‘I had a panic attack because I realized I was making a romance comic’: Stjepan Šejić on Sunstone and beyond

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Few people working in comics today have a personal story as fascinating as Croatian creator Stjepan Šejić. A self-taught artist who grew up in the former Yugoslavia, he seemed to achieve mainstream success overnight in the early 2000s, rapidly going from posting fan art online to working for practically every publisher under the sun. But then, at the height of all that success, he walked away to focus on, of all things, Sunstone, an adults-only BDSM romance webcomic. It was a career pivot few would have predicted, and certainly nobody could have known it would not only achieve massive success, but lead to an entire shared “Šejić-verse” of connected series from both himself and his wife Linda.

I caught up with Stjepan Šejić over Zoom to talk about his improbable journey, what’s kept him going, and his ambitious plans for the future. — Jason Bergman

JASON BERGMAN: I want to start at the very beginning. You were born in the former Yugoslavia, is that correct?

STJEPAN ŠEJIĆ: Yes, Croatia to be specific.

So you must have come of age right around the time of Croatian independence?

Yes.

Were comics a thing for you back then?

Oh yes. So in former Yugoslavia, it was a big thing. We had a very strong publishing market and purchasing market for primarily Italian comics. There were some random bande dessinée stuff that made its way there, but it was primarily this whole wave of Italian comics. We had Sergio Bonelli, and I forgot the name of the other publishers, but what we got was massive. We had like Zagor, we had Dylan Dog, we had Martin Mystère, we had Blek le Roc, Alan Ford. There were a lot of comics. Tex Willer. We had genres, we had all kinds of stuff. Oddly enough, the American superhero comics at the time never really made any foothold. That happened later after Croatia became independent, and we had Slobodan Dalmacija start importing American comics and translating primarily the Ultimate line from Marvel.

Oh wow, so that would have been like the late '90s?

Yeah, the late '90s. By the time I was in high school, that was actually when I was really getting hooked on comics.

What comics were you reading at that time?

So while I was still a big fan of the current Italian stuff that started getting published again in Croatia, I was a big fan of Nathan Never, which was like a sci-fi, very Blade Runner meets an action hero-type deal. So that was big. It had really, really excellent artists at the time, which really hooked me. And at the same time, our class in high school, we were taken to a comic biennale in Rijeka. That was like an exhibition of worldwide comics and artists doing them. So that was where I was actually introduced to the work of Esad Ribić for the first time as well. But the really curious part was, as I was browsing the exhibition, I stumbled upon this big cover of this comic that I'd never heard about, but the title hooked me. And that title was Witchblade. So I was walking there, never heard of it, saw that thing, right? And I was for the first time introduced to the ‘90s style of American comics. You know, the whole edgy, cool, hyper-rendered stuff like that, which then was followed up by me getting into the Ultimate line of Marvel. I was devouring any comics I could get. So I got my hands on the entirety of the Ultimate Spider-Man, Ultimate X-Men. I think we had Ultimate Avengers here, and that was about it. So those were the ones that made it there. And just before that also, there was a brief stint where they released some of the classic Spider-Man stuff. And by classic, I mean like, we had the Absolute Carnage arc, the original one. And we had Peter David's run on Hulk released at the same time. The artwork in that one was really freaking stunning.

Were you familiar with these characters at all? Or was this just like a firehose of new stuff to you?

My familiarity came down to anything that I could get when I was a kid. When I was a kid I knew Spider-Man because I saw a few cartoon episodes. I knew the Hulk because I saw what I thought was at the time, a movie, you know, the Lou Ferrigno stuff. I had no idea there was a whole TV show about it, but I saw like, two or three movie-length cuts. In the former Yugoslavia, it was kind of hard to get your hands on anything continuously. It was whatever dropped in, but you know, you're a kid, you see superheroes, you’re like, “Oh my god!” So a lot of it latched onto me. And by the time I had a chance to buy a comic, I did. Who needs to eat when you can buy one extra comic?

Did you want to be a comic artist as a kid?

No, it started off with me wanting to be a paleontologist. Because I got into dinosaurs after Jurassic Park. Like fiercely. After that, I realized, no, I'm not technically into dinosaurs, I’m into whatever the fuck Stan Winston Studios did with Jurassic Park, Predator, Aliens. So I got obsessive about making large-scale models and doing masks and stuff like that. Basically, I got obsessed with this idea that I'm gonna work in Hollywood one day on special effects stuff and movie makeup and stuff like that, right? Now, the benefit of that obsession was my sense of design got developed through that. And then, as Slobodan Dalmacija, as I previously mentioned, started publishing comics, I got into them and I got into them heavy. And then once I started trying to draw my own comics, it was past the point of no return. I was like, yep, we're done.

Was that high school or was that college?

High school.

So what did you end up going to college for?

Well, I tried for the art academy but didn’t make it in.

Wait, you didn't get into the art academy?

[Laughs] No, I had the perfect grades but … let’s just say I lacked the “additional paperwork” and leave it at that.¹ I took a year off and then eventually got into a different college to become an art teacher. So you know, [the] closest next thing. And in hindsight, for a multitude of Linda-related reasons, it ended up being the best possible outcome.

I'm curious what you actually studied though, because you have such a clear understanding of anatomy. Are you self-taught or did you get some formal training in that?

Mostly self taught. We had art classes with access to live models, which was very beneficial. But the problem was there was no context for any of what we were drawing, you know? And it was very hard to get anatomy books at the time that were any good for an artist. Sure, one could get a medical anatomy book and just stare at it in confusion. Those were often too complicated, too detailed. At some point, I think I bought the Burne Hogarth books — Drawing Dynamic Anatomy, Dynamic Hands. That one kind of got my foot in the door. The rest came with my newfound access to the internet. There I found anatomical references that pushed me forward, and as I kept going, I kept improving. Sculpting helped a lot because sculpting is basically drawing from literally every conceivable angle. And I've always kind of been a sculptor at heart, but at the same time, you can't sculpt a comic.

I mean, you probably could. Seems like a lot of work.

I have done it technically with Ravine. because with Ravine, a lot of the stuff that I did, the dragons, armors and stuff, were often 3D sculptures that I created in ZBrush and then painted over and combined with my own painted background. Not gonna lie, in the end the whole thing was a very tedious process [laughs].

So your pathway to comics then, professionally, was I guess DeviantArt? Is that accurate?

Yeah, at the time back in the day when the site was really good,² it served as a digital portfolio, you know, from amateurs to professionals. It was a very nice place for people to start their stuff, start their artistic journey. And my first actual site was at the time, CGTalk, which then became CGSociety, and was eventually shut down. That one was a really good one. But unfortunately, you know, it didn't stick. But yeah, after that I got my start on DeviantArt, started posting a lot there, got a few viral successes with some of my fan art. It's one of those unwritten rules. If you want to get hired to do stuff in this line of work, make a bunch of fan art. Now it benefits you if you're an actual fan of the stuff, and I tend to draw stuff that I'm a fan of – some Masters of the Universe fan arts, Ninja Turtles fan arts, and a bunch of Marvel and DC joke strips. After a while, I got my foot in the door and here we are.

Who reached out to you first? Do you remember?

Oh yeah. I can never forget that because I was doing my stuff on DeviantArt and I got contacted by Tyler Kirkham, who was at the time an artist for Top Cow. And he basically asked me if I wanted to digitally paint over his cover. I'm like, yeah, sure. It was a fun thing for me also. So I colored a Vampirella cover for him. He submitted that and I got paid for the work. And after that, he asked me, “Hey, I'm working for Top Cow currently.” I'm like, “Go on?” And he's like, “Would you be able to paint a whole comic like this?” “Yeah.” “Yeah, but how fast?” “I don't know, if you can make it in a month, I can paint it in a month.” So he put me in contact with his editor at the time, which was Renae Geerlings. We did a comic and it was a significantly big one for me at the time, a Darkness/Wolverine crossover. I did the painted style coloring, and that really made my work noticed, because Tyler's drawings and my style really mashed together and we made something really cool there. So that got Renae to actually ask me, “Oh, hey, can you color these five pages for Witchblade?” I'm like, “All right, cool.” And then I went, “You know, I also draw comics.” She's like, “Oh yeah, that's nice.” ... So I sent her some of my actual painted and drawn work and she's like, “Wait, you can actually do comics?” [Laughs]. And that's how the whole thing took off.

But just so we're clear, you went from being relatively unknown to doing a ton of comics in a very short period of time.

Yeah, because here's the thing with comics: If you can actually pull off the deadlines, if you can actually produce pages, you're set. At the end of the day, that's what they need. They need people who can make comics and make them fast and make them look good. And I had that. My speed was at the time ridiculous because I developed this thing back in the day in Photoshop that really kind of sped my work up by like 30%, which was this blending brush that allowed me to blend colors in such a fast way that it's just like, you know, I just do a few blobs and then [makes super speed sound effect] and people are like, “What the fuck just happened?” [Laughs]

Is that still your process?

Pretty much. I actually mimicked it completely into Clip Studio, because Clip Studio, they were smart enough to actually produce their own blending brush. So I'm like, yes, thank you. I don't have to work for this. [Laughs]

Just so I understand, how fast are you now, roughly?

I mean, if I actually sit down and focus, I can make two comic pages a day.

Yeah, that's crazy.³ [Laughs]

Generally, I tend to stick to like one page a day so that I can do my other stuff because I'm also writing a novel. I'm doing 3D sculpting. I'm doing a bunch of other stuff. So, you know, I manage my time. [Laughs]

Well, we'll come back to some of that. But getting back to your early, just explosion of work. You were working for Top Cow, Dynamite, Marvel, Zenescope ... I don't even know how many.

There were a bunch of other small publishers also and companies trying to make comics. So yeah, it was a wild launch. [Laughs]

Were you having fun doing that stuff or were you –

I lived for that stuff.

Okay, that's what I thought.

You don't go into and stay in comics unless you're a special kind of crazy for comics. I often ask people, what do you wanna be, right? Because I'm often asked, "Oh, how do I get into comics?" My answer usually starts with a very important question: do you want to make comics? Because there's a big difference between "I love to draw comic characters" and "I like to make comics." Because when you make comics, you're a storyteller, which means you're gonna make compromises. You're gonna have to work fast. You're gonna have to work a lot. How many pages a day, a week can you perform? And from day one for me, personally, the answer to my own question was: absolutely! This is what I want. This is what I love. So I'm gonna just properly commit to it. And so I did.

You could have stayed in mainstream comics on that track indefinitely, right?

Yep.

Because you are exceptionally fast. You deliver the work on time to a quality they want. So why did you walk away from it?

I had my own idea I wanted to tackle. I was also a writer. I loved writing, but the problem was I was still a bit new to it. But I got the grasp of it over time. In the end to my great surprise, the thing that made me completely unlock myself creatively was Sunstone. Sunstone was me entering into a completely unknown field and just writing, you know? And [the] crazy thing is it got really successful. Sunstone gets translated in like dozens of languages. It's ridiculous.

Where did Sunstone come from? It's a difficult book to describe because it is a romance book, right? So here you are, very successful making mainstream superhero books and you have this idea to do a character-driven romance?

Yeah, Sunstone was an unplanned thing altogether. It was the end result of a catastrophic burnout where I was actually considering leaving comics and just accepting one of the several video game company offers. Because I wasn't fulfilled, you know? I wasn't writing my own stuff. I was drawing other people's stuff. And yeah, it's nice when you get a script that's very cool and high action, high pace, but you don't always get the benefit of that. Sometimes you need to do the character moments.

And the problem was at the time, I was also having a crisis of style because one of the big things that happened for me early on was when I started comics, I had a style that was my own, that was very similar to what we have in Sunstone now. But as I got into the American ‘90s comics, I convinced myself that my approach was wrong and I should make my comics look like that. So I kind of adopted a strange Frankenstein of a style comprised of influences from Michael Turner, Marc Silvestri, and Alex Ross. I put them all in the blender and hit puree and what came out was a marketable style. But it was like writing with another person's handwriting, this whole time you're adjusting. The whole thing felt creatively insincere to me, and that contributed to an overall deterioration of the style as the years progressed. I wasn't getting better, I was getting worse.

So one day, you know, I was having a burnout. I was talking to my wife, I'm like, I'm probably gonna quit comics altogether and just move on to something else. Because there is no joy in it anymore. And in order to diminish some of my foul mood, I decided I was gonna make a new secret account [on DeviantArt] because I didn't want to connect it to my name. I've had a history of putting fetish illustrations and stuff like that online. That's not a problem. I just needed something that was vastly different and something that I could see grow on its own. Like starting a new character in an MMO, in an RPG. Like, oh, hey, look, I'm level one. I'm rising, you know? Something that would make me feel any kind of joy from making stuff again.

I started drawing these characters, right? Actually that’s an overstatement. They weren't even characters. They were just kind of simple, fetish-y illustrations. My idea was, I was gonna do something fun, and make a bunch of BDSM-type jokes. I figured I had experience with it all and knew how funny the whole thing actually is. And so I looked into the rules [of] DeviantArt at the time, and one of the strange ones was you couldn't depict an erect penis back then. So I said, well, fuck it! I guess I'm just gonna draw women, because how am I gonna justify this? Am I gonna Austin Powers every single dick?⁴ So I drew these two women, just the most stereotypical looking domme and her submissive. The style was messy and distorted but honest so i decided, fuck it, I'm just gonna draw some drawings of them, draw some funny jokes. Oh, hey, maybe I'll give them names. Maybe I’ll explore how they met for the first time.

In the end, that strip, the one exploring how they met for the first time just ignited the account. There was so much feedback from people. There was a strange energy to it all and I liked it. So, I started working on it, started writing it. When I wrote the first chapter, I had a panic attack, because I realized I was making a romance comic, and I have no fucking idea how to make a romance comic.

My only experience with writing so far had been Ravine, and that [was] a bumpy ride. It's an epic fantasy, and at first my writing wasn't as nuanced, it was oddly paced. The first issue read as kind of lore-dumpy. So there was a whole lot of stuff to master. And all of a sudden, I'm trying to master all kinds of stuff in a genre that I've never done. I had a brief phase in which I tried to turn Sunstone into a sci-fi, grand space fetish opera, no joke. There were aliens, there were domination tiaras and shit that if you were dominant enough, you could subjugate the aliens and all kinds of bullshit. I read the outline for that and went, "Wow, this is shit." So maybe I just try this romance thing. So I did. Turns out [that was the] best decision of my life. And here we are.

Were you drawing on any tradition of romance comics at all, or was this purely uncharted waters?

I had experience with reading romance novels. When I was a child and all the way through college, I was an absolute devourer of books. And often my appetites would outpace the library lending limits. So I'd just look around and be like, “Hey, mom, are you reading this? Okay, shit, I'm reading it now, fuck it.” So I had experience with [romance] novels, but I've never had an experience with either reading or writing a romance comic. So that shit was new.

Well, I'm curious how the series evolved for you then, because you have all these very heavy themes running through the book, right? Like, you're going deeply into consent, trust, and the need for boundaries. All that is fundamental to the book at this point. When did that get layered in?

From the very beginning. BDSM is sexual LARPing, and as such it is fertile ground for a whole lot of comedy and drama, both often connected to the game not going according to plan. Then of course there are the themes of consent and trust. These topics are inevitable by the very nature of the game. People who are sexually submissive, they have a desire in this kind of sexual itch, that fantasy to fulfill, but the problem with that sexual fantasy is that by its very nature it is a fantasy of surrendering one’s control into the hands of another. Ideally it’s something they’d want to do with somebody they trust enough to give that sense of control back, to respect the agreed upon safe word. The problem is, again, it's also something that's kind of frowned upon because it's been depicted in so many different ways. It's not really a simple topic to bring up. This is where it always gets messy.

Now, with Sunstone the fun part was I was writing. Lisa is a very introspective character from the get-go. And also, you know, two of the other characters are doms who kind of have their own insight into the whole thing. This would prove itself relevant, especially when the Mercy arc launched. That arc expanded the topics and the themes to such a degree that even I was surprised by the scope of it all. Sunstone in general has proven itself a very fertile ground to look into some genuine issues. Not just with the kink, mind you. Kink on its own tends to be very simple when it comes down to it. But you start looking at the people behind it all, and that's where it gets interesting.

Well, but again, there is a world where you made this as just a porn book, right? Where it was pure fantasy. And you clearly didn’t.

Yeah, of course. So early on, I actually made a conscious choice about that. Once I made the "how they met" strip, I actually realized I'd have to make a decision about that very thing. I was like, okay, what do I do with this? Do I make this a porn thing? Or do I go into something slightly more educational, slightly more lighthearted? And the moment I committed to that was kind of the defining moment that shaped the rest of everything.

I guess when you started, you weren't thinking that expansively?

Not at all. At first, no thoughts, just instincts. Basically, just make stuff, you know? It was after that point where I discarded the idea of launching them all to space. If you look at the first book of Sunstone, it is a very simple, honest thing, with some very simple, honest messages and lessons learned. You know, they meet, you see them going through some stuff where it's like, okay, you're meeting a person online, this is not necessarily the smartest decision. So there's a bunch of overcompensations, excessive planning, going through the stress of it all. And, in the end, they hit it off. So that one was very fundamentally simple. I didn't have to do a whole lot of brainstorming for that one.

But the moment I decided, yeah, okay, I'm committing to this being a romance. So then I had to ask myself, okay, what's the point of the book? Where am I going with this? So for the first book, I decided on the theme of … how do I word this best? Of taking stuff for granted, of taking roles for granted, of taking a person for granted in general, which became this thing that tears them apart for a while, where Lisa has been so used to this whole idea that Ally is a dom, so Ally has to make the first move on everything. Then eventually, Lisa becomes introspective, looks into her own relationship paths and realizes, oh shit, I've been waiting for everybody to make the first move every time. And it kind of became a pattern for her. Additionally, she kept acting like Ally was very experienced in all of this as even though Ally made a clear point that all of this was also her first time. So, you know, once the theme was established, I figured that one out, I blocked it out. But then I also started thinking in advance, like what [comes] after, right? So I started making the first block outs for some of the concepts that were gonna be a part of the next arc, the Mercy arc. This is where in the second issue of Sunstone, I place in the seeds for what would later on become Mercy arc’s, one of the big elements, which is Alan and Marion’s story. I started exploring that. I started placing relationship landmines that the characters get to step on in the future, like deep into the Mercy arc, you know, some of them deep into the Jasper arc. So at some point, I think by volume three, I kind of figured out that this was going to be a very long running series. And by volume four, I kind of settled on the plan for the 20 volume series.

So 20 is the number.

That’s the endgame.

Book one is basically about these two, I guess three, characters, because you also have Alan in there, but by book three, you've introduced Anne and all these other characters. And now you've doubled back and you're expanding greatly on the early stuff.

Chronologically speaking, the Mercy arc starts before Ally and Lisa meet. So it covers Ally and Alan's history together and Anne's early years, where we introduce Laura. Laura is going to be a very important character later on. And then after that, it's going to cover Alan and Marion's history. And then it's going to cover Anne and Alan with a very, very, very hilarious one volume that's going to basically focus on Anne's entirely fictional relationship with Lisa. Oh god, that one’s probably gonna be the funniest book in the whole series. Then after that comes Jasper. And all of these arcs are going to both expand and continue the initial story of Sunstone. So we're gonna see Ally and Lisa progress and so on and so forth until it goes to volume 20. And volume 20 is Ally and Lisa's wedding and all of the shenanigans that happened.

Right, you established very early in volume one that they're already married.

Yup!

Since Sunstone has become wildly successful, do you feel an added responsibility towards the BDSM community? As you said, this all started as a silly thing on DeviantArt.

I mean, my responsibility is that of a writer at the end of the day. All I need to do is make the characters feel human. Their circumstances and supporting cast will do enough to offer an insight into kink and people engaging with it.

It comes down to this. BDSM and kink in general doesn’t really come with a rulebook. It’s people roleplaying in different ways. Some adopt a looser, sillier approach while others take it extremely seriously. Then of course there are all the degrees of it in between. Point is, Sunstone is not here to present kink as good or bad, but as profoundly human. That is a responsibility I take very seriously. I wish to offer a look behind the curtain, past the kayfabe of it all and just show a bunch of kinksters for who they are. By the varied nature of its expanding cast Sunstone allows me to do just that but even so I can't cover every flavor of it, nor would I ever try. After all, proper representation of anything is a matter of building up multiple works by multiple creators with different outlooks. I’m just here adding my brick to it all.

At what point did you decide to make another book while also doing Sunstone?

Oh, I mean, at any given point I'm juggling 15 ideas. It takes me a while to pull the trigger on any of them. But as I was working on Sunstone as a webcomic, I figured out the idea for Death Vigil, made that one. That one didn't really stick the landing with the markets, but reviewers loved it. After that, I tried Teen Witchblade. That one didn't even last four issues, which was hilarious since I had a hundred issue run planned. So, you know [laughs]. There is no such thing as a sure hit ever. You can think you have absolute gold and the market doesn't notice it, you know? And then after that, while I was working on Sunstone and everything else, I did Harleen for DC. Then after that, I started my own next really big hit, which was Fine Print.

Fine Print shares a lot of themes with Sunstone, but is obviously much more fantasy based. Does that scratch an itch for you?

Fine Print (Or How a Divine Contract May Not be the Best Cure for a Broken Heart)⁵ is effectively a Greek tragedy in modern times. Coincidentally featuring quite a number of greek gods with a shared continuity to my wife’s book Punderworld. Fine Print is a tale of fate, hubris, love, and desire. It is yet another in the long tradition of stories of humans mingling with gods and learning that after the fucking around phase, the finding out often hits uncomfortably hard. As such the story lets me get creative with some fun takes on the ever evolving world of gods and how a single mortal can throw their world into absolute chaos by the end of the story. It’s gonna be a lot of fun.

Death Vigil is your death metal gothic fantasy series, which seems like it would fit nicely with your audience. Why do you think it hasn’t quite clicked in the same way that Fine Print has?

Many layered reasons that would take a bunch to explain. Some were linked to the way the comic industry works, and the distribution and sales of floppies when you’re a no-name author. And make no mistake, at the time I was a no-name author, and to this day I still am for a portion of the market. For the rest I'm just an unpronounceable-name author and I’ll take that! We’ll see how book 2 lands next year. Who knows, we may see the series resurrected. It is on-brand for its theme after all.

Somewhere along there, you also started The Queen and the Woodborn, right?

Yeah, Queen and the Woodborn is currently still [happening], yeah. The first volume is going to be released next year. And I also started Achilles Shieldmaidens, but like, I kind of consider those in soft-development consistently until, you know, I actually hyper-commit.

[Laughs] So, yeah, so you have a million things going.

Kind of, yeah [laughs].

I'm curious how you juggle all these. Do you write scripts or do you go straight to the page?

Yes [laughs]. Literally, yes. Depends on the day, depends on the mood. Sometimes I stream myself just writing and drawing the comic right on the page.

At what point did you decide that your universe was shared with your wife Linda?

That was in the early days of Sunstone when she started making Blood Stain. I was hyper-excited for Linda committing to making her own stuff and it was like fucking awesome. So we started talking. Mind you, we always talk a lot, but like, oh my god, we started talking a lot. We would go out for coffee and brainstorm for hours about our stories which lead to the initial idea of, "Well, hey, what if they play an online game together at some point later?" And that was the starting point. Then after that, it got crazy.

Right, so if I've got the connections correct, Sunstone and Blood Stain are connected.

And Fine Print and Punderworld, all of them.

Right, and Punderworld is the same as Fine Print. And then of course there's Smutstain and Crimson After Hours.

Yeah, all of those books are in the same universe. [Laughs].

So, but those last two, Smutstain and Crimson After Hours, when did that come about?

So Smutstain and Crimson After Hours are the same thing. It's all Crimson After Hours. Smutstone and Smutstain were our inside joke names for each specific chapter [laughs]. That book is a result of many morning coffee talks where we would think up these like offside jokes with our characters, but didn't have the room for them in the main series. So we kind of figured out a framework for that. Now, Crimson After Hours is absolutely the spiciest thing we've ever created, as it's basically a story about a bunch of drunken idiots sharing exaggerated tales of their sexual encounters. And it starts being hilarious and even oddly enough slightly educational, but also it is honest and often heartwarming.

Right, I mean, this might be the first case I know of creators creating their own slashfic.

[Laughs]. Exactly! Except it's in full continuity! So yeah, we got that going for us [laughs].

You mentioned Harleen earlier. Harleen is, I guess, your last mainstream book.

I'm not opposed to making more of it. The problem is, it's one of those things where I have to have the time for it. And the problem is any time I have is usually better spent on making something of my own. Pays better too!

You keep using the term books, but how much of your income is Patreon versus physical books?

About, I'd say, 50/50 roughly.

Okay, because you seem to be thriving on Patreon, which is interesting. Your books are totally available on the web.

Yeah. And pretty much 80 to 90% of them are also freely available to download. My whole shtick is I give you the books for free and then you get hooked. And then later on you see it in real life and go like, "Hey! I know this one! I remember liking this one. I might pick it up.” It works when the book is good.

So just to bring it all home then, what does the future look like? I mean, you've got 20 volumes of Sunstone-

Twenty of Sunstone, nine volumes of Fine Print. After that, there's going to be an attempt early next year releasing Death Vigil 2. If that gains traction, if that justifies its own existence, there's going to be future Death Vigils. That's planned as a five volume series. If it doesn't, Death Vigil goes on the Ravine pile. I'm gonna definitely do Queen and the Woodborn, that one's a shorter series of three volumes. So that one’s gonna get finished. Beyond those, if Death Vigil fails, my next attempt for a different thing is going to be Achilles Shieldmaidens where I do a mecha story, because I love giant robots.

That was the Kaiju, giant robots, and girl band thing?

There's no Kaiju, it's just giant robots and giant alien robots.

Right, right [laughs].

And then gianter robots. And then giant robots that combine into more giant robots. It's gonna be great.

But also kind of a girl band thing, if I remember correctly?

Yes, yes. Yes, the premise is, the main characters are basically military propaganda, right? They're a recruitment tool for the galactic defense forces. So they're doing these concerts, like if they were Spice Girls meets Evangelion, you know, they're like making piloting these mechs look really cool. So they're encouraging people to get themselves tested whether or not they have the ability to connect to the machine properly. There's this whole thing of achieving man/machine singularity and like one in like 30 or something people can do it and getting those people to get tested and go through the rigorous training and everything, it's not easy. So in come the Achilles Shieldmaidens, they're basically pop stars telling everyone how they should join the army. And yes I fully intend to explore the dark implications behind that whole thing.

Anyways, then the aliens attack and the entirety of human defense forces get effectively betrayed and all of the military mechs get their Achilles killswitch activated, which destroys them and [the] aliens win without even fighting. Humans are now down to their final line of defense, by raising protective shield domes around the big cities that now serve as the last strongholds of humanity. Things get wild when it is revealed that not all the mechs were destroyed by the military killswitch. There were five mechs that never had it installed as they were never weaponized. The prototype mechs [were] for the achilles shieldmaidens. With these mechs being attuned to their pilots, these girls become the only hope for humanity to start mounting an effective counterattack

But first you have to finish up all your other books before you come back to that one.

Well, I mean, first I have to finish Death Vigil and see if that sticks. And if it doesn't, well, the Shieldmaidens is the next one on the list. I already have 60 plus pages, so what's another 120 for the first book? [Laughs]

The post ‘I had a panic attack because I realized I was making a romance comic’: Stjepan Šejić on <i>Sunstone</i> and beyond appeared first on The Comics Journal.

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