In this conversation, Braxton Cosby shares his journey as a creator, from his unexpected calling to write in 2011 to establishing his own publishing company, Cosmeteor Productions. He discusses the transition from traditional publishing to indie publishing, emphasizing the importance of self-marketing and creative control. Braxton delves into the intricacies of storytelling, character development, and the unique challenges of adapting prose into comic format. He also highlights his latest work, ‘Broken,’ a dystopian narrative, and offers valuable advice for new creators navigating the convention circuit.
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Ryan George (00:17)
Hey everyone, so I am here with Braxton Cosby. He is the creator of the Cape series, Steel Rain and Broken. Braxton, how you doing?
BRAXTON A COSBY (00:18)
Thank
I’m doing great, thanks for having me on and I appreciate it.
Ryan George (00:28)
Yeah, no
problem. Thank you for being on. You’ve got a lot of experience and a lot of variety of creative experiences that I’m really interested to talk with you about. But the first thing with anybody that we have like on the show, kind of the first thing that I always ask is your origin story as a creator. And since we’re kind of comics focused, I would like to see, obviously you do more than just comics, but your origin story as a creator and then how that led you to writing comics.
BRAXTON A COSBY (00:57)
Right. So as a creator, ⁓ I was kind of called to writing back in 2011. Basically, I was in church, craziest thing. And the pastor was preaching and he was saying like, you know, he feels like God wanted to use some people out in the pews to do something, maybe something they’d never even done before, but nobody was asking. So he kind of, you know, asked us like, you know, hey, you know, ask God what you would have you do that maybe something different. And I was a physical therapist. went through ⁓ three levels of college and you know,
Basically the last thing I wanted to do was doing the writing or reading. So this funny thing, I just like to say, Hey, you know, God, what would you have me do? And all of a sudden I heard like this voice or this drive, this feeling inside of me was to write a book. And I didn’t know what it would be about. You know, I started kind of thinking, what would I write it about? And I don’t know about you, Ryan, but I’ve done, sometimes I was a big movie buff. And so I would look at a lot of movies and sometimes the movies would be really good, but I would always be able to find these little points like, I
I wish when they got to this point, they kind of went this direction with it or they did something else with it. So I was hearing this voice like, all those cool things that were missing in those movies you love, put those in your story. And I was like, okay, okay, that sounds cool. So I started kind of fleshing out this script in my head of the story, this narrative, this trilogy of the science fiction teen story. And I come up with a StarCraft saga right there.
And I went and got it published with Atlanta, with a publisher in Atlanta called Firefly Publishing. Got the first book out. It ended up winning a sci-fi ⁓ book of the year with CLC, which is the Children’s Literary Classic, a teen and young adult book award. But it also won sci-fi ⁓ romance book of the year with Reader’s Favorites. So was like, okay, man, out the gate, I’m doing pretty good. I feel pretty great about this. So just kind of matriculated and
I worked with another publisher on a sequel and then that didn’t work. So I finally decided, hey, here’s my order. I’m going to create my own publishing company and just do it myself. And that’s when things started coming around really big with self-publishing back then anyway. So it kind of worked hand in hand. So right around 2014, went ahead and started a Cosmetic Productions. We’re a full, a small press publishing house. We published over 30 authors with 60 different titles and e-books, audio books and paperbacks. And we really cried ourselves.
We had a partnership with a larger publisher before, so I was able to kind of steal the tricks and the trades of how to format and give book covers done that were basically looked like the real industry standard. So it wasn’t anything I wanted. I didn’t want anybody to pick up one of our books, whether it was mine or somebody you published and go, oh, yeah, this is self-published. can look at it. So I wanted to screen next level, big publisher, mainstream publishers. So I really, really pushed that envelope and the artists and the cover designers that we worked with. really challenged them to make sure that we had
what was necessary to give our office the best chance of being successful. that’s basically what we’ve done since then. We’ve had a lot of Amazon best sellers, we’ve had some award-winning authors, we’ve got a lot of recognition. And I feel great about the space that we have moved Cosmeteor Productions into as far as a small press publisher. And right around 2020, we were publishing our own superhero series that we kind of knit together with me.
and four other authors, was Caillou’s Champion with his Madacusa Panin series, ⁓ Keishon Dodd with his Minzuo Saga, Daniel Payton with his Barks series, and Lawrence St. John with his Metatron series. We basically have all of our superheroes in our own little superhero universe kind of referencing one another in their novels until we were able to cross them over into our first team-up book, which was the Infinity Seven series, which we ended up getting two books out of that.
where me, Keeshawn, ⁓ and Kayo kind of brought all our characters together to kind of put a button on this long saga series called the Dark Force series that we were working on. And right around 2020, we said, man, what are we gonna do next? So we decided, I know one of my childhood passions and dreams was to write a comic book, because I grew up on DC stuff. I liked Marvel, but DC was really more my jam. And so the dream of actually doing a comic book just seemed so far away, but I started getting into publishing and working with other creatives.
started realizing that it’s not that hard if you could just come up with the concepts, get with the right team who can give you the images that you want as far as bringing your characters to life. And then also, you know, having the funds to do it. So I talked to the other creators, we were all like, okay, cool, let’s do this. We put together a huge Kickstarter to do first issue comics that continue to push the stories that we had already written about in our novel. So I had a three book series with Kate.
Tishan Daz had a time he had a three-pointer series with Menzoo, Lauren St. John had three books out for, I think they had four books out with Metatron, and Kayo Champion had two books out with Maddie Zulkanen. So we were like, hey, you know what? Let’s go ahead and do this. We went ahead and got it together and we had a successful kickstart. I got to work with four different, like maybe I think three different comic artists to get our books out there. And, you know, we got the comics together and we’ve been
kind of moving forward ever since with this identity with Cosmere Productions being the small press publisher of the novels and things like that and Star Child Comics being our comic imprint publishing our comics for us. And we just tell people when we go to conventions and things, hey, we are a hybrid publisher. We tell our stories in both novels and comics. So if you come and you start like a still rain series, that starts off with the prequel, which is the comic free flight.
and you jump right into the novel, is my international bestselling novel of Sci-Fi Bounty Hunter series. And then you jump back again with the new one that currently putting a wrap on now that’s gonna come out in early 26 called Palindrome. So people get a chance to kind of change, change pace a little bit, see a little something, read a little something. And they love it because they like that variety and those options of how they’re gonna receive their storytelling. Because the only medium that we haven’t touched yet is TV and film.
Ryan George (07:13)
Wow. So there’s a lot. I think I came up with like 10 questions just to ask based on what you told me there. So that’s great. So I get one quick question. Do you still do PT or are you? Okay. Wow. Wow. Okay. Got it. Yeah.
BRAXTON A COSBY (07:17)
you
yeah, that’s my favorite. And at night I’m a superhero. I do
all the writing, publishing, ⁓ the editing, the formatting and things like that. Kind of putting together our next book that I fall in love with that comes from either me or the author that we serve.
Ryan George (07:38)
Yeah, no, interesting question for you. ⁓ So my career has been in fitness and personal training. And ⁓ I’m curious to know as a physical therapist, somebody who’s got, I mean, you’ve got way more experience than I do in knowledge as far as like anatomy and physiology. Does that play into some of your, ⁓ how you design your art or ⁓ how you were thinking about how the body is shown or how movement is shown? Like I’m just thinking like as a somebody who’s on fitness and also Muay Thai.
BRAXTON A COSBY (07:43)
I
Ryan George (08:05)
I’m not particular about a lot of the art in my work, but I’m very particular about certain fight scenes. And there are certain things where it’s like, it has to look a certain way because of the background. Do you have that as well? Like when you’re dealing with, even if you’re writing prose, do you deal with that when you’re in part of the creative process for you?
BRAXTON A COSBY (08:20)
Yeah, I think that most my thesis from my master’s was on personality types of their physical therapist. So we had to do like a questionnaire, we had to send it out to like all the PCs who graduated in last 10 years, wherever they were working. And it is seriously based simply where they just asked about the temperament of therapists. so a lot of information came in that people really were on the same kind of wavelength of how we think we’re very detailed oriented, very structured. We like clean lines and
Ryan George (08:27)
Hmm.
BRAXTON A COSBY (08:47)
And we’re very concrete, not a lot of abstract thinking. So I think for me, that goes into play is that I want it to look a certain way. I want those pages to come across their way. in my storytelling, you hinted at with writing novels and prose, there’s a three act structure all the way through my stories of my novels. And I carry that into my comic book as well, which is really a ⁓ pitiful kind of work because it’s really painstaking to be that detailed in
20, maybe 27 pages of comic book story where you’re getting six to seven panels on a page. And to be like by five page, know, page five, I’m out of act one. In act two, I’m rolling through six through 18. And then, you know, if I’m doing 24 pages, my last 19 through 24 act three, that takes a lot of effort and determination. But because I’m a PT, I’m kind of wired that way. It’s not a big deal. Also, when I wrote the Star Cross Saga, which is my series that I started off with,
I want to use my own technology. So you don’t see things like lasers and light sabers. I use some of the stuff that we use, electromagnetic wave fields and energy, electrical stimulation, like those types of things we use, lasers and all of that stuff. Ion, I try to incorporate that into my storytelling so that people get something very fresh and different when they read my sci-fi. It’s not everybody else’s sci-fi.
Ryan George (09:54)
Nice.
Yeah, no, that’s great. So now when you talk about your you’re kind of getting in, so prior to like that moment of like kind of clarity or inspiration that you had in church, did you create, like were you a creative person? Did you draw, did you write? Or was it just kind of like you didn’t and then that was that moment of, because it’s interesting, because you’re academically right, it’s very science-based obviously when you’re doing something like PT. ⁓ And ⁓ to then make that shift from like, I’m gonna do something this,
to something wholly creative is a big shift. were you, like, did you grow up writing or drawing or doing anything or was it, did that just kind of, that was that moment of like, I’m going to do this and you saw it through.
BRAXTON A COSBY (10:51)
Yeah, I definitely have a creative gene. would say that my aptitude for expression has always been there. I can explain things very well. When I went through ⁓ undergrad, I hated multiple choice tests because I really felt like it didn’t represent the knowledge that I had about the subject. But when I got into all my essay-based classes, I mean, history, anything that had to do with essay, I got A’s in. So language arts, those types of things, I can feel.
that that was my thing, my lane was to be able to express and to be able to tell. And now it just kind of gravitated into storytelling. But like I said, I always loved a good story, but I was always a huge, huge fan of science fiction and fantasy. So, you know, I grew up with Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 was the first time I was introduced to science fiction. And I just really fell in love with it since then. And it kind of rolled out, obviously with the Star Wars, the Star Trek.
Farscape all those guys that came around Babylon 5 Always a fan and was very intrigued So when I got the opportunity to say hey, you know, okay Well, I’m just shifting gears here a little bit not very different from what I do and I was an artist I do my own images I actually wrote my own five page comic book back in like fifth grade when it’s my friend He did his he he was once like Dungeons and Dragons and he did his thing there and I did some superheroes Which I’ll still be bringing out at a later time to join in with the capes as well
He, ⁓ I wrote that back then. So I was always kind of curious and wanted to get into superhero fiction. So when I kind of got the opportunity to work with these other creators and kind of pulled from them like, hey, you know, how did you go about doing this? And what kind of superhero series are you writing? And what would I like, you know, as far as the way I like to tell stories, it all just kind of came together perfectly. And I just, I’m in love with storytelling now. You know, I really like.
The things that I look at now are really more about the stories and about character driven narratives that really push and pull and bend and almost break the characters but then bring them back around while we raise the stakes as they go through the three acts of a story and how can I identify those things and how can I make my writing better based on that with those seven flows of the storyline where it’s continuing to keep you ⁓ engaged because you don’t know which way it’s gonna go next if you know that character’s slowly moving.
towards their goal. And then, you if he picks up friends, how will they lose them along the way? know, so you kind of, those are the things that really keep me engaged with stories. I just want them to fresh and new. And I don’t even mind if they rehash because I know there’s a thing in writing where they say there’s really nothing new under the sun. It’s about give me the same but different. So if you give it to me, make it really, really different and I’ll give you the audience, you know.
Ryan George (13:36)
Yeah, no, that makes sense. Now, I’m interested also in, ⁓ so a few things like there’s some like kind of these different weird juxtapositions, when you’re kind of establishing this kind of career. you’ve got, like I said, like, know, kind of the very academic straightforward and the creative. Then you also have, you know, you went from a pretty interesting career path where it’s like, I’m going to you’re creative, you’re working for
publisher and then you make that decision to be your own publisher. I guess maybe some of the pros and cons, and this is I think important for lot of people who are in, know, a lot of listeners of this podcast, right, they’re new or newish creators are trying to figure out their way in this, you know, in this world. And for a lot of people, it’s like, have to get traditionally published, I have to get traditionally published. And it’s not all as cracked up to be like I was, I have a couple books that were traditionally published and like, I made way more on my Kickstarter than I ever did and got more reach, you know, doing it myself, you know, with just one
Kickstarter. like maybe tell some of the listeners like maybe some of the pros and cons of traditional publishing, but then also why you made that decision to shift over to doing your own publishing yourself and, and what you see the difference as and what you think is maybe the better route for like a new, a new person or someone who’s trying to get
Braxton Cosby (14:43)
Yeah, I mean, the jump to me, honestly, when it comes down to traditional publishing, it was like, hey, know, kind of what are you going to do for me is really the question. Everybody’s excited. You get published traditionally first. And that first publisher that I was with, she had the book for a year. And actually, she just kind of got out of the game. She was like, hey, I’m not publishing anymore. You can have your rights back. And I got them back. I shopped around for a literary agent, got one. And then I got picked up by another smaller publisher. But I just, when it came down to it, I was like, man, you know, am I really getting
everything that I want out of this experience, you know, and for me, it was really like, ⁓ if, if, if you’re not going to do the things that I think I can do, which is basically market myself on social media, do brand management and, and get my own thing going, then what are we doing here? You know, I’m losing royalties to you and wherever, the book has been, ⁓ you know, placed to be for sale. So like, if they didn’t really offer me anything, I thought I couldn’t do myself and I was done. So.
Again, being an artist, can get my own cover design. I do them exactly how I want. I had to work on formatting and getting that skill set so everything looked the part and then get a set of editors that I thought were good enough and who I trusted to really help make sure that the story’s read right and that people would have an enjoyable experience and read my works. And after that, I was like, hey, let’s do it. So would I still publish traditionally?
Yes, but it would have to be a very, very big house who already has really a reader’s list, because that’s really what you want. You want people, you know, people who are on their reader list, they’re going to just trust them. Hey, it’s, you know, Penguin. Well, we love whatever Penguin presents. We’ll just pick up the book just because they publish it. It’s got to be good kind of thing. So there’s an expectation that they have with their readers that a lot of small press publishers just don’t have. So, yes, so they’re going to lose out. And I’m not going to go with a publisher on the same level as me. What would be the point?
Ryan George (16:38)
Yeah, no, that’s fair. mean, that’s a very fair point. Now, ⁓ what, so what have you learned like as far as being a publisher on your own? Like what are some of the benefits for you just as a publisher? Cause you’re now working with other people. ⁓ So in a sense, like you’ve gone from creative to, know, creative to now businessman. Like what is, how does that manage? And also maybe how does that, does it conflict at all with the creative process for you being, having to also run a business while, while, while also creating your own work?
Braxton Cosby (17:05)
⁓ no, it’s time management. mean, you’ve got to be amazing with time management because you’re not just managing yourself. You have the expectations of others as well. You know, Hey, we’re going to go ahead and get your, you know, you get your book, ⁓ you know, out by this date and then you got to get a press release. You’ve got to get a cover reveal. You’ve got to get a book trailer. You know, you’ve got to make sure it’s on the right, platform that it will be successful. So there’s a lot that goes into it that expands way beyond just you sitting around.
only taking care of yourself. So yes, so you do have to have a lot of time management and you do have to have, you know, a grace for yourself that some of these processes take a lot longer than you think. And of course, then you got to work with the authors and what their expectations are on kind of level set to, hey, we’re going to publish you. We’re going to give you all the tools to make you successful. At the end of the day, you’re have to run with it. You’re going to have to represent your work because you can tell people more about your book and your dream and your passion for it than I ever can. So there is expectation that they’re going to do the work as well.
Ryan George (18:01)
Yeah, that’s fair. So now tell me a little bit about, I know you’re like the current work is broken, correct? Yeah, so now, so I guess tell me about that. What kind of inspired you to create this kind of dystopian world? It’s an interesting premise and setting. Like what inspired that decision and to go with that? And then you kind of feel, are there any parallels to kind of things that are going on today or not? know, yeah.
Braxton Cosby (18:06)
Yes.
absolutely.
Well, I think, see, that’s the lady right there, Kisa. Kisa Donovan. This is her journey in Broken. First of all, I dedicated this story to my girls. I have three girls, and I wanted to give them a character that they can relate to, that they can connect to. Kisa’s 16 years old. At the time I wrote it, maybe two years ago, my oldest daughter was finishing, getting ready to finish college. My middle child was around 16 years old, and my youngest was about 10, so…
Ryan George (18:26)
Mm.
Braxton Cosby (18:51)
I wanted a character to reflect a little bit of their personalities. So I took a little bit of all of them and kind of put it into a Keese’s character. And ⁓ I was a huge fallout fan, Mad Max, Borderlands. So I liked the whole dystopian vibe. I wanted to do something very different, which was write a first person narrative from a female perspective. basically, you know, in writing the hero story, it’s about taking that character and making them a fish out of water where they have this one life that they were having.
and everything seemed great and all of a sudden put him in something else that is going to challenge him on all fronts, know, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and even physically. And that’s basically what the land of ⁓ Broken became for me was a character in and of itself. You have this post-apocalyptic world after all-out nuclear war, 70 % of the population of the planet is killed. The planet is almost decimated. And those who survive go to the coastlands for fresh water.
and trying to ⁓ restart the planet again in civilization, obviously money no longer has any value. So this one organization called the Establishment, this military conglomerate, comes to power, seizes power, and basically decides to ⁓ reactivate slavery. But it’s a class-based system, so if you don’t have, you will be a slave. And they don’t use the people just to work the land and have jobs and things like that that are not paid for.
They actually use them as trade too. So now humans have become monetary value. So they trade them amongst other districts across the planet. So when we find Kisa, she is in the slave plot of Savannah, Georgia with our younger brother, Karen, and they divide them up based on age and they’ve been forced to work the land. Kisa is what they call a scout where she goes and sits upon a tree pretty much half the day and she’s scouting the land, the countryside.
What she is doing is she was looking out for other raiders, these people called hoarders, because anybody who ingests the ashes of the nuclear fallout, three things can happen to you. One is you lose your mind, you become like enraged savages who just kind of ravage the land for resources, kill people out of sight and hunt in packs. And those are called our hoarders. ⁓ The other people become mindless zombies, which are called ashers and they’re run, they have a hive mind. So there’s always a leader.
of the pack ⁓ and they run in schools, kind of like fish. And then the 1 % of population who ingest the ash is that they have new ⁓ traits and special abilities unlocked. And we call them alphas. They actually have visions of the future and they can see signs and wonders and all these other things. And as we start to read the story with Kisa, you start to get ⁓ clues that she may be one of these alphas that everybody’s talking about. So.
The whole thing kinda comes to a head as she’s working through the slave pot. She hears rumors of a resistance movement that’s trying to overthrow the establishment and now she has to make the decision if she’s gonna continue with the life that she has in the slave pot or she’s gonna try to escape and find this resistance movement. So that’s kinda where it went. Again, with hybrid publishing, book one was the novel, book two is a comic book. And I don’t know if that’s what you ended up getting a copy of.
⁓ We got the comic here, I’ll show you the cover for it.
Ryan George (22:16)
Yeah, it’s very cover.
Braxton Cosby (22:18)
Yeah, and the artwork was done by a very talented artist named Rom Silva. And my ⁓ favorite colorist is Louis Caballero. He’s just done an amazing job with the covers on here. And if you see, they did the covers and the interior, but right here we got Kisa holding a knife, these little throwing knives that her father taught her how to use, which you read about in book one. And you see there’s three reflections in the knife. One of them on the bottom is the Asher.
Number two is the hoarder, and number three is actually the establishment soldiers there. So the issue one comic is book two, essentially, of the series. And then that leads you into ⁓ issue two, book three, where we the same artists and colorists again to do everything in here. And we were able to do a graphic novel this time, 60 page graphic novel, very, very proud of it. Love the way it all came together. And so now I’m already.
Ryan George (22:55)
Got it. Yeah.
Braxton Cosby (23:13)
⁓ working on what we have since we booked four of the series, which I’m hoping to come out sometime maybe in late 2026.
Ryan George (23:21)
Now will book 4 be a comic or is that going be a novel?
Braxton Cosby (23:24)
So it’s going to be what I have created. I call it ⁓ a story comic. So it’s gonna pretty much be a novel, but ⁓ it’s going to be bigger than your ⁓ size than your traditional novel. And it’s also gonna have for each of the chapters, it’s going to have a beautiful one page comic page in it.
Ryan George (23:28)
Mm.
Braxton Cosby (23:54)
really a ⁓ splash page that’s going to kind of give you clues of what’s going on in the chapter. Because I wanted to give a nice combination of that. I give the narrative and the prose from the ⁓ novel, but mixed with some of the beautiful artwork just to kind of bring things to life for the readers.
Ryan George (24:00)
Got it. Yeah.
Yeah, no question. So you mentioned like kind of writing this from a female perspective. Were there any challenges? Like what were the challenges for you? And what did you do as far as writing a story from a female perspective?
Braxton Cosby (24:21)
Really, I kind of pressed into a lot of works where it was a female narrative. ⁓ Octavia Butler, the parable of the sower. I kind of made sure, I do a lot of audiobooks. I was listening to that to kind of get the gist and the vibe of how she tells that story. And I think it was important to kind of get it from a female writer’s perspective of writing female narrative. I also ⁓ went with Suzanne Collins in The Hunger Games, because it was kind of a nice parallel.
Ryan George (24:49)
Mm.
Braxton Cosby (24:51)
with this dystopian world. So I love what she did with that story as well. So, ⁓ you know, I just like those narratives and also a little bit of Veronica Roth with Divergent. So I pressed into those characters just to kind of get an idea of how females see the world, how they express themselves in that world, a little bit more emotional than the guys would be. So some of the traditional storytelling that I was already kind of writing about, I wanted to make sure I dove a lot deeper.
into the emotive side of how they felt and what they saw and how they experienced the world around them. So yeah, think I was able to pull it off. So I really kind of fell in love with that character and the story that I was telling.
Ryan George (25:30)
Yeah. So now when you shifted from writing, so obviously started prose and then shifted to a comic, would you say were the biggest challenges for you switching from writing prose to writing a comic and that just change in storytelling?
Braxton Cosby (25:50)
Well, I think there is a respect for comic writing that you don’t understand until you do it. Because you have all day, all kind of time to write a novel. You can make it 50,000 words, you can make it 30,000 words, you can make it 75, 100, you can go into 200 if you like. You can take your time telling that story.
Hopefully you’re using some structure with a three act structure or something like that so you just don’t run off the rails with all this narrative and things that you wanna say just because and they have absolutely nothing that drives that story forward. But when you get to comic books, you don’t have that type of time. I’ve written screenplays as well. And you know, know that if it’s a comedy, it’s probably around like an hour and a half, so it’s 90 pages. If you’re do a drama, you can probably get to.
120 pages, if it’s sci-fi, you’re probably in between that 90 to 120. So you know there’s rules to the writing, but the intentionality always has to be there. Every page matters, every scene matters. So when you get to comics, every panel now matters. There’s no throwaways. You can’t just do a panel because you think it looks great. There has to be a reason why that panel’s on that page, and it needs to continue to direct the eye of that reader as they’re moving down that page and when they get to the next one. Then you wanna be skillful at
your setup and your payoff. Because sometimes when you turn that page and that last panel on that one page is giving you something that’s in anticipation of what’s on the next page. So when you turn that page over and you see this boom or whatever is happening, then you’re keeping that reader engaged and they’re moving through that story along with you. But again, we talked about that structure and I’m gonna stick with what I’ve talked to lot of comic writers. They’re like, man, I didn’t do that. That’s crazy. know, I just wrote the story, you know?
Ryan George (27:40)
you
Braxton Cosby (27:40)
But to me, just, again, just the way I’m wired, I want everything to be intentional. I wanna be able to have an objective, meet that objective when I first start off with my summary or my outline of that comic, what we’re going to tackle, what it’s gonna be about. I wanna make sure I’m hitting those buttons and those beats on time. And that comes from, know, intensives ⁓ and courses that I took on screenwriting to make sure that I’m not losing it. I’m not losing the audience.
I think I read somewhere one time that ⁓ Nolan, who worked on the Batman series, he said that after every two pages, somebody needs to get slapped, you know? And it wasn’t necessarily like actual literal slapping, but something has to happen. So you’re waking that audience when we’re back up again, every time when they’re starting to lull a little bit, they wake back up and they’re back into that story again. So I try to do that with my stories as best as I can. And that way,
Ryan George (28:20)
you
Braxton Cosby (28:38)
People are always engaged and they’re not losing focus of where the story’s going. And then hopefully at the end, when I wrap it up with Act Three, it’s either a closed ending where you feel like there’s resolution or it’s an open ending where you know there’s something else coming.
Ryan George (28:51)
Yeah. So now in prose, like you can spend pages like describing a character’s emotions, what they’re feeling, where in comics, like you don’t have that, you can’t afford that time, right? Like, you know, and you only have so much ⁓ to work on certain things. like, with something like that, let’s say if there’s an emotion that you want to convey, how much of that do you leave to the artist to decide versus how much of that do you actually like try to write that out, like as far as directions for the artist?
Braxton Cosby (28:56)
Right. Right.
Right.
no, I’m a very detailed script writer. I’m saying it in here, you know, whatever’s happening in that scene and then we have dialogue, but whatever’s happening in that panel is, if you’re a real true ⁓ comic script writer, ⁓ and I learned this from the art of comic,
book writing is a fantastic book. If any of you ever wanted to get into comic writing, you’ve got to get this book because it breaks down three attraction, but also talks about your role as a writer. You become the director, you become the producer, you become the ⁓ editor, you become the director of photography, which is the biggest role you wear because it’s about all the angles. Is it an over the shoulder shot? Is it a floor up shot? Is it a top down shot? Is it a wide shot? Is it a close up? So I put all that in there and I say,
Ryan George (29:42)
Yep.
Braxton Cosby (30:09)
in this scene, this person, that person and the other are all in this panel. This one looks sad, this one’s very angry, this one’s laughing. You know, gotta put those emotions so you can cue the artist. And even when we worked on Broken, because Broken started off in such a, I think that was a 352 page novel and it was really emotional and powerful. I didn’t wanna lose that just because we were getting into comics. So I really challenged Rob like, hey.
In this scene, I want a close-up. want you to see the bloodshot eyes. I want you to see the emotion. I want to see the tears. I want to see you sweat. So he really, really did an amazing job of bringing those cues together the way I like them. And of course, when you have a great colorist ⁓ like ⁓ Luis Caballero, he was able to give the shadows and the darkness under the eyes to really bring those characters to life. So ⁓ I really feel like that is my role as the writer.
And some people do, pass it on to the artist and that’s fine. But for me, ⁓ I wanna make sure that everything is captured. If I was taking a camera and I was on a closeup of an actor, I have an expectation of how they’re gonna deliver those lines and do that scene. And that’s exactly what I want the artist to do with my drawings.
Ryan George (31:20)
Yeah, that’s a great way to describe it, because you really do become everything, especially like you’re almost like a project manager. You’re really, really wearing a million hats. mean, you kind of answered another question, was like some resources. And I read that book, Articom writing, great book, taught me a lot on how to write. ⁓ So now question, so like, it’s another interesting thing for someone who writes prose. Like, so for me, same, like I started writing, ⁓ you know, writing prose just for myself.
Braxton Cosby (31:24)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah, right, right.
Got to, got to. Mm-hmm.
Ryan George (31:47)
And so the biggest challenge for comic writing, and I think a lot of people have that issue is dialogue, right? Is that you can write as much dialogue as you want on a page, but in a comic, in a panel, you can only fit so much, especially because you don’t want to take away from the art. So this is kind of a dual question. Part one, and that’s specifically interesting for you, part one is how do you manage that? Did you find that difficult or have you found a way to manage that? But the second part is you started your characters and their voices in prose.
Braxton Cosby (31:52)
Yeah.
Right.
Right.
With me.
Ryan George (32:16)
have you been able to adapt that to comics without taking away? Like are there things that let’s say, you have to shorten in the comic because you just have to, to make it work, that maybe you would have made a little bit longer in the book?
Braxton Cosby (32:16)
Right.
Right.
Sure, my mind, I did all the hard work of laying the foundation of certain things in the novel, you know? So I gave a lot of the detail. Hopefully I did my work correctly and I gave you all those details that you need to know about the character. So now you know what? You’re hungry. You’re following me. You’re going along with me. You picked up the novel. You read it. Now you’re ready to move into the comic book. I want to reward you with a lot of action now.
So the whole premise of it’s better to show than tell really comes across in comics. And you also can’t dumb down your audience too and have to tell every little detail. Remember, I’m showing you now. So I don’t have to say Keese was very sad in this scene. You see it on her face. So sometimes I may go a couple of panels where it’s just like the emotional part where she’s just changing and holding her head or running her fingers through her hair. I don’t have to write anything. I’m just showing you. And all of a sudden,
Ryan George (33:05)
Yeah.
Braxton Cosby (33:28)
it might be a dialogue where the words are very shortened, you know? And I remember I had a ⁓ dialogue ⁓ at the end of the first comic with Kisa and this other character. And it was like, I could get real fluffy and start saying, I love you, you were great. And you know, we can, we’re gonna do this together. But it was more like, you know, ⁓ that character said something to Kisa was like, ⁓ you know, I hope you understand what I was, you know, like with the way this scene went.
together, was like he was explaining something and she was like, it was everything. So, her just saying everything tells you everything you need to know. You don’t have to be like, yeah, it was great. I’m so glad you did that. So you gotta go back in and chop up those lines. Like you say, you don’t want to take away from the artwork and you know where you are on the scene. You know, if it’s a small panel, like how am gonna get dialogue into here? So you got to be really creative and go back to those pages after you’ve written them and like visualize again, what is this thing looking like? And can I really, really get away?
with all this dialogue or am I gonna just run it into each other? I did that with my first comic I ever wrote. The pages early on had a lot of because I was trying to bring everybody up to speed. And I felt like that I needed to do that. So I was like, hey, you know, we’re gonna have to just do it. But we made the panels much bigger. And at the time I had worked with an amazing artist named Bruno Abdias. He’s actually working for Marvel now. He does the White Tiger series for Marvel. He got in with DC.
and he did the Cyborg series. So I was very blessed to work with him. And the way he did his panels, he basically opened those bad boys up so much that they weren’t just confined. And I learned how to even do paneling from the way he did it when I gave it to him. And I was like, we can do that. You we could do that with panels, you know? So he was just so good at it that I learned from him as well. So the experience was the best teacher in that case. And so you learn how to play around with the panels to get some things out of it that you.
Ryan George (35:01)
Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Braxton Cosby (35:22)
⁓ couldn’t normally see and that way your dialogue is not dominating everything. This is a visual medium. People need to be able to see it and understand that if you can’t effectively do that, then you probably need to start over on those pages and make sure you’re giving them exactly what is necessary for picking up a comic book.
Ryan George (35:39)
Yeah. Now, ⁓ one of the questions, so obviously we think of people who read novels as one audience and then people read comics as a completely different audience. Did you find that you were able to, have you found so far that you’ve been able to maintain the carryover from people, like were people who read the book and really enjoy the book, are they excited about reading the comic and vice versa? Like when people picked up, maybe picked up a comic, are they excited about going back and reading the book?
Braxton Cosby (35:46)
Mm-hmm.
Right.
All right.
Yeah, you’d be surprised that the majority of people who pick up the novel, know, they’ll come to a comic convention and they’ll say, oh yeah, I said, what do you like to read? And they go, I like comics, you know, and I’ll tell them about the comic. And then they’ll go, but this is the novel? And then they’ll pick up the novel, because for one, they love the cover art, and two, they really want to get that. I’m kind of, we have an initiative with Cosmetic Reduction, it’s called Rediscover Reading.
And that means that we’re always trying to get people to get back into reading again, you know? And I think there is a big transition. That’s why Barzow was opening up more stores again. They’re starting to get more revenue and dollars and people are starting to come back to reading novels because TV and movies are becoming honestly quite predictable. It’s the same rehash with the same big names, like a big name actor and a lot of action sequences and really not a lot of story. And people wanna, I think they want their minds to work a lot more.
Ryan George (36:51)
Yeah.
Braxton Cosby (36:52)
So they’re
reading and they wanna have those images in their mind. They wanna bring those characters’ life in their mind. So now you’ve brought them to visually in your head what you think these characters look like and how they act, think and feel. Now I give you my representation of those characters in the comic. And I think it’s just a nice blend. I think people really like that, being able to kind of move back and forth.
Ryan George (37:11)
Yeah, that’s a really, definitely a fair point. Now, so you decided to write, at least for the novel, as a young adult novel, right? What made you decide to go that route?
Braxton Cosby (37:20)
Mm-hmm.
That’s where I started at, know, young adult science fiction is where I started. I’m a huge fan of young adult sci-fi. I feel like there’s been like a big push away from it where science, where young adult has become a lot more provocative, a lot more, ⁓ dare I say, ⁓ risque, and probably more adult than young, you know? And I read a lot of young adult stuff. Now I’m like, man, they actually trying to say this is young adult? This is adult.
with some young characters, but they doing some adult things, you know, and
Ryan George (37:54)
Yeah
Braxton Cosby (37:58)
I still wanna keep the youth element. I still wanna have that innocence in there, you know, of just young people, just being young people, man, but being thrown into these crazy situations and worlds where the stakes are high, the challenges are almost insurmountable, and they still have to think their way out of it. So I like it, challenges me to be a writer. Like I said, I still have my steel reins, I still got my butt kicking.
adult sci-fi, when I tell people I said, is hardcore sci-fi, you like hard sci-fi? This is exactly what you get. You get all those big technologies and tech stuff and big shifts in action and adult dialogue. You want that, I got that for you as well. But if you really like that young adult stuff, that’s sweet, sincere, but also action packed and you got those little love triangles here and there, you know, weaved in, I’ll give you that as well.
Ryan George (38:47)
Yeah. No, so for people who are, let’s say, starting conventions, what advice would you have for people doing conventions? You mentioned that you do them. You’ve got quite a bit of experience. How would you recommend somebody who’s, let’s say, just their creator, they got their book out, and they’re just beginning the convention circuit? What would some recommendation be for you or from you?
Braxton Cosby (38:56)
out
You are going to work. You are not there to sit behind your table, have your books or comics sit there and somebody will come up to you and you’re waiting for somebody to come up to you and say, ⁓ I like your book, let me buy it. That doesn’t work. You have to talk. You were there for two days, three days. You gotta be working. You gotta stand up on your feet when people come down the aisle. You gotta try to identify people who you think might be interested in a book like yours or sometimes even not. I have had older people stop by and go.
Ryan George (39:07)
Yeah.
Braxton Cosby (39:32)
I wanna get this for my grandson or my granddaughter. I’m glad you stopped me. But if I just saw some old person walk by and go, it’s younger than that, I’m gonna read it. Sometimes it’s not about them. It’s about who they’re gonna take it to. So you gotta be prepared to work. Take you some snacks, get you some water, something to drink, but be prepared to work and not just sit there because you owe it to yourself. You paid for the table. Most likely you paid for a hotel somewhere to stay. You’re traveling there.
Ryan George (39:38)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Braxton Cosby (39:57)
⁓ And you put your work into your books and this is your moment to sell and get somebody excited in what you put together So make sure you do that and don’t miss the opportunities
Ryan George (40:05)
Yeah, no, I totally agree. I think that’s part of me being somebody who’s somewhat introverted, at least when I meet, you know, like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, but it’s true. It’s like, you really, you have to talk to people. And what’s interesting, what I, what I’ve found, cause I’ve just for myself started doing convention the last year is like,
Braxton Cosby (40:10)
Y’all me? I am too. I am too. Don’t get it twisted. I am too. It’s not the easiest thing in the world. you walk by you go, hey, do you like to read? No. Okay. You know?
for you.
Ryan George (40:29)
the just have conversations with people and that sells the books. And I found like the best way to sell your book is just to talk to somebody for 20 minutes and you know, by the end, not even necessarily about the books. Sometimes it’s just like about writing about the process. And then they’re like, you know what? I’m picking this up. and ⁓ yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I know. So yeah, definitely you have to kind of, you got to, got to, there was a guy I’ve talked about this a couple of times. There was a guy that was next to me. The first convention I did, it was inspiring because like,
Braxton Cosby (40:32)
man.
Yeah. Yeah.
Right, right, right. Yeah, hey, I like you. know what, I’m gonna go ahead and I’m gonna support you and then just pick up me going, okay, great, you know.
Ryan George (40:59)
He, every single person that passed, was like a, you know, almost like a cyborg. could see him like scanning them, identifying one thing about them that he would call out. And then he’ll be like, nice shirt. Like, oh, those, those, those sneakers are interesting. I had them in what, like he would just identify something. Boom. And he had a connection with somebody and every, and then he had them and then he had his pitch and you know, I had to hear the same pitch a thousand times, but like you, was like, wow, this guy’s really good. Like he get, you know, he gets it. Like he’s finding everybody that passes by his table.
Braxton Cosby (41:10)
That’s right.
That’s right. Yep. Yep.
Yep. Yep.
Ryan George (41:28)
They’re gonna, he’s gonna connect with them and it’s not just gonna be, you know, and so it’s, it’s interesting to see that how different people interact and engage and, ⁓ you know, yeah, you definitely, like you, when you’re conventions, you have to, you’re like, you have to be very social. Yeah. So, ⁓ tell me, so I always ask, we’ll have a couple, like a little bit out the box questions. not too crazy, but if, so if broken was adapted into a movie, who would you cast as Kessa and the big cat? Who would your, your fan casting be right now?
Braxton Cosby (41:30)
Rest you gotta do.
You have to. It’s a rule,
Oh, Zendaya. If I could get Zendaya to be Kisa, man, it would be a knockout city. I would love that. That would be great. I’m trying to think of who I would do, like Dr. Gregg. I think Dr. Gregg would kind of be like a… I’m trying to think of the guy’s name. Oh!
Ryan George (41:59)
Okay.
Braxton Cosby (42:22)
You know who would be good? It would be… ⁓
the guy who was, he was from Made Men back in the day. Ham. John Ham would be great. It him in a wheelchair. And so I would love to get like Killian Murphy to be Crace. So I have like, you know, I got some people I would put together definitely on a cast that I think will just be Dynamite for that.
Ryan George (42:31)
⁓ okay, it,
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Yeah,
no, absolutely. You know, it’s always fun to kind of like, know, fan, you know, fan cast, your castor on, who would be good for these roles? ⁓ So now tell me ⁓ what’s like, what are you promoting right now? What’s up next? I you mentioned the fourth, like kind of comic book or novel with the comic, but I guess tell listeners like what’s coming up, what you have, where can people find your current work?
Braxton Cosby (42:50)
Absolutely.
Right.
Right, well right now, like I said, we’re still in the main flow of broken. These two issues, the latest one is ⁓ the graphic novel came out. ⁓ That was the latest one this year. So those are out right now. I’m Obviously, ⁓ the sequel to Cape. So like I said, had the first one was done by Bruno Abdias. And you see his work on that cover there is amazing. That was Cape one issue one, that was Hellfire.
Ryan George (43:30)
Yeah.
Braxton Cosby (43:33)
And then as I went through all my novels and they finished up all those characters, finished up their story arc, there was a passing of the mantle down to the young folks, kind of like a young justice and teen titans called the Fabulous Five. So this is the latest issue of the Cape. So that one’s out right now. That was done by Marcelo Salazar. He does an amazing job with those characters as well. Like I said, we are a publisher that publishes other artists, authors.
So I served as a line editor and a producer behind this bad boy, which is Nexus Astrum written by Chris McCauley. He’s written on the Babylon five comic book series as well as the Stoker universe. So this is our first foray into manga. So there’s a ⁓ companion novel that goes along with this too. So yeah, this one is great. Big fighting robots. If you love that, that’s available now. And then ⁓ one of our latest crazy ⁓
IPs is called ANVK African Ninja Vampire Killers. that was kind of like on the TMNT. That was written by Kyle Champion. And a lot of people love this one just came out and we’re already working on issues two and three right now. I’m co-writing with him because we’re doing a little bit of that cross pollinate, pollination where I have one of my characters who is traveling back in time.
Ryan George (44:36)
Okay.
Yeah.
Braxton Cosby (44:57)
and is gonna hook up with those, with the three guys from A &VK and kind of hang with them for a couple of issues before they go forward into actually teaming up with the Capes, with the young Fabulous Five in the future. So it’s a lot, a lot of crazy stuff. I have an IP special project. Everybody be on the lookout. October 7th, I’m gonna have the cover reveal for my latest series that’s gonna dive, it’s gonna be an intro.
to my new new series that I’m doing, which is based in feudal Japan. So just kind of be on the lookout. ⁓ If you wanna follow us on Instagram, it’s Cosby Media Productions. ⁓ It’s also Braxton A Cosby and it’s Star Child underscore comics. Or you can just go to our website, www.cosbymediaproductions.com. All our social media links are there as well. And you know.
Peruse what we have. We sell all of our comic books online if you want to pick one up. you know, hey, if you’re interested in good original storytelling by some talented artists, I mean authors and some fabulous artists, you’re going to come to the right place and you’re going to find something that you really like at Cosmetic Productions, I guarantee it.
Ryan George (46:13)
Well, Braxton, this was great. I can’t wait to have you back on, as the next stuff is coming up. I love these conversations where it’s informative, get the creative process, but also there’s a lot of stuff that creators can really take from. So really, it’s great to have you on and look forward to having you on in the future.
Braxton Cosby (46:19)
Please.
Absolutely. Thank you.
And thanks a lot for having me. I’ll definitely be coming back with that new IP. You’re going to love it.
Ryan George (46:36)
Awesome, thanks.
00:00 The Creative Origin Story
03:23 Transitioning to Self-Publishing
06:19 The Journey into Comics
09:17 Balancing Creativity and Business
12:15 Creating ‘Broken’: A Dystopian Narrative
14:26 Writing from a Female Perspective
16:10 Challenges of Comic Writing
29:02 The Art of Comic Writing
31:20 Dialogue Dynamics in Comics
35:22 Bridging Novels and Comics
37:23 Young Adult Literature and Its Evolution
38:22 Navigating the Convention Circuit
41:20 Casting Dreams: Adapting ‘Broken’ to Film
42:22 Upcoming Projects and Future Endeavors
46:38 The Portable Hole Podcast Outro.mp4
Keywords
Braxton Cosby, comic books, publishing, storytelling, indie publishing, dystopian fiction, character development, conventions, creative process, hybrid publishing
Summary
In this conversation, Braxton Cosby shares his journey as a creator, from his unexpected calling to write in 2011 to establishing his own publishing company, Cosmeteor Productions. He discusses the transition from traditional publishing to indie publishing, emphasizing the importance of self-marketing and creative control. Braxton delves into the intricacies of storytelling, character development, and the unique challenges of adapting prose into comic format. He also highlights his latest work, ‘Broken,’ a dystopian narrative, and offers valuable advice for new creators navigating the convention circuit.
Takeaways
- Braxton’s journey into writing began unexpectedly in 2011.
- He founded Cosmeteor Productions to gain creative control over his work.
- The importance of self-marketing in indie publishing cannot be overstated.
- Braxton emphasizes the need for intentionality in comic book writing.
- He aims to create relatable characters for young readers.
- The transition from prose to comics requires a different storytelling approach.
- Braxton’s work in ‘Broken’ reflects contemporary societal issues.
- Engaging readers across different mediums enhances storytelling.
- Conventions require active engagement with potential readers.
- Braxton’s future projects include a new series set in feudal Japan.
Sound Bites
- “I want everything to be intentional.”
- “It’s better to show than tell.”
- “I want to keep the youth element.”
Chapters
00:00
The Creative Origin Story
03:06
Transitioning to Self-Publishing
06:02
The Journey into Comics
09:00
Balancing Creativity and Business
11:58
Creating ‘Broken’: A Dystopian Narrative
14:09
Writing from a Female Perspective
14:25
NEWCHAPTER
16:21
Challenges of Comic Writing
28:41
The Art of Comic Writing
30:59
Dialogue Dynamics in Comics
35:01
Bridging Novels and Comics
37:02
Young Adult Literature and Its Evolution
38:01
Navigating the Convention Circuit
40:59
Casting Dreams: Adapting ‘Broken’ to Film
41:56
Upcoming Projects and Future Endeavors