Interview | The Sample Chapter Podcast

Jason Meuschke is a Hellbent for Letterbox listener who has a great podcast of his own. It's called The Sample Chapter Podcast and it's all about the process and business of writing. Each episode, Jason interviews a different author about their writing life and then invites them to read a sample chapter from their work. Jason's a great, fun host and I had a blast talking with him. And then I had a blast reading from Kill All Monsters, describing panels, doing sound effects, and generally just being a giant goof.

Take a listen and then check out Jason's archives for interviews with Lou Diamond Phillips and Diane Franklin (aka Monique from Better Off Dead).

Poplitiko Interview

My buddy Alex Ness runs a thoughtful pop culture blog called Poplitiko. He's currently publishing a series of interviews with various creative people and asked me to participate. We talked about my development as a writer, my habits, and my thoughts about my earliest work. It was fun to reflect on all of those things.

It's also a quick read, so go check it out and take a look at what else Alex has going on over there.

Interview in Dark Worlds Quarterly

If you're like me, you enjoy the guest posts here where GW Thomas writes about pulp magazines and Golden Age comics. And you've probably also noticed at the bottom of those articles where his bio says that he's the editor of Dark Worlds magazine.

Well, worlds have collided and GW was kind enough to invite me to participate in an interview for the latest issue, now online. It's a special kaiju and comics issue and I got to chat about Kill All Monsters, this blog, and just influences and stuff I love in general. The rest of the issue is cool, too, with articles about Reptilicus, Kamandi, and much much more. Please go check it out.

The Two Page Spread interview

I met this guy at C2E2 who was awesomely dressed as Kevin Matchstick from Mage and also runs a Tumblr called Two Page Spread where - among other comicsy things - he's done a bunch of short interviews with people who make comics. We talked for a minute and you can hear the whole thing in the Soundcloud track above.

I was apparently trying to set some kind of speed-talking record though, so I apologize about that.

More love for Kill All Monsters

A couple of the biggest supporters of Kill All Monsters are James Biggie and Frankie B. Washington, creators of the amazing, kaiju-themed webcomic Robot God Akamatsu. You may remember the awesome print James created for us (which is one of the Kickstarter reward levels, just sayin') and be forgiven for thinking that he's the artist on RGA. As talented a visual artist as he is though, James actually writes the webcomic and Frankie draws it. And now Frankie's done his own, stunning version of what an RGA/KAM crossover (A-KAM-atsu!) would look like. Check out RGA and also be sure to like their Facebook page, a one-stop shop for keeping up with giant monsters and robots news.

Since I mentioned the Kickstarter, the quick update is that as I'm writing this we just passed $6,000.  That's so far beyond my initial hopes for the campaign that I can't even remember them. A few people have been nice enough to mention the Kickstarter, including Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter, the folks behind the Outré anthology, and Crimson Engine, so thanks to all of those people.

There've also been some more reviews, starting with my Robot 6 compadre Corey Blake talking about KAM in our What Are You Reading? feature. "After the novelty buzz of the concept wears off," he writes, "you're actually left with a world and people that you want to spend time with and learn more about. There's some mystery, some intrigue, some questioned motives, some social commentary, all lightly peppered throughout to keep the story chugging along even while the oversized slugfest takes a break."

My pal Siskoid at the indispensable Siskoid's Blog of Geekery also had an advance look at KAM and praises the team's diversity (something very important to me) as well as Jason's loose style. "The material (robots) might have called for very technical drawings, but Copland's work has a sketchiness to it that trades technical accuracy for energy, which I think is really the way to go." Jason had been wanting to loosen up his style for a while and debated about whether or not Kill All Monsters was the time to do that, but I totally agree with him and Siskoid about its being perfect for this series. It gives everything a grittiness that makes the world real.

The last review was from David Goodman at Geekadelphia. He wasn't familiar with KAM until he heard about it on Twitter, so it's fun to hear from someone who's coming at it totally new. "Yes, a few pages in I had distinct visions of Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and wasn’t sure what I had gotten into. But once I really got into the tale May and Copland were telling, you realize that Kill All Monsters is science fiction storytelling at it’s best. You have robots the size of buildings beating the snot out of giant monsters in what’s left of Paris, while at the same time you get to experience a very human story of survival. Add in a conspiracy theory or two, some tensions among the pilots and dynamic art that is just a joy to look at and you have a prime example of why webcomics are so great."

Thanks to Corey, Siskoid, and David for the very nice comments!

Finally, a couple of interviews: Russ Burlingame from ComicBook.Com interviewed Jason about the comic, Kickstarter, Jason's influences...lots of stuff. It's a great, comprehensive interview and I even learned some new things about Jason myself.

And I got to talk to my friend and colleague Tim O'Shea for his "Talking Comics with Tim" column at Robot 6. Everyone at Robot 6 feels weird when we talk about Kill All Monsters - and no one more than me - so it's especially nice of Tim to go for it anyway. Check it out; Tim always asks fun and interesting  questions.

Review (and Interview and Mention) All Monsters

Hartley Holmberg from Vancouver's The Hartley Show attended Vancouver Comicon and spent a lot of time with Jason talking about Kill All Monsters. It's a fun interview and Hartley seems to have liked the book.

A bunch of other reviews have been coming in too. My pal Ken hadn't read the entire first volume yet when he wrote this post for That F'ing Monkey about KAM's being in Previews, but he's one of our biggest supporters and says about the part that's appeared online: "The story is full of that fun team dynamic. For some reason it reminds me of the adventure groups in a good table top RPG. [...] Jason Copland’s art is beyond words. The organic design of the beasts is offset by the mechanical battle suits. His line work is so clean and precise that you’ll spend time just taking in all the details."

Kris at Deeply Dapper also likes the book and calls it "only the bestest comic book ever."

CT at Nerd Lunch has a super-nice review and writes, "While May has done a great job at setting that scope, fleshing out the characters, and delivering the dialog, Copland balances that with dynamic, two-tone art. It's got a grittiness to it that is needed, but still clean enough to be able to tell what's going on. The action scenes come across well and Copland is able to display the weight needed to show these are behemoths battling over the city." He also draws a comparison to Thundarr the Barbarian, an influence I hadn't consciously been thinking about, but absolutely affects the world. I loved that show so much as a kid and recently revisited it with my son, so there's no doubt that that's in there from a world-building perspective.

Comic Bastards has a nice, thoughtful review that's complimentary while not completely so (which is perfectly fair). Some of the fights ran a little long for their taste and I get the feeling they would have liked some added emphasis on the monsters, but they seem to like the human characters and the robots and the way that the Kill Team's machinery isn't perfect. And of course the art. Overall, it's a very positive review and I'm thrilled to get it. I do want to respond to the criticisms - not to defend against them, but just because acknowledging them in more detail will help solidify some of the lessons I learned from writing KAM - but this post is already long enough, so I'll do that later.

And finally (for now), the Great and Powerful Cal at the Canadian Cave of Cool wrote a fantastic review that proves he and I were separated at birth by praising the things I'm most proud of about the story. He loves the art too of course, but it thrills my heart to read his appreciation of the world-building, the mystery, and how the story doesn't explain every single thing.

While it's not technically a review, SF Signal was nice enough to mention the Kill All Monsters Kickstarter in their Crowd Funding Roundup and call KAM a "kickass webcomic." Ken also wrote another wonderful post about the Kickstarter for That F'ing Monkey.

As I'm writing this, the current Kickstarter total is a little over $5500, due to folks helping to spread the word like that. I'm in shock, to be perfectly honest. Thank you again so much to all of you who've shown support either through pledges or just by telling people. Jason and I are amazed and humbled.

And thank you to all the folks above who reviewed the book. I know of at least a couple of more reviews that will be going up this week, so I'll keep doing these roundup posts as long as people are willing to write about the book.

One last bit of KAM-related information: I noticed that the UK comics retailer Forbidden Planet has Kill All Monsters available for online order. I have no idea what that means exactly for our order numbers, but it's a great sign.

Comics You Can Dance To Interview

Danny Djeljosevic and Nathaniel MacDonald at Comics Bulletin's Comics You Can Dance To podcast were nice enough to let Jason Copland and I crash their party this week.After the most awesome musical introduction ever, we talked for half-an-hour about Kill All Monsters: the history, the creative process, the influences, and balancing KAM with other projects (in my case, blogging and some other short stories I've got lined up). It was extremely fun and I'm thrilled with how it turned out. Thanks again to Danny and Nate for having us on.

I've kind of caught the podcasting bug now. I also just had a great time recording an episode with Tommy Hancock for his Genre Talk program about one of my favorite genres. I'll link to that when it's up and tell you more about it then.

Panel Bound Interview

Matthew Manarino from Panel Bound interviewed me about Kill All Monsters and the writing process in general, especially working with artists. He asked some great questions and I had a lot of fun.

If you like process stuff, the site has a whole series of writer, editor, and artist interviews with folks like Cullen Bunn (The Sixth Gun), Shane and Chris Houghton (Reed Gunther), Christian Slade (Korgi), and Brandon Graham (King City). That's some humbling company to be in, so special thanks to Matthew for inviting me.

Dear Monsters...

Just a reminder that the Killing of All Monsters commences tomorrow.

Also, David was sick last night and I wasn't able to post this, but the second half of our interview with Ian Explosivo went up yesterday. Unfortunately, we didn't have time to discuss Taco Salad, but we did get to talk about why Jason and I decided to make Kill All Monsters! into a webcomic and how that format has affected the way we're telling the story.

Who Reads the Cownt?

Apologies to First Second Books for stealing the title of this post from them.

In other Cownt news, I forgot to mention that Newsarama's Chris Arrant was nice enough to interview me about the Hooved Horror. We conducted the interview last Fall before you could buy the comic online, so it's a little out of date, but there's some stuff in there about the Cownt's creation that I don't think I've talked about anywhere else.

Writing is Hard: Interviewing Tips

I used to love interviewing, but I don't do a lot of it anymore. Mostly that's because it's a lot of work if you're going to do it right. Anyone can ask about influences and upcoming projects, but a great interview requires research and a lot of thoughtful insight.

I'm not saying that I'm looking to do more interviews, but if I do, I'll be adding author Lynn Viehl's suggestions for interviewers to the list of other things I've learned about the craft.