Kyle Higgins is a comic book writer known for his work on Nightwing, Power Rangers, and his on-going Image superhero series, Radiant Black. Founder of Black Market Narrative, a creative collective studio, Kyle is no stranger to playing with multiple media formats to tell stories. The Massive-Verse, which includes Radiant Black and other Image superhero series comics like NO/ONE, already features a scripted audio series, short films, an upcoming audiobook, feature film, and card battle game. I sat down with Kyle to discuss his work in comics, wearing all the hats, and the stresses of creating and expanding a new universe in an entertainment industry that continues to shrink.
Minus World: Kyle. Thanks for being here. I love what you’re doing in comics.
Kyle Higgins: Thanks. Happy to be here.
MW: So, I’m going to see if I can name everything in the Massive-Verse. So, there’s Radiant Black and Rogue Sun. There’s also Inferno Girl Red. It’s Inferno Girl Red, right?
KH: Inferno Girl Red, Yeah.
MW: Okay, I get that mixed up with Radiant Red all the time. Yeah, so there’s also Radiant Red, Radiant Pink, NO/ONE, and The Dead Lucky. I think that’s everything.
KH: There’s C.O.W.L., too.
MW: C.O.W.L. and C.O.W.L. 1964. I knew I was leaving something off.
KH: And separate from that, Black Market Narrative also does Moon Man, our sci-fi superhero series with Kid Cudi. It’s not a part of the Massive-Verse, but I like to joke that it’s one universe over. But yeah, the Massive-Verse as a whole comes out of a group of us that are all close friends and have been creative partners for years. That includes myself, Ryan Parrott, Mat Groom, Michael Busuttil, Melissa Flores, Brian Buccellato, Alec Siegel, Rod Reis, Eduardo Ferigato, Marcelo Costa… These are people I’ve worked with forever, often across disciplines. There are some newer creators involved as well, like Cherish Chen, Meghan Camarena, and Joe Clark. Joe is one of my oldest friends and collaborators who is newer to writing comics but has been absolutely killing it. He, Alec and I all went to high school together and when Alec and I made The League, my college thesis film way back in 2008, Joe composed all the music. That film then became the inspiration for C.O.W.L.
MW: That sounds like a solid roster. So, the Massive-Verse Card Game, where’d that come from?
KH: With all of our outside-the-box multi-narrative approaches, a card game was very much on our radar from the beginning. It just so happened that a few years ago the right opportunity came up, and the guys from Solis Game Studio approached us at San Diego Comic Con and pitched us on doing a game with them, utilizing their Pocket Paragons engine. We did a demo for it at the show and we all quickly realized it was a perfect fit. The game comes with 8 characters from across Radiant Black, Rogue Sun, The Dead Lucky, and Inferno Girl Red. The move sets are all catered to our characters and the specific abilities from the books. All the card art looks amazing and is pulled from the books, with character and box art by Dan Mora who is the best superhero artist in comics right now, by far.
MW: The game looks fun. I got to watch Ryan Parrott beat you in a match on YouTube.
KH: Yeah, but there was a follow-up match that I won (laughs)! You have got to find that one, too!
MW: I didn’t see that one. I’m sure it happened though.
KH: It’s a blast. It’s a really fun game.
MW: Are you sure the card battle game didn’t stem from one of those Goku vs Superman kind of conversations between Black Market Narrative creatives?
KH: No, it didn’t. But you know what did stem from one of those is this cool, animated short film we did called Versus.
MW: The QR code in Radiant Black #15 leads to this, right?
KH: Yeah. So, in issue 15 for those who don’t know, Radiant Black goes up against his greatest challenge yet: creative license. There’s an unauthorized YouTube fan film from a channel called Versus. And it’s a death battle style video of who’d win in a fight between Radiant Black and Blaze from C.O.W.L. Because C.O.W.L. not only existed and happened in the 1960s in the Massive-Verse universe, but it was also turned into comics and then was adapted into a blockbuster film in the early 2000s. That’s why Nathan and Marshall are big fans of C.O.W.L. So, there’s a level of Meta to it all.
Anyway, Marshall gets a hold of the script and reads it and gets pissed off because he realizes he loses. So, he shows up on set to chew out the director, claiming he doesn’t even know which way to point a goddamn lens, but he eventually cools off when he realizes they cast Batman Beyond’s Will Friedle to play him. He offers to help the production out and save them some money by doing all the visual effects– but he has some thoughts on the story. As the film shoot wraps and Nathan and Marshall talk about the experience, we find out that Nathan had written a little speech for the end of the short film that gives it its heart, and really gets to the core of what Radiant Black really is or should be. But it’s bittersweet, because, as Nathan and Marshall are talking about it, we realize that Marshall really just wants to do this on his own without Nathan. So, there’s a little bit of a breakup there between the two friends. Two pages later, we ran an “ad” for the short film with a QR code– if you scan the QR code, it takes you to the fully-animated short that we did with Will Friedle voicing Radiant Black and the actors who played Blaze and The Grey Raven 15 years ago in The League, reprising their roles. So, when you get to the speech at the end of the short and you compare it to the last conversation Nathan and Marshall had in the issue, you realize it’s bittersweet– the speech worked, but behind the scenes the two friends are divided.
MW: I love it when you guys take stabs like that. Working something interesting like that into the narrative.
KH: I want to highlight what you just said there because that’s what’s really important to us– taking a stab at new media or playing with a book’s format, no matter what it is, always comes out of the story. The Versus short film comes out of the story between the two friends. It’s a really cool short film that we’re all proud of, on its own, but the reason to do it was because it’s additive to the story arc that we were already doing in the comic. Another example of this is what we’ve been doing with NO/ONE, which features an in-universe podcast that the reporters of the book make, investigating the identity of NO/ONE and their coverage of this accountability killing movement that has sparked in Pittsburgh. We make that podcast for every issue as a scripted audio series with Rachael Leigh Cook, Patton Oswalt, Todd Stashwick, Yuri Lowenthal, Walter Jones… just an amazing cast. The podcast and the story in the book are also supported by in-universe websites and fictional newspaper articles that accompany each episode. I hired a crime reporter from CNN and the Chicago Tribune, named Peter Nickeas, to consult and help us write all the articles. It’s our way of taking the idea of immersion, especially in a murder mystery, to the next level. The cap to this is the recently-announced feature film that Brian Buccellato and I are writing and producing and that I’m directing, which is designed as a true crime superhero documentary. So, utilizing a “documentary” format, the film is both an adaptation of the comic and podcast as well as a continuation of the story. Steven Schneider, who produced Paranormal Activity, Insidious, Late Night with the Devil, Blair Witch– he’s a king in the found footage world– is producing it with us along with ZQ Entertainment and Stuart Manashil. It’s a narrative where immersion is additive to both the genre and the specific story we’re telling.
MW: So, on top of comics, you’ve also got a short film, an animated short, a fictional podcast series, an upcoming audiobook, an upcoming feature, and an upcoming card battle game. I just wanted to ask you when we can expect the Fortnite skins and also what’s next?
KH: You say what is next like we’re not stretched razor thin right now (laughs). Is it not enough for you?? Is it not enough, everything we’re currently killing ourselves to pull off?!
MW: No.
KH: I mean, what else is there? A show, I guess? Things that are insanely outside of our budget and control. I mean, yeah– we have a lot of ideas and a lot of, “wouldn’t it be cool if” concepts and plans. Some of those are going to take longer to come to fruition than others. In large part, because, if you think about it, the Massive-Verse as a universe and as a publishing line, as well as Black Market Narrative as a studio, are all still quite new. Radiant Black #1 came out in February of 2021. So, we’re not even at the four year mark at this point. And we’ve done quite a bit, because the stuff that we’re trying to do is all stuff that we either have a love for, or have experience in. And most of the time it’s both. These are also things that were designed to be achievable even at our relatively small size and for relatively small budgets. They were things that we thought would help us capture some of that magic that we felt existed when we were growing up on superhero stories across comics and other media. In large part we feel like the magic hasn’t been there for some time and that’s for many reasons, but there’s a component of it that I think is related to the mass proliferation of superhero content that all feels the same.
MW: Multiple shows and movies a year will do that.
KH: I think as exciting as it is, it’s also made it harder to do anything that really feels special and unique. We’ve also transitioned out of the video physical media boom of DVDs and Blu-ray. You see a lot of cutting corners now when it comes to special features and behind the scenes materials. Those things that go the extra mile and help audiences revel in the magic of how something is made. The things I grew up loving. You see studios not focused on that, or caring about things of that nature in the era of streaming. That loss is very personal to me. We want to do things that excite us, that we know we can pull off at a high level, and also feel help us put a little bit of the magic back in the world that we all miss.
MW: I recently listened to an interview where you were asked about comics in service to film and TV. You were quick to shoot that notion down, saying, “That’s a disservice to the medium. Comics are their own thing, and if an adaptation comes later, it happens.” On that note, what do you think is lost when going from page to screen? Is there something that bad comic adaptations continuously get wrong?
KH: That’s a big question. I think if I had to boil it down – When I was a kid, I really would be excited about seeing translations. As an adult, I am much more interested in seeing adaptations and the difference between those two for me is one of creative vision and intent. As much as people may bemoan the Joker being the one who killed Thomas and Martha Wayne in Batman ‘89, it’s a choice that works within the unique world that Tim Burton built. And because of where it ends up falling in the narrative structure of the movie, that reveal ends up recontextualizing things. It happens at the end of the second act, the reveal, and the realization on Bruce’s part then gives context to not only the audience, but also recontextualization for a lot of the story of the first two acts, just as Bruce is getting ready to go into the final battle. It ends up emotionally heightening the stakes in an organic way. You look at the choices made on the X-MEN films. You look at the choices made on Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man films, even Nolan’s Batman. They’re not doing panel-to-screen. They are more interested in creating worlds and takes based on this material that hopefully is accentuating the things about the material that resonate with the filmmakers. To varying degrees of success, of course. But now we are in this era where, especially on the Marvel side, these movies and shows all look the same. That’s by design, of course, so that everything feels more cohesive as a universe.
MW: Right.
KH: But I feel like we lose something as a result. We can do anything and create any frame imaginable with the technology that’s out there, and because of that, I feel like a lot of the authorship and choices have been lost. Growing up, I found comics through movies. I was obsessed with Richard Donner’s Superman, and Tim Burton’s Batman. Things in animation like Batman: The Animated Series, and X-MEN the Animated Series. All four of those I just named, even with X-MEN being so influenced by Jim Lee’s art, they are not doing movie or animated series translation. They’re all making choices and building takes that are intrinsic to their creators’ vision of the material. When we talk about comics being adapted to movies, most of the time people are thinking about superheroes. My favorite comic book adaptation of all time is Road to Perdition. It’s a fantastic, criminally underrated film. Paul Newman’s last movie, I believe. It’s based on the graphic novel by Max Allen Collins, with art by Richard Piers Rayner. Most people don’t know that it was based on a comic book. I would argue in large part, because the authorship, both visually and narratively, is so strong and distinct that it feels like a piece unto its own rather than something that is a derivative translation to another medium.
MW: It’s one of those things where if you don’t know it’s based on a comic you get to enjoy the film for being a film and then later on the comic for being a comic. You’re not going in, ready to pick apart the adaptation based on your preconceived notions.
KH: That’s why I bristle a little bit at the question. It’s not any fault of the previous interviewer for asking it. There’s a perception and an acceptance to some extent that you make a comic because you’re trying to make a movie or a TV show, and I absolutely hate that because they’re different mediums. They work differently. I’m a big believer that you have to build a story that takes full advantage of the medium you’re working in. You can’t be designing something for another medium and just try to do a comic to shore up the IP in order to make it more attractive as a film or TV show. Coming from a writing and directing background I get the notion of thinking about something from your book being ripe for the screen, but the second you’re chasing that dragon and using the page to serve the screen, the book’s going to suck.
MW: Continuing with adaptations, there was a C.O.W.L. adaptation in the works over at 21st Century Fox about a decade ago. In a recent interview, you mentioned that things had been going well for a while. Then at one point your agent reached out to see if you guys could get more money for the pilot, and then they tried to backdoor you.
KH: Wow! I don’t know where you found that. I think I’ve only told that story once, and I don’t even remember where it was.
MW: We’ll link to the interview here for anyone who wants to check it out. It’s a good interview. So, as you mentioned at the start of our conversation, you jokingly said, you’ll do a TV show next. Have you cooled on the idea of TV from that C.O.W.L. experience?
KH: No, not at all. TV is not my preferred medium. To be honest, I love movies. I love features. There was certainly a period where, up until very recently, the indie feature was really being put out to pasture against its will, and against pretty much every filmmaker’s will. In its place, the eight-episode prestige show became what was being sold to us as creators from a standpoint of, that’s where you go to do your real character focused work. Like what you would have done as an indie feature a decade ago. There was some really interesting stuff that was done during the peak TV era, but it’s not a format that I’ve ever put my focus behind. It’s funny because I write comics full time. So much of what I do is an ongoing series, which reflects closest to a TV model. But what I really love is features. I mean, I have had some stuff over the years that we’ve optioned. But it’s stuff that has never gone forward far enough that it became a real thing.
MW: It’s hard to get your hopes up when so many things don’t see the light of day, even after years of work.
KH: With the C.O.W.L. situation, it was never actually at 21st Century. That’s who made us an offer. We had it set up with New Regency and Trigger Street. This was long before any of us knew what was going on with Kevin Spacey. So, Trigger Street was a pretty prominent company and name in 2014. We were working with Trigger Street and New Regency and then 21st Century Fox made an offer, and essentially they backwards negotiated where they’d made an offer for an option price, and then a quote for Alec Siegel and myself to write the pilot. My agency countered asking for more money on the pilot, and it wasn’t anything huge. 21st Century Fox then came back and took the pilot script deal off the table to instead “focus on shoring up the rights.” My manager and my agent freaked out. They were like, “Whoa! That’s not how this is done. You’re backwards negotiating. That’s not negotiating in good faith.” And Fox claimed they wanted to close the rights deal before the end of the year, and then revisit this down the line. At that point, my reps were pushing for an If Come Deal, meaning if you’re going to go forward on developing a pilot, then you have to hire Kyle and Alec to write it, and they wouldn’t do it. They just wanted the rights. So, we walked away from it.
MW: That had to be tough, but good for you guys pulling out on your terms.
KH: There was another studio exec at one point on another project who didn’t want me as a writer on it. Again, they just wanted the material. I remember them saying “Kyle needs this deal.” And I told my manager, “I really don’t,” and killed it and walked away. This is a long way of saying I’m not opposed to anything in TV. It just has to be the right situation and the right fit with the right partners. It has to be something that I am doing with them as opposed to watching them do with my work. I do think a lot of the stuff we do in the Massive-Verse works better for TV than it does for film. If that were an opportunity down the line, it’s not something we are opposed to exploring. But again, it has to be the right situation.
MW: Sticking to TV, I’ve seen Radiant Black being compared to Invincible. I believe Robert Kirkman even said something along the lines of the two being similar. It was a quote on the first trade paperback.
KH: It’s on the cover. Yeah.
MW: Well, now with the Invincible out and doing well. When was that first season? 2020? 2021?
KH: First season was … oh, yeah, you’re right. It was March 2021.
MW: It feels like it’s been out for 10 years. So that comes out. People love it. Between the comparisons and the show doing well, is that an added pressure on you and the Radiant Black team or does it have you rubbing your hands together menacingly saying, “Yes, yes, it’s all coming together”?
KH: No, you know it’s neither for me. I’m a huge Invincible fan. I had read the first 12 issues years and years ago, and then right before Covid happened and while I was building Radiant Black, I decided I needed to read the rest of the run. Partially because I had been meaning to do it forever, but also because I wanted to make sure I was staying away from certain elements while building out Radiant Black. So, I got the 12 hardcover books and plowed through the entire run in two months. I loved it, just loved it. And it was the first time in a long time where I got to be a fan of something again, and I just had such a blast going through that. It’s exciting for me as a fan to see Invincible do as well as it’s doing but as far as pressure or feeling like it’s creating an opportunity, I don’t feel like that at all. I don’t feel either of those things– we’re doing our own thing. I love the thought that people think of us in any way as a spiritual sequel to Invincible. That just warms my heart. I love that, but I also know what we’re doing and how we’re different.
MW: That run was really good and the show is great. You guys are in good company.
KH: Robert did a really kind and special thing when Radiant Black was launching. He sent me a pull quote where he compared Radiant Black to Invincible. The quote was, “The perfect superhero comic book for anyone missing Invincible,” and there was more to it like, “or anyone who hated Invincible, or anyone who, you know, never heard of Invincible… it’s just the perfect superhero comic to fall in love with superheroes again.” Robert said use this in any way you want. Cut it up, use whatever. I love to tell people about that as often as I can, because that is such an awesome and generous thing for a creator, especially of Robert’s caliber, to do where he absolutely didn’t have to. Especially knowing that his show was about to come out a few months later. I know big creators who would never comp their successful thing that they’re most known for and is about to be an even bigger thing, to some new thing in a way that gives an added bump to it. But Robert did, and we’ll forever be thankful to him for that.
MW: Yeah. I imagine most creators would say, “Radiant Black? Nah, go read Invincible or whatever my thing is.” Speaking of Radiant Black, I got to check it out earlier this year. I’m new to comics and stumbled upon the first issue while at my local comic shop. The cover on issue #1 caught my eye, but what sucked me in was turning to the first page and seeing a bank account in the negative. As a struggling millennial opening and seeing that first panel I was like, “this motherfucker has my attention.” So, I scooped up the first 10 issues.
KH: I love it.
MW: It’s this story about the struggles of a generation and you know it’s funny. All the Invincible comparisons come in and while yes, it’s a superhero satire, it is also about how your parents really aren’t superheroes and are these flawed people. Meanwhile, Radiant Black, and the radiant series is saying that you have to be your own superhero. No one is coming to save you, and I think there’s something beautiful about that. We’re going to get into a little bit of spoiler territory. You have the 2 Radiants Black. You have Nathan Burnett returning home after failing in Hollywood, and then you have Marshall Ward, who never left home, never actually tried and is a bit bitter about that. I always like to ask creators who do you relate with the most? Are you a little bit of both? Are you Nathan one day and Marshall the next?
KH: The book’s not about me but there’s a lot of me in the book, and that’s by design. For example, I’ve been in L.A. for 20 years and I’ve never had to move back in with my parents because things got so bad. I did leave town after a bad breakup in 2016 and went on a kind of adventure off to Europe. On my way back to LA, all my stuff was in storage, and I ended up staying with my parents for a few days. Those few days turned into a couple of months, because I realized I’d left Illinois for California when I was 20 and every time I’d ever come home for a week, two weeks, whatever, I would say, “One day, when I have time and the resources, I’m going to come back and spend a big amount of time here with my parents, as an adult.” I never got to do that and then all of a sudden, I’m there and I had nowhere I had to be, so I decided to finally commit to it. So, I stayed there for three or four months and had this amazing time with my family that I felt like I had missed for a decade.
MW: That’s nice. Quality time like that isn’t easy to get.
KH: So, the book is set in my hometown, or one town over. I grew up in Homer Glen, but I went to high school in Lockport, and so I set the book in Lockport. Nathan’s house is a friend of mine’s house. The retro video rental store that Marshall works at doesn’t exist, but that building exists and is called the Roxy Theater. We just turned it into the retro video rental store that we all wish existed there, especially when we were growing up. As far as a personality thing, there are definitely aspects of both that kind of come from different aspects of my personality, for sure. Nathan wasn’t doing Hollywood stuff, but he was in L.A. chasing this romanticized idea of a dream that doesn’t exist anymore. Similarly, my love and dream of directing and filmmaking really comes from a filmmaking era that doesn’t exist anymore and hasn’t existed, really, since probably the early 2000s.
MW: And the filmmaker/director pools are getting smaller with each passing day.
KH: Nathan feeling like he had an opportunity to do something meaningful and wasted it is a constant terror of mine. I got a lot of opportunities very early on in my career. I directed a short film in college called The League, which became the basis for my book C.O.W.L., years later, which is a part of the Massive-Verse. I put that short online and one of the first people that saw it and reached out to me was Joe Quesada, who was the Editor-in-Chief of Marvel at the time, and so I started pitching to Marvel when I was 23. Then I wrote my first book for Marvel, an issue of Captain America when I was 24. That was the first comic book I ever wrote. I was at DC by the time I was 25, and then started working on The New 52, and suddenly you blink and it’s been years. You have a career, but you’re not doing the thing you really want to do. And it always bothers you.
MW: You feel the pull from the other thing, even though you’re already so busy as it is.
KH: There was a Senior VP at Universal who told my reps, “We think Kyle’s first movie should be made for 40 million.” And my eyes just went wide, like, “Uh, yeah, sure, that sounds amazing.” But then you realize, you’re 24 and you don’t yet know how to do the thing that you need to do to actually move that forward and take advantage of that opportunity. In my case, that meant writing a really strong feature script and I was dead set on doing it myself. Then years go by, and you feel like you wasted the opportunity. That’s something I relate to heavily, even though it’s worked out for me. Like you said as you alluded to upfront, I’m getting ready to go direct my first feature now. I’ve come close over the years a few times on some even bigger stuff. It’s still something that you think about. I remember that feeling very well, because I had it for so many years, even as my comic book career was going well. I felt like I was doing this at the expense of the thing that I truly wanted to do but maybe was too afraid to ask for help on, or because if you don’t ever really try, you never fail at it. In hindsight there probably was a little bit of that feeling inside of me. The other side of it is when you’re making a living as a writer and you’re writing the number of comics you have to write just to be able to afford to live, there’s very little time to go off and write a hundred plus page screenplay for fun. I was writing four or five books a month sometimes, and that comes with its own struggles. You’re learning how to do this, and how to be a consistent writer, and how to get better, but you’re also doing it under this really bright spotlight, especially when working with someone else’s characters. So, there’s a lot wrapped up in it all. Creative anxieties.
MW: And what about how you relate to Marshall?
KH: There are aspects of Marshall’s personality, not even so much the never tried but a level of insecurity masked with extroverted tendencies masking a deep level of insecurity, self-sabotage and even a bit of self-hatred. That’s something I understand and relate to quite a bit. Robert said something one time that I loved, which was that you can’t pick your hits. At the same time, though, when I was developing Radiant Black, I really thought we might have something there. Especially coming off three years writing Power Rangers and building out that line at Boom, then tackling Ultraman with Mat Groom at Marvel, which is another take on a Tokusatsu icon, I felt that between those and all my past superhero work, that I could build something new and contemporary with those aesthetic influences. I felt, if I could hit the emotional core in a way that I didn’t see other books doing at the time, we could really have something. So, looping back on the Robert “you can’t pick your hits” quote, I decided to try to avoid the self-sabotage route and really take a swing to set Radiant Black up to be a book that– if it worked– could grow with me, and I could enjoy writing for the next 10 to 15 years, (knock on wood) rather than a book that I might feel like a chore to keep coming back to, that I might end up fostering resentment towards because I have to keep coming back to it. That might sound like a silly thing to consider at the start of something, because it sounds like you’re planning for it to work, but that is absolutely something that Marshall would do (laughs). And I think you do kind of have to have a little bit of that self-delusion just to force yourself to will things into existence that otherwise aren’t going to just happen. I think that’s a quality that I feel like you were touching on a little bit earlier. We’re on the edge of all the stuff that we’re doing out in the other mediums. We’re not waiting or asking for permission. We are just doing it because we want to see it done, and we want to do it ourselves. You need a little bit of that, especially in this day and age and in these industries.
MW: So, you take Nathan’s anxiety. You take Marshall’s self-hatred and self-sabotage, and I know C.O.W.L. was based on your short, which I just watched like an hour ago, and I loved it. That was great.
KH: Oh, thanks!
MW: Take what you’re doing. You have to do everything. You have to be the marketer. You have to make this; you have to make that. Is C.O.W.L. a glance at a previous generation and their path to “the top”? Do you look at a character like Geoffrey Warner and shout, “You had so much, and it cost you so little”?
KH: Yeah, that’s a really interesting and astute observation. I think that’s a bit retroactive if I’m being honest, as it was never the intent at the time. But between the short film and then ultimately going even further and building out the comic series, it’s there. From the start, Alec and I were really interested in the idea of looking at the corruption of American institutions and I think that transcends eras. It’s especially applicable now, but in the sixties, I wanted to look at that through the lens of labor politics in Chicago and superheroes in a slightly meta way, the transition from the Golden Age to the Silver Age in comics. You could argue the Golden Age of superheroes are the flawless Titans that we could never be. We look up to Superman, Wonder Woman, even Batman. These are the Titans that will save us. Which gives way in the Silver Age with Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four, The X-Men, The Hulk, and everything in that huge Marvel boom. These are the flawed gods that are amongst us. So, there’s a relatability there and that’s where Marvel’s world outside your window approach really took off. I liked the idea of taking superheroes, that would have been big in the late-forties, early-fifties, and as they’re now getting older and they are running this institution, they are clinging on under the pretense of for the greater good, but it’s really just self-preservation. Deep down, selfishly, they’re terrified that they’re being passed by. I think that’s a thematic idea or at least a motif that transcends eras in our history, especially in this country, and very much applies right now.
MW: It’s creating a bottleneck out of fear of being “done.”
KH: I’d be lying if I said that I was using C.O.W.L. to comment on all these things we have to do as creators. That was not the intent, but I do agree with you that it actually does map pretty well to that. From a media standpoint, even a comic standpoint, the industry is so wildly different now than it was 10 years ago. I really started breaking in near the end of 2008. Even heading into 2018, companies were still sending editors to shows. Marvel and DC had big booth presences. There were big dinners for creators that were great networking opportunities. Everything has changed so much. If you’re a new writer now, I don’t even know what all that looks like anymore. The pipeline is broken. To be coming up at one of these institutions, to be doing good work, developing under an editor who knows how to teach, with opportunities that are real and pay. It’s a bummer, but there are ways to still do this, and there are ways to break through. But the plus side is that because of the Internet, the world is so interconnected now, and as a creator it means that there’s really no such thing as undiscovered genius. If you’re doing good work as a creator, as a developing creator, and you’re putting it out there, people will see it.
MW: It’s funny you mention the pipeline because in every other industry you now hear that the pipeline is broken. You hear it about TV. Staff writers don’t go to set at all and they’re not getting that set experience they’ll need to be showrunners down the line. You hear it in video games, too, how someone works on a project for three years, and they’re laid off just as the game is nearing release. I had a feeling comics were in a similar spot. It’s still disheartening to hear that’s actually the case.
KH: Yeah. Page rates are stagnant. They have been for some time. What Covid did to Marvel and DC, it feels like a lot of the larger entertainment landscape has now caught up to what we all started going through in 2020. DC had a mass layoff around June of 2020, and it was everyone above a certain pay grade. I still have friends in DC, and they’re doing great work. But you know, DC is not even in the offices that they had custom built in Burbank when they were forced to move from New York in 2014. They’re not in that space anymore. It’s just a different entity. I don’t get the sense that the Warner Brothers money is there anymore.
MW: I think WB and DC would agree with that statement.
KH: This is something that C.O.W.L. touches on, as well as Radiant Black. It’s this idea of mega corporations, and what comes with us selling out to them as a society. It comes with some perks for sure– it’s great that you can go on Amazon and hit order, and depending on what it is, it might be at your doorstep that very day. On the flip side of that, Amazon buys a company like ComiXology and decides that it doesn’t make enough money for them anymore, or in the way that we thought it would, and then all of a sudden, the resources they were pouring into ComiXology dry up. And something that so many people utilized and relied on to read comics is gone with no readily available alternative. Amazon was able to do that because they’re so big. The same thing goes with Marvel being owned by Disney and DC being owned by Warner Brothers. When those corporate interests shift away from periodicals and comics, due to not hitting a revenue marker, that doesn’t mean there’s no validity or merit in a platform or medium’s continued existence and operation. But these companies can crater the industry if they want to.
MW: I don’t want to get too ahead, you’ve still got two issues left of C.O.W.L. 1964, but it feels like you’re making the argument that it all eventually has to end. Like you can have it all, but you won’t have it all for forever.
KH: I think there’s that, but I also think there’s a strong component of not everything needing to scale. I’m increasingly a big believer in that. Around the time I was starting Black Market Narrative, a very smart businessman told me that you don’t start a company without a plan to sell. I understand the reasoning behind that and the spirit of that comment. You’re trying to design a company in a way that makes it attractive and the best way for a company to be attractive is how much money it’s making consistently, or the innovative things it’s doing within a space. I get the spirit behind the comment, but my thing has always been– why does everything have to sell? Why can’t doing something well at a level that’s sustainable just be enough?
MW: Why does growth always have to be the end game?
KH: Right. Why can’t we have more A24s? More Neons. Why does everything have to get to a point where the business model is selling to a larger entity, getting your bag, and walking away? Why leave something so many people love or rely on at the whims of conglomerates that can take movies out of release windows and shelve them forever as a tax deduction? Why do we champion structures that allow that? That’s a larger conversation from a societal standpoint. It’s just incredibly disheartening.
MW: Disheartening, because then from the creative side, you see a creative make that sale, and then they either disappear or go on and make another company that’s a perfect likeness to the previous company. In the hope of recapturing some magic from the company they sold. I get the inclination of not wanting to disappear and wanting to do something else, but whoof.
KH: Yeah.
MW: You mentioned Joe Clark earlier. The two of you just finished Deep Cuts, which you were nominated for an Eisner for best anthology.
KH: Yep.
MW: Congrats. The book is a fictional history that follows all these different artists throughout these different decades. Throughout the series you see all these artists struggling to make a name for themselves, but there’s this major throughline in the series of the smallest occurrence in someone’s career being an inspiration to someone in the next generation and driving them forward in their efforts. They also might not make it in the way they thought, but then something they did goes on to influence the next generation, and that cycle just keeps going and going. When your career is over after you’ve made all your comics, you’ve made the features, the TV, the card games that you want to make. What do you want the next generation of creators to take away from you, The Massive-Verse, and Black Market Media?
KH: That we’re doing it for the love of the game. Whether it’s new creators who we are trying to give opportunities to, readers who are finding comics because of us, or lapsed comic readers finding their excitement for the medium again, because of us. I hope that’s what we’re most remembered for, because everyone doing this stuff is really doing it for the love of the game and we are putting everything we have into it. That includes also doing things the right way, concerning how things like this should be done with creators, collaboration, ownership, and things of that nature. Like I said before, it’s so tough, pipeline-wise, to really break in and find the right platforms to grow on and also do work that people will see. We are very cognizant of that, and we’re constantly looking for new creators and new artists all the time. The reason I set up Black Market Narrative as a creative collective is for the very reasons that I’m talking about right now. I just want to be additive to the history of creators, making really cool comics that push the boundaries and remind people why comics are so exciting, and how cool they can be.
MW: I love that. That’s a good button. Kyle. Thank you so much for chatting with us today.
KH: Of course.
