With the Kickstarter campaign live from Dark Planet Comics for new volumes of Palomino and reprints of Romance In The Age Of The Space God, we are delighted to be joined by Stephan Franck. Stephen is an award-nominated animator, writer, cartoonist and director.
Hi Stephan, it’s so great having you here with us again.
Could you tell us about the origins of Palomino?
I used to be a musician and started playing in clubs like The Palomino when I was 15. The actual Palomino closed the year I arrived in Los Angeles, so I never worked there—but I was lucky to become friends and play with those same musicians at other clubs over the years. I always thought that world would make a great backdrop for an LA neo-noir crime mystery. That’s how I ended up with Eddie—a Palomino house band musician by night, private detective by day. The kind of guy trouble finds.
What can you tell us about Eddie Lang?
Eddie is a former Burbank Police detective who never got over his wife Lena’s murder. Now a PI, he keeps his cases small and does his best to maintain a safe status quo for his teenage daughter Lisette. He also finds solace playing music at the club six nights a week. But their quiet world is upended when a new murder case wedges its way into their lives—a case that reopens old wounds and sends both father and daughter on quests for truth and justice they’ll either solve or die trying.
Could you tell us about the world that Palomino is set in?
Palomino begins in the San Fernando Valley in 1981. Little known fact: during the Cold War, the aerospace defense industry was largely based in the Los Angeles basin and San Fernando Valley, creating a strong ecosystem of well-paying union manufacturing jobs, and music nightclubs thrived. Among them, The Palomino reigned supreme. Six nights a week, four-deep at the bar with a line outside, you might stumble upon Jerry Lee Lewis and John Belushi getting drunk together, Evel Knievel up front, or an actual Beatle popping on stage. By 1 a.m., chairs flew and tables rolled. Working musicians, TV actors, stuntmen, cops, hustlers, and broken souls all played their part in the cultural myth-making. It’s hard to imagine a cooler backdrop for a noir story.
Who is Lisette Lang?
Lisette is Eddie’s teenage daughter, with his wry humor and razor-sharp wit. Like him, she never backs down from a fight, and their banter is hilarious. Lisette is an old soul, and she might be even more hard-boiled than he is. Like Eddie, she’s a classic noir figure—tough on the outside, but deeply sensitive and driven by empathy and justice. As badass as they are, they’re not invulnerable. Their only superpower: they never let things go, even when it’s inconvenient. Like Eddie, Lisette is still reeling from losing Lena—but unlike him, she was too young to know her mom “as a person,” making Lena’s mystery loom even larger in her life.
You created all of the art for Palomino. What part of that process did you enjoy the most?
One of my favorite things about making comics is getting to do everything myself—something that rarely happens on other projects, especially in animation, where the collaborative process is inspiring in its own way, but I like balancing it with the authorship that comics allow. Whether I’m writing, laying out, drawing the finals, coloring, or lettering, it’s all about being in the moment and capturing the right vibe. I approach the work more like performing arts than illustrative art, and that applies to every step in its own way. When I draw, I try to connect to the characters’ internal emotions. When I color, it’s about how the world feels in that story moment.
By the time I started doing comics professionally, I already had years of experience in animation, so writing and laying out the pages felt natural because the storytelling principles are the same. But final inks took longer to feel right, and color was the last piece of the puzzle. I only started getting serious about it recently, so getting a Ringo Award nomination for best color last year on Palomino 2 & 3 was a huge thrill!
On average, how long does it take you to create a volume of Palomino?
Because Palomino is a long saga and a mystery, I sometimes work on multiple volumes at once to make sure that the story tracks. I wrote Volumes 2 and 3 together, finished the art on both, and released them as a set—which took nearly three years. In the two years since, I’ve written Volumes 4, 5, and 6 (the grand finale) in one stretch, laid out all three, and completed final art on 4 and 5, which we’re releasing now. Next up: final art on Volume 6, which will take 6 to 9 months. I’m doing this alongside my animation work, so the days are long—but the years are short.
What can you tell us about Romance In The Age Of The Space God?
I tend to do long graphic novel series, but I also love short stories—more about a few meaningful moments, even when the world they suggest feels vast. In that spirit, RITAOTSG is a 48-page open-ended short story set in a world not unlike our own. It’s part sci-fi thriller, part slice-of-life, part political satire. Oh, and it stars adorable little mice. Forged in the mad days of the pandemic, it wrestles with a question I see as central to our times: how do we find purpose in a broken world?
We follow a group of young people who each struggle with that question in their own way, only to discover they’re connected by a mysterious plot of cosmic proportions. RITAOTSG ends with the words “to be continued?”—and yes, the question mark matters.
As you are crowdfunding and dealing directly with consumers, does that make Palomino and Romance In The Age Of The Space God more special for you?
Whether I’m directing a studio project like Marvel Studios’ What If…? or working independently, I always start from a place of telling stories that feel true to the human experience—stories I’m personally connected to. But what’s special about crowdfunding is that backers help shape their own cultural landscape. These books exist only because their readers believed in them and manifested them into the world. Then they exist as physical objects—paid for once, owned forever. There’s real magic in that.
What kind of feedback did you get for Romance In The Age Of The Space God and Palomino?
The most consistent feedback I get on series like Palomino (or Silver before that) is that they’re addictive, with characters who feel real and complex—people you develop strong emotions about. They’re also binge-worthy and keep readers on the edge of their seats. With Romance in the Age of the Space God, the response to its short format has been, “We love these people—we need more!” My answer: RITAOTSG is deeply plugged into the world, and the world is moving fast, so it’s hard to keep pace.
On the storytelling itself, readers often comment on the clarity and cinematic feel of my pages. Maybe it’s my animation background, but people say the books feel like “reading a movie.” At a store signing once, a guy told me he worked at the Universal studio office that archived dailies from every film shoot. He said he knew everyone’s visual style, and that my panels looked like they were shot by Richard Donner. Needless to say, that made my year!
How would you describe Palomino?
Palomino is, first and foremost, a super fun neo-noir crime mystery—with all the intrigue, suspense, and sass we love in the genre. What makes it unique is how it translates the classic LA noir story into a Deep Valley musical setting we haven’t seen before. There’s a lot of real-life truth in Palomino: personal truth in the characters and the experience of parenting through loss—told from both the parent and child’s perspective.
There’s also a deep societal backdrop. 1981 marked both the height of the club scene and the dawn of the Reagan era—the end of the New Deal that built the American middle class. It was the last time a working musician could afford a house and raise a family in LA on a six-nights-a-week house band gig. Then, with Volume 4, we jump 14 years to 1995—the start of the digital revolution. Palomino lives on the fault line between two eras in the American experience. Fittingly, 1995 is also the year the real Palomino closed. There’s your metaphor.
What can comic fans expect from Volume 4 and Volume 5 of Palomino?
Volume 4 jumps to 1995, where we find Lisette—now 29 and going by Liz—working as a beat reporter for one of the Valley’s free weeklies. She’s still the same badass, only now with all the agency—and complexity—of adulthood. It’s her turn to drive. But the tragic events of 1981 have stunted her emotional growth, and the need to solve the mysteries of her past still burns beneath the surface.
When the original 1981 case Eddie couldn’t solve resurfaces through an unexpected interview, Liz gets activated. Like her dad, she never lets things go—and the dark truths that follow will send her through a gauntlet she may not survive. The series will conclude with Volume 6—in the gnarliest, most epic way possible.
Any message for the ComicBuzz readers?
Keep supporting the storytelling that you love! We need it now more than ever!
Free free to check out Dark Planet Comics’ 2025 Graphic Novels by Stephan Franck on Kickstarter.
We would like to say a big thank you to Stephan for chatting with us, and wish him the best of luck with the Dark Planet Comics campaign.
