Dan Martin is the British cartoonist behind Deathbulge, the brilliantly immature punk rock webcomic that melted the minds of terminally online millennials back in the 2010s. His work is characterized by its distinctive style, featuring outlandish hairdos, bowling-ball heads, and subversive humor that blends zany shock value with Martin’s over-the-top delivery. Beyond his instantly recognizable art style, his work on Deathbulge can be treated as a case study in how to successfully forge a viable career as an indie cartoonist online. This is because Deathbulge has been running since 2012 and has developed a dedicated following that helped it crowdfund a print collection, as well as an acclaimed video game adaptation called Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands. Dan kindly agreed to an online interview in January to discuss his storied career leading up to the recent semi-revival of Deathbulge and how it evolved from a “raw” idea into a beloved creator-owned multimedia franchise.
J. D. HARLOCK: So, Dan, can you tell us a little bit about yourself before you became a cartoonist?
DAN MARTIN: I have little memory of life before being an artist. I remember in the fourth year of primary school, everyone had to draw something of their choice from a book that was handed out to them. I have no idea what the book was, but I really liked a [picture of a] steam train running along the bottom of one of the spreads. So, I copied that. A bunch of kids in the class and the teacher said it was really good, which surprised me. I just copied a train. What was so special about it?! I think that was the first praise as an artist I ever got, and I guess it all just snowballed from there.
And what specifically inspired you to become a cartoonist?
Growing up, I would watch a lot of animated shows like The Simpsons, Futurama, King of the Hill, and Tom and Jerry because animation was always visually appealing to me, especially its expressions, dynamic action, and bright colors. This, of course, also applied to comics. I would be really impressed by Richard Elson's artwork in Fleetway's Sonic the Comic, which I still have hundreds of copies of. Some of that stuff was so sick to look at, and I've always wanted to draw that well. This is why Nicholas Gurewitch's Perry Bible Fellowship comic was another major inspiration. In the world of funny internet jokes, there seems to be a correlation where the worse something is drawn, the funnier it tends to be. This was at odds with my aspirations to grow as an illustrator. So seeing an artist actively thriving in the humor comics scene despite incredibly well-drawn panels was important to me. It was nice to know I could post funny jokes and challenge myself as an illustrator at the same time.
How did you “formally” enter the field?
When I graduated from university, I wanted to work in the video game industry. But after being rejected and messed around with, I was fed up with the process of trying to get others' permission to start making cool things with them. So, I opted to just do my own thing for a while to prove to them and, more importantly, myself that my skills were actually worth a damn. Comics were perfect for that, because they are so much more accessible a medium for a solo venture. I had all the skills necessary to make a comic, and that was all I needed, so I was able to put them to good use and throw it straight out to the world to judge, without needing to rely on anyone else — besides Rory Price, a lifelong friend, who made the website for me. And so Deathbulge was born!
As a fan, I've always wondered why you chose that name for the strip. It's certainly humorous and eye-catching, but I was curious if there was more to it than that.
I wanted to do a comic about a metal band full of idiots, and I knew comedy was going to be the primary focus, so it had to be a funny name for a metal band. “Death-something” seemed like a good approach, and “Deathbulge” was the first name I came up with that got a laugh out of me, so I had to do it. In hindsight, it definitely makes the comic sound raunchier than it really is, especially when friends introduce me to their other friends as "Mr. Bulge.”
And, can you pin down what inspired your “unusual” sense of humor, “Mr. Bulge?”
I just draw whatever I find funny!
What about the unique anatomy of your characters?
I just fell into it. Drawing realistic characters with noses and ears never really appealed to me. Eyes and mouths are where the party is at!
Looking back, after all these years, I realized I'd forgotten that Deathbulge started with a recurring cast of characters and a premise centered on poking fun at the heavy metal subculture.
Well, I really liked the idea of recurring characters to give the strip a bit more concrete identity, and metal has always felt like such a rich culture with a unique aesthetic to tap into, and it’s one I felt particularly close to. I've been to a lot of music festivals, and even today, I often destroy my throat shouting-singing at karaoke. I'd probably still have the long hair if my balding weren't so relentless. I also really enjoyed shows like Peep Show, which had a whole side arc about Jeremy and Super Hans' band-related ventures, so doing something similar to that seemed really fun.
So why were they eventually fazed out in favor of one-off strips that poked fun at everything and everyone?
The original concept felt too limiting, so I started doing more one-offs. Popularity skyrocketed almost immediately, which pretty much validated my decision. However, that did mean Deathbulge lost a huge part of its identity, leading to many occasions when people praised me for comics I didn't draw or praised others for comics I did. Fortunately, there were still the stupid haircuts and door kicks.
Early on, did you have any plans for the original cast that didn't materialize?
I wasn't planning that far ahead at that stage. I didn't know if the comic would even last one year!
That’s crazy to think given how long Deathbulge has lasted compared to its contemporaries. Now it’s well past four hundred installments across fourteen years, but there was a later addition I was always curious about. You introduced Alt-Text in strip 170, "Swear Jar," and I was wondering why you made it a fixture of the comic so late into its run.
At the time, many webcomics with their own websites would have fun with bonus jokes in the alt text. It's like a cornerstone of the experience. Occasionally, I would get people asking if I'd considered adding funny alt text to my comics, so I did. I remember someone being annoyed that they didn't realize until way later that I started adding alt text jokes, so they had to go all the way back to see how many they'd missed!
It’s not hard to see why now, with how much they have to go through. However, one of the perks of this longevity is that you tend to celebrate every additional hundred installments as a milestone. For the 100th and 200th installments, you asked readers for lines of dialogue, which you then molded into narratives, but then discontinued that tradition for the 300th instalment, where you instead poked fun at how you wanted to do something similar for that milestone but couldn’t be bothered. I was wondering how this short-lived tradition began and ended, marked by only two milestones.
I used to post on internet forums a lot, and occasionally people would do these interactive comic threads, which always ended up with the artist having to draw the main character constantly engaging in unhinged activities. I always enjoyed the idea of making comics with an interactive twist, so I figured I'd give it a go for the special occasions. I don't think they went down particularly well cause it turns out trying to shoehorn dozens of random quotes into a coherent story makes for a very nonsensical read with no room for the usual build-up/punchline structure. That pretty much explains why I stopped doing it, and no one ever complained about that, so it seems I made the right call.
The 100th and 200th issues weren’t your only way into interactive fiction, however. "Bovril's Big Adventure" was another interesting interactive fiction experiment for Deathbulge around that time. It saw one of the initial recurring characters go on an interactive adventure of his own, entirely determined by fan input. It seems to have been well received, and some fans even requested that some of the elements introduced be rolled back into the main comic. However, did it have any impact on the mainline series and the video game adaptation, Deathbulge Battle of the Bands, which we’ll get to a little later?
I definitely enjoyed the interactive elements of "Bovril’s Big Adventure" more than the 100th and 200th comics, but it had absolutely no impact on the mainline series or video game. However, there are some very early concept art sketches for Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands featuring Birim, the metal-legged girl who was introduced in "Bovril’s Big Adventure." This was because Deathbulge Battle of the Bands was a hell of a lot more Deathbulge-referencey in its early stages.
Something that’s always stood out to me as a recurring theme in your work is the “loving jabs” at the pro-wrestling industry. As a fellow pro-wrestling fan, I always approve. It’s not something I see all too often these days, with a significant decline in the popularity of the art form, so I was wondering what first got you into pro-wrestling, and how it inspired your work?
Pro-wrestling was absolutely huge back in school. You couldn't avoid it. Everyone was always talking about it. I would enjoy playing all the WWE SmackDown games too, often with Jeff Price, brother of the aforementioned Rory Price, who, funnily enough, would inspire my second book based on a whole other interest. Specifically, I absolutely loved the character-creation features, which were a fantastic platform for exploring my passion for character design. One character I made was called "Ian the Fisherman", marking the origins of Deathbulge's most iconic character all the way back in the mid-2000s. Admittedly, I don't really watch wrestling at all these days, but because of wrestling's strong presence in my upbringing, it just seems to find its way into my work without much thought.
For the 400th strip, you finally went all out with the pro-wrestling parody, "The Deathbulge Rumble Saga ~400th Comic Spectacular." You'd never dedicated an entire strip before this one to the subject. I was wondering what inspired you to make a full-on parody, and why you chose the 400th strip special for that.
I really like the Royal Rumble match format, pioneered by the WWE. It's my favorite match structure in pro-wrestling by far. Given that the previous "Party Saga" comic of mine had gone down really well, I felt that doing another one of those kinds of comics for the 400th was the obvious choice. I was thinking about a scenario I could do that's similar to the party, where people show up at regular intervals, and things get more and more chaotic. That's when the Royal Rumble entered my mind, because it was the perfect structure for this kind of comic. I had to do it.
On the topic of Deathbulge roasting my favorite things, I'm also a lifelong Pokémon fan. If I had to pick a favorite strip, it would have to be your by far most popular strip, the infamous parody of Pokémon evolutionary lines. Out of the thousands upon thousands of parodies I've seen of the franchise, I think it’s one of the best, if not the best, at satirizing its quirks. I'd seen it shared on social media so many times before I realized it originated from Deathbulge. I'm curious about how it’s been received by other fans over the years.
I've noticed that it's common for people to think those designs are a jab at how modern designs of Pokémon have gotten sillier over time, but I’ve never played any of the games. I just had a poster of the 150 Generation I Pokémon on my wall. That was pretty much the extent of my knowledge for a long time, and the parodies were entirely inspired by that. The format of designing three variations of a monster with increasing complexity is a really fun visual design challenge, so that was the main reason I did it.
You're one of the earliest creators I recall who ran a successful Kickstarter to collect his comic strip in print. It was all the way back in 2014, and the collection was published under the title of Deathbulge: Prettier on the Outside. Not long before, in early 2012, The Order of the Stick’s Rich Burlew launched his historic Kickstarter to fund the reprinting of his existing print collections, asking for $57,750 and raising a staggering $1,254,120 in the process. From a consumer perspective, this was still novel for webcomic creators at the time, so I'm wondering what inspired this choice.
I was inspired by the fact that I didn't have the money to print a thousand 240-page full-color books, and I had no idea what kind of demand there would even be for the book, especially since my entire audience was built up from posting free stuff online. You have no idea who, if anyone, would throw down money for that kind of thing, especially as the vast majority of the comics in the book were already available for free anyway. Gauging interest before printing was the perfect way to not make any idiotic decisions that might leave me with hundreds of unsold books in my house. Granted, it still took me a few years to sell out the entire thousand-copy print run.
Ironically, in the process of funding your first print book, you essentially had to write, illustrate, and print a second book in order to fulfill a backer reward for the first. This is how we ended up with Jeff, which featured a board-game themed superhero by the name of Jeff on a quest to find the "ultimate board game." It’s a unique idea, to say the least, and it’s an interesting addition to the Deathbulge universe, but how on Earth did you come up with such a quirky idea?
I had decided to offer a long-form comic story to whoever chose the highest-tier reward. Little did I know my lifelong friend, the aforementioned Jeff Price, would swoop in on it. Jeff is a huge board game enthusiast, so he decided on the board game theme right off the bat. I hadn't planned for it to be as long as it was, or to even do a whole separate print run of it, but I guess I got carried away. It seems to happen a lot.
By any chance, do you have any plans for further adventures with the character?
I don't have any further plans, though part of the backer reward was that Jeff would be a permanent character in the Deathbulge universe, which is why he showed up in the video game adaptation and will continue to appear in future projects.
In 2017, Horseback Earthsmack was unleashed, and, to date, it’s one of your few forays into long-form narrative storytelling in comics. It features quite a few of the recurring motifs of your work, but it’s certainly a lot more out-there and a lot more explicit, even when compared to the edgier Deathbulge strips. I was wondering what wrought these four horsemen of the apocalypse onto our world.
Horseback Earthsmack was inspired by my first time attending the Thought Bubble Comics Festival in Leeds back in 2015. I suddenly felt the urge to do another long-form comic after Jeff. The opening scenes are set in the flat I lived in just prior to creating it, so it was a test to see how much I could remember. It was a very dilapidated but sizable flat I shared with a couple of others, and it was right above a solicitor's flat, so no one was downstairs during the night. This made it the perfect house for big parties that went on a little too long. To this day, I fondly remember my time in that flat, so it was a nice opportunity to pay homage to it by coating it in gallons of blood and detached body parts ... just in the comic, of course.
Years later, on Dec. 15th, 2025, you shared Horseback Earthsmack for free on your website. I was wondering what prompted that decision, since you don’t see that happening all too often. Usually, it’s the other way around.
It's eight years old now. I had sold out of all the copies I had, and there wasn't enough interest to justify another big reprint. Over time, people have messaged asking where on Earth they can even read it, and I didn't have a good answer, but now I do.
You also self-published Premium Treats in 2018, which collected the longer Deathbulge strips from 2017 that spawned from a “belated Hourly Comic Day attempt,” but it wasn’t crowdfunded. It was instead sold directly to readers in addition to being offered as an add-on reward in the 2019 Kickstarter for your role-playing video game (RPG), Deathbulge Battle of the Bands. Since then, you seemed to have been discouraged from physical publishing, and I was wondering what changed.
Shipping prices and customs have become increasingly nightmarish in recent years. I'd go so far as to say packaging stuff now takes twice as long as it did in 2014 due to all the extra faff, so I have been particularly discouraged from selling physical products.
Your comics output, in general, decreased significantly around 2018. After that, you posted only twice in 2019 and 2023. It's honestly great to see you back to posting semi-regularly in 2025, but I, and a lot of other fans, were wondering why that happened. Some point to your work on the video game adaptation, Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands, as the reason for the dropoff, but was that actually the case?
No, I had been slowly running out of steam before that from around 2018. Turns out, trying to avoid being formulaic and to generate funny scenarios from scratch, over and over again, with no formula to build on, is quite mentally exhausting. I overdid it and needed a break. The Kickstarter campaign for Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands launched the following year, so I think a lot of people blame the game for why I stopped making comics, but really, I would've stopped anyway.
Development on Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands began years before the Kickstarter campaign and continued for years after, until it was released in 2023. A lot happened in that time period, including the COVID pandemic, and more financial crises than I can bear to remember. It’s uncommon for webcomics to be adapted into video games, but this crowdfunded indie RPG, in particular, stands out as one of the most polished attempts at one, and we were all wondering how on Earth you were all able to pull it off!
Funnily enough, that all came about because of that first Kickstarter for Deathbulge: Prettier on the Outside. In the “About Me” section at the back of the book, I mentioned that it was my lifelong dream to make an RPG. Kyle and Scott both backed the Kickstarter and got copies of the book. Upon seeing that section, they reached out, and so began one hell of an undertaking.
We prided ourselves on not prioritizing things based on how quickly they could be done, were incredibly stubborn about our vision, and didn't compromise much at all. As far as I'm aware, there were no truly wasted periods of time. Of course, there was still significant bottlenecking, which was both a blessing and a curse. It meant the development took longer, but it also afforded me the time to pursue features that were just colossal time sinks, like the animations and portraits for every class variant, or the sheer amount of situational dialogue and complex NPC behaviours. I somehow racked up 2500+ hours writing dialogue on my own. On the tech side, there are a lot of unusual mechanics that we haven't really seen much in other games, so that was a whole thing, too.
As a full-time webcartoonist, how were you able to support yourself with Deathbulge on hiatus while the game was being made?
During the first few years of development on Deathbuldge: Battle of the Bands, it was very much a side thing for all of us, since we weren't really sure where it was heading. Development kicked into high gear from around 2018 onwards. Luckily, I had some savings that allowed me to go all in and cover some of what the Kickstarter didn't. Of course, I was still selling my comic books and merchandise as well as drawing portraits at comic conventions every year, besides 2020, which helped a bit, too. I also still had some monthly income from Patreon, but that understandably dwindled after I moved from weekly comics to “decade-ly” video games. Even so, I still had to move back in with my mum towards the end. Initially, neither of us minded, because when I moved in around September 2021, I thought we were mere months from release. It was a great opportunity to just focus on tying things up at an efficient pace, but those “mere months" ended up being close to two years!
It's interesting you chose a whole new cast to represent the central band. Two of them were inspired by characters from the strip, one of whom was just a fisherman who hung out with your self-insert character, called Ian, and the other was a whole new creation. I was wondering why that decision was made, and whether the video game is set in the same universe.
They were originally going to be the playable band for the game, but my character design tastes had changed a lot over time, and I wanted to make a new band with more varied looks and personalities. I didn't want to be tied to the design choices I made eight years earlier. Of course, featuring a whole new band with the same name in Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands means revisiting the old characters, while developing the Deathbulge universe, and gets a little messy. But I still like to give the old characters the occasional nod for longtime fans, such as their unsightly cameo in the game.
Even though you’re a team made out of Western creatives, Deathbulge Battle of the Bands is unique among Western RPGs in that it was primarily inspired by 2D Japanese role-playing video games (JRPGs) specifically, which were all the rage back in the mid-to-late '90s. To those who are as familiar with them as I am, JRPGs from that era are wholly unlike the American RPGs that have dominated in the last twenty years, and I was wondering which ones of these classic JRPGs you and the team drew inspiration from in writing, illustrating, and designing your video game adaptation.
This is a hard one to answer, as so many of the game's creative decisions were based on what wasn't already done. We all played a lot of JRPGs growing up and, as a result, noticed patterns, many of which we felt had gotten very stale in the modern day and were in dire need of a rework. So, if anything, we were inspired by the negative space amidst those RPGs. That said, Grandia is definitely a glaring exception to this as its expressive dialogue portraits, sick battle music, and manipulatable combat turn bar definitely inspired features in the game.
I personally think you outdid yourself with the crazy hairdos in the game. Maybe I’ve read too much into this over the years, but I have a hunch that this was perhaps inspired by one of our shared interests!
Yes, you’re right! That's the real JRPG influence right there! Ever since I laid eyes on Cloud, the protagonist of Final Fantasy VII, the concept of ridiculously shaped haircuts has always seemed like a great opportunity to have fun with a character design. I remember being disappointed when I first saw the character artwork for the Final Fantasy VIII cast a year or so later, because I was comparing everyone's haircuts to Cloud's.
Organization XIII from Kingdom Hearts was another notable inspiration. I love that their colorful, wildly varied hair was often the only way you could tell them apart. I was never that adventurous with giving different characters in my comics different facial features or clothing, so I perhaps grew reliant on hairstyles to do that, and it spiralled into increasing absurdity from there.
On the subject of crazy hairdos, it's ironic that with all your accomplishments as a cartoonist, what you're still most known for (and where I, shamefully, first came across you well before finding out about Deathbulge) was that iconic selfie you took of yourself with the legendary "Moatee," which went ultra viral on X around seven years ago. I remember this peculiar "phenomenon" was even joked about in one of the later strips of Deathbulge, and you even debuted a new and improved "Moatee 2" later on, but you just can’t capture lightning in a bottle twice. Care to explain how it all went down, and how you feel about the infamy from it, especially as it relates to how it overshadowed your other, “lesser” achievements?
I always like to try out silly facial hair ideas mid-shave. I believe it's a very common practice amongst beard wielders. Sometimes I'd post them online if I felt they were particularly creative/daft. The Moatee wasn't the first time I posted a stupid beard idea online, so I expected about the same reception as my usual silly posts that I would throw out amidst the comics. But yeah, it exploded immediately. I think what made this one so special was the angle of the photo and my expression. People immediately saw a character. So many people who saw it just kind of assumed it was a real person who walks around like that.
I received a lot of comments of disgust, but that was completely expected. I'm not exactly inexperienced with posting comics that deliberately evoke disgust, and those kinds of replies are always really funny to me. This was no exception, of course, but it just happened on a much grander scale. I laughed a lot reading it all — shout out to the one person who complimented my great skin in the photo! I definitely didn't expect the photo to have such a lengthy internet life, though. I think a big part of that was because it was the number one Google search result for "neckbeard" for well over a year, so it became the go-to for people's memes or YouTube videos about Discord mods or Redditors.
I don't have any grievances about the photo overshadowing my other projects at all. If it means even one person finds my comics and/or the game through that photo, then I'm happy. It's nice to be known for something, even if it's not what you initially envisioned, life's more interesting that way. As Nathan Fielder once said: "A legacy isn't always something you get to choose, and I truly believe that this, and only this, will be your legacy. And there is nothing more to discuss about it."
When the first anniversary of the original Moatee post came around in 2019, and I had an even bigger beard, I felt like celebrating. And, being so close to Christmas, I had to get a little festive with it. I haven't shaved my beard into the moatee since then. But it always crosses my mind whenever I'm shaving. It's been over seven years now since I first posted that picture. I would be remiss if I didn't bring it back for the ten-year anniversary, so get ready for that!
Initially, I was a bit reluctant to use the Moatee to promote the video game. It's always felt a bit tacky when people behind internet memes cash in on it, be it through making NFTs of the meme or whatever. But I felt the comic addressed it in a way that made me feel good about it and comfortable posting without feeling like any integrity was compromised. Though, admittedly, throwing around words like “integrity” does feel a little silly considering the photo we're talking about!
Back to the subject of Deathbulge’s iconography. It wasn’t until I played Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands that I realized that every door ever featured in the comic is always kicked open with the force of a battering ram. I have to say it’s one of my favorite recurring gags, and I was wondering how you come up with it.
I didn't even realize I was doing it until Jason Poland, the creator of My Dad is Dracula, made a collage post showing off the various times I had someone kicking down a door! Much like the hairstyles, I didn't actively decide to make it a thing. It just seemed to happen by itself, which I think is the best way for recurring gags to develop. Once you become self-aware of it, though, it's hard, 'cause you find yourself constantly toeing the line between meeting fan expectations and getting too reliant on it. Though what I like about both the haircuts and door kicks is that they never serve as the punchline to a comic; they only serve to jazz up the build-up.
So, with all the love and care clearly put into Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands, how has it been received since its release, and how do you feel about the reception?
It's been received extremely well … by those few who have played it! Many are saying it's the best RPG they've played in years, which is obviously extremely validating to hear, especially when people compliment the writing, as it's by far the biggest writing project I've undertaken. As a humor comic artist, I don't dabble in long-form, character-driven storytelling much at all, so I had no idea how it would be received.
Do you think your surprise inclusion in the recent Humble Bundle collection will help it reach a larger audience?
Our inclusion in the Humble Bundle has definitely been a huge lucky break for us. Being lumped in with major indie video games as big as Vampire Survivors and Ultrakill is absolutely wild considering Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands’ relative obscurity. I imagine the vast majority of people getting the bundle will be buying it for the other games. You know, the ones they've actually heard of. So I'm not sure how many will actually play ours, but it's still a mammoth exposure boost that we're very grateful for.
In all of these multimedia projects surrounding Deathbulge, I was enticed by your book 64 Demons NPC at a House Party, which promises "a collection of NPCs for a potential video game that may actually exist one day," and I was wondering when those promises would ever be fulfilled.
Hey now, "promises?” I said MAY exist, MAY. THAT'S NOT A PROMISE, BUDDY. But yeah, it's a weird amalgamation of my desire to continue making books and my desire to make stuff for video games. The books with actual comics definitely fared better, though. There are a lot of character designs in them that I really like and would love to use in something, even if not for the exact game the book alludes to.
Do you have any further plans for video games based on Deathbulge?
It's been a rocky road filled with uncertainty since the game's release, but I refuse to give up just yet. Despite all the signs telling me it's a treacherous, futile path for idiots, I love making video games. At the moment, I'm trying to cobble together another one. It's still very much in the experimental stage, where I’m trying to figure out if it's even fun and worth pursuing. All I know is there's a mix of grid-based gameplay, because I love video games like StarVaders and Into the Breach, with free-roam non-playable character (NPC) interacting shenanigans alongside it. I'm basically seeing what I can make with the Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands framework. On that note, I'm hoping to tie it into the same world as well. The art style will be the same as Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands, but better, since it's being drawn by a significantly more seasoned Dan Martin. This game's sprites are gonna make the BOTB sprites look like absolute shit by comparison. It's gonna be great.
And you’re also back to posting new Deathbulge strips somewhat consistently as of 2025 after nearly a decade.
It just kinda happened. I stopped because I felt like the well had run dry. I started again because ideas just started popping up again. Plus, it's nice to be back in the rhythm of posting entertaining finished stand-alone things again. I'm not sure how appealing my social media pages are, if I'm just promoting the video game on them all the time. If you already bought the game and my social media is just me telling you it's on sale over and over again, why would you want to follow that? Regardless, I don't intend to go back to weekly strips. In the interest of pursuing this new game project, I'm gonna keep it monthly and see how it goes. Going forward, my plan is monthly comics, porting Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands to consoles, and working on that fish game. That'll keep me busy for a while. Of course, a new Deathbulge book will probably become more and more tempting the more new comics I have to fill it with, but as of right now, no.
Like a lot of fans, I’ve noticed that the Deathbulge strips posted in recent years have included references to the video game adaptation. Now that you're back to posting semi-regularly, I was wondering how the video game adaptation will affect the comic strip moving forward. Since completing Deathbulge: Battle of the Bands, I thought it would be fun to have a graphic novel sequel to see what they get up to after the RPG ends.
Yes, I’ve been sneaking in characters from the video game into the comics here and there, but only when I feel that the joke makes sense for the character. Scrumptious would definitely dress up in a BDSM outfit for a funeral, because it was the only black outfit he had, so it felt great to put him in it instead of just a random blank canvas character. Like, if I think of a funny joke related to tech, I might be inclined to use Rona or Trista as the main character in it, or if I think of a funny joke related to being a total waster in a pub, then Faye's the one. I fear that if I commit to only doing comics with the game characters, I'd be imposing the same limitations that plagued the early Deathbulge strips. I've learnt my lesson. That graphic novel sequel does sound like a fun idea, though!
The post An interview with <i>Deathbulge’s</i> Dan Martin: ‘Eyes and mouths are where the party is at’ appeared first on The Comics Journal.
Hello, my name is Jack Sparrow. I'm a 50 year old self-employed Pirate from the Caribbean.
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