Let’s talk about that comic, Quicksand Jack. How are you planning to release it? As an e-book, or is it getting printed? Will it be in bookstores?
Nick: As of right now, we’re probably just going to release it as an e-book – a digital download. I don’t really think we have the capacity to release a graphic novel in a mass amount.
Matt: We may find some way to print them – it may be possible, but I don’t see them being in bookstores, because you’d have to have a real publisher to do that. Unless some publisher gets in contact with us and says, “Hey, I’d like to publish this,” it won’t be in bookstores.
You mentioned The Bully Book, which had a DIY e-book publication that received enough support and feedback to get noticed by a publisher.
Nick: Yeah, and if there’s success with Quicksand Jack, then maybe we’ll get picked up by a comic publisher and distributor.
When are you hoping to release it?
Nick: We’re hoping sometime this summer. It’s sort of tough, because we keep on pushing the comic back because of various other projects, like AVPSY and Twisted. The graphic novel is something that we really have been wanting to do for a long time, and we sort of just keep pushing it back because of our obligations to the StarKid projects. But hopefully it’ll come out this summer. Ideally we’d like to get the first couple of issues out before the movie The Lone Ranger comes out.
Matt: This always happens to us! Whenever we decide to do a story, something else pops up that’s just like it.
Nick: Yeah!
Matt: Although Quicksand Jack isn’t anything like The Lone Ranger, or Django for that matter, it just so happens that there’s a cowboy in it. In the trailer for Quicksand Jack, you don’t see the tiniest glimpse of really what the comic is about, basically because only the first issue is drawn. So we could only show a few pictures in the trailer. But it’s going to be very different, and hopefully very cool.
Nick: Yeah, we just for sure wanted to get at least the first issue out before that movie comes out – just so people don’t go, “Oh, they were just copying off of this cowboy thing!” Quicksand Jack is an idea that we made up when we were 13 years old. And we’ve been working on it for about 14 years.
Is there anything you can tell us about the concept?
Nick: The concept is that there is a cowboy type character named Quicksand Jack and he’s sort of mysterious. He has some sort of strange powers and you don’t know exactly why.
Matt: Or where he got them. That’s one of the big mysteries of the comic. Finding out what is and who is Quicksand Jack. And then basically, Quicksand travels to this town called Brimstone that has this mine – it’s a mining town – and there’s a constant string of deaths. Miners dying down in the mines. And people say that they’re haunted.
Nick: People are seeing things down in the mines and they’re dying. And the story picks up following a girl that lives in the town named Maud – everybody messes up her name and calls her Mud. So Mud starts on this adventure where she’s trying to figure out what’s going on in the mines.
Matt: She meets Quicksand Jack and the comic is then uncovering this mystery of what’s going on.
Nick: And she has to also uncover this mystery of who is this guy, who is Quicksand Jack?
Matt: So it’s got a lot of supernatural and mystery elements.
Nick: And hopefully a little bit of romance. We’ll see.
Matt: We tried to make all the bad guys as funny as possible.
Nick: There will be some violence though, which I’m hoping won’t throw people off too much.
Matt: It’s not too violent!
Nick: It’s not too violent. We’re not trying to be very violent. But there are gun fights – there’s some shooting – like “Draw!” People will like it, I hope.
Matt: Yeah. I like it. It’s my favorite part.
Who are the artists? Is it your sister?
Nick: Yeah, it’s our sisters – Jen Lang, and her wife is Teia Smith. we call them our sisters but it’s really our sister and our sister’s wife and they are doing the art.
Did you guys all collaborate as kids? How long have you been working as a family?
Nick: Yeah, this’ll be the first thing that we actually finish together. But we have worked on things in the past. When we were small kids, it was either I was working on something with Matt or I was working on something with Jen, but very rarely did we all three work together.
Is it just three of you? Any other brothers and sisters?
Nick: No, just the three of us.
Have you always written for a lot of different mediums? Did you always intend to write for theater? Was that your original plan?
Nick: No! No, originally we wanted to make movies. When we were kids, we were like, “We for sure are going to grow up and make the Dragon Ball Z movie. For sure.”
Matt: But it didn’t work out that way. So yeah, we never thought we’d write for theater. But that’s sort of mainly what we do now, so getting different kinds of stories in different mediums out there will be good I think.
Nick: Yeah. We’ve got ideas for different things. Like, a cartoon show, movie stuff… Our biggest idea that we can’t talk about is an idea for a cartoon show.
Matt: That may never happen. But we’ll see.
Nick: It might happen – probably not. But maybe. We took it to the Disney Channel and they said no.
Matt: Yeah, they didn’t want it. It was too violent.
Nick: They said, “Our channel is for much smaller children.”
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