and all your love man. And I know from everyone on that list and all the people in the community that have had anything to do with you, the love is returned then. So thank you for the opportunities. Mr. Peter Wilson, my friend, you’re all my friends, but this dude and me have, I’m going to spill some beans. So for the last couple of years I haven’t done any battle for bustle. I’ve been through a personal journey that required introspection, recalibration, I guess a few other things that popped up that I won’t go into. That’s the story. For another time along the way, I lost my way and had to find myself again.

(01:47:50)
Battle for Bustle is a 25 year project that involved my father and his life and I turned it into a dystopian story based on how I viewed society. I guess when I lost my way and went through a change of life and refound my way, I found the fact that I have now lived longer than my father. And that was a rather, how shall I say, quite unusual realisation to have. I therefore realised that the story of battle for Bustle is no longer about the journey of my dad, but the journey of me. So to take that journey further, I have asked Mr. Peter Wilson to come on that path with me, which I’m very thankful that he has accepted the mission. I’m looking very much forward to bringing you more battle for Busle this year. Battle for Bustle will be starting from the numbers of volume to issue one. It will obviously continue on the story, but with a slightly different flavour and much more accentuated way that I now see the world.

(01:49:15)
Just thought I’d let everyone know that because issue volume two issue one will be out. You’ll probably get flooded with them in the second part of the year. There will also be four reasons explained further down the track volumes. One issues one to four are going to be collected into a trade paper back at the end of the year. We’ll get a making of artwork because I have over 500 pages of character designs pages that had never made the comic book that I have hoarded for over 25 years. I have the original character designs of Hansen, Haki Gecko Christopher from the years 1993 and 1994 when they were first drawn. I’m going to flood you with all of those images for the people that are interested just because I know there are and I feel I need to leave that portion of my life behind to move on.

(01:50:13)
So you will get to see that. I’ll also be releasing a comic book called My Mind is My Fortress. My Mind is My Fortress is, how shall I say, an extremely personal, very personal account of the journey that I have been on over the last 18 months to two years since becoming sober and getting clean and breaking the chains of addiction. And I want to, I guess tell you that story. So after a pretty slow 18 months for me, I’m going to bring you all of those things this year. I am also going to, as best I can, continue to bring you Chinwag every Tuesday night. There may be the occasional recorded chinwag because I do need a break from time to time and balance is a key for me, which I realise that I need. Now. Self-care is something that I also need. It’s something that everyone needs, so don’t go too hard at things because you can just trip up a little bit.

(01:51:29)
Even though you think you’re going well, sometimes it just catches up to you and gives you a bit of a bite on the bum. So be aware as we bring ourselves to a close this evening, I would like to thank Aaron for meeting him tonight. Very thankful for you coming on the show. I wish you every success with Gods amongst Men. I’ll be right there with you men, max Ferra. I wish you every success with Stella Lands too, man, and I will see you around the traps and keep it going man. We want to get to all you. Very good, Mr. Peter Wilson, I’ll see you on the streets of battle for Bustle once you are fo Kickstarter is done, my friend, and we will disappear into dystopia together for a while. Look forward to it. Some am I mate. Some am I. It’s been too long since I was away from my city and Mr. Shane Sizzle and Kerry Harris, thank you very much for the opportunities that you have provided myself. Everyone in this community, everyone in Australian comic books, comics is made with Love. Comex is a community that is bonded in Unity. The Comex shop is available for every publisher, independent comic book, producer, writer, creator in Australia. Correct? You want to make that clear again so there is no confusion. It’s very simple. It is an open door, green light. There are opportunities to get your stories into comic books.

(01:53:22)
It’s all there. It’s all here. Tuesday. Chinwag with myself will be here every Tuesday and I can tell you moving forward that if you’ve enjoyed this, you’ll enjoy more. We move back to the normal format next week. Everyone’s got the motivation for 2024. Thank you Comex for giving me and others the motivation to keep it real. Exactly. Richo, well said. Chinwag returns to its normal format next week, which Mr. Rob O’Connor, qa. Now I want to thank Aussie verse very much. The address is going across the bottom. If you like com X like and subscribe Aussie verse. They’re a lovely group. They are basically sister group to X sponsors them. We all work together because it is a community. There are live streams, there are opportunities to have interviews, live prerecorded. You can talk. It is a community. The opportunities are also there. Reach out.

(01:54:38)
It’s all one. We all work together and it’s build the foundation. Thank you Peter. It’s lovely to be back. Don’t forget to like and subscribe com X. Thank you Kerry. Don’t forget to like and subscribe Aussie verse. Don’t forget to press notification on all of these comic books, any Australian comic books that you see out there. Comic books are going through a rough time at the moment. The only way comic books are going to endure is to work together, is to promote each other, is to help each other. And if you do not do this, what is the point of working on your own when there is so much here for you to be a part of? It’s a beautiful thing. Chinwag will be back with me in the seat next Tuesday night, seven 30 Queensland time. And I can tell you this right now, promises they weigh a lot. I don’t give them easy Trust is something that I also find difficulty giving away. But I will promise you this, that I trust myself enough where I am right now, that Chinwag will be made with the most important ingredient of them all from now on. And that is love. Community is unity. Take care. We’ll see you next Tuesday.

Voice Over (01:56:16):
Sees this show is sponsored by the comics shop. Check out Comex CX for all things Comex and find out what Comex is all about. We hope.

ComX Studio family

Main Guest

Aaron Mak, Max Ferrada, Peter Wilson & Shane 'Sizzle' Syddall

Guests List

Transcription Below

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