There are a lot of people who work for large publishers in the Comics Industry, but it’s increasingly common for individuals to branch out and do their own thing. Today, we have just such an example.
Martin Eden is one of our contacts within Titan Comics, and he’s the creator of his own webcomic, Zeros. Martin was gracious enough to take our ‘7 Questions’ challenge about his passion project, and we’re sharing his responses with you.
Without further ado, please give a warm Comical Opinions welcome to Martin Eden.
1. For anyone who’s not familiar with you, what are the works you most want to be known for?
My first proper comic was The O Men which I began when I was in my early 20s. It’s an epic super-soap, and I wanted it to be a mix of Sandman, Watchmen and a soap opera. I produced it for around 35 issues and then I decided to put it on hiatus to create Spandex, an eight-issue series about an all-LGBT superhero team. After that I went back to finish The O Men (8 final issues), and now I’m working on Zeros, an all-ages, five-volume web-comic.
All of my comics are set in the same universe, although Zeros is set in the future.
All of the comics are on Comixology and the best link is just my Instagram page – at Martin Eden.
2. What was your original elevator pitch/idea/logline behind the concept of Zeros?
The basic premise is that it’s set in a world where everyone has a superpower. But I didn’t want it to be a full-on superhero comic, so most people only have basic powers. I just wanted to draw an exciting soap opera but to be able to pepper it with interesting looking characters. I wanted it to be set in a school and be a bit like Harry Potter or any of those young adult franchises – but I wanted the focus to be on the whole class, not just 3 or 4 of them. A few of the characters do seem to have taken centre-stage though.
3. Your previous work, Spandex, takes on superheroes from an adults-only perspective but Zeros feels more in line with an all-ages book, although they explore some similar themes. Did you always want to do an all-ages comic?
I always wanted to do a comic that is an engaging read with plenty of twists and turns. The kind of story where you’d get to the end and read it again in a completely different light, because you’ve learned all the answers. Grant Morrison’s work really inspired me in that regard. In my early 20s I was reading a lot of mature comics, Vertigo and indie, and I wanted to be able to swear in my stories and get a grown-up audience. I guess I always wanted to do a comic that I’d like to read myself. Spandex was for adults-only because of its content, and I can’t tell you the amount of kids I had to refuse Spandex sales to at conventions – the kids loved the bright colours of Spandex!
I have a young nephew and niece now and I wanted to create a comic that they could read, so I went down the all ages route. It’s a fun challenge to control the mature level. There are some really mature stories coming up and I have to decide how to tackle them and portray them in a way that isn’t going to upset or alarm the younger readers.
4. You’ve explained in the Zeros comments section you draw character inspiration from your friends and family. Did their individual superpowers also draw from their real-life personalities? If not, how did you choose the power for each character?
My friends and family influence my characters’ personalities but not so much their powers at all. Most of my friends and family have appeared in my comics and it can often purely be because I need a background character to draw, so I just pick their likeness. My mum appears as a psychiatrist at the end of O Men volume 1, my dad is the first person you see in Zeros volume 1, my brother and his wife are Harry’s parents in Zeros. A lot of my workmates appeared as background characters in The O Men and it was a running joke that they’d normally get killed off (it’s okay, they thought it was funny). My nephew and niece are called Harry and Emilie and they have a vague resemblance to the Zeros characters of the same names but the powers aren’t related to them. When I started Zeros Volume 2, I realised that the Harry and Emilie characters are going down some pretty weird and unusual storylines and I had to warn them – ‘don’t forget, these characters have your names but they aren’t really you!’
With Spandex, I created a lot of it in my 30s when I had some really cool gay friends and we all just hung out in the pub a lot of the time. I wanted the Spandex characters to be like that – to be fun and likeable, and not like some of the LGBT stereotypes you’d often see on TV.
Some of the characters just came fully formed into my head along with their powers. Some of them take a longer time. For a long time, I knew who the main Zeros characters were but I didn’t necessarily know all about them. I knew how I wanted Will to look and his powers came later when I had decided where I wanted the story to go. His powers kick off some of the key events of the series.
5. As of this writing, Zeros is published through issue 2 of Volume 2. Where do you want to take this story in future issues/chapters?
I’ll be fleshing out the characters over the next few chapters and revealing what makes them tick. Some pretty important things are happening which are going to have an impact on their lives and personalities. Chapter 6 is huge for me – it shows Sara/Sunshine dealing with a big new issue in her life and there’s a lot of my own history in there. We’ll see how it plays out through the rest of the series. I think it’s one of the biggest and most personal stories I’ve ever created.
Chapter 9 will show a day in the life of the characters – weaving in and out of what they’re up to, and Chapter 10 will be a big, epic self-contained story. After that, Chapter 11 will probably be called ‘The Before Stories’ and it will show you what happened to some of the characters over the last few years (the story had leapt ahead by 10 years so we missed a good chunk of their lives). And then the final chapters will start to wrap the volume up – things will be tying up and it will get more and more dramatic.
There will be at least two more volumes in the series and I know where the stories are heading. It’s pretty shocking!
6. There are heavy themes of acceptance in the plot. Is there a specific message you want readers to take away from the story?
I definitely want all of my characters to be likeable, even the villains. The main villain of The O Men, Anathema – sometimes you feel sorry for her. The villains in Spandex, Les Girlz, became kind-of likeable mainly because I loved them myself. With Zeros, there’s a push for all the characters to be good, and some of them aren’t – but I still want readers to sympathise with them.
I always want people to be emotionally invested in my comics, and I’m really fascinated by the thought of ‘can I make my reader laugh?’ or ‘can I make them cry?’. I want them to be engaged with the story. I love a good twist, and I usually put some pretty big hints about them into the early parts of the story. I’m happy if readers figure the twists out.
I want readers to enjoy Zeros and to really be excited for each new chapter and volume.
7. What’s next for Martin Eden?
I’ll be doing Zeros for at least 2 more volumes – maybe three. I’d love, at some point, to do some final stories with the Spandex and O Men characters – it might even be part of Zeros. I’d love for Zeros to be published properly and I’d love for it to be a TV show or movie.
I have a big idea for another project – it’s a humour-style strip (like Dilbert and Garfield) and I’ve done some work on it but Zeros seems to take up most of my time. I’d like to do an autobiographical comic – about my experiences in self-publishing and about some elements of my own life. Maybe one day.
Overall though, I just want to keep creating comics and engaging with readers.
We’d like to thank Martin for taking our ‘7 Questions’ challenge. If you’d like to read all of the ZEROS volumes for free, head on over via the link here.
We hope you found this article interesting. Come back for more reviews, previews, and opinions on comics, and don’t forget to follow us on social media:
If you’re interested in this creator’s works, remember to let your Local Comic Shop know to find more of their work for you. They would appreciate the call, and so would we.
Click here to find your Local Comic Shop: www.ComicShopLocator.com