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Comics are a great medium for telling diverse stories and can be obtained in a growing variety of ways — as floppies or trades from your local comic shop, in digital form from outlets like Comixology, directly from creators via crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter, and, recently, via the popular newsletter subscription service, Substack. The latter has given a number of high-profile creators a chance to deliver creator-owned works in a new way, via a subscriber-based newsletter that sends their original comics directly to the emails of comic fans.
A Substack newsletter especially excited Eisner award-winning writer Saladin Ahmed who’s made a career of telling diverse stories with Marvel Comics on titles like Miles Morales: Spider-Man and Ms.Marvel, as well as in his creator-owned books like Abbott and the Kickstarter-funded Dragon. The writer launched Copper Bottle, his creator-owned imprint on Substack, where subscribers can pay a monthly or discounted yearly fee to receive weekly comics from Ahmed and his collaborators as well as interviews, essays, and commentaries. This fall, Ahmed and his Dragon collaborator, artist Dave Acosta, will launch Copper Bottle’s first comic series, an 80s-influenced, dystopian, science fiction tale titled TerrorWar.
CBR spoke with Ahmed about the series, Copper Bottle, and what the new digital home for his creator-owned titles means for his Marvel work and books like Abbott. Also included in this interview is a sneak peek look at some of TerrorWar‘s concept art from Acosta.
CBR: Let’s kick off by talking about Copper Bottle, your personal Substack site that people can subscribe to for a monthly or discounted yearly fee and receive creator owned comics by you and your collaborators. Is that how it will work?
Saladin Ahmed: Copper Bottle is a subscription-based pop-up imprint that will be the new first home for my creator-owned work. It’s being hosted by Substack, but it’s definitely our own little endeavor.
We’re madly producing comics right now and once they start dropping in the fall people will receive issues viewable right in their email inbox, on the website, or in a dedicated reader. I was skeptical at first regarding format — I’m a big book nerd who likes physical things. But I think these pages look awesome on a screen. And while that may take some getting used to for some “Wednesday warriors,” I think new formats are a great way to reach a lot of folks who don’t necessarily go into comic shops but spend a lot of their reading time online.
Plus, it sounds like with this arrangement there are major benefits to you as a creator of original content.
Absolutely. Creators are looking at this contract and we’re kind of shocked over how non-exploitative it is in what’s generally an exploitative industry. We retain all of our own rights including publishing. So there’s nothing to prohibit doing print editions and no one to get in the way of adaptations. Plus, there’s generous funding there to just produce work, and a suite of support services as well.
It’s remarkable how different it is from the typical working conditions for making comics. I think everybody’s almost a little confused by it. [Laughs]
Has the digital delivery format affected the way you’re writing your Copper Bottle books?
Yes. What we’re looking at it is not exactly a webtoon format, but it learns from that format. Becoming aware of things like easing up on panel density, investing in ‘page’ turns in a different manner, thinking about pacing in new ways. Some of this stuff feels more like weekly TV, some stuff feels completely new. It’s fun to get into process-wise, and we’ll be letting readers in on that along the way. I think folks are really going to enjoy the overall experience of how these comics come to them, and how they deliver stories.
Let’s talk about TerrorWar, your first Copper Bottle book. I see shades of the dystopian environment of Judge Dredd, the sci-fi action/horror of Aliens, and the trippy, psychological horror of things like A Nightmare on Elm Street and It. Was that what you were aiming for?
Yeah, all of those make sense. I’m a child of 80s film and this definitely has some of the classic ’80s sci-fi DNA. There’s some horror DNA from that era as well. What I’m trying to do is take a lot of the tropes and archetypes we still connect to in that stuff after 40 years and refract it through a more modern lens. Using familiar furniture to think about what problems in cities, what storytelling, and what the world all look like now. Also, thank God, who we put at the center of stories has changed. I want to try and reconcile all of that stuff in my own stories.
The idea of TerrorWar’s central location, Blue City, where all the world’s remaining cultures live together excites me because it allows you to explore both cultural and universal fears.
Yeah! My writing is always about talking about cultural specificity and also talking about universality as two sides of the same thing and we’ll definitely see that played out in TerrorWar.
What can you tell us about the protagonist of TerrorWar, Muhammad Cho? Is he a reluctant hero?
I don’t know if I’d call him a hero per se at all. I’ve written a lot of grizzled, cynical characters and Muhammad is a little bit different. He’s got a cynical, working-class edge, but he’s also got a bit of a swashbuckler flair to him.
So, some of what’s influenced his character are almost the visuals from exaggerated style anime and manga. There’s a sort of stylization to the character that is visual, which becomes present in the dialogue. So, he’s a little cartoony in some ways than some characters I’ve written. It’s a dark cartoon though. Plus, he’s an evolving protagonist. One of the exciting things about doing a book that drops weekly or bi-weekly will be to watch this guy evolve almost in real-time. He’s also someone who, like many characters I care about, is defined by his city. I wrote a fantasy novel where the main character is defined by his city. My series Abbott is about a character defined by her city. So, it’s a trope that I keep coming back to for reasons, but I hope it feels new in the way we explore it here.
When you mention a swashbuckler character who is defined by their city I can’t help, but compare them to Marvel’s Daredevil.
That’s very interesting. He’s probably a little less guilt-ridden than Matt. There’s a certain kind of working-class grit that manifests as a, “fuck it all” style spirit and can come off as a laissez-faire carefreeness. Muhammad will exhibit that, but there’s always something deeper underneath the surface.
TerrorWar’s title comes from a mysterious force plaguing Blue City. What can you tell us about it?
At the center of this series is a mysterious phenomenon called Terrors. This is the literal physical embodiment of people’s fears manifesting and burning them to ash. It’s a new phenomenon that’s been happening in Blue City. It’s only been going on for a few years and no one really knows where the Terrors come from or what they are, and most people are powerless against them.
Muhammad though and a handful of his teammates seem to have some ability to fight the Terrors. That’s all I want to give away for now, but it’s a really fun way to play with surreal visuals, horror elements, science fiction elements, and just throw them all into a blender.
It also sounds like there will be elements of mystery and fun as well.
There’s definitely some mystery, and there will be some fun too. We’ve got several big reveals plotted. That’s an appeal of serial storytelling; to know that some bombs are going to drop for people weeks and months down the line.
What can you tell us about the supporting cast of TerrorWar?
They’re a group of working people from diverse backgrounds that personify different ways of dealing with adversity and the hard life of being a working person in a city-owned by non-working people.
I’ve been itching, since Exiles really, to do a team book again. There’s definitely an element of that in TerrorWar even though Muhammad is the center of this book. I love that kind of drama between characters; the way people support and undermine each other makes for great writing.
Your Dragon collaborator, Dave Acosta, is the artist of TerrorWar. What’s it like moving from period adventure-horror with him to sci-fi-action horror?
It’s funny because there’s a connective tissue there that makes absolute sense to Dave and I and it almost doesn’t matter if I don’t to anyone else. [Laughs] It felt like a very natural transition. We really hit on some magic working together on Dragon, which will be going out soon to Kickstarter supporters. I knew I wanted to do something else with Dave as soon as possible and this was a story idea that I had banging around for quite a while. So, immediately the two clicked together.
What does the move to Copper Bottle mean for your creator-owned book Abbott with Sami Kivela?
Abbott will stay at Boom! We just completed our second volume, Abbott 1973 and while there’s nothing official on the calendar I’ve always imagined that there are more stories to tell there. The last story ended in a way that I hope is clear there’s more to come.
Earlier, you mentioned that print copies of Copper Bottle comics are a possibility. What can you tell us about that?
We definitely want to reward folks who are supporting us. Our ability to do this is kind of dependent on people showing support upfront. So, we want to thank the people who show up on day one by making sure they have some time to be the first to get to read this stuff. But print is absolutely on the table and probably inevitable, though there are currently no concrete plans.
In addition to comics, Some Substack imprint creators are offering subscribers what would be back matter material in a book. Do you have any of that planned for Copper Bottle?
Yeah, Copper Bottle won’t just be comics delivery. We’ll be doing those weekly, but probably about half of our posts will be things like interviews with the artists, talking about the books, and giving background and concept sketches. Also, we’ll have posts from me talking generally about the work, the work I’ve done in the past, about craft and influences. There’ll be quite a lot of that published by Copper Bottle right alongside the comics.
Do you have any other creator-owned projects in the work at Copper Bottle that you can talk about, hint, or tease?
[Laughs] All I’ll say is we’re planning at least one other ongoing series hopefully to be announced quite soon. I’m also excited about writing a series of short stories for a carefully curated group of artists; folks who may not be able to come on for a full-length book, but we could come together for a few pages here and there. I’ve wanted a venue to do that forever. So, it’s super exciting to finally have that space.
And there are more surprises planned! But as I say, the plan is to have at least two ongoing series running on the site once we’re up and moving in the fall.
Finally, you may be ramping up your creator-owned projects, but you’re not done with the Marvel Universe. I understand you’ve got plenty of work going over there, especially at the Spider-Man office.
Yes, I’m continuing to write Miles Morales every month — we’ve got some crazy stuff lined up for him! I’m also going to be one of the writers on Amazing Spider-Man. For, this next arc we’ve taken a sort of writer’s room approach where it’s a whole bunch of us crafting a story together that involves Ben Reilly. I’m really excited for that. I also have another fairly big Marvel project on the way to be announced! So, I’m definitely continuing to tell stories there as well as in other story universes. But there’s no excitement quite like watching new universes being born, so stay tuned to CopperBottle.net!
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