[dramatic cinematic music] ♪ [dramatic cinematic music] ♪ [dramatic cinematic music] ♪ - Hello and welcome to "Comic Culture".

I'm Terence Dollard, a professor in the Department of Mass Communication at the University of North Carolina at Pembroke.

My guest today is Comic creator Steve Coulson.

Steve, welcome to "Comic Culture".

- Thank you.

Thank you for having me, Terence.

- So Steve, let's talk a little bit about "The Bestiary Chronicles", which is your new series.

It's a rather interesting comic about, I guess, what could have been.

So could you tell us a little bit about the comic?

- Well, "The Bestiary Chronicles" is an anthology series.

Each issue tells a self-contained story.

By the time this airs, the five comics will be out and it's set in a quite familiar world, in a sense, if you are used to pop culture.

It's a world that's been overrun by monsters but it's focused really on ordinary people just trying to get along.

You never actually see the monsters in any great detail.

It's not a story about monsters, per se.

It's about living in the shadow, which I think is a very interesting place to play, for human kind of interplay and characters.

- It's interesting because it is, I guess, sort of like a Cold War analogy where you have the threat of these monsters, and when you say monsters, it's not like a Frankenstein or a Wolfman.

These are the Godzilla-class monsters.

- Kaiju monsters, absolutely, yeah.

Without getting too deep into this, I was in New York on 9/11 and remember the period after that very distinctly about living in the shadow of this uncontrollable disaster.

And that's a little bit of the head space and whether you can maintain optimism and a positive outlook when you really have no control over the world.

And obviously, that was over 20 years ago, but it's still relevant today with the things that we're facing in the world.

- I also was in New York at the time of 9/11 and there was a feeling, a vibe, and and I do know that, in the few days afterwards, if you heard a jet flying overhead, you went outside and took a look around.

You've sort of captured that sense of community but also that sense of, "Let's take a look at these other people.

"Maybe we're going to blame them for our problems."

So you're covering a lot with this anthology series, and I'm thinking back to the one, an analogy to the Vietnam War, where we are reading about this soldier's letter home.

So when you're coming up with this particular approach to this story, how are you coming up with these different angles?

- Well, the great thing about an anthology concept is you can dart back or forth, explore different characters, different time periods.

We're gonna talk a little bit about how I'm creating the artwork for this comic, right?

And so the series is an opportunity for me to try new things and try different things.

I think if there's any influence in the comics field that made me think about an anthology series, it was "Astro City", which is not only a fantastic series but the format allows you to build out a story world through discrete segments that are not necessarily linear or sequential and slowly build a world, one small window at a time, which I think "Astro City" does really, really well.

Story-world building is part of my life.

My career in comics is a sideline for me, almost.

I spend the rest of my time creating transmedia immersive experiences for entertainment properties.

- Now you mentioned the artwork in "The Bestiary Chronicles."

It is generated using AI technology.

So can you talk about how you're able to create this?

Because you've got different styles for each one of your books.

You can kind of see there's something computer generated.

I mean, maybe digital art, but not necessarily that this is AI generation.

So how are you creating these fantastic images?

- Well, I became very interested in artificial image generation back in June or July when Midjourney opened itself up to the public and there was this flowering explosion of people playing with this new technology on a consumer level.

And I'm always interested in using new technologies to tell old stories.

I think that's really important.

I think that's one of the reasons why I'm telling, for all intents and purposes, a Godzilla Kaiju story because if you want to try something new, it's best to do it with... You know that phrase about "Tell new stories with old technology and old stories with new technology."

So that's when this presented itself, I said, "Well, maybe I can explore the potential of AI image generation to tell sequential stories."

Which was quite a leap, because, if anybody here has tried Midjourney or Stable Diffusion or any of those online apps there, it's great at individual images, if great is the right word, but it's fascinating with individual images.

But obviously, a comic is a different animal.

It's a sequential story with the unique consistency across, so that was the challenge I set myself.

And you're right that the style changes every issue.

It's 'cause every issue takes me about four to five weeks and that's how fast this technology is changing.

By the time I get to the end of an issue, technology's upgraded such an extent but the next issue can explore it in a different way.

And that's the really exciting time that I think we're living in.

Every four or five weeks, there's a massive generation enhancement.

And so, each of my issues, each of the stories is guided a little bit by what is possible what I think I can do to push the barriers, push the edges of the technology as much as possible.

And then by the time that issue is finished, then the next generation comes along and I go, "Oh, now it's possible.

Now what can I do?"

- It's fascinating because you said you started this in June of 2022, which is less than a year from the date that we're recording.

So this is a rapidly advancing technology, a new technology.

So as one of these early adapters, how are you able to figure out the software and then find a way to make it work for you and then every update, make sure that you're able to take advantage of it?

- Well, I'm a great believer in learning by doing, not by, you know, and diving straight in.

One of the downsides, almost, of this technology is that you can't plan too far ahead.

But we are recording this somewhat in advance and I think I said to you before we went on air, "My goodness, everything will have changed by the time this comes out."

And it really is.

At the moment, with this technology, if you have a project that's more than five to six weeks from beginning to end, the technology will change before you get to the end of the project.

So that forces you to kind of dive straight in, and almost changes the way you write a comic and how you generate the artwork.

I'm using the word artwork very carefully here, because there's a question of whether it is art or what is this new thing?

And the other thing I think that, really at the start of this series, is that I knew this was a...

This new technology presented some challenges, especially for the comics industry and I'm a long, long-time comic fan, as you can see, my wall I have my comic art on.

I'm a geek like you.

So the story is about, about a monster... About a monster that's created through human meddling in my case, in the Kaiju's cases, through the the atomic explosion on Bikini Atoll.

And once that monster is released, there isn't a way of putting that back into the bottle.

How do you [indistinct] for that?

So there's kind of a metaphor in my comics that really talk about the technology that's being used to create the stories themselves.

- You know, you bring up another great point about AI artwork, is there is a controversy, and I know that a number of traditional artists take umbrage to people using AI, because in some cases it's pulling examples of their work off the internet and using that to create this new amalgamation as people are using prompts in their software.

So, as you are creating your artwork and again using your caveat that it's a contentious term, how do you come up with the style that you want without necessarily stepping on the toes of the traditional artists?

- That's a good question and I do it certainly a lot of my comic art.

Sometimes you can, with these image generations, is to reference one or multiple artists in your prompts to try and get their style.

I've achieved most of my artwork by not doing that.

But I would be foolish to say that every comic I've ever read has influenced what I'm doing and all my favorite, not just designers not just graphic artists, but writers as well.

I'm really influenced by this.

Every one of my comic's channels on King, and Ed Brubaker, and some of those really great, fantastic pop writers.

So all art stands on the shoulders of those that came before.

I'm not using that to excuse the practices of some of the companies on whether they have stole or not...

It's a bit difficult.

It's a challenging and complex subject and it's easy to have a kneejerk reaction.

I can absolutely understand why a comic artist might be incensed when they find that there art is in a database that the machine has been trained on.

Now these machines train on billions of images.

So in a sense, although it's not every image ever created you could make an argument that they're training on everything.

Everything everywhere, all at once.

And then you start to say, "Well, if a child goes into a library "and learns to read by looking at the books, "is the child stealing the author's words?"

I'm not sure.

So I think this will continue to play out, ethically, in the courts.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't... You shouldn't stop, necessarily, experimenting with the new technology.

I am old enough to have worked at an ad agency when they had manual typographers and pasteup guys and people doing all manner of things that computers came along and just wiped out.

And I think, even now, in comics industry specifically, there were those guys that did the color guides and there were a lot of letterers and people came into the ink studio and spotted the blacks, as an apprentice.

All of which, most of that is now all done, and I know there are letterers still within comics but you can use dropdown menu and a set of fonts from Comicraft, then you start to see that encroaching and I think this is just another facet of that, of the rise of technology and how it impacts certain industries.

And I do think comic art will be one of those industries it impacts.

- It's interesting, because some of the earlier examples that we see of this AI artwork is, sometimes it's...

I think the one that people are talking about is hands that have more than five fingers, because the computer is creating an image and isn't quite human to know that there's too many fingers on that hand or something.

So as the technology is improving, as people talk about this, the technology will improve.

So, you know, as an early adapter, how do you see what's coming compared to what you've started with?

And again, just less than a year ago, as that path, you said that it's the future of comics.

So what do you think is going to come?

- It's really difficult to imagine that.

I do say to everybody that I think a lot of people looking at it and saying, "Well, it can't do this.

"Well, it can't do that."

My response is always, "And this is the worst it will ever be.

"Today, looking at it, it's the worst it will ever be."

I had a friend I remember who showed me one of the first digital cameras and it was this like, this postage-stamp-sized image.

I looked at it and I said, "Oh, people will always want film."

I couldn't imagine a world in which there was, that Kodak didn't exist.

And now, everybody has a camera in their pocket but now we just take that for granted.

So, you're right, the technology can't draw hands, it can't do this and it can't do dynamic motion and well, all those things will change, quicker than we can imagine, I think.

It's interesting, my comics, each one is almost a reaction to that.

I did the first one and people complained that the images weren't very crisp.

So in the second one you'll see a remarkable upgrade in the image quality.

But then I would say, "Well, you know "you're not really using the same character in every scene."

I had astronauts with helmets on, so my next comic had consistent characters and then the Knicks and the comic I'm working at the moment has dynamic fight scenes and it has action and it has all the things that people say are difficult.

So it's about trying to, trying to knock down those hurdles as much as you can, almost by hacking the technology a little bit.

There is a new, just in the last few days, something has been released that allows me to actually draw a poem.

It's called ControlNet, and it allows you to have much more control over character poses.

To answer your question, I think graphic art and illustration is the first hurdle to fall.

Then next we'll see music, next we'll see video or motion video, we'll see animation.

A rise of people creating movies at home.

It's a very exciting time.

It's very empowering 'cause it democratizes and I realize that there are some, I guess there are some industries that are gonna be threatened by that but the opportunity allows anyone to be able to, just as the computer has done, as anybody to create themselves.

That's really, that's really exciting.

- Those of us who are watching this, this revolution, I guess, this AI revolution in art, those who are pointing out the mistakes are sort of like the beta testers in a way.

They're giving the programmers something new to look back and correct.

So I guess it is sort of this inevitable tide where we know something's going to come and although it's there, I suppose the fact that I can still go to the store and buy some paper and some pens, I can do comics the old fashioned way if I choose to, but there will be people who choose to use AI and that's just, I guess, the way it's going.

- Do you remember the time when people said "Web comics?

"No, we won't allow web comics," and "Photoshop?

"No, that's not really illustration."

And I'm sure, going back, all the portrait painters said "Photography?

No."

So there are always, with every revolution, there is a change in process, but if you can adapt to it, I do think that comic artists who have honed their craft traditionally, if they embrace this technology and use it in their workflow, they would be the masters.

Change is hard.

I can absolutely see a world in where backgrounds are generated by artificial intelligence, spaceships, just things that take a lot of time and effort.

Almost like a... An art studio that creates those pieces for you so an artist can focus on character, and storytelling.

- Let's talk storytelling because you made the point earlier and I did want to get back to it, about consistency in character design.

And I'm imagining on a page that may have six or seven different panels, you've gotta be very precise in the way that you deal with the AI generator to make sure that the character on panel one looks the same on panel three and panel four, even if you change the camera angle and it's not a profile looking left, it's a head-on shot, and it's a profile looking right.

So how do you sort of make sure that there's that consistency from panel to panel?

- That's the technology that is advancing.

When I started these comics, the only way to achieve consistency from character to character was either through lots of post-processing, Photoshop, or to have a description that generated the same character.

One of the early ways of doing that was to use celebrities.

so the computer knows how to draw Idris Alba.

So my character would be Idris Alba, obviously without permission, doing that.

But now I can train.

For the latest comic I'm working on, I generated hundreds and hundreds of images of just the main character.

And some of them look more like the character and some like less, just as when you are sketching and doing a character sheet.

But once you've got a character sheet of 20 to 30 shots of your character, you can then train AI to look at that character and it'll go "I understand, "this is what that character looks like now "and let's give them a name."

And then every time now I use the system and I ask for my character, it draws, very consistently, that character again and again and again in multiple situations.

- You mentioned before that it takes you about four weeks to do an issue of your comic which is roughly the amount of time it would take someone sitting in front of a drawing board to do pencils and inks.

I'm thinking of Jim Aparo who worked for DC for so many years in the '70s and '80s.

He could do one page a day, pencils, inks, and letters.

He could do no more, [chuckles] and he would always do that and he knew he'd get a good comic.

So it seems like you are on essentially, that same sort of schedule.

So is this more a matter of your other job getting in the way or is this something, it's the craft, right now, and the technology.

- When I say it's four to six weeks it's four to six weeks of a couple of hours a day, maybe.

It's an evening and weekend pastime for me.

And even then, I think, I'm trying to hone this thing because I'm really interested in the process.

I know there are some AI comic creators that are putting putting out a comic in a week or in two weeks because they're a bit playing a little faster and looser with the technology and they want to get that stories out into the world.

Where for me, the fascination is in the crafting.

So I'm going slow, but it definitely... You can get things out very, very quickly.

And the other thing that's really interesting here is how you write a story with AI.

Comics have become a very sequential, a sequential art.

You know, these writers like Alan Moore, Warren Ellis write their scripts that are deep and long and a whole page per panel, right?

Which is very different from the way Stanley used to do it.

He would write a whole issue on one page, hand it to an artist and go, "Gimme 30 pages "and I'll do the dialogue when it comes back."

That's the Marvel method.

That's kind of more the method that I use.

Because, when you have a system that can generate 50 splash pages in half an hour, then you don't need to plan ahead as much.

You don't need to carefully craft your story and hand it off to an artist who's gonna, say, do a page a day.

I can get 50 pages, or e-images, in half an hour, Then it's much more like kind of improv jazz where I throw something out and the system throws something back at me and I go, "Oh, that's interesting, let's explore this.

"Let's go in a different way and let's move it."

And the narrative kind of coalesces, as you work, and it goes in some really exciting places.

It really is like playing jazz with other musicians and you have a beat that you know you're moving to but you know, happy accidents happen and you go off in completely new directions.

- I would think that you would have a final idea that you're going to go and try and interpret using AI but you're saying it, and if I'm wrong, please correct me that you will put an idea into this search, this engine, rather, and allow it to come up with multiple images and see which one speaks to you and see which one guides the story.

- Right, right.

So just as an example, I think, when I did my second comic, "Exodus", which was an attempt to create a comic full of full page splashes.

The first comic, the imagery was very kind of rough and ready, and so I decided, my second comic, I was gonna do all kind of hero shots.

And I knew it was a bunch of astronauts and I knew they went off into space for some reason, and I wasn't quite sure why they were going off to space.

And I found my characters and I realized it was an all-female crew because the images I got back called the female astronauts really spoke to me and I'm like, "Oh, then why are they going "and what are they doing?"

And as I explored it, I discovered the story.

If you've ever read tarot cards, which I am not, I'm not at all, I don't believe in the occult or the paranormal, but tarot cards and laying out a series of images and saying "What is the story it's telling me?"

as a tool of self-therapy is quite interesting.

And there's a little bit of that with Midjourney.

Do you know the story?

Is Midjourney telling me the story?

You kind of explore it and you make conscious decisions almost like, I've often said that that Midjourney is the best computer game I've ever played.

It's like Dungeons and Dragons 'cause it takes me in a direction to go in nowhere and it takes me there and it goes through there.

So it's a little bit more, it kind of unfolds, the story unfolds before you, as you work on the imagery.

- It's fascinating.

It is almost a collaboration, akin to Kirby Lee where Lee might have an idea and he might say, "The Fantastic Four fights God," and then a month later, he gets Galactus and the Silver Surfer coming into New York City and has to sort of adjust his original idea to the pages that come in.

- And it's been very difficult to do that with comics, because as you say, it takes so much time and so much skill to draw a panel and a series of panels.

There is no room for experimentation at a whim unless you have 100 eyes there, all drawing your panels.

So this is the technology for the first time there's shortcuts that allows you to adapt and modify and generate.

I've been on Midjourney since, Midjourney is the system I usually use, let's say since I've made five comics but I've generated about 30,000 images...

In that time, in my exploration.

So you see, it's kind of wonderful.

The opportunity, and just how far down the rabbit hole it can take you in pursuit of a narrative and you end up in a place that you may not have planned.

- Well, Steve, they are telling us that we have run out of time.

If the folks at home wanted to find out more about you and your comics, where can they find you on the web?

- They can find me at TheBestiaryChronicles.com.

All my comics are for free so please go ahead, download them.

Some of them have tips in the back about making your own comics, as well.

I also moderate a group on Facebook called AI Comic Creators, and that's a bunch of AI comic artists getting together and talking about what they're doing and exploring together.

- Well Steve, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to talk with me today.

It's been a fun and fast half hour.

- Thank you for having me, Terence.

I love to talk about this stuff.

Thanks, everyone at home, for watching "Comic Culture".

We will see you again soon.

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