Talking Sword & Sorcery and More With Comic Tropes!

Posted by on December 29, 2020 No comments

Chatting with Chris at Comic Tropes was an absolute pleasure. We cover all kinds of great stuff here, including how I got my start in animation and comics, working in the business and a lot of sword & sorcery fare, including Dungeons & Dragons, Pathfinder, and Conan the Barbarian. Check it out!

Talking Stone Star With Citywide Blackout

Posted by on December 19, 2020 No comments

Max and I chatted with the Citywide Blackout podcast all about STONE STAR Season 2 – How we work together to develop the series, the fun of creating our own universe, and teasing big story developments coming up in future issues. Give it a listen!

Stone Star Season 2 #1 Reviews

Posted by on December 18, 2020 No comments

• Drop The Spotlight: “Exactly the kind of thing I look for in a comic book, a great story, well-written characters and dialogue, artwork that’s beautifully colored, I thoroughly enjoyed everything about this!”

• Fanboy Factor: “Max Dunbar is outdoing his previous top-notch environment and action work in this new season, bringing in a whole new A-Game of visual interpretation. Together with Espen Grundetjern on colours and Marshall Dillon on lettering, this team is offering a fun, funky take on mechs, men, women, and beasts.”

• Reading With a Flightring: “This is so charming and so well told that you can get lost in this world and left wishing you could explore the city itself.”

Creating a New Language in Conan the Barbarian

Posted by on December 6, 2020 No comments

For Into the Crucible, my first arc of Conan the Barbarian, I wanted to channel the sword & sorcery prose/comics that had a big influence on me but also give it a spin that, ideally, readers hadn’t quite seen before.

That piece ended up coming from building a new language.

Conan is traveling through Uttara Kuru, a distant land from his home of Cimmeria. In the classic comics, characters would all be speaking the same language or passages would automatically be translated to make the exchanges relatively frictionless for the reader.

I decided to give our team a challenge and put Conan in the deep end on this trip by not having him (or the reader) understand exactly what was being said. Assumptions and inferences abound. Body language and facial expressions have to sell intent that much more.

Sometimes Conan gets bits translated for him, other times the translator puts their own spin on things.

In the fourth part of the story we included a lexicon of key words so readers could go back and do their own rough translations if they want.

It was one of the most challenging things I’ve done so far as a writer, but also a ton of fun.

If you’re a sword & sorcery fan and like what you see here, you can read Into The Crucible now in single issues (Conan the Barbarian #13-16) or pick it up in trade paperback in March 2021.


Conan the Barbarian:
Into the Crucible
(issues #13-18)

A new era for Conan! The barbarian has faced many foes since leaving Cimmeria, but the greatest challenge lies ahead! Conan finds himself in a city in the mystical Uttara Kuru, farther on the eastern border than he has ever traveled. And with a new city comes new dangers! 		PRE-ORDER
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Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons #2 Reviews

Posted by on December 5, 2020 No comments

• But Why Tho: 10/10 “Houser and Zub humanize two of our main fictional characters while Galindo brings out raw emotions through an amazing display of facial expressions.”

• Comic Book.com: 8/10 “Honestly, this comic focuses on another great aspect of D&D—how people use it to grapple with complex emotions like grief or rage. It’s a surprisingly deep comic, one that clearly comes from a place of love for D&D.”

• Comic Crusaders: 9/10 “The ability of this fellowship to bring Will back into the world of the living, to be able to experience joy, imagination and friendship once more is a key part of the story that we never saw play out on the screen. The healing feels organic and really builds up the bonds between the friends.”

• Monkeys Fighting Robots: 8/10 “…a bittersweet issue, one that follows the events of the first season. Its success is in making the characters feel so very human, as they learn to cope with everything they have seen and survived.”

• One More Comic (Spanish): 8/10 “The love of playing Dungeons & Dragons transcends and is no longer just fun, it is a way to heal wounds.”

• Scifi Pulse: “The art team does a great job on this issue. The character likenesses are bang on. As are the different locations. I particularly enjoyed the sequence of panels where Mike was devising the game in his attic.”

Stranger Things and D&D Panel and Liveplay – Part 2

Posted by on December 1, 2020 No comments

Dark Horse hosted a second live panel and livestream D&D session about the Stranger Things comics with creators. Watch the crew discuss Stranger Things and D&D, an upcoming comic series, and our many other Stranger Things graphic novels and comics, and then play a session inspired by the Stranger Things Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set.

00:08:10 Stream Start
01:02:49 Game Session Begins

Chatting With Comic Quirks

Posted by on November 30, 2020 No comments

I spoke to Jimmy at Comic Quirks about growing up reading comics, writing iconic characters, writing structure, and more. Check it out.

Talking Star Wars and More on Comic Pop

Posted by on November 17, 2020 No comments

Sal Crivelli from Comic Pop and I chatted up a storm about Star Wars, the Mandalorian, working in big shared universes, conventions and so much more. Sal’s great to chat with and we had a blast.
Give it a watch!

Stranger Things and Dungeons & Dragons #1 Reviews

Posted by on November 9, 2020 No comments

• But Why Tho: 10/10 “…a perfect amalgamation of growing up, friendship, and a passion for geek culture.”

• Comic Book.com: 8/10 “…a love letter to the bonding power of D&D…A great comic, one that syncs up perfectly with both Stranger Things and the D&D experience.”

• Comic Book Club: “I was surprised how much I enjoyed this…I thought this was a lot of fun.”

• Flickering Myth: “I look forward to more of this bizarre mix of intellectual properties; the concept sounds insane and yet I very much enjoyed the story presented so far.”

• Mass Movement: “an uncanny ability to weave great stories featuring well-rounded, believable and relatable character and when you team them up with a staggeringly talented artistic duo the end result is inevitably going to knock you off your feet and completely blow your mind.”

• Monkeys Fighting Robots: “…a fun and charming beginning to this miniseries. It’s an endearing adventure, allowing for a sneak peek into the world they lived in before everything turned so…strange.”

• One More Comic (Spanish): 10/10 “Both the story and art capture the camaraderie and tone of the Stranger Things series, as well as how exciting it is to participate in the game.”

• The Pullbox: “The settings are well-rendered and attractive, and there’s a lot of play with panels and collages, maintaining strong eye appeal and interest. And the gaming scenes? You can tell, dude was just having fun.”

• Sci-Fi Pulse: “Diego Galindo does some epic work here and his fine line work is brought wonderfully to life by colorist MSASSYK. Furthermore, the artist does a wonderful job of capturing the likeness of the young actors that play the four key characters on ‘Stranger Things’.”

• That Hashtag Show: “It was nice to get a look at Will, Mike, Lucas, and Dustin before their lives got turned “Upside Down”. This Stranger Things origin story mixed with the fantasy world of Dungeons & Dragons is a must for fans!”

Conan the Barbarian #15 Reviews

Posted by on November 4, 2020 1 comment

• The Brown Bag: “…crammed full of treachery, numerous death-traps, passionate love-making and the adventurer’s unconquerable will to survive, many fans of Robert E. Howard’s work could arguably have believed that the incredibly atmospheric Into The Crucible was actually an adaption of some long-lost manuscript from the Thirties rather than a modern-day interpretation of the fictional sword and sorcery hero.”

• Comic Book.com: 8/10 “This arc could end up being a genuinely perfect one, if this issue is any indication.”

• Comic Book University: “I think you’ll actually see that this is really a fun book, all in all, from beginning to end.”

• Graphic Policy: “I thought Conan the Barbarian #15 was an easy issue to follow and I wasn’t confused much at all picking this one up in the middle of the storyline.”

• Kaboooom!: 8/10 “Roge Antonio’s art continues to impress, showing a unique sense of motion throughout the issue. Even when speaking in a static conversation the characters seem to be continually in motion, like wary predators circling their prey.”

• Pop Mythology: “Pick of the Week – a book that shows me the savage rage of everyone’s favourite Cimmerian is exactly what this year needs.”

• Weird Science Marvel Comics: 8.5/10 “I’m totally on board with the direction Zub’s and Antônio are taking…If you’re interested in Conan the Barbarian, now is the perfect time to give it a try.”