Greg Pak.

Yeah.

And at the end of my issues, we basically kept talking, saying, "Hey, man, we should...

This was really good.

We should totally do something, create our own together." And the thing is, I'll be honest with you, I heard that from pretty much every single writer I've ever worked with.

[laughs] And then, like, things just never get done because it's just something you say because you had a good experience, right? And but, like, then we, among other things, we discover that we lived in Brooklyn very, very, very close to each other.

So Fred actually is, like, one of the...

Wow.

that one?

it's uh basically um it's not only it is about vampire the pirates and vampires but also we were very adamant from the beginning that we didn't just want to make like you know uh we didn't want to get a pirate book and put vampire vampires in there because i am i believe that uh by setting this in a our own world we really really did something different so basically uh it's uh it looks like a period piece because we decided that basically it's a book uh that's in very inspired visually by uh a span of different uh age of piracy eras that they can go like between the 1600 and like it goes until Victorian stuff because of course it's not just a pirate movie it's also a vampire book so it's not just a pirate book it's also a vampire book so to me that kind of gothic fiction immediately scream Victorian Victorian era so we wanted to have something really fresh and to me the the the absolute keyword or at least it's like the filter that i see the whole book through is like pulp I'm in love with those turn of the century pop magazines like Amazing Tales, Weird Tales, Amazing Stories, stuff like that.

And I really wanted something that has that vibe.

And basically what we do is we have this alien world in which the dominant species are all vampires.

and there are human we call them you i actually don't know if the in the book we actually call them human i don't remember like they're human for like lack of a better words but since this is a alien or the world that they're technically not human but like the known vampires let's say they are actually the majority they outnumber the vampire by five to one let's say but uh You know, vampire, like, I really like what Fred always says, that one thing we don't buy about vampire literature or any vampire story is how, you know, vampire, they spend their whole existence, their whole, like, centuries of existence, like, hiding in a castle or in a crypt somewhere.

Like, they would absolutely fucking rule the world if they existed because they're predators and we are like cows for them.

So I think this is really a cool spin because this is a world in which basically vampires are the ruling class.

awesome and luca what about for you in drawing and taking those references maybe from your favorite vampire pirate

[laughs]

... you know, uh, there is a ruling class, and they have to basically rule over this population that is a vampire, but also these other people that have, you know, they have no interest in being food, but they are, it's better than being, you know, uh, tortured or brutalized.

And it's, uh, the whole thing is like about, uh, basically as, uh, Fred mentioned at the beginning, uh, the, our protagonist, she was the empress and she's dethroned.

Uh, there, there's a coup in which they basically, uh, take power.

And one of the reason is also because they thought that she was gonna be, that she was being too soft with the, with the humans.

Okay.

So it's like, uh, i- i- it's a lot of political intrigue and I don't know, I think it's, um, I think it's, it's something that you don't see often when you think about vampirates or, uh, vampires because it's, uh, it's, um, I think the...

When, when you f- when f- when I first read the treatment that Fred sent me, I thought I was, you know what, maybe this is a bit unnecessary because it's like vampirates, it's vampires and pirates.