At New York Comic Con (NYCC), we had the honor of meeting Punko, creator of Stagtown and Cinderella Boy, along with Brent Bristol, creator of Ordeal. Their Webtoons have garnered millions of readers on WEBTOON, generating immense excitement for their first-ever NYCC appearance. During this roundtable interview, we had an engaging discussion about their creative beginnings, experiences as Webtoon creators, memorable moments with fans, and future goals, among many other topics.
Everything has been lightly edited for clarity, as there are questions and answers from other outlets included. There will also be major spoilers and images from both the Horror Webtoon – Stagtown and Action packed – Ordeal
Q: What made you both want to create your own comic and get into the medium?
Brent Bristol: I grew up a lot with anime, manga, comics, and stuff like that. I was a big fan of it. I didn’t have a lot of things to do as a child. I was very indoorsy. So that resulted in me being very boring, reading a lot of comics, watching a lot of anime, and playing with a lot of action figures. That was my thing. I still collect as a grown man.
I would make these scenes with it and I’d make little comics and stuff, obviously copyrighted material, so I’d make comics of Spider-Man, Star Wars, and stuff like that. I’m a big Star Wars fan and I just carried it over to adulthood, I guess.
Punko: I knew I wanted to be a comic artist when I was eight and I haven’t deviated from that since. When I told my parents “I’m going to be a comic artist”, when I was eight, they’re like, “oh, that’s cute”. Then when I was 13, “I’m going to be a comic artist” and they’re like, “aww”. Then, when I was picking out a college, “I’m going to go to this school to be a comic artist” and they’re like, “wait, you were actually serious about that? Really? Don’t you want a nice state job like your mother”?
My father went into the military and I was like, “no, no, no, I want to waste my life and be a comic book artist”. They’re like, “all right, okay, we’ll send you to the only school in the U.S. that lets you have a degree in comic books”. There’s lots more now (schools with a focus in comic books), but back then there wasn’t. It just kind of went on from then. I just decided I’m going to be a comic book artist and just tunnel visioned on that since about nine. Except for that one deviation from sixth grade where I wanted to be a paleontologist, but then I learned that involves math. So I said, “no, forget it”.
Q: How long does it usually take you guys to do a panel in both of your art styles?
Punko: I was just about to ask him the same thing because I was reading his comic while we were waiting. I showed him the panel, like, what? He’s got more hours in the day than the rest of us, and it’s actually not fair.
Brent Bristol: I think my major issue in the beginning was time management because before, a chapter used to take like weeks. But that was when I was on Canvas. You know, Canvas is free and whatever, so when I got the Webtoon contract, part of it was weekly episodes. I tried to get away from it. I was like, What if I do 10 days? Like, every 10 days I release an episode because I just need the extra time and they were like, you need to kind of figure it out. So I had to make some sacrifices.
The sacrifice for me was the length of my episodes. Well, at least I thought because I thought my episodes were too short to cut down on length. I only have seven days to complete an episode, so I would do like 70 panels a week. Six days to 70 panels a week and then I found out my contract is 50 panels. So I’m doing too much and I feel like I’m not doing enough. Some fans say it ended too quickly. I think another issue would be sometimes when I have an action scene.
Action goes by really quickly because it’s fast-paced. Every panel ties into the next one, so you’re scrolling really quickly. There’s no text, so there’s nothing to pause at.
People sometimes finish reading the episode in, like, five minutes and after waiting a week, they’re going to complain in my comments.
We beef about it all the time because this is a sacrifice you have to live with. It’s either I reduce the quality of the art because backgrounds take a lot of time, especially for someone like me who doesn’t use assets. Nothing against assets. I just, it’s math. Assets are math. It’s too complicated for me, so I prefer to draw my own backgrounds and sometimes that takes a lot of time. I had to cut down on certain things and I didn’t want to cut down on the art. I didn’t want to cut down on the details, so I had to cut down the length of my episodes. So they are a bit short for me, but apparently they’re still long. It’s a whole thing.
Punko: Wow. I actually had, like, the same problem because I went from one series, like, Stagtown that was fully drawn by hand. I do a very Edward Gorey etching style with a million little lines, all done in Procreate and people are like, “where do you get those etching brushes”? My Brushes.
Reporter: Oh, so you actually did Stagtown by hand.
Punko: That’s all by hand. I was making myself very sick. I also have the same thing. You have an action scene “oh, the episode is too short”. You know what I do? I use words as speed bumps, but they have to slow down and look. I have never had a complaint about an episode being too short. People actually say, I really appreciate your extra long episodes. My episodes are shorter than his (Brent Bristol).
But I slow them down by putting lots of word bubbles and what I will do is I will say, if there has to be action right here, I am going to front load the episode with a scene of a lot of talking. Then you bookend it. You take, like, an action scene in the middle, and then talking, talking, and then they scoot, and then it’s like trying to speed in a zone where there’s like two speed bumps. You try to speed up a tree, and you’re like, slow down again.
Reporter: That’s actually a clever trick, using the text to pad out the episode.
Punko: It’s not useless. It’s not people are like, “oh, hey, look over there! What is that”?
It’s useful text, but instead of putting it in big blocks, I separate it out and what you do is visually, when they’re scrolling, you put it in different places. Then they’re like, oh, wait, I missed one. Oh, wait, I missed one. Then they end up going back.
Reporter: That’s experience right there.
Punko: It’s time management, but I had the same problem. I was like, “how do I cut down on it”? Well, the one thing that helped me cut down on my work time was realizing when I said, “why do I always get to the last day”? For some reason, it takes me all day to do eight panels, and yet somehow I can do those same eight panels in three hours when the deadline is five hours from now. Why is it I can do it when I have to do it, like, right now?
So I thought it’s because when you’re under a deadline, you cut out automatically like, “I don’t actually need this or that”. You make the hard decision very quickly. So now when I work, I get up and I set a timer for eight hours, and then I go by my panels and I say this many panels done in this hour, this many panels in this hour, this many. Then when I see the timer, I stick to it. I’m like, “oh, I’m almost out of time until lunch” and, like, this has to be done by then.
I don’t actually really need to focus on this person’s hair that much. It doesn’t have to be that flowy. They’re just going to scroll right past it anyways and fans do, like, they’re not like, “oh, the quality has dropped”. A lot of them have said that the quality has improved.and I think it’s because I don’t second guess myself. I’m like, you know, when you’re sitting there and you’re just like, “why did this panel take four hours? I could have been working on something else”. And, like, I want to harness that last minute, “oh, it’s due today energy, but every day”.
Brent Bristol: It’s brutal when you spend, like, five hours on a panel and people scroll past it like that.
Punko: We were talking about this in the green room earlier, and I said I pick out one panel per episode where I say, this is the one that everybody’s going to screenshot or they’re going to really like, “oh, my gosh, they’re kissing” or, “oh, my gosh, that’s an amazing outfit”. That’s the one I’ll spend the most time on and then I have a tier, like, second-tier panels, they get this much time. Third-tier panels, they get this much time and it’s all very carefully mapped out.
Reporter: I screenshot the really good jokes.
Punko: Even the jokes have tiers. I’m like, these are, like, my two hero jokes that everybody’s going to laugh at and probably repeat. These are, like, three to five pretty good jokes. These are, like, five jokes. They’re just in there to be jokes. They may land, they may not, yet, I will admit, I still do pull a lot of Sunday to Monday all-nighters. My fans know I still don’t sleep very much. Yeah, you do what you have to do. I bet you don’t sleep either (looking at Brent Bristol)
Q: For Punko, you’re coming from a horror comic to a comedic comic. How was that transition for you?
Punko: Really good, very welcome. I like doing horror, but when I pitched Cinderella Boy, they were like “can you do horror and then can you do comedy”? Because it’s hard to change genres and I said, “I’m going back to my comedy genre”. Like, I’ve done stand-up. I’ve done, like, improv, I’ve done things like that.
I like doing comedy and I will say, it’s a lot more light-hearted. Like, it’s very, It’s a lot more fun. We have a lot more fun in the comments and everybody, you know, they don’t take it as seriously. They don’t do that nitpicky thing, where it’s just like, “I saw that he had his cup facing this way in one panel, and then in the next panel, it’s in the other hand”.
They’re just like, it’s more of a light-hearted, like, eh, whatever kind of thing. People are like, “is Chase a little bit taller than he usually is”? I’m like, I don’t know, maybe and they’re like, eh, whatever.
Reporter: I mean, also, to be fair, comedy is basically, like, not that dissimilar from horror because they’re both, like, mediums that play on emotions and expectations.
Punko: Yeah, that’s a really good point. Yeah, they have both, like, intense reactions, just a different kind of reaction.
Reporter: So I guess the adjustment’s not bad.
Q: For Brent, do you have a favorite genre that you like to work in or feel most comfortable working in?
Brent Bristol: Well, I’m a big action nerd, so that’s easy for me to do. I just love the whole impact scene. My favorite thing to draw is the action scenes, which you would think takes me a lot of time to draw because they’re really flashy and all that, but they’re actually the easiest to draw for me. There’s no detail in impact scenes because it’s really small characters and just a bunch of effects in the background, right?
Whereas a scene full of dialogue, its facial features, wrinkles. It’s a lot of time, so I really love action scenes and that category really goes for me. A little bit of the adventure because I love when my fans are theorycraft. They like to figure things out, and, like, the Discord is toxic. Who’s saying Leo is better? Who’s saying Rokash is better? They’re beefing in the comments, and I’m like, “yo, I love it, go ahead”.
I love the adventure aspect, even of an action series and my big thing is, like, flashbacks. In an adventure series, you can introduce more of a character that you didn’t introduce in the beginning. You brought up a new character and you haven’t given them his backstory yet, so you save that for, like, a juicy flashback where he has this really deep backstory, it really lends to the whole genre. It just adds, like, adventure to the action series, which is what they’re here for, in my opinion.
It allows me to do both, even though I’m really more into the big impact and fight scenes, but I need to have some kind of something, some meat in the middle of it so that they can have something to read and enjoy and theorycraft over.
Punko: I am very envious of his action scenes. I am terrible at action scenes. Like, everybody looks so stiff. His are, like, so fluid. Mine are like… I just want to draw stick figures telling jokes, basically. What I actually want to do is write a stand-up, but I have to have a comic to go with it.
Q: For Stagtown, was there one specific challenge that the trio went through that you wouldn’t want to go through?
Punko: I think the one I would least accept was when Frankie’s crawling under the farmhouse through the vent for hours. That was the one that everybody said, like, “this is the one that I can’t read”. It’s so claustrophobic and that would probably get me the most.
But I don’t know. Maybe when all of her apartment rooms started disappearing, then I’m like, well, at least I can kind of plan. We put the food in the bathroom. Which room’s going to disappear next? Am I going to be in it or not? Maybe I would accept that one the most because you’re going to at least amount of immediate danger. But yeah, definitely crawling through the vents would be my least favorite. Like, if I was trapped in Stagtown, I would be like, “anything but the vents, anything but that”.
I’ll go down into the caves. I’ll do whatever. But I… Oh, you know what? Actually, no, going through the Underground River because they almost drowned. There’s an actual Underground River in Pennsylvania. It’s in Hellertown. I got the hat. I went on a tour because everything in Stagtown, like, all the locations are based on places near me in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.
Punko: I had somebody come to a convention last weekend and they were getting an autograph and they said, “you know, I know where you live, but not in a creepy way”. I was like, “well, it’s really hard to not make that creepy, but like, go on”. And they’re like, “oh, I just know what apartment complex that is”.
I’m like, “oh, I did use it for the basis”. And I said, “have you been to the Underground Cavern”? Like the Underground River in Hellertown. I took the tour. I was the only one on the tour. It’s 10 a.m. on a Wednesday. But I wanted to get it right for the comics, so I went on the tour and I got the hat. But yeah, definitely would not want to, that’s probably my least favorite then, going through the tunnels underwater.
Q: At first, Che appeared to be talentless (no powers). Was this always the plan?
Brent Bristol: Well, the original story was different. They were actually like mobsters.
So it was like a gang, and they were like cooks and chefs, but when I switched it, I wanted him to be really different. So I wrote the story kind of backwards.
So the end of the story is that he’s like this really powerful, almost like villain of the series. I wanted to start as far back as possible, so I started him off as a human. The idea was that he gradually gets powerful, but he’s a happy human. He has to go through depression, go through sorrow, a lot of loss. Like I love my tongue, a bit morbid, but I love to have death in my series. Like with a purpose, I want that when a character dies, the whole cast reacts to it.
I had a character who had his first kill, and after his first kill, he was always happy. So after his first kill, he was zoning out, always really somber for a good few episodes so that the readers reacted to him. And I just do these things because I feel like it helps, it adds to the story, but it really lands with a lot of readers.
For example, wanting Che to start from the very beginning, like a human to super power, right? As he’s going through this journey, because we’re in season three, he’s almost, well, he’s at the point that he makes that turn where he becomes this sort of villain, right? That’s not a spoiler, that happens in the beginning of the series.
What I wanted for him was to, I wanted readers to sympathize with him because in the future, no one agrees with his stances, right? I wanted that the only person that agrees with him is the readers. So like he’s in this world and he’s alone, but the readers are with him because they understand why he does the things that he does because they’ve been with him for like three seasons, right? But the characters in the future are just meeting this terrible overlord kind of guy, right? So the idea was that he goes through a lot and like he stops smiling.
He used to be a really joyful, happy guy, like the big brother, right? He stopped smiling for like an entire season, so when I did the collaboration with Street Fighter, the episode that I did, I allowed him to smile a lot. I wanted it to be like a breath of fresh air for the readers because they’ve been reading this like emo Che for a long time. So I wanted him to just relax in this episode. It’s a collaboration.
It’s fun. It’s not, well, I wouldn’t say it’s canon, but it’s just like fun, right? It’s a fun episode. See him smiling. I just thought it was cool. But all the comments, they were not “Brent, your art is good. Brent, the story is cool. I got no compliments”. All the comments were “Che smiling”. They were like, “wow, we haven’t seen Che smile for a year. It’s been so long. He looks happy for once”. I’m like, “oh, I didn’t mean to depress you guys”.
These things surprise you when readers actually relate to certain things and they hold on to certain things. I know they’re following Che going through this really dark time and the fact that they reacted so positively to him smiling, it shows that I’m kind of going in the right direction of this character development. I still have a lot to learn. I’m still a very beginner in this field, but I think the development is going good for me. I just have to make sure I deliver well.
Q: What is it about the Webtoon format that appeals to you both? Do you find that there are any constraints that you kind of have to work around?
Punko: You know, it’s funny. I started out in Print Comics 20 years ago, and I thought, “oh, well, you know, book comics are the best, you know, monthly issues, all that”. Like, you don’t want to have a deadline every week. Reading on your phone is such a constraint, but then I realized it’s actually… I mean, I’ll get in trouble with my old bosses for this, but I feel like it’s sometimes the superior format.
And it’s simply because, especially if you’re doing horror or comedy and you need to have reactions that depend a lot on timing. Like you open up a comic book and you have a very scary panel. Unless you can actually work it out with the publisher, like, “okay, this has to happen on this page” so that they turn the page and see it. You open up the book and the panel’s over here. They already saw it. They already saw it or they’re already looking ahead. They’re already reading. They’re already spoiling it for them by reading it two pages at a time.
When you have it, like, I think what a lot of the scariness in Stagtown, like the reason it works so well is because of the scrolling format. They can only look at one panel at a time and you can time them from scrolling.
We had a really great scene where there’s somebody sleeping in a room and another character who has been, like, you know, evilly possessed or something comes into the dark room, and, you know, it’s very threatening and everything. It was great because people always read it at night because it comes out, like, very late at night.
The episodes will come out late at night, so a lot of people would say they’d be reading it in the dark or they’d be reading it mostly dark. I had all black gutters for the series and so you’re looking at it, and the room is dark, and the room is dark, and the image is dark, and the panels of her sleeping in the bed. Then the person comes in from the hallway.
And you know when you come into a room, and it’s nighttime, and, like, it’s very bright in the hall with, like, the light coming through the door. They scroll and scroll and scroll, and then suddenly there’s a very bright panel. A lot of people said, like, “oh, that really made it feel like I was actually there and somebody really just opened a door and it was, like, suddenly very bright on my phone”.
And that just made it feel very visceral. You can also control the scroll for, like, a jump scare kind of thing. So when we were putting together, because Stagtown is being assembled into two books by Penguin Random House, and we’re laying out the book, and I said, “oh, don’t worry. I’ve had years of experience in Print Comics, this is going to be a snap”. And then we started putting it together, and I was like, “ah, this is ruining all my scares”.
Like, I want them to read it one panel at a time. This is so unfortunate. And they’re like, well, “we’ll try and move things around and put more pages in”. I’m like, “eh, but, like, I had this really cool scroll thing and it just doesn’t work in book format”. So there’s pros and cons to each one. But honestly, I really appreciate the scroll format of Webtoon now. It just helps the pacing so much more
Brent Bristol: To be quick, I really do think scroll format is the superior form. It really is because that gutter space, being able to manipulate, its gutter space to add that breath of fresh air. Because it’s the same. Like, in movies, adaptations, television and stuff, they take a pause before they speak.
Readers don’t necessarily have to take a pause unless you separate the text bubbles like that. So you have to pause. You can, like, gauge, like, three seconds before the big surprise, the big reveal. I do the same thing with the reveals. I stretch that gutter space. So that when the pop comes up, like, I use the whole panel, the whole screen for the panel, and, like, I’ll put a text, and then a lot of gutter space, and then a reveal at the bottom. And that’s something you can’t get in paginated comics.
So it’s, like, really limited to Webtoon format, and I feel like it really lends itself to so many better things. I guess the only drawback would be the size. Because most Webtoon readers use their phones. Yes, it’s available on the desktop, but most people use their phones because it’s more practical. But even with that, it’s a good quality because you can zoom in, right? But I feel like that scroll format is superior.
Punko: It is. Controlling the timing is what helps us.
Q: Stagtown and Ordeal have received some sort of adaptations such as a movie or trailers advertising your Webtoons. How did you feel about receiving this sort of development and if there’s anything that you would want to see being adapted in the future?
Brent Bristol: So I did get some trailers made by Studio LICO in Korea. They are absolutely amazing. They did four season one trailers, like three-minute long trailers, just to really get through season one. That was pretty good. An anime adaptation is really my end goal. It’s, like, absolutely what I’m hoping for and it’s the dream, right? I grew up on, like, all anime only. So I’m hoping to be where Punko is one day.
Punko: I’m jealous of you right now, like, I want a trailer. I want to see my anime. It’s been so long. So yeah, Margot Robbie’s production company, LuckyChap, is going to be doing a Stagtown movie and it is kind of a trip. Like, when I was talking to the director, Ben Brewer, he’s a fantastic guy, like, really cares an awful lot about the project. He’s not one of those guys who’s just like, let’s just film a thing and then cash in. It’s like a cash in science sort of thing. He was asking questions he wanted to know about the ARG that ran alongside the original series.
He told me I could be in it. I said, “I want to be, like, a surly, like, just, like, this busted looking woman, like, in the back of the store, in the convenience store, just, like, staring him down with that, like, New England hate”. Just like, I don’t know if you’re from around here or not. Like, I want to look like a people of Walmart. I’m in, like, slippers, and I’m just, like, taking milk out of the fridge. And he’s like, yeah, we can do that if that’s what you really want. I’m like, yes.
Reporter: So I guess forget the black goo. It’s Punko that we’ll be more cautious of, right? Haha
Punko: No, no, no, no, no. I don’t care. Like, I’m actually, like, I really don’t care if I’m in it or not. But he was like, no, we should do it. I was like, okay, like, I’ll just stand in the back for, like, a second. It’ll be fun. But most importantly, I care that, like, that we just kind of, like, capture the soul of the series so that when readers who have been long-time fans of it and they really, really like it and they’re the ones whose support got the movie in the first place, that they’re not disappointed. That they don’t feel like, oh, this is just, this is nothing like the series. They just did this to slap the name on it and blah, blah, blah, blah.
I want them to feel like, yes, this is what I wanted. This is what the characters look like to me. This is authentically the experience I had when I was reading the story. And I’m satisfied with the adaptation. I just want them to get the movie that they feel that they deserve, like, the one that they want.
Q: When writing stories, do either of you intentionally leave little snippets for your readers, like theory crafting? Also, what are some favorite theories that you’ve heard from your readers in regards to any of your stories? It could be Stagtown, Cinderella Boy, or Ordeal.
Brent Bristol: Theory crafting is the best. I love it. I’m also a gamer, so I like MMOs. I love builds and those kinds of things. I like the whole idea about it. When you introduce a new character, and they’re in an important role, and there’s nothing known about them, that’s it. People are just going to theory craft over it.
I think my favorite theory, because since I started Ordeal, I introduced the character backwards. So, I started with the end. But you know Che is going to become this, like, villain. So, it’s like, the journey is what happens. How does he become that, right? So, there’s a lot of powers that he has in the future and people are theory crafting like his eye.
Che has a very iconic new eye in the series and everyone’s like, “where did that come from? He has two perfectly good eyes. Why does he have a new eye in the future”? So, I slowly, like pigeons, just give them little pieces of bread about what’s happening. So, he gets into a fight and he gets injured. “Oh, no, he still has his eye”. So, not yet and I give him a little more bread.
And then, oh, he loses his eye. And then, I give him a little more bread. So, it’s like, and everybody’s like, so convinced that they figured it out. But I mean, it’s so, I think it’s so perfect that no one’s going to get it right. I’ve seen a lot of really close theories because I look at the series, but no one’s getting it spot on like what really happens.
But also, that’s the challenge to me that when I do the reveal that it ties into the story. It’s not too crazy because, just because fans figured it out, sometimes you might be tempted to change it because they figured it out. So, no, still go with it because it took them a lot of time to figure it out. Put pieces together. If you change that now, you ruin everything you built. To be really quick, a perfect example of that is the ending of Game of Thrones. If anybody has seen that.
They realized that the fans were figuring it out, so they kind of deviated from where they were heading. They shouldn’t have done that. They messed up everything they built in the beginning.
Punko: It’s such a mistake because part of the enjoyment of the fans is figuring it out. Like, I knew that Stan had a twin in Gravity Falls. When we finally saw him, that didn’t make me sad because I guessed it. It made me happy because I guessed it. But I like, I can’t do, I can’t move like five feet without my fans guessing on it because they know that every single series I do is absolutely full of like all different threads.
Like all up to the end of season one, they’re like this big secret about the character Buddy and they were, they didn’t realize that it was all threaded through with like the colors that people wear and like the color of their eyes and what they say, and like everything they say has a double meaning. And then, because I want them to, you know, be surprised by it or maybe guess it, but then go back and then go, oh, I missed all of these things.
But now in season two, it’s like the new readers that like, they’re so on to me. Like I can’t introduce anything and they’re like, “but what does it mean”? Like if I type out, “I ate rice today”, they’re like, “but what does she mean by that”? They get into Discord and there’s like 50,000 theories and I was just like, “it just means that I didn’t have any toast”. I really appreciate doing it. It takes a lot of forethought to sit down and like, I had to plan the series for a year to do it all in advance.
I was pointing out to my editor, I said, “hey, you know, the characters from this series season, like, like, like Cinderella Boy, like this one made a guest appearance way back in Stagtown three years before I even started the series”. And so they go, “oh yeah, Deacon’s in there getting punched in the face and then his car stolen”. And I said, “there’s somebody from every season of Cinderella Boy appearing in the last series, even though we hadn’t even started Cinderella Boy”.
Then I pointed out to him, I said, “oh yeah, you see this character who’s in season three of Cinderella Boy, like that’s in Stagtown too” and nobody’s seen that cause they haven’t even met them yet. It’s just like a weird, funny easter eggs for people to go back and see and I’m very into that.
Conclusion
What were some of your favorite moments from reading any of their works? If you haven’t already, make sure to check out their webtoons Stagtown, Ordeal, and Cinderella Boy. You can also follow their WEBTOON accounts Punko and Brent Bristol for the latest updates.
Thank you again to Punko and Brent Bristol for making it to NYCC, we’ve had such an incredible experience meeting you both and hope to see you again in NYC! Huge shoutout to WEBTOON for providing us the opportunities to these events and cannot wait to see what’s next!
Images: Stagtown, Ordeal
© Brent Bristol, Punko
Participate In Discussions