Q&A with Midnight (September 2021) (Patreon)

—Who is your favorite character to write, Reena or Madison? Which do you relate to more?

That’s a tough one. Honestly, I enjoy writing them equally (I know, not the most exciting answer). What makes Reena/Madison both so much fun is that they’re such radically different personalities—in many ways the polar opposites of one another. If placed in the same situation, both would think/speak/react vastly different, and that’s always a treat to write. A writer never really wants two characters in the same scene who are so similar their dialogue choices or reactions are interchangeable.

As far as who I relate to more, I think I fall somewhere in the middle. As much as I’d like to be endlessly optimistic like Reena—that’s usually not the case. But, thankfully, I don’t think I’m as cynical as Madison (on most days, anyway)!

—I’m not asking for you to give anything away or go into spoilers but how many chapters will Horror High be? You said it could be the longest arc yet. Just curious. I really like where this story’s going and I'm excited by the idea of a longer plot line.

The plan is for Horror High to be around five or six chapters — but it could be a little less/maybe a little more. Originally, when it was still in the concept stage, I envisioned Horror High as only two chapters. Later, after mapping out the plot outline, I realized how much I wanted to expand the story without shortchanging any of the characters. There’s also a lot of subplots in Horror High, which really sets it apart from many of the previous chapters. 

—Any release dates for the new projects you mentioned? Maybe a hint? Are all the stories connected to Danger Zone One? And will they be posted on the DZO site or just on Patreon?

No definite release dates yet, unfortunately. But both Sailor Justice and The White Wraith are progressing well and there’s a very good chance one of them will launch before the end of the year. There’s also a possibility that both will launch before January—but that’s very tentative.

The White Wraith takes place in the same continuity as Danger Zone One. Sailor Justice is its own story, unrelated to DZO.

As for where the comics will be uploaded, both will have their own sites and update once-per-week.

—What happened to the Danger Zone Onesies? Will we ever see more of those?

We’re currently working on new ones and I’m hopeful we’ll release one or two next month. They’re going to be a bit different from the previous Danger Zone Onesies, however. These will be in the 4-koma format.

—Any favorite manga artists?

Whenever I answer something like this, I always come up with a dozen more artists an hour later that I forgot to mention :D

But the manga artists that immediately spring to mind at this moment are:

Kenichi Sonoda (Gunsmith Cats), Masamune Shirow (Appleseed), Yoshikazu Yasuhiko (Venus Wars), Shoji Sato (Triage X), Go Nagai (Devilman), and Takeshi Obata (Death Note).

A few others are:

Satoshi Urushihara — Though I like his manga work, I’m an even bigger fan of his character designs, especially on Legend of Lemnear and Plastic Little.

Masayuki Taguchi — His work on the Battle Royale manga is simply mind-blowing. That attention to detail…

Akira Toriyama — There’s no way I could not mention Toriyama. The sense of “speed” in his art style is always impressive, along with the character designs and inventive structuring of his panels. I can re-read those early Dragon Ball chapters over and over.

And I’m sure there are countless others I'm forgetting!