MF GALAXY Episode 006 - BRANDON EASTON: COMICS, ANIMATION + SCREENWRITING, PART A

Screen animation and comic book writer Brandon Easton has written for the animated series Transformer Rescue Bots and the 2011 reboot of ThunderCats, and for comics including Shadowlaw, Watson & Holmes, Miles Away, Roboy, The Joshua Run , and Arkanium, and the motion comic Armarauders. He’s also authored a bio-graphic novel about pro-wrestler Andre the Giant.

News outlets such as Forbes and Wired have noted Easton’s work, and so have awards juries. Easton's original graphic novel Shadowlaw received a 2014 Best Single Issue nomination from the Eisner Comic Industry Award. In 2014, the East Coast Black Age of Comics, or ECBAC, gave Easton three Glyph Awards, including Fan Award, Story of the Year, and Best Writer, for scripting Watson and Holmes #6, and in 2013, the Best Writer Glyph for Shadowlaw .

Easton is also the documentary film-maker behind Brave New Souls: Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Writers of the 21st Century.

Easton spoke with me on December 18, 2014 via Skype from his office in Los Angeles. We discussed what writers need to do—other than write—if they want to work in Hollywood; the differences between writing for animation and writing for live action; how to write scripts for comic books.

This episode begins with our discussion of what the recent Sony hacks revealed about why major US studios exclude African-American movie stars from even being contenders for casting in countless motion pictures.