E.B. Kogan & Jessica Silvetti | Shockheaded Peter #3 | Comic Crusaders Podcast #771

Some guests come through the Comic Crusaders Podcast, tell us about a project, disappear back into the creative wilderness and maybe we hear from them again somewhere down the road. Then you have E.B. Kogan and Jessica Silvetti, who came through before with this wonderfully twisted little nightmare called Shockheaded Peter and apparently decided they were not finished messing with us yet. They’re back, and this time there is a damn good reason for it.

Shockheaded Peter #1-3: The Complete Graphic Novel brings the story together as a massive 248-page collected edition, completing the dark fantasy and horror journey they have been building across multiple installments. For readers who have been riding with the project from the beginning, this is the payoff. For everybody who missed the earlier campaigns, now you can walk straight into the nightmare from page one.

This also meant there was absolutely no reason for me to bring Ethan and Jessica back and make them repeat the same origin story we already covered. Been there. We know where the madness came from. This conversation was about what happens when creators actually have to finish the thing.

We get into Ruby’s evolution, Peter’s increasingly complicated place between monster, protector and something much harder to define, and the line separating justice from revenge. That last part is one of the things that makes Shockheaded Peter interesting to me. It would be easy to create a character who punishes terrible people and just let us cheer every time somebody gets what is coming to them. The more interesting question is what happens when the punishment itself starts making you uncomfortable.

E.B. and Jessica also open up about the completely different challenge of writing an ending. Beginning a comic gives you possibilities. Ending one gives you consequences. Things planted years earlier suddenly have to mean something. Characters have changed. The creators have changed. Readers have expectations. Somewhere in that mess you still have to stick the landing without betraying everything that got you there. Then there is the marriage thing. Yes, these two are married. Yes, they write together. Yes, somehow everybody is still alive.

We talk about how their creative relationship has evolved throughout the making of Shockheaded Peter, what each brings to the partnership and how spending years building the same fictional world teaches you things about the other person that probably never come up while deciding what to order for dinner.

Their filmmaking backgrounds also remain a huge part of the conversation. Comics and film share plenty of storytelling DNA, but they force creators to think differently about pacing, framing, performance and what happens between individual images. After hundreds of pages, E.B. and Jessica can now look at those differences from both sides.

Artist Giuseppe Sabè Di Stefano is another major piece of the equation. Bringing a world this strange to life requires more than simply drawing what appears in a script. The visual language has to sell the fairy-tale darkness, grotesque horror, comedy and emotional material without one side completely swallowing the others.

We also dig into crowdfunding because by this point these two have actually lived it. There is a massive difference between launching your first campaign and asking strangers to believe you can deliver a comic versus returning with completed work, existing readers and a track record. They talk about lessons learned, building a community and what creators should understand before assuming Kickstarter is simply a giant button labeled FREE MONEY. Spoiler: it ain’t. But my favorite part of this conversation is ultimately the simplest question. What happens emotionally when you finish a world that has occupied years of your life?

When somebody eventually picks up the complete Shockheaded Peter, they will not see the deadlines, campaign launches, rewrites, production problems, creative disagreements or years behind those pages. They will just open the book and experience the story. That is simultaneously the beautiful and completely insane part of making comics.

Check out my conversation with E.B. Kogan and Jessica Silvetti on the Comic Crusaders Podcast and discover what happens when Shockheaded Peter finally reaches the end of its beautifully twisted road.

FOLLOW & SUPPORT

Shockheaded Peter:
https://www.shockheadedpetercomic.com/

Kickstarter:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ebkogan/shockheaded-peter-1-3-the-complete-graphic-novel

E.B. Kogan:
https://www.instagram.com/ebkfromla/

Jessica Silvetti:
https://www.instagram.com/jess_silvetti/

Light & Shadow Pictures:
https://www.lightandshadow.pictures/

The Crusade Never Ends!