Hey, everybody freaks, I freak.
Hold on.
Let me start again.
Hold on.
Sorry, I just noticed that I misspelled Reuben.
That's all.
Right. Okay.
All right.
That threw me off real, real fast.
Okay. Five. Four. Three. Two. One.
Hey, y'all, welcome to Geek Freaks.
I am Frank, and I'm here with Alan Rubin and Dave, creators of the Harold.
How are you all doing today?
Fine. I'm.
Yeah, I'm all right.
Alan is an all too familiar voice for us in the show in the past.
Rubin, this is your first time.
so let's start with Alan.
We're going to be going over the.
Harold, can you break down what the Harold is?
yeah, it's a book.
Awesome. Okay. Go ahead.
Let's go to Dave. Now, let's talk about
nothing.
You'd be of more use to us.
Yes. That is.
Yeah. No. So the, the Harold was.
It's it's Reuben's brainchild, and,
it's a story that he already came to me about a man with.
I don't want to give too, too much away, but it's, it's a super.
Yeah, yeah, well, give him a little taste.
It's a supernatural western.
that involves a bounty hunter
who is, I guess, just on a mission to retrieve something that was stolen.
And we wanted this story to kind of expand through, you know, different,
different time periods and just really just stretch
what we can do with a story of this size.
Yeah.
So then, Reuben, where did you get the idea for a time?
Wondering bounty hunter.
So, Yeah.
Idea. Yeah.
Came out of anything at, like, literally the air.
Like air.
I didn't I didn't even have a plan for the book.
Honestly, I knew that I wanted to do a Western, and I knew that
I wanted to do a Western, with a cowboy, a horse in a crow.
But, I do have a theme
in my comic books usually, which is a religious team.
And I try to implement a little bit of mythology in this book,
and that's what you will find mostly.
Why? Why attracted to the Western?
I know you're from Europe. Why? Why Western
do I think we've all grew up watching old Westerns?
At least my grandpa used to roll those movies in the old TV a whole lot.
So I just used to sit next to him and just see, like Clint Eastwood
shooting some bad guy, you know, Beth Martin, some people.
And that's awesome.
Honestly.
And, I wanted to have a more, artistic, approach to, to a Western, creates
something a little bit out of the ordinary if
I, if I consider an adult came about.
Speaking of that, let's go a little bit into the art.
We have a very clear art palette with the pinks and the oranges,
and then it shifts. Of course, when we go to a different time period.
is that what your goal was?
Is to use different kind of color palettes for different time?
Exactly, exactly.
So you can't even establish correctly where you at in, can you?
And you know, you will see a whole lot of that throughout the book.
So you can distinguish where you at, what the situation is and what it represents.
Okay.
And then Dave, let's go over to you.
We have a lot of like the calling from the crows in the dialog
that's both kind of western that, that, person just kind of in our ears.
And then also from, our protagonist, how as a letter
are you trying to make this feel like it's an old Western?
well, honestly,
that's all Ruben's father like he very much.
He was just like, look, man, this is how I want it to look.
If you can't.
If you can't do it, I'll just find someone else.
That's.
That's just how he rolls. It was.
It was not. It was not like that. But it was.
It was exactly like that.
He was exactly like that.
No, it was actually.
No. But he did have a very specific, look and feel that he had in mind for this.
And, you know, I think the book came out the better for it.
Honestly.
It's it's, very clean, very, very striking.
Yeah.
you did a really wonderful job with a Greek scenes.
Can you kind of explain what you what your choice was there?
Oh, just, you know, like it.
There's there's always the, the thing in comics where, you know,
you throw in the little brackets when things like is translated
from the original language or anything like that.
And I was just like, well, you know, this doesn't really need to be translated
for anyone, so they just make it look more like it's,
like Greek, you know, speech.
Yeah. And it seems like it almost chiseled words and stuff.
Yeah, yeah. Good words at that point. Yeah.
it reminds me of the Thor comics.
Whenever you're reading a Thor comic, it goes to almost like fancy English
whenever you start speaking.
So it's a little bit different.
It's a very good choice.
Alan, let's go back to you.
Clearly, at this point, you've made a few comic books and stuff like that.
Yeah. Just like.
Yeah. Why did you want to attach yourself to this one?
And does it have any sort of not connection, but were you inspired
by some of your past works?
yeah.
So the reason why I want to be connected to this was just because I was bored.
Okay.
Did not. Right.
But I mean, you've already got a few things you're dealing this.
Yeah. Yeah.
I had nothing else going on. No.
so obviously I'm a. Yeah. Right.
I'm a big fan of of Reuben, first and foremost.
And just for Reuben to approach me to want to do something was awesome
because I've worked with Reuben on a couple covers, for Grandma Chainsaw.
And we've we've bounced around ideas before for some other stuff.
And he did the art for a story
that Brian Verlander myself worked on for Rosebud Manor.
And it was just one of those, as soon as Reuben approached me with this,
it was an immediate yes, because I'm a huge fan of mythology
and theology, and this was just like, I don't know, like right up my alley.
I just felt, you know, it felt right.
It was one of those things. Yeah.
Reservoir of the manager.
Rose Blood Manor is sort of the Avengers Endgame of this universe,
where I feel like there's a bunch of creators
that have touched that project that go on to create
other things that I've interviewed, like, oh yeah, I also did Rosebud.
I'm like, okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
It seems like everyone has done that at some point.
Yeah.
can you tell us a little bit about this main character?
What's the drive?
Why are they first off, you know, I don't I don't spoil anything.
There's a lot of big spoilers there. But what's the drive for this character?
it's I think it's a and I love these types of characters.
it's a bound by oath type character
and, you know, without without giving away too much, like, that's like,
that's kind of the big, big, big thing with it.
we, we wanted a character who got.
How do I explain this?
I love the anti-hero in a lot of ways.
And you don't know exactly why he's doing what he's doing,
but, you know, it's for a cause that's bigger than he is.
Or is he actually, you know, chain to fate, right?
So it's one of those situations where we we wanted it
to be kind of ambiguous, obviously, for at least the first issue.
What kind of challenges can we expect this character to face?
Maybe room. And you might know this one too.
I'm sure you do.
what kind of challenges are we expecting him to see?
Because he seems unstoppable in this particular scenario.
But I'm sure he's going to run into something.
So that's the fun part about it.
because we are gonna, most likely.
And that's the 100% we are going to deliver the ash
kind of issue to, along with this campaign.
And that's where you will see a shift,
most likely on that specific department,
and you will get to understand the correlation
with the CRO with everything and why they work together.
And even the reasoning for
and he he being the way he is
and what he is actually more like that.
Yeah that's that's pretty much it. Okay.
And how do you make sure to differ this character
from other Western characters or even other supernatural characters?
I don't know. Okay.
So that's one tricky question because that's,
I think that's the whole blood of it.
Okay. Yeah. No problem. No.
But let's see.
Alan, do you think we can explain that in in some way that doesn't give?
Yeah, I'll explain this in a, Yeah.
From a really pretentious, grocery creator.
Yes, yes, yes.
what makes this character.
So I don't want to say different from anything else.
What makes this character special to us?
and obviously this is a lot of credit for, for Ruben.
And his approach with it is being forward thinking.
Like Frank, you and I have talked about this before.
You know, even as stupid as Grandma Chainsaw is
and as wacky as Horace's,
I unfortunately still put a lot of thought behind it,
and I want to make sure that the story's well delivered.
And I want to make sure
that when Dave goes to letter the book, he bitches at me as little as possible.
So I always try to make sure at least the story's coherent, cohesive
and everything.
And that's one thing about the Harold is,
we're not flying by the seat of our pants on this thing.
Like, the whole story has already been thought out.
We're we're ready to go.
We have the whole beats for the whole series.
and, you know, this
this challenge for this book, and I.
And I love this because how I'm used to doing it, I'm used to writing a script.
and then I give it to the artist.
Then the artist will go and do that.
Then it goes to Dave, but we're kind of switching steps around
and this is where we have to be proactive in our thinking
because I Ruben, I love you and I hate you for this.
But he draws the book first
and then yeah, he draws and callers it.
So no pressure.
So he does it first because he has a specific idea
and he's going off the story beats that we've talked about.
and then he places it that way.
And then we go back and write it
and and it works.
And I hate it, because, you know, it's, whenever he did it for the first one
because it's like we had 25 pages and he's like, here we go.
And it's like, oh my God, I was not expecting this, right?
Because he just dumped everything at one time.
Yeah. So yeah.
Well, Dave, that's got to change your whole process quite a bit.
How much are you working with
Alan to try to make this story fit into the the new limitations?
Not at all.
I just don't I genuinely don't care what he does.
And this is true.
So in Watchmen style, just a big block of dialog like it'll work.
Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely.
I mean, you know, if it doesn't fit, he gets he gets yelled at basically
is what happens.
And like what he said about that earlier, that's 100% true.
He tries to make me bitch at him as little as possible
because he knows it's coming. Yeah, yeah.
I'm liking this idea of Alan being the whipping boy and everybody
just kind of being like, yeah, Matt.
And I'm just going to text Alan real quick.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dave is really mad at Ruben, but he just takes it out on me. Yeah.
It's that language barrier.
He's not gonna understand what I'm saying anyway.
You guys.
Should.
All right, so all the guys on your guys's Kickstarter page, you guys mentioned
influences of, like, Clive Barker, Quentin Tarantino, the spaghetti westerns.
I mean, boy, spaghetti westerns.
You mentioned that earlier, Reuben with like of those Clint Eastwood's
what from those is brought into this.
I know just outsiders of the cowboy, but there's something else there that
that Lone Ranger.
Reuben, what other things are you pulling from those inspirations, though?
Okay, one thing that I can say is that this first,
this first book I wanted to implement,
the classic bar fight, you know, so that's one thing that I always wanted to draw.
I don't know what attracted me to that, but that was a fun thing.
So that little, little town in the middle of nowhere,
where there is a bar with regulars and an outsider just comes in,
and of course there's going to be some some friction.
And that's what I wanted to explore in art and it's these types
of little things that come from those types of movies
that I want to explore and take to another level.
That never level is very important, and I don't want to spoil anything.
It's a very big turn in the book.
that is such a fun turn.
Actually, I'm trying to. Put.
Put into words. It's so cool.
when you're making that hour, how are you pacing out the pages?
Are you trying to make sure
that the reader is feeling that moment before you turn happens?
Or are you trying to, like, boom, turn the page all of a sudden surprise?
How are you putting that out?
That's interesting.
I think I go, I go about a simple, a simple process.
I honestly, I check a lot of photos, for this book,
I go around and see a bunch of movements
and every type of action
that I can feel, and it can translate to my book, to my book.
So, for example,
then, yeah,
this part I will have to redo, but that's okay.
I'll vignette.
I don't know, honestly.
it's super organic.
I try to see like a movie.
So if the shot works, if the shots good, and if it's pretty, I'll use it, you know,
and I'll go about that if if it sounds organic, if it looks organic,
and if it's not,
how should I say it?
I just, I just go about it.
That's why alien doesn't like me.
Because I just go.
I just go around because this book is super unorthodox.
It's.
I just go around and do.
It's it's it's just that you feel.
You feel what you're saying, though. You feel the cinematic.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
The tempo the everything feels very much like shot by shot.
You can almost feel that camera zooming in as.
Yes, know, it's still stuck in my head that I cannot even translate into words.
It's it's weird.
This book is weird, but it's really weirdly good, you know.
That just makes you want to jump into the book so much.
I wish I could tell you what happened, but it makes you want to jump in so much.
But it's such a
as even telling Ellen, you guys release the trailer and I might cut this part out,
but you guys are at least showing, like, don't reveal that part like that.
Yeah. Cool.
Hey. Yeah, but that's it.
So that's the wild part with Kickstarter, right?
Because, you know, there's stuff that we want to keep hidden, but
we're trying to make a name not for ourselves
because that's that's whatever we want the project to eat before we do.
Right? Yeah.
So yeah.
So we, we want people to know what this book is
and what to expect, even if we have to give away a little bit.
I mean, it's not obviously not all of it.
Frank, you've had a chance to read this thing.
Yeah.
you know, even in that trailer, because, like, that's where the book.
I don't want to say it's not exciting up until that point,
but that's where it's like, okay, these guys aren't messing around.
Yeah, right.
And that's that's so awesome.
And and the the big thing about the artwork
in the style that Reuben chose for this, because Dave and I, we've talked
about this a million times.
It's it's funny because this is not a criticism at all.
Reuben is a chameleon with his art.
He could be on three books,
and I couldn't tell you it was the same person, because he adapts
so well to the story and pulls references and and cares about what he's doing.
but with this book, you know, purposefully wanted
to make it feel like it was from that time period.
He wanted the flat colors.
He he wanted some of the, you know, shaky lines to go with it
and some of the unfinished lines to do that and let the color show
where the land separates and the buildings begin.
you know, like I said, it was all intentional with that stuff.
And that carries over into the time change.
when we're in Greece, we have random like, yellow shafts
and pink shafts coming in that are almost just like, oh, wow.
This is just an artistic choice.
I don't know what it does narratively, but I'm feeling it narratively,
which I think is more important, especially when talking about colors.
And it's it's it's amazing how much the tone shifts for that Greece piece
and then what later on when you get the surprise, when you're like, oh, okay.
It all makes sense now.
And it's a really nice choice.
I think talking about,
the lettering again and, and how the design of the comic books go.
Dave, where do you pull your influences from?
We talked about Clive Owen and stuff like that for, for this book,
but where do you pull your from your influences as a letter from.
you know,
I try to pull from the art, honestly, you know, whatever I think fits the art,
you know, doesn't clash with, you know, whatever's going on on the page
and everything like that because you know it.
This isn't a book that, like, you know, even before Reuben, it was just
you crack the whip and said, you know, you letter it this way.
There was no way I'm gonna like, letter this.
Like it's a marvel comic or something like that.
You know what I mean? Like, that's that's not going to flow.
That's not going to look right.
but I am a very big fan.
If it works, especially with, like, the bold colors that he used on
this, of, like, the, outline lists.
Balloons, like, just like the clean and the white.
and I think it just works really well with something like this.
When you do outline is less versus outline.
Is there a message you're trying to convey to the reader of like
separate or was it just convenience of color?
it's just more
like convenience of color because I mean, like, you know,
what's interesting is like, there's not a lot of,
I mean, I don't think there's, like,
really a lot of white in the book, is there?
Reuben?
I don't think so.
No, I don't think I've used pure, pure whites.
I don't know, I'm not sure.
Yeah.
Yeah, just just a lot of bold colors and it just really works out because
like the only instance, like if there is like white
where lettering has to go, then you just do it like a little bit of an off yellow.
So it still shows up and you get that same effect.
Yeah.
I'm just going over the colors again, off of the lettering
a little bit, just again where it's like these like angular shafts in the shadows,
not like it's follows the shadow lines you'd expect, but just a boom.
And it's just such a neat idea.
It's really beautiful.
this is obviously going to be on Kickstarter.
And can you guys tell us a little bit
about what you guys strategy is for Kickstarter?
How are you going to change this campaign
or how this campaign is going to be unique from others?
well,
the thing we always try to do, and, you know, Frank, have been on here
like 11 times now.
So, so the thing that we're trying to do with
this one is the same thing we do with all of them.
We just want to make it as simple as possible.
and you know exactly what you're getting.
Okay.
And, pretty much like
we want to let the book speak for itself, right?
you know, of course, there's variant covers,
and I'm sure we'll talk about that here in a second.
But the other thing that's unique about this campaign,
you're not going to believe this.
The book's done.
So when the campaign's over and, you know, the funds hit
and everyone's already filled out their survey, and we know exactly how many
you know of each to order,
you guys
will get it very soon, which is awesome.
That is so relieving, because I can't tell you a few times
where I get a random comic book in the mail and I'm like,
oh, that's right, I forgot to pack this thing a while ago.
Yeah, yeah.
That's great.
okay. And how are the rewards?
And we'll talk about the covers in this as well
in the theme of this Western supernatural.
And you have some beautiful color,
covers of this too, that feel very unique and different.
Yeah. Dude.
So, obviously we wanted to pick artists that we, we thought
would be able to deliver, a good punch and a unique punch, too,
because obviously we want the covers, to be able to stand on their own.
But with this, again, we wanted this campaign to be nice, clean and simple.
so you know, of course
we're going to have stretch goals where we will reveal those as we go.
But for the day one backers, Dave designed this beautiful,
you know, the playing card for it.
And that was awesome.
The other thing, and Ruben's lending his skills to this.
You get to be drawn as an outlaw and have a four by six print of you,
and you get to see my stupid face on the, on the Kickstarter campaign
that Ruben decided to draw.
So, you know, like I said, it's just fun.
It's easy.
We're not trying to bog it down with so much extra stuff.
we just want this thing just to really celebrate the book.
And this is, you know, like I said,
I've worked with Ruben before, but it's just been from a cover standpoint
and from a singular eight page, one off story that was involved with another book.
This is the first time that it's Ruben, myself and Dave.
It's all three of us really like coming together,
and we're just kind of celebrating what we've accomplished together as
a first time creative team all together, doing this because, you know, obviously
without Ruben reaching out to me and Dave, and then without me bouncing ideas off
Ruben and Dave and without Dave telling us that,
you know, Alan, Ruben, you guys are stupid.
This isn't going to work. You guys need to change it to this.
Like, it's like everyone just kind of had an equal piece of the pie to.
And we all want this book to be as as good as it can be.
Yes, yes.
And it feels very like the teamwork came together.
It feels very cohesive and like that.
And Ruben on your cover and by the way, all the covers look amazing, but cover art
is just beautiful. I mean, that's thank you, thank you worthy.
Honestly, with the birds coming up. Amazing. Yeah.
Thank you, thank you. Awesome.
Yeah. When Ruben said that to me.
That's crazy.
And I like how I feel like that's brilliant.
You can. Write.
This.
I was going to make a joke about it. I was like,
could you without looking at the name, could you tell who covers this?
Easy peasy. Yeah.
okay. This is amazing.
Guys, I really appreciate you guys coming on talking about the Harold.
a where do we want to see the Harold going forward?
Do we have multiple books planned for this? Ruben.
Go for it.
Okay, so we do have five chapters in total.
So that's pretty much the whole the whole thing.
so depending on how well this Kickstarter goes,
we will release it by chapters.
And then in the end, we will obviously compile everything together, or
we will just release everything together so people can read the whole book at once.
Yeah.
really depends on how well the Kickstarter this really.
I think it's going to go quite well.
For then I'll. See.
That's amazing.
Okay, so you guys
want to get in on this adventure with, this team right here, the Herald.
It's beautiful.
I'm going to make sure to link to everything
in the description, including all your guys's socials.
I want you guys to at least go and get in there.
I'm going to try to put this out before you guys even publish.
So you guys get the notify page
and you guys can see
these beautiful colors right off the bat and get on board with this as well.
Thank you guys so much for joining me today.
I really appreciate it. Yeah.
Thanks so much for having us like always man.
Even though I think you you could you could pick any creators to have on here.
But you chose us.
You you damned fool.
I've got another interview today and I'm like,
I gotta make sure to get Alan and his latest book and adventure in.
Well, we'll be back for, Grandma Chainsaw for the finale.
So that's who knows how that's going end.
That story has very much been different than page one.
You're like, oh, I'm just going to watch.
I'm just going to read this like ten Chainsaw Massacre rip off or whatever.
Like I'm I'm done for this.
And you're like, no, that's not what's happening at all.
Yeah, yeah. Man, I can't wait for you to see what we've been cooking up.
An issue for, man.
It's, It's nuts. So that's what.
All right, guys, so we'll see you guys next time.
But the. See you. Thank you. Yeah.