I wrote VILLAINS because I wanted to blend my love for hardboiled crime fiction with the superhero comic genre. I also thought it’d be interesting to write a book purely from the villain’s perspective. I was lucky enough to partner with Ryan Cody, whose bold art style complemented the noir feel of the story perfectly.

Soon after the four issues were collected into a trade, something astonishing happened: VILLAINS was optioned by Universal Studios, and is in development as a major motion picture.

Now here’s the part that keeps me up at night. I have thousands of story ideas, but I chose to pour my resources into VILLAINS because I thought it would make a good book, and because I believed it had the potential to be optioned. The odds were many thousands to one against me–picture getting a hole in one, but you’re in Boston and the hole’s in Brooklyn. I was an unknown, working with an unknown artist, and this was my first solo book. There are creators in the industry who have toiled for decades without ever being presented with such an opportunity. I don’t want to seem like I lack humility, because I really do appreciate how fortunate I was, but this success has only encouraged me to continue making comics in the thin hope that lightning will strike twice…or thrice.

VILLAINS

Nick Corrigan is a downtrodden young man with no direction or prospects for the future. But when he realizes that his elderly neighbor is a retired supervillian, he sees an opportunity to turn his life around.

Comics

Writing comics is a dream come true. I’m a lifelong fan of the medium, but I took a long and circuitous route before returning back to the place I secretly wanted to be.

I’ve been lucky enough to work in a variety of collaborative entertainment industries, but I find comics to be the purest form of creator-driven media. There’s a direct, unfiltered dialogue that exists between the creators and the consumers that you won’t find anywhere else.