Geek Syndicate Issue 5 | Page 49

Geek Syndicate
from this. If I have to go back to consulting, that’s fine. But I’ll have never wondered ‘what if’. And I think I’ll still keep making comics because there is demand for it.” How does Neil’s wife feel about his new career path? “My wife is incredibly supportive,” he says. “She has complete faith in me that its gonna be successful because she sees the fan reaction every day and how it is growing.” Now with three volumes of Twisted Dark, and the first issues of Tortured Life and Tabitha under his belt with more work to come, where next for Mr Gibson and T Publications? The first job: balancing the books and getting the company properly on its feet. “I don’t expect to break even for the next two years but the number of followers we have is growing exponentially,” says Neil. “The reviews we have are fantastic. We’ve got celebrity endorsements. I don’t anticipate making a profit for another year or year-and-a-half. But I’m fully convinced it’s going to happen. Our sales figures are just increasing. We sell more at conventions than anyone else in the world. At New York and Toronto we sell more than anyone else, not just at the London conventions.” After that Neil has more ideas of his own to unleash, including diversifying into other genres under the ‘Twisted’ anthology banner - throwing around possible future titles like Twisted Sci-Fi, Twisted Fantasy, and the forthcoming Twisted Light. Cynics might say that this is a very business perspective but Neil disagrees. “Ultimately I only write stories that I think are interesting and I like lots of different genres.” He also plans to one day be able to take on other writers and make T Publications into a full on publisher of comics that aren’t just his own work. “In the short term it’s [probably] going to be Twisted Dark Presents. We’ll be looking at doing this in about a year and a half. It will be an expanded universe where stories have to tie in with other stories but its written by other people.” Speaking of expanded universes, you wouldn’t believe how much thought Neil has put into linking all of the stories in his Twisted Dark series together, even going so far as compiling a massive spiderdiagram to keep it all in check. “All the stories [in Twisted Dark] connect. Some are so subtle and some are very obvious. The different art styles confuse it as well because you don’t necessarily realise that character is the same person. Every single story has multiple connections. Even when you reread [the series], even after the third volume, you will be amazed at how many connections you didn’t get, and when you get to volume eight you
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Image © GT Publications, 2011

for my last project. Long term I didn’t think it was a good thing to be [doing] because you keep travelling so much. It also coincided with the fact that the comics’ responses were great. “ He continues, “Even though I liked my job – I love comics. I was luckier than most in that I liked [my consulting job] but I thought: ‘if I took a gamble – and it is a big gamble – if it pays off, every single day of my life is a holiday. Every single day. That’s worth taking a risk.’ I’m putting my life savings into this and it’s going very well but I was terrified before I made the decision to actually do it. But I decided to do this and I’m going for it. If it pays off its totally worth the gamble, and even if it doesn’t its worth it all. Because I get so many fan mails