As we’ve covered previously on the site, the latest comic book to emerge out of the kaiju sphere has been SECTOR-7. The comic, full of crazy kaiju designs emerging in a mysterious, post-apocalyptic retro age, has been buzzing around the kaiju community lately. The book itself takes everything cool and futuristic about retro sci-fi and applies it in a unique way, but never truly spoiling all the fun. Currently mid-campaign on IndieGoGo, I took the opportunity to discuss the comic with its writer, Matthew Boyce, and illustrator/penciller, Ron Moscicki!
Getting the chance to talk to these two shined some new information on their comic, what their intentions and plans are with the book, and even a little bit of fun background info about the two gentlemen that have unearthed the secrets behind SECTOR 7.
Interview:
Jacob Lyngle
Hello again, Kaiju United community! I am here with writer Matthew Boyce, and artist Ron Moscicki. They are working on a brand-new indie science fiction and kaiju comic book, Sector Seven (Sector-7). Matt and Ron, do you guys want to introduce yourselves?
Matthew Boyce
Hi, I’m Matt Boyce! Ron is with me as well. We’ve been friends for over 12 years and decided to do a comic book together!
Ron Moscicki
It’s been that long! We actually met through this idea that’s finally coming to fruition. Years ago, he was working at OfficeMax in the copy center, and I was bringing in copies of a different book I had been drawing for someone. We started talking, of course, and turns out, Matt has had this character idea for 20 years at least. Then we got together, and basically created 80% of the world, the first time we met.
Matthew Boyce
We just sat down in my house, for like, three or four hours. It was like we’d been friends for years. Everything clicked.
Jacob Lyngle
How fun! So, you’ve had this idea for two decades, and the time to do this is NOW, with the IndieGoGo campaign. Why have you guys waited until now to do it, instead of ten years ago? Did you want to make sure you had a fully complete, planned story?
Matthew Boyce
I don’t know if some kaiju fans out there might remember the website kaijuphile.com. Back when message boards were still all the rage; I was actively a part of that community. I started toying around with the idea of creating this character, I had some work commissioned for it. And I had a basic outline of the story, like, okay, where does he, you know, how does he come to be, and just kind of like the skeleton of it, and I had always kind of planned on, at first, I’m writing it as, like a novel sort of, like, you know, once upon a time Mark Cerasini, published those, you know, young adult, Godzilla novels, like, I remember those. Yeah, right. And I had a bunch of those. And then like, the more I thought about it, over the years, I really wasn’t doing much with it. And I just was like, you know, what, it’s such a visual type of genre that, like, what about a comic? And then, you know, at some point down the road, Ron walked into Office Max, and I just immediately fell in love with his work. And I thought to myself, I’m like, you know what? I’ll ask him if he’s interested in doing something. We ended up clicking right away, and the rest is history.
Ron Moscicki
Yup, that’s the story! When we get together, creation is truly the easiest part. We just worked frickin’ well together. And even that was like, you know, 11 or 12 years ago, right. So that was day one. Of course, life happens. I got married at 40. I had my first son at like, 41. So I’m starting late, and it means you’re not working on a comic book when you’re up at 2am with a baby. But, as that was happening, I was getting better as an artist, different ideas were coming up. On top of that, Matt and I always stayed in touch. So that extra time really, really needed to happen. And then recently, about, I don’t know, it happened so fast, like, five, six months ago, some financial things happened with my family, some financial decisions had to be made. And I was like, you know what? Matt and I already have this thing. It’s already fleshed out. Let’s just make it happen. I had like 16 pages already drawn. And all I’ve got to do with 16 pages is just basically update them. I mean, they’re finished. And that’s so much easier with a tablet. Isn’t everything now? Ha-ha. So, technology, it’s so much easier now to update and draw everything. Like I said, Life put the finger in my chest and said, That’s it. This is this is happening because it must, okay, let’s just do it. I haven’t really had time to think, we’re just constantly moving forward. Honestly, this is the happiest I’ve been in my adult life. This creation is what was what was needed.
Jacob Lyngle
I’m happy to hear that it’s bringing you guys all this happiness and fulfillment and joy.
Ron Moscicki
The fear turned into a blessing!
Matthew Boyce
Yeah, I squandered most of my 20s just kind of floundering through life, with the OfficeMax story, and over the past 10 years, I became an English teacher. I’m about to finish my master’s degree in Literacy. Writing has always been a big part of who I am. This project itself is hopefully the fulfillment of a lifelong dream.
Ron Moscicki
I think that’s a big part of the project. The big part of the project itself is me and Matt are both writers. Yes, I’m an artist, but I’m also a writer. And that’s really what this book is about. The people, and you have like, 40 pages of buildings falling, and people are getting stepped on. Do you know what I mean? This is more like what I’ve always said, like The Walking Dead, where, yes, there’s zombies in the background, and they look cool, and they look great. But it’s the people that you’re reading about.
Jacob Lyngle
I totally dig it. Were there any specific inspirations that you were looking at when you were designing the creatures, and fleshing this world out? Like, I’ll point out a couple of your peers like Tyler Sowles always points to the 1990’s when examining the influence of Colossal Conqueror. What about you all?
Ron Moscicki
I’ll let Matt explain.
Matthew Boyce
I gave a basic idea with the kaiju. And with the characters.
Ron Moscicki
The kaiju specifically all came from Matt’s head, and he’d give me basic instructions. I’d draw them up, and send them back to him, and it was all a team effort.
Matthew Boyce
I had other artists design these creatures I had floating around in my head too. I had a few different images from John, who used to run Skreeonk. And there’s a gentleman I’ve lost contact with over the years. Usually, I’d say hey, here’s the idea. Here’s what I’m envisioning. With this current project, I would describe that to Ron, and Ron does this magic thing where he reads my brain, and he likes, plucks it out and puts it on paper. And he’s good at that. So, it’s impressive and, and he’s also added his own unique style to some of the tech and things like that, that you see. In fact, I’ve only become more impressed with the level of detail and purpose he puts into those things. Like it’s not just there because it looks cool or fits a style like he he’s very intentional in all those texts. As far as inspiration goes, obviously, I’m a giant monster nut. I’ve grown up with it. You know, I think I’ve rubbed off on him a little! Ha-ha.
Ron Moscicki
I mean, I grew up with it, too. I love Godzilla, but I love Godzilla, the character. He loves the entire kaiju genre of media. He knows all the directors are all going back forever. That’s not my world. That’s his world. In other words, I was a Godzilla freak. He’s an all-kaiju freak.
Matthew Boyce
For me personally, imagining some of the things in this comic; I get a lot from gaming. There’s some inspiration from that, but in terms of influence, there wasn’t any one thing that was really driving this. In fact, I take a lot of care to try and stay away from being derivative. Of course, there’s nothing new under the sun, everything’s been done. If you want to get technical, nothing’s original.
Jacob Lyngle
Like everything’s mythology at the end of the day.
Matthew Boyce
It’s like, what can I do that feels fresh and different? And how can we put that out there and give something to people that feels familiar, and yet is something new and exciting that they want to get behind?
Ron Moscicki
From my end, the designs came from the story. I mean, the designs are drawn the way they’re drawn because of the world that that we created. In the story, it’s set after the nuclear apocalypse. Basically, on the day of the moon landing, nukes went flying. In our world, World War Three was in 1969. And then the entire northern hemisphere, where all the superpower countries are at, has been decimated. So, everyone who was left had to go beneath what we nicknamed The Veil. It is a nuclear demarcation line. So, everyone now is in the Southern Hemisphere, and there’s colonies scattered throughout the southern hemisphere.
Because there was no government versus government, it was just the humans that were left, they all scavenged what was left and worked together. There were scientists and all diverse types of people that survived. So, they were able to use what we consider in the conspiracy world today, like top secret technology, Nikola Tesla antigrav stuff… in this universe that exists, it’s existed since 1800, something but we’re not allowed to have that, well, in this world.
They could use that now. So very quickly, in the scientific establishment their job was to rebuild. In some of my designs, you’ll see like a horse and buggy. I haven’t literally designed a horse and buggy, but it’s got like two electrical things on the front where the horses would be, and that’s what’s pulling along the “buggy”. That’s the world we live in. So, you’ll see a 1950s Oldsmobile all retrofitted. You know, because for me, it’s quite a distinctive look for sci fi. It’s not steampunk. But there’s got to be flying cars. That’s my rule. I love sci-fi. I’ve always loved flying cars, if there’s no flying cars, it’s not my kind of sci-fi. Right? So even if they look like they were retrofitted, and if you got straps holding things down, they’re going to fly. So that’s as sci-fi as I went with the design of this world.
Matthew Boyce
I can’t stress enough just how well we’ve been able to work together, and how I am always impressed with the stuff Ron does. He’s a wizard with a pencil and ink. It’s amazing.
Jacob Lyngle
I like what Ron said about having to start over and just utilizing whatever was left over.
Ron Moscicki
Yeah, having to start completely over. Also, you’re allowed to use things that you weren’t allowed to use before. All the top-secret fun stuff! We have characters that have been around since World War II, but we haven’t revealed when it REALLY takes place. These WWII characters are around because of health extension technology, so clearly, it’s been a long time. The apocalypse happened in 1969, but that was long ago. 50 years? 100 years? 10 years? It’s never said. We’ve done everything with a purpose and a reason. And we haven’t gone crazy overboard, you know, there’s no Star Trek phasing technology or anything like that, but it’s what they have, and it really works for this story.
Matthew Boyce
The catalyst for all this is one of our main characters. He’s an elderly man, his name is Solomon brand. And what’s really cool about him is after the Cold War became extremely hot, as I like to say, the space race was this huge, huge point. Adding to that, I was like, okay, well, what if World War Three went off? Ron and I were talking, and I describe the scene and it goes like, we’re landing on the moon, and Apollo 11 has gone off as we remember, but Neil, and Buzz, they’re looking back at the earth, and there’s all these mushroom clouds going off on the Earth.
Matthew Boyce
And that feeling, like, we’re not going back. Now what?
Matthew Boyce
It came from the soul, he drew that. And it’s beautiful. Because you see, in the astronaut’s visor, you see the reflection of the earth and the bombs going off on the earth. And at the same time, you can see him just like shedding a tear. And that was just such a powerful scene. I feel like it’s visually just super interesting. And it just made my jaw drop. I was like, wow, that’s, that’s just such a cool moment. You know, obviously very tragic, but it gets that kind of emotional response which our book has, in my opinion.
Jacob Lyngle
What a killer scene to do in such a visual medium!
Ron Moscicki
It’s hard to find a kaiju comic book like that, I think. The ones that I would pick up at Barnes and Noble, or whatever it is, it’s hard to find one where it’s not just all monsters, or cool monsters, but they weren’t good at drawing people that much. I come from an old school comic book approach; you got to be able to draw everything. I was a 90s image kid. I tended to focus on the cool tech in the bigger muscles and whatever.
In fact, I’ll tell you a story. Graham Nolan, who was the co-creator of Bane, lives an hour or two away from where we’re at. Back in the 90’s, he was exceedingly kind, and he allowed me to come to his studio. And it was always so cool. So cool. And at that time, I will totally admit, I was cocky. I was like, what was I was like, 20-21 years old. I had thought that I was going to be the next big thing. Graham told me, to do this, you must be a good draftsman. You must be able to, you know, when you look at a police station, when you draw the police station, it has to make sense. It must have the stairs be a certain way. Everything has to still have this tangible quality. And he used the word draftsman. And I’m like, that’s not a cool word. That’s lame. I don’t want to be a draftsman.
I got into my 30s. And I’m like, looking at my art. And I’m like, You know what, like, now that the blinders are off, and all the flash of Image Comics and all that is now gone, I’m truly behind as a storyteller now, not just as someone that can draw some headshots and some cool capes, but as a storyteller, I’m in my 30’s, and I’m behind! This isn’t okay. He was right. I had to catch up with stuff like the backgrounds, making things smaller and interesting, and so on. And yeah, it’s been an interesting journey. I was cocky, and I should not have been.
So, my approach to a kaiju comic book has always taken that into consideration. You HAVE to be able to make the buildings that topple over interesting. Like if there’s an old lady getting groceries in the intro, you have to make that interesting. You must make that if she’s getting gross reasons. She’s part even if she’s in the intro, you’ve got to frame that you’ve got to make that interesting for the reader with the angles with something in front and behind her. You can’t just draw an old lady with a square knob, a rectangle door. No one cares. Everything I look at is from the 60’s through the 80’s now. They were the masters at that. Unbelievable!
Matthew Boyce
One thing I love about his (Ron’s) pages is that they tell a story on their own. There’s no dialogue. There’s no, you know, words on the page yet, but they tell a story. I want to keep looking. I want to turn the page, even though there’s no words on them and see where this is going. And it’s just so interesting to me. So that’s another thing I really appreciate about Ron’s work.
Jacob Lyngle
With all this art talk, are you doing full color pages? I’ve seen the promo pages shared around, and they are in B&W.
Ron Moscicki
No, we are we are doing full color. We went back and forth for a long time. We’ve always liked to keep the cost down. We have pondered, maybe we’ll go black and white. And again, like life poked me in the chest. I was like nah, we’re doing this right. We’re going the whole way. And I’m lucky because we got Matt Yackey as a colorist, his professional color work. He is ridiculously talented at what he does, and I’m proud to have him on our team. He did the cover of the girl running.
Jacob Lyngle
I like concept art. I just like seeing like, the gradual process of designing things. I’m just like, how did you get from your first concept art to your monster to all the way over a year just to Yeah, like, those posters with a monkey turns into the man kind of thing. Like. Um, but yeah, that’s cool. You got a colorist? I didn’t know that part.
Ron Moscicki
What is nice about this, too, is that this story has a beginning, a middle and an end. So, this is not a story that’s going to go on forever. Especially because in the indie world, it takes a long time to do just one issue. Thank God that the indie collectors know that and are used to that. That’s what that’s what they expect. But even me, creating the book, I’m like, I want to do three books a year. Because we’re doing this in our free time, we won’t get to three books a year, but it’s the goal to shoot for. The point is people won’t be waiting years and years for the ending or whatever. There’s a clear beginning middle and end, you can read it like a movie.
Jacob Lyngle
Are you trying to find a balance between the kaiju community and indie comic book enthusiasts? There is an audience in both, but I was interested in knowing how you are handling that.
Ron Moscicki
I’ll answer that. To be honest, it hasn’t even entered my brain. To be honest, now, I am aware of the kaiju community, I know that that’s more his (Matthew’s) world, right? I am aware that the books that the kaiju folks may be used to have more buildings falling and monsters brawling. Don’t worry, we will have that! We’d like to think that this is just a comic book, and anybody can read it! Just know our approach is more about the humans dealing with the creatures. A lot of kaiju comics are centered on monster action. It’s all Godzilla. But I’m trying to give enough promo images of the kaiju in the story to hold them over, so they have some cool things. They have some cool shit to look at now, that later, issue three, it will fall into the story when it’s supposed to. That’s the only thing I’m trying to do when it comes to balancing. Other than that, the way me and Matt are, we’re only concerned with an excellent product. That’s it. If you try to hit certain communities, whether it be movies, whether it be Toll House cookies, whether it be anything, if the cookie is good people will buy it. You start to market cookies to certain age groups; you’re going to lose the other ones. Just make a good cookie, and let whoever wants it, get at it.
Matthew Boyce
I have thought about it some. And I take pride in the fact that what I think is going to happen… You are going to have interest from the indie comic scene and interest from the kaiju community. But it wasn’t like we were attempting to appeal to any fandom or scene in particular. Being a huge kaiju fan myself, of course what this is centered around.
I’ve compared it to, and I’ll catch a lot of hate for this. I love the original Star Wars trilogy. I grew up with it as a teenager, a gigantic fan. I personally hate everything because I was really attached to that universe. I read all the books; the Han Solo trilogy, Thrawn Trilogy, Shadows of the Empire. I could go on and on. But I really love that original trilogy. I love that universe that they put together there, and to me that was very character driven. You fell in love with the characters; you were invested in them. I think that’s what I really want from this book. I have a shelf full of the Godzilla graphic novels all the way back to Dark Horse, and there’s never really a point where you’re just like, oh man, I really love this human element they have in here. There is not a character that you would like, put on par with Darth Vader. I think that’s what we set out to do is like, let’s give these people some characters that they would like, connect with, and, and like, say, Wow, that’s cool. I really like this, and then put the giant monsters in and have it all just blow up. And I think it’s going to be great.
Ron Moscicki
In our latest meeting together, we tackled the final issue. It’s going to be big; it’s going to be a big story. And we were like, how are we going to write this last issue? How are we going to write this in 40 pages? How are we going to keep that? What we decided was, you know what, let’s make a giant size issue. So, 60 pages, whatever, right? But make the issue giant sized too. So, as you’re watching these crazy fights, let’s make a giant size comic as well. So, we want you holding a giant comic in your hands with a giant showdown, it’s going to be cool. Because you’re going to need that you’re going to need that like, like there will be a payoff. Also, don’t think you will have to wait until issue 8 to see the kaiju—you will see them right away! There is not a big wait for it.
Matthew Boyce
So, we’re trying to strike a balance with that. But also, going back to the Star Wars analogy, just saying like, I want to give people characters that they really care about and fall in love with and want to revisit, like, as a gamer, my favorite game of all time recently got remade. Final Fantasy VII. I love that game. And it’s because I really love the characters in it. I love the storyline; I go back to it over and over and over again. And it’s like visiting this something familiar place, and I get this feeling of not only nostalgia, but kind of like visiting an old friend and running into them again. Like, that’s the type of thing I want, like people who experience hopefully, going back and looking at these characters later and experiencing the same thing.
Jacob Lyngle
It’s interesting you bring up the Final Fantasy franchise. As an outsider, FF7 sticks out as one of the most iconic video games on the planet. Everybody knows who Cloud or Sephiroth is. But, I couldn’t really tell you anything about Final Fantasy 4, for example. FF7 just had the magic aura surrounding it, I guess.
Matthew Boyce
Right? I like several of the other ones, but I think that seven just hit the nail on the head with the style and the cool factor. It came out at the right time in my life too. I was 11 or 12 when it came out, and it has just stuck with me forever. I am truly hoping on some level to do that for others. Yes, we write for our own personal pleasure and entertainment but also like, I hope to bring a little joy to other people. That’s a personal goal of mine.
Jacob Lyngle
I’m that way with Halo. I’m always ready for the next one, even if it’s not great. I just want to see Master Chief again.
Well guys, it’s been wonderful. Was there anything you wanted to close on with this interview?
Ron Moscicki
What could be cooler than just backing us? Everything I have said above. You’re going to get a terrific book, there’s a clear and concise plan, and we hope that you enjoy it! If anyone, you know, we’ve been given a lot of time by other people. I’d also love to just help others. If you need a cover done, I’m available despite the busy schedule. Just hit me up! I also love chatting about comic books, as a genuine lover of the medium. Happy to just chat about comics anytime.
Matthew Boyce
I second that. I just love talking to people. I don’t always have as much time as I would enjoy doing that, but I’m always available to reach out to. But yeah, just as a writer, I love going over people’s stuff. And being someone that people can bounce ideas off, and I’m just really honored to be part of the kaiju fandom for so long. It’s been probably 25 years at this point, that I’ve been around on kaiju internet. That’s crazy. Just being able to grow and evolve in this community along with it has been really cool. I’m hoping to be able to contribute in a way that I have never been able to before. So, thank you to anyone who wants to come along for the ride.
Jacob Lyngle
Thank you, Matthew, and Ron!
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