Get to know the creator of ‘Seven Years in Darkness’ Joseph Schmalke

Article and photo by Colleen Bement, Editor

Another Fan Expo Denver is in the books, and Nerd Alert News had a blast checking out all of the fun. We also had the chance to chat with Joseph Schmalke, the creator behind Midnight Factory Press. This comics creator, writer, and illustrator is loved for his focus on horror, sci-fi, and the bizarre with popular comics like Seven Years in Darkness, We Don’t Kill Spiders, and Prophets of Doom, Cherry Blackbird, and more. His artwork has been featured on variant covers for Image Comics, Boom! Studios, Vault Comics, Mad Cave, Behemoth/Sumerian Comics, Source Point Press, Archie Comics, IDW, and his artwork on exclusive Marvel Entertainment merchandise. Get to know Joseph Schmalke. His road to fame is certainly worth the read.

Colleen Bement: Welcome to Colorado. What are you releasing for Fan Expo Denver?

Joseph Schmalke: It sold out already! I got bombarded here on day one from people in the area who have never been able to see me before. I had a Something is Killing the Children 42 Variant, and it’s gone. Of course when you’re traveling you can only bring so much. The newest thing on the table is Seven Years in Darkness Year three, #1. 

CB: The title that caught my eye was a book about the necromancer witch and the Viking. I love all things Viking! Tell me more about this one.

JS: Growing up, me and my father bonded over certain comic books and the ones we gravitated to the most were stories like Conan the Barbarian, Red Sonya, so I always liked that idea. But I’m more of a grounded person. That’s in Hyborian, which is this mythological time and space, and I was like what age is closest to that that I would want to tell a story. Originally when I started writing this it was modern day, but I was like man, that’s so lame. I hate drawing cell phones and guns and all this other crap. I wanted swords and sorcery. I was out for a walk, and I think it was Heilung trance music, and I was like…it’s a Viking story! That’s exactly what happened. The Viking age. That’s the sweet spot for me. I could avoid all that modern day crap that takes you out of the illusion of fantasy. I think that’s why you see things like “Stranger Things” taking place in the 80s because kids today couldn’t go on that adventure. They’d just Google search it and that’d be the end of it. So it’s in the early Viking age. It’s in a region that really existed. There is this small community and there’s a series of murders. So they send of this learned man–there was no such thing as a detective–and immediately they’re pointing their fingers at this outcast–this witch, but everybody utilizes her. Then you find out the story behind her and the community that she works with. She’s the last follower of this forgotten god and her totem is a spider. That’s where the title comes from. “We Don’t Kill Spiders” because that’s her god.

CB: What was your first professional published book?

JS: That was The Calamitous Black Devils that came out in 2014 or 2015. It’s been a minute. That’s out of print. When it pops up on second places like eBay, it goes for a couple hundred. The issues are super rare. That was the start of me having a publishing deal through Broke Icon Comics. After I did that book I joined with a studio called Split Decision Comics with Ben Bishop, Ryan Wing and Dylan Andrews. It was this collective of all of us working out what we were going to do next, and where we wanted to function in comic books. I decided that I was going to stick with the thing that I love which is horror. I had done portfolio reviews with Marvel and DC, and made pitches to them, but they were not into the idea of me both writing and drawing the ideas that I had, so at the time Kickstarter was a viable way to produce a product. Basically we were road-warrioring around selling our books by hand. Eventually I met with the president of Scout Comics and they took a liking to my book Cherry Blackbird which was my third graphic novel. They really liked it but they wouldn’t touch it with a ten foot pole because it was too adult. They said can you develop something that’s for all ages, and at the time I had just quit my job as an engineer at ABC News. I had gone into being a full time artist, and Rich Woodall in New Hampshire had been talking about collaborating on something. I pitched him on my idea for The Electric Black, and so we developed that book, and Scout had us do eight pages and Scout slipped it into all submissions to different Hollywood agencies at San Diego that year. They had to sign us. The Electric Black came out and it was a big hit on the indie market and then Horror became my niche. I stuck with it because that’s what I’m passionate about. That’s what I want to do. I worked on a toy property that was sort of sci-fi/horror adjacent called Phantom Starkiller. Scout gave us the opportunity to have our own imprint, and I put out Cherry Blackbird and that became the top selling book that has ever come out from the company. 

CB: And they didn’t want it!

JM: Then we left Scout, and I spent a couple of years developing my own works. I started working on Seven Years in Darkness. I had independently put that into several comic book shops, and that caught the attention of the owner of Comics Experience Publishing, and we signed a deal together for a couple of years. Now, me and my wife a year and a month ago launched Midnight Factory Press. We started out own LLC and our books started out this year on the direct market. We’re independent publishers putting out our own work.

CB: How does that feel? It must be a lot of work.

JM: One of the publishers at A&M Comics is a close friend of mine. We worked together pretty closely when he was one of the publishers at Scout. We maintained that relationship and now we’re both publishing. Our companies started at the same time. We’re competition, but it’s friendly competition. It’s great to have people like that where we can toss ideas back and forth. I’ve built relationships with shops. Having fans is great, but shops are your customers. They pick up your books and sell them for you. We have a really unique with Midnight Factory in Australia, in particular. There’s a whole publishing unit of us. He handles Australia, New Zealand, and Asia. Now we have this huge market over there. 

CB: All that happened because you went independent.

JM: Yup. Because when you are independent, it’s all about pivoting. This industry is always changing. Everybody always says the sky is falling. It’s not. You have to follow where the money’s going, and how the market’s reacting. 

CB: Do you still find time to create?

JM: I’m like my own worst boss. This year we went really hard on the convention circuit. It’s one of these things like we’re trying to get the word out about our products. It’s important to show up and meet people face to face. You get something at these shows that you don’t get just online purchasing something. You can ask questions, you can watch the artist draw the characters you love.

CB: It’s personal.

JM: It is more personal that way and I try to do that. I try to do two shows on the West Coast every year, two shows in the Midwest, two shows in the South, and the rest are in the East because I can drive there. Now I’m having to work weekends to sort of catch up with my deadlines. I’m writing other books that I have other artists working on with me. In October, we have a brand new book coming out called One Last Trick and that’s being illustrated and painted by J.K. Woodward. He does work with IDW, Marvel, Heavy Metal Magazine. His works have been “Doctor Who,” “Star Trek,” “The World on the Edge of Tomorrow.” He does lifelike portraiture of Shatner, Nimoy, and stuff like that. Beautiful stuff. Getting to work with an artist of that caliber is really awesome. One Last Trick is about a cybernetic escort who uncovers a plot by the corporation that creator her to enslave humanity.

CB: Sounds kind of Blade Runner-ish.

JM: Very cyberpunk-dystopian, and actually one of the variant covers, he wants to do homage posters to certain films and issue one’s homage is “Blade Runner.” You picked up on that. Then we have Murder Hobo, which is interesting. It always gets compared to “Rick and Morty,” but “Rick and Morty” is a lot more intelligent. This book is really dumb. It’s about the worst mercenaries in the lands of high adventure, and they come together to form a heroes for hire. It looks like it’s going to be action-packed, but most of the first issue is them trying to figure out who gave the other one pink eye. They’re all kind of degenerate low-lives. It’s a funny book. That’s drawn by Ryan G. Brown. The amount of detail and background stuff that’s going on is incredible. I’ve been working with him on the series for a couple years now. So, we have that coming out next year. We’ve been making the issues and not releasing them because I needed to give him a long runway because, again, he’s doing so much detail, it might take him a year. When we have four issues done, then we’ll put it out. We’ve got a bunch of previous issues for it already that were done by different artists. There are actually a couple of stories done by other people like Stephen Lavigne from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Jarrett Melendez who does a lot of interesting cookbooks like Chef’s Kiss that was Eisner-award nominated. And he’s doing something with Kim-Joy. The final book that I have coming out with another artist is Amanda Kahl. She lives up in my neck of the woods, and does a lot of fantasy role-playing and cyberpunk gaming art.

We look forward to Midnight Factory Press’s next projects!

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