Chip Zdarsky Talks Public Domain

On this episode, Chip Zdarsky pulls no punches. He’s dishing out tough love left and right. But actually we’re doing a deep dive on his newly release trade of Public Domain. Public Domain started on his substack but is now in print with Image comics.

In Public Domain, Syd Dallas is responsible for pop culture's greatest hero: THE DOMAIN! But his sons Miles and David have a complicated relationship with both the creation and their creator. Can they convince their dad to fight for their family's legacy?

Chip Zdarsky and Dan go through the first volume of the series to talk about it all. We spend some time talking about his substack and the community he built there. It’s the first time on the show we’ve had the chance to discuss the platform move with one of the big names who switched over. We discuss if the community is built more on past fans or if it actually attracted new ones.

Chip Zdarsky gets into the real meat of the book which heavily revolves around the comic book medium itself. The story itself deals with creator rights and royalties so we take some time to really get into that with discussions about creator owned work versus doing something for the big 2.

We talk about the development of the series and it's characters. The topics of family and the dynamics of the creators of the series share with one another.

We also get into how Chip Zdarsky did everything for this book and what it was like as a creator to do something solo. Chip talks about his collaborators of the past and talks a bit about the process of making Sex Criminals with Matt Fraction.

We also get into his Spider-Man, Batman, and Daredevil work but we try to stay to discussing Public Domain which you should pick up now from Image!