Thread "PodKISSt interview" in forum "KISS 4K Webcomic: Feedback"

Posted at 3:07PM, Jul. 4, 2008

Great interview, you did awesome. On the KISSfaq forum there are already several people saying it makes them curious to check out the series.

Also weird, but in a cool way, to hear how your voice sounds.

Also cool you mention me as the big Vinnie fan :)

But I'm not a huge Vinnie fan. Just thought it'd be cool to see his character in a KISS comic.

Also, you say you can't do it because of legal issues. But as I understand it, it was Paul whom designed the Vinnie make-up and it's owned by KISS. Vinnie started wearing the make-up to conventions in 1997, but then got a cease-and-desist from Gene and Paul (meaning he'd get sued if he did it again.

Plus, the make-up pops up in the background on more than one occasion in the Psycho Circus comic. So, I don't think it be that big of a problem to use the make-up.

Or can you shed some more light on this?

Posted at 2:07AM, Jul. 6, 2008

I may have confused you with another guy who emailed me about putting Vinnie's makeup in the comic. I wouldn't be surprised if I did. Ken and I got going in that interview to the point where I was talking faster than I could think at times. :D

The US Patent Office's website shows that the patent for Vinnie's makeup is actually owned by Vinnie himself. He also owns Eric Carr's fox design. There was a link in the KissFAQ forum a year or so ago. Might've been another forum…I can't recall at the moment.

I was going to ask Dan at Platinum about it, because I kinda wanted to use it in a scene in Issue 10. However, I made a last-minute change to Issue 8 that shuffled a lot of stuff around in Issues 9, 10 and 11–to the point where I might not have the room to show that scene at all.

Last-minute rewrites are like that. It's kind of like dropping a pebble into a pond: the ripples keep spreading out further and further.

See, in a previous draft of the script for #8, She ran away from Alick and her infected family by popping out on Earth, but she didn't end up in Kiss HQ. She ended up somewhere else entirely, where she ran into Lester. As I was getting closer to that scene, I liked it less and less.

At the (very) last minute, I said to myself, "Man, it would be a lot more exciting if she suddenly appeared at 4K Headquarters!" I'm still rewriting parts of later issues as a result. ;)

In general, I try to stay away from talking about the legal parts of this job. Seems to me like it detracts from the fun too much. But it's a valid question you have here, and I hope I answered it coherently enough.

I'm half-asleep right now…it's 3 a.m.! So I might not have made much sense. :D