HOT WINGS a NSFW Comicbook From David Campiti

We recently had the opportunity to speak with David Campiti the CEO of Glass House Studios, an animation and illustration studio with offices in the USA, Canada, Philippines, Brazil, India, Indonesia, and Italy. He has also worked as a publisher, editor-in-chief, and publishing consultant. Among his many writing credits is Stan Lee's How to Draw Comics with the legendary co-creator of the Marvel Universe as well as  The Marvel Art of Mike Deodato. We chatted with him about his current (adult) Kickstarter comicbook, HOT WINGS.

As creator/author David Campiti hadn’t planned on writing a NSFW comic book about demons and angels for Kickstarter. He’d been content with running crowdfunders selling classic comicbook racks, updating and collecting existing projects (Jade Warriors, Skyclad), continuing series he and his wife Jinky Coronado started decades ago (Banzai Girl, Exposure), or offering up prestige projects by a superstar artist (The Mike Deodato Sketchbook, The Cartoon Art of Mike Deodato).

Then David released one of his favorite projects, the new all-ages adventure graphic novel  Thundersaurs. It was big (treasury edition-sized!) and bold (complete with film designs and storyboards!) and had the massive appeal of Jumanji, Jurassic World, and Land of the Lost in its DNA and the response was…underwhelming. “I’d produced exactly the type of exciting all-ages graphic novel retailers and parents said they wanted, in a big can’t-miss-it size that store owners told me would make it stand out. Then stores don’t order it. Parents didn’t buy it on Kickstarter. We hit our minimum goal, but the project didn’t really fly.”

So, what next? David looked around for something inspiring for Kickstarter and found heavenly guidance. Or perhaps it was from the other place. “I wanted to do something polar opposite of my last project. Instead of kid-friendly, make it NSFW—‘Not Safe For Wife,’ as a friend of mine calls it.”

David had previously ventured into stories about angels and devils three decades ago, with a project called Angel Heat: The Ninth Order, for which only a single issue appeared. “That story dovetailed into a cross-over with my Exposure series at Image Comics, but because Angel Heat didn’t continue, the big payoff wasn’t there.”

When he started thinking about a new project, David came across Cliff Richards’ published and unpublished art for Angel Heat and remembered how much he liked Cliff’s designs for the angel. That became his starting point. David turned to his wife for visual support, and Jinky drew the first image of what became the series’ inspirational drawing for HOT WINGS. “It had all the elements—three angels battling a huge female devil erupting out of the street.”

For a series title, David chose the tastiest, spiciest name he could think of—HOT WINGS. “The heat of hell, angels and demons with wings, and hot in the ‘sexy babe’ approach, as well. It was certainly on-the-nose in that sense, but I thought it was a damned funny name for a government-mandated team of heavenly heroes.” David said.

With Cliff Richards busy drawing Isom and Jinky focusing on cover work, David turned to artist Mel Joy San Juan, who drew the first few pages of the story before another project claimed her schedule. So, David called artist Dave Santana, his partner-in-crime for one Goddess Girls and three Heroes in Training graphic novels at Simon and Schuster. Well-received by Kickstarter and WhatNot buyers for his sexy hit adventure comics The Devil’s Misfits, Double Impact, Jinkies: Supernatural Investigations, Dave had also drawn Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse for Disney, Justice League Unlimited for DC, and other stories for Playboy,

“Demons, angels, police, a powerful clandestine government organization, the ultimate villain, and sexy girls! How could I not love drawing this?” said Dave Santana. He brings to HOT WINGS a style at once fresh and new yet reminiscent of Marc Silvestri and J. Scott Campbell.

At its hellish core, HOT WINGS is about a blue winged alien who comes to Earth on a holy mission—only to be captured by the American government for study. After a literal demon erupts from the Earth, the discovery is made that the blue alien’s lifeblood can transform damaged, discarded, forgotten test subjects into angels for the good of mankind—not to mention for political expedience—the story is off and running. “This is easily the most mean-spirited set of people I’ve ever written, so it’s worlds away from my Thundersaurs or Exposure or any of those kinds of projects,” said David. Given how his Glass House Graphics agency in decades past was the art supplier for Lady Death, Purgatori, and many other such comics, it’s not surprising that David gets the vibe.

As with most Glass House-developed projects, HOT WINGS involved more “skull sweat” than the average comic book. “My script had piles and piles of notes and references to help Dave [Santana] develop characters and environments,” said David. “Even my notes to colorist Rohvel Yumul and letterer Keith Gleason were pretty extensive. From creating various corner silhouette graphics in each narrative caption to having the space angel speak in Aramaic, because in print that looks like ‘alien dialogue’ to contemporary comics readers.”

Will HOT WINGS eventually tie back into David’s earlier Exposure and Angel Heat series? “Anything’s possible,” David said, after a lengthy pause. “Though telling the most exciting story now is far more important than a long-forgotten continuity.”

For its crowdfunder, now running on Kickstarter, HOT WINGS features such unusual rewards as 3-D mouse pads (a dozen different, all designed by Jinky Coronado) offered as “the best place to rest your hands”. Besides, the primary HOT WINGS covers from Dave Santana are regular, triptych, foil, and metal covers from Joe Bennett, Jinky Coronado, Mike DeBalfo, Brian Miroglio, Giusi Lo Piccolo, Jenna Powell, and Silvio Spotti.

The HOT WINGS Kickstarter direct link: https://shorturl.at/oMQYe

I'm Stan Lee, and you're not! Stan Lee's How to Draw Superheroes

For those of you too young to get the subtle joke behind the title of this particular post, it should be read in your best Chevy Chase voice. 

The reason I get to say this is that bask in 2011, my good friend, David Campiti, passed my name along to the folks over at Dynamite Entertainment, as someone who would be able to contribute to the company’s third volume of Stan Lee books (the first two were Stan Lee’s How to Draw Comics and Stan Lee’s How to Write Comics). The book to which I contributed four chapters, was entitled, Stan Lee’s How to Draw Superheroes, and it came out in 2012; published by Penguin/Random House. 

Then in June of 2016 I received the opportunity to contribute to contribute to yet a fourth book, Stan Lee’s Master Class, where I penned another four chapters. That book went on sale ion Nov 26, 2019.  

Finally, in Dec. of 2020 I (finally) reached out to Penguin/Random House and arranged to received my comp copies of Master Class. Surprisingly they also sent me additional comp copies of How to Draw Superheroes. Further, I was also able to purchase (at a discount) supplementary copies of both books (which hopefully will arrive soon.

After some 30+ years of professional writing I’ve achieved some level of professional achievements, and feel that my being able to contribute to both of these books ostensibly “written” by the man who’s writing  — quite literally — got me into comics in the first place, was one of the coolest projects to which I’ve ever contributed. 

Excelsior! 

Who says Comics are dying?

 Not us, for sure. We recently spoke to David Campiti founder of Glass House Graphics, and  former publisher of Innovation Publishing (that gave us comics ranging from adaptions of Anne Rice’s novels Interview with the Vampire, The Vampire Lestat, and Queen of the Damned. Piers Anthony’s Incarnations of Immortality, On a Pale Horse; the TV series Dark Shadows, Quantum Leap, Beauty and the Beast and Lost in Space; as well as the movie series Child’s Play, A Nightmare on Elm Street and others. Some of Innovation’s original series included Angel Heat; Dangerous Secrets; Dream Angel; The Experimentals;  Al Rio’s Exposure; Galaxy Girl; Greylore;  Kevin Juaire’s Hero Alliance; Legends of the Stargrazers; and Mike Barr’s The Maze Agency). In it’s day, Innovation was the #4 comics publisher in market share, after Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse. With Glass House Graphics he represented numerous artists that worked for many of those same companies.

Well, he was telling us about a very cool company called Red Giant that is looking to, well essentially re-invent, revive, and completely resuscitate the comicbook industry. Now while this may sound like a very noble cause, we too were wondering how Dave and Red Giant plan on doing this, and well, what he told us came as something of a surprise. Red Giant is looking to develop its properties for not only the comicbook market but for other media as well; such as movies, video games, television, novels, toys, apparel and telephone wireless applications. Currently the company has a number of such properties that it is publishing on the web as web comics, but plans to reverse-engineer itself and go to print, producing a million copies of comics on a weekly bases that can be distributed free of charge in comicbook shops but elsewhere across the country.

Yes, you read that right, a million copies, weekly, free of charge.

Recently, the company was written up in not only  The Orlando Business Journal (several times), but the  The New York Times as well. Personally, while we are admittedly a tad skeptical of their plans, we totally love that they are seriously attempting to “put their money where their corporate mouth is” and give their plan the old college try.

As we have come to learn, they did an IPO last year, as a penny stock, and turned a very nice profit. Now they are working out the next steps to realizing their very noble (as far as we are concerned) business plan.

Needless to say, we wish them the very best of luck in their endeavor, because we know as well as anyone that — while comicbook characters are doing box-office business at both the movies and in the videogames industry, comicbooks themselves are experiencing something of a downturn in numbers of comics printed every month. Hopefully, Red Giant’s plan will play out and  we will get to experience yet another golden age of comics.

Comics done Stan Lee Style

Hey kids, if you are looking for a wicked-cool book on how to draw Comics, then perhaps you'll want to check out Stan Lee’s How to Draw Comics. Yeah yeah, I know that Stan never really drew any comics, but that really doesn’t matter, because Stan’s name is virtually synonymous with comics. Anyways, I want to clue you in to this cool book because my good friend David Campiti (ghosted, edited, packaged, produced?) it (not exactly sure what part Dave had in getting the book published, but I know that it was “his” baby).

Anyways, here is a clip of Stan plugging it on Craig Ferguson’s TV show.



No go out and buy several copies! (how’s that, Dave?)