Tag: Dean Haspiel

Pop Culture SquadCast Live with Special Guest Dean Haspiel

Pop Culture SquadCast Live with Special Guest Dean Haspiel

In the latest live episode of the Pop Culture SquadCast, our hosts Mike Gold and Bob Harrison will talk with writer, artist, cartoonist, playwright, filmmaker, and heck of a good guy, Dean Haspiel.

Our Guest:

Dean Haspiel is well know for his web comic The Red Hook Saga on Webtoon.com. He has worked with Harvey Pekar on the American Splender comic and Jonathan Ames on The Alcoholic. He was an early adopter of the mass appeal of online comics and used it to cultivate projects like his Billy Dogma stories. He is currently working on Covid Cop which is a kickstarter campaign that is still going on.

You can watch the stream below, and we are also broadcasting live on our Facebook and YouTube pages.

Blackout: The Latest Season of the New Brooklyn Saga is on Webtoons

Blackout: The Latest Season of the New Brooklyn Saga is on Webtoons

What do you do when your Psychotic Vigilante Mother gets hold of an Apocalypse Sword?

Comic creator Dean Haspiel has been working on his original metaphysical superhero story The New Brooklyn Saga for a few years now, and the fourth season has just premiered on Webtoons.com.

The latest installment is called Blackout. Here is how Dean describes the new season:

When The Green Point’s apocalypse sword is reactivated by the malice of The Coney, The Red Hook must combat and convince his psychotic, vigilante mother to help finally destroy it, only to accidentally rebirth the wrath of an unexpected villain who threatens to save earth from the hierarchy of humanity by sending New Brooklyn back to the stone age! Does The Red Hook have to break bad in order to restore the goodness of society?

The Red Hook, crook turned reluctant hero, is an engaging character, and the world that he lives in is full of interesting characters. The big ideas that Haspiel explores in this series have always raised the quality of the story to lofty heights. The previous season ended with the sun being reignited by love; so, where do you go from there? Continue reading “Blackout: The Latest Season of the New Brooklyn Saga is on Webtoons”

PANDEMIX Is the Comic Anthology You Need to Be Reading Today

PANDEMIX Is the Comic Anthology You Need to Be Reading Today

We are living and surviving today in a world with a virus that has changed so much of how we were used to living. It has affected everyone in America and most of the world whether you “believe” in it or not.

Talented artistic folks have invariably impacted significantly. While many artists were used to the working at home that has become the new norm for so many more, the world is different than it was pre-COVID19, and we knew that it would be only a matter of time before we saw creative expression of what the pandemic has wrought in comic form.

That time is now. We present to you PANDEMIX: Quarantine Comics in the Age of ‘Rona!! Available Today!!!

A group of nineteen talented artists and writers have come together to share their impressions of how they are seeing the world that we live in today. It is a wonderful collected anthology of comic goodness, but wait there’s more. This self published digital edition is available on Patreon , and all proceeds go to charity with donations to The Hero Initiative.

Continue reading “PANDEMIX Is the Comic Anthology You Need to Be Reading Today”

With Further Ado #072: The Unrelenting Coolness of Dean Haspiel and Red Hook

With Further Ado #072: The Unrelenting Coolness of Dean Haspiel and Red Hook

Dean Haspiel is a certain kind of artist. When you read his work, you can’t help but like what he’s doing.  And then the more you learn about him, you can’t help but admire who he is, what he’s doing and why he’s doing it.  It’s inevitable that you want to learn more about his focus and his work. 

There’s no denying that he’s a cool cat. That’s part of it, but only part. He’s also a passionate believer. He’s the type of guy that’s fighting the good fight.  It’s easy to picture him getting into arena each day, doing his best, and then repeating that the very next day.  His purposeful work ethic and big dreams shine through every page of his work.  Continue reading “With Further Ado #072: The Unrelenting Coolness of Dean Haspiel and Red Hook”

Exploring Webcomics With the Pros – The Video SquadCast

Exploring Webcomics With the Pros – The Video SquadCast

Hey Everyone!!

Welcome to the Video SquadCast! This is the recording of the panel we hosted at Baltimore Comic-Con on October 20, 2019. The panelists are Steve Conley, Katie Cook, Dean Haspiel and Thom Zahler.  The video is hosted on our YouTube Channel and the audio version of the SquadCast can be found at the bottom of this post.

Be sure to check out this great conversation about webcomics and how these professionals work their craft. The will tell you the techniques they use for developing story and rendering it into art.


Continue reading “Exploring Webcomics With the Pros – The Video SquadCast”

Spotlight Interview with Dean Haspiel

Spotlight Interview with Dean Haspiel

One of the earlier interviews that we had in this series on Pop Culture Squad was with cartoonist and auteur Dean Haspiel. He was talking last year about his collected edition of The Red Hook for Image Comics. This year his second volume in that universe, War Cry, is about to hit stores October 9th.

War Cry is the continuing adventures of Sam Brosia and the characters created in The Red Hook. We have seen the story on Line Webtoon, but we have also seen a preview of the collected print edition, and it is fabulous.

We were able to have a conversation with Dean, and, as usual, it went far afield into storytelling techniques, comic making process, the anatomy of a sentient city, and his mom.

Below is a transcript of the majority of our interview.

Continue reading “Spotlight Interview with Dean Haspiel”

Spotlight Interview: Talking Web Comics and the Red Hook with Dean Haspiel

Spotlight Interview: Talking Web Comics and the Red Hook with Dean Haspiel

At Baltimore Comic-Con this year, we were able to catch up with comic artist and writer Dean Haspiel. Dean, a New York City native,  grew up in the comic industry working with luminaries such as Howard Chaykin and Harvey Pekar. He has produced award winning work in both television and web comic media. He is know for works such as Billy Dogma, The Quitter, American Splendor, Beef with Tomato, Bored to Death, The Alcoholic, The Fox, and his current epic saga, The Red Hook.

The Red Hook is a webcomic that was original released on the LINE WEBTOON platform and won the 2017 inaugural Ringo Award for Best Webcomic. It was released this year in a collected print format by Image Comics.

The second season of the Red Hook was released as War Cry, also on LINE WEBTOON in 2018. It was also nominated for a Ringo Award.  The third season titled StarCross is expected to be released early 2019.


Webcomics: You can’t avoid it. You can’t deny it. Start to embrace it!

PopCultureSquad: Hi Dean. Thanks for doing this. Let’s start with, “When are we going to get to see StarCross, the third volume of the Red Hook saga?”

Dean Haspiel: The initial date that we decided on was Valentine’s Day 2019. It is a very ambitious project for me. Ideally, I would like to have about sixteen chapters in the can before we launch. I hope to have that done by mid-February. If not, then we may push it until March or April, and then it will run for about five and a half months consecutively.

PCS: There are times when things get announced on LINE WEBTOON as “Coming Soon”, and then it takes quite awhile before we get to see them. Continue reading “Spotlight Interview: Talking Web Comics and the Red Hook with Dean Haspiel”