33. The Making of a Comic: 'Ronin Digital Express' by Renton Hawkey
Get a sneak peek into upcoming episodes and Hawkey's top 3 self-publishing tips
Howdy Brave Being,
Welcome back to my recurring series, The Making of a Comic where I chat with comic creators about their process. This week, writer and artist Renton Hawkey gives us a sneak peek into his webcomic RONIN DIGITAL EXPRESS. I started reading Renton’s webcomic on Webtoon, and I loved it! I became invested in the characters right off the bat and it always leaves me wanting more.
Recently, Renton published all the past episodes on Substack, plus new ones that continue the series. Here he is to tell us all about it and the ins and outs of self-publishing webcomics! Let’s hop to it!
Ronin Digital Express
Brittany Matter: Tell us a little bit about RONIN DIGITAL EXPRESS.
Renton Hawkey: Ronin Digital Express is about a nameless ronin going through a subtle crisis of identity and trying to find something to do with himself. He starts off as this strong and silent archetype, but as the story goes, the layers start to peel off and you get little hints about who he really is (and what he might be hiding). If you like old-school Spaghetti Westerns, Kurosawa movies, and 90s anime, Ronin Digital Express is what you get if you throw all of those tropes and aesthetics into a blender.
BM: How did you develop the characters?Â
RH: When I first started drawing on a tablet, I wanted to get used to the program and the workflow, so as practice, I designed 200 characters. It was a lot of fooling around and most of those designs are not good, but some themes started to emerge. The most catching stuff had this cool blend of western, Edo samurai, and 90s anime elements. So I went with that, and started to wonder who these characters were and what kinds of trouble they could get into.Â
BM: How did you approach world-building?
RH: I like world-building that is subtle and implicit. I did a bit of "opening crawl" in the Ronin Digital Express prologue just to give readers a sense of when and where, but beyond that, I don't want to spend a lot of time explaining things about the world that the inhabitants of that world would already know. There is a pretty rich history and culture behind Ronin Digital Express that I developed, but most of that is the underwater part of the iceberg for the reader. As a fan, I like when I get to dig and discover that stuff, but as a creator, I prefer to help someone walking by enter the story at almost any point without some dense companion reader. Those threads are there for people who want to tug on them, but it's not required to get the main gist of what's going on. Plus we're relying here on pretty ubiquitous tropes that we already have built-in schemas for, so that's quite a generous shortcut pop culture gives you.
BM: What inspired this story?Â
RH: The "Man With No Name" trope made famous by guys like Toshiro Mifune, Clint Eastwood, and later on, even characters like Boba Fett. This is an archetype that's mostly about presence and cool factor; you want to know more about them, but you don't have much to go on, so your imagination does most of the heavy lifting, IF (big if) your imagination can be captured by that "cool factor". I wanted to do something a bit different with that archetype by slowly revealing a few more details than you usually get, and hopefully undermining expectations. We'll see if that works for people or not. To fill in the rest of the story, I'm mostly borrowing from Spaghetti Westerns and old serialized TV shows like Kung Fu. Ronin Digital Express is pulpy and episodic. The story is pretty threadbare and minimalistic. Each episode is fairly self-contained, but this question of, "who is this guy?" looms in the background throughout. That's the arc.
BM: How can readers catch up on RONIN DIGITAL EXPRESS?
RH: It's on its own dedicated Substack page, free to read with or without a subscription (the subscription just puts it in your inbox when new episodes come out each Tuesday). If you want more behind-the-scenes and developmental-type stuff, my newsletter is a good companion piece, also free.
Self-Publishing Webcomics
BM: I recall that you started self-publishing RONIN DIGITAL EXPRESSÂ on Webtoon but then switched to Substack. What was the impetus for the switch?
RH: Mostly just workflow concerns. Ronin Digital Express is made in traditional print format. This meant that for Webtoon, I had an additional step where I'd need to convert a page into that vertical format. Webtoon also has very strict formatting guidelines that complicate this step, so I often had to re-draw things on the fly, re-letter entire episodes, and other "post-production" hacks to try and duct tape it all together. Kind of a stupid way to go about it in retrospect. Chalk it up to me being too green to do that many things at once, honestly. It's also a bit stylistic. I think the vertical format is really cool, but if I ask myself what kinds of comics I love and want to make, we're looking more at the big European-style album. That's the kind of stuff I want to do, so I don't know if it's wise for me to spend time trying to master this other format, or trying to do both things at once, which usually means doing neither of them well.
BM: What are the benefits of publishing on Substack?
FH: Mostly just that it's very idiot-proof. It's easy to set up, there's the monetization option (if we get there at some point), the analytics are pretty straightforward. Consolidation is big, too. I was on Webtoon, Mailchimp, and considering a Patreon. No real reason to do that now, at least for me. It's all under one roof. My sensibilities rhyme with the company's values on artistic expression as well. If I want to push Ronin or another project into more mature territory, that's just not something I'd have been able to do at Webtoon. Various platforms are making what I perceive to be more conservative content moderation decisions, and I just prefer things to be a little more liberal. Lastly, Substack appears to be investing in the comics community pretty heavily. There are probably other platforms or Wordpress configurations I could work with and get most of the same benefits, but that the company sees comics and goes "we want that to be part of who we are" is pretty cool. Who doesn't want to be found where they are welcome, right?
BM: Since you're both writer and artist, what's your process like?
RH: I'm definitely the kind who does a lot of writing while I'm doing dishes. I'll usually let a project slow roast in my head for a little while, and move the good stuff to an outline, and eventually that outline evolves into a script. By the time I need to sit down and formally turn it into a usable script, that process is probably a solid afternoon of just stitching things together. Then I'll sit on that and forget about it for a while and go back and make sure it doesn't sound crazy when I read it back. I just really take my time. The art stuff, I haven't really nailed a process for it yet that can "scale." I'm still in the "learning as I go" phase there, asking questions, watching tutorials, trying different approaches, listening to the feedback I'm getting like I'm sitting at the feet of Jesus, etc. I'll report back.
BM: What are your top three tips for aspiring comic book creators interested in self-publishing webcomics?
RH: 1) There's nothing to be afraid of. Whatever excuses you're making, whether you think you don't have the time, you won't be able to navigate or fit into the culture online, or people won't like your art, whatever, I know it sounds like your voice telling you that, but it's not. It's just fear. And if you woke up this morning, you have a brilliant opportunity to choose not to live by that fear.
2) It's going to take a long time to get to where you want to be. Embrace the suck. There's no way out of it but through. It's going to be boring spending your nights watching videos on perspective and practicing technical art, but there is no Matrix program that will upload it into your head. At first, you'll feel chaotic and directionless, but just keep sitting down and doing your reps. Eventually, you'll crest a hill and you'll actually enjoy learning.
3) Keep your motives pure and do this for you. Ignore the latest discourse, ignore politics, ignore circular firing squads in the community. Your highest calling as an artist is to improve your skills as much as you are humanly able so that your art better reflects that blurry, heavenly vision inspiration put into your brain. You owe yourself your best work. Cut out the distractions and get to it.Â
Get the Scoop on Renton
BM: When writing and drawing your own stories, what are your favorite genres to work in?
RH: I'm probably most at home in the western and spy genres right now. I could veer into sci-fi and horror a bit at some point, but I think the western or spy tropes will probably run through anything I'm doing whether I like it or not.
BM: What books are you reading right now?
RH: I read a lot of non-fiction, usually history, philosophy, psychology, or theology. Right now, I'm in a research phase, so I'm reading a lot of Eastern warrior culture and mythology stuff, as well as art books and the like to sharpen up. I'm also working through a lot of 90s X-Men, Spider-Man, and Batman comics just for fun.Â
BM: What kinds of things inspire your work?
RH: It's hard to nail down, I don't know that I've done a lot of thinking about why this appeals to me over that. I think I'm trying to create work that reflects my values and principles as an artist. Whatever organically sort of "rhymes" with that is gonna show up, I'll let you know if I figure out a framework to explain it.
BM: What are you working on lately?
RH: You, Brittany, already know exactly what I am working on lately. As far as when I can talk about that thing you know something about, I'll probably have more to say in the fall.Â
BM: Haha!! I do...that means we’ll have to chat again. Sorry everyone for the dodgy secrecy, it happens in comics!
Dear readers, be sure to check out RONIN DIGITAL EXPRESS and sign up for his newsletter rent*space to follow his work.
