Beyond Marvel And DC Comics

Interview with Wesley Allard, co-founder of Last Bastion Studios based in Los Angeles, CA.

Only three more days to go until the end of Ragnar Soft Vinyl Toy Kickstarter campaign. Make sure to check it out!

Founded and located in Los Angeles, CA, Last Bastion Studios is an art house and production studio dedicated to quality craftsmanship, innovative solutions, and imagination. They specialize in all manner of collectibles.

Can you tell me about yourself?

I was kind of a nerdy kid when I was young. I liked to spend a lot of time in my room, playing with action figures, reading comics, and drawing pictures. I LOVED my comics the most though. I was constantly reading them, reorganizing them, and just looking at the covers. I used to sit at the table and spend hours trying to redraw the covers I was looking at. I was so protective of them, that I still have boxes and boxes of them all bagged and boarded to this very day. I also really like to tell stories. I think my mom even has a local newspaper clipping of me as a kid telling a story to my classmates as part of a reading drive. It’s just something I’ve always liked and the main reason I ended up going to college for creative writing, screenwriting in specific. I didn’t exactly do anything with it once I got out though. I mean I tried to write things, but I wouldn’t get very far before I had trashed whatever I was working on. It eventually occurred to me that I had to go live life, experience things and find who I was before I was ever going to be able to write the things that I wanted to write.

Fast forward about 8–10 years through the drudgery of life, and all of the sudden, I felt ready to write again. I didn’t know about what, but I felt ready.At the time I was dating a girl who had this incredibly funny roommate. We were driving up to Big Bear when I looked over at her and I said, “Can you imagine what it would be like if Leche had superpowers?” She just started laughing. From there, all these thoughts just spiraled off. I started working on a script that would eventually become Luchador one of our main IPs at Last Bastion.

Can you tell me about the birth of Ragnar? How did you start working with Chris?

Chris Hillseth and I have been friends for well over a decade and we actually met through martial arts. Both he and I are avid Judoka. We’re both active and practicing Judo black belts who’ve spent a lot of time training together. We became really good friends and found that we had a lot of common interests.

Ragnar was born out of Chris’ brilliant and crazy mind. As I know the story, one day Chris was sitting in horrible, horrible LA traffic and just started contemplating what Kaiju would best be able to wipe out the mess in front of him and allow him to get home. He thought about all the classics, King Kong, Godzilla, Mothra, but eventually he started dreaming up his own ideal Kaiju. He went home and things spiraled out pretty quickly for him from there. He started drawing the character and eventually started sculpting it as he dreamed up the world which he came from.

It took a while before we ever thought about working together though. With Chris being a sculptor, he had already come up with a resin figure for Ragnar and was on the convention circuit at the same time I was developing Luchador as a graphic novel series. I went to one of his conventions to show friendly support for his work, while at the same time looking around for comic artists. When I arrived at his table I learned more about his character and fell in love with the idea and characters he was telling about it.

He had always wanted to make a Ragnar comic to go along with his figure but he’ll tell you himself, he’s not much of a writer. I told him I wanted to write his comic with him and then pitched combining forces to make comics and toys together. We’ve been doing that ever since.

I noticed you guys have a good following on social media. How did you get to this point? How are you going to grow your fan base even further?

Well, I’m a firm believer in “If you build it, they will come.” More importantly, I had to cast aside any notions that I was going to be an overnight success, get rich quick or become super famous. My business partner feels the same way I do and we both understand that it’s a marathon, not a sprint. We know that it’s about the work and that as long as we are making consistent progress on our projects, people will start taking a look.

We are also firm believers that if people like what we are doing, they will come back for it. Even if they have to wait. You don’t need to look too far in today’s society to see examples of that everywhere. Why do you think Hollywood is dredging up films and TV shows from the 80s and 90s for remakes of and sequels? Take Top Gun for example. There’s a new Top Gun movie coming out and it’s gonna be a blockbuster hit people are going to flock to. Why? Because of the love and nostalgia for the original product. Regular comic book companies like Marvel and DC think that if they don’t throw a new story at you every single month, they are going to lose you. We don’t believe that. We believe that if we trust in our skills and in our craft, we do the best job we can to make the best product we can then people will find it as well.

Aside from that, many of our followers come from the people we meet at conventions. Pre-COVID, we hit the convention circuit pretty hard and went to anywhere from 1 to 3 conventions a month. We kind of look at the convention circuit almost like being in a band. You play crappy bars, you play crappy nightclubs and then maybe you open for somebody at a slightly bigger venue, you get more people following and then you blossom from there. That is the philosophy that we had regarding conventions. We’re going to go to every convention that we possibly can, whether we make money from the table or not. At this point in our business it’s about fan outreach and getting our product up in front of people’s eyes.

While we may not be Marvel Studios, I really do feel like we have something special and it won’t be long before people really start taking notice of who we are and what we’re doing en masse. Right now, it’s kind of weird. We’re almost like the artists’ artists. A lot of other artists know who we are and what we do, and they fully believe in us. We hear a lot of:
“You just gotta wait until the public catches.”
“The public will catch, just keep going.”
“You’re almost there, just keep trudging forward.”

Until that time, we are happy to earn our followers one by one.

How are you able to fund this company?

Last Bastion studios is also a multi-directional business. Aside from making collectibles we are also heavily involved in 3D printing, 3D sculpting and producing all things that can be done with 3D printers. We have 12 different 3D printers and we have a range of capabilities and services that we offer. For the most part we have helped other artists bring their figures and art to life but 3D printing crosses a lot of industry lines and we find ourselves with some very unique opportunities. Through that, we extend our network of creative types and give ourselves a different revenue stream that can buoy us when the comics aren’t selling or when the figures aren’t moving or we’re in the middle of a project that is still six, eight months down the road. We’ve tried to look at it as almost like a tripod. We have 3D printing, related services, and our own line of original content and collectibles and all three legs are generally connected.

If that wasn’t enough, my business partner and I still work regular day jobs and invest all of our extra income into the growth of this company and the projects we want to do. Basically, we believe in us and what we do so much that we’re willing to bank every spare cent we have on it. I’m hopeful and confident that there will come a time when we don’t have to work another job and can do this on a full time basis.

What are some of the challenges that you are facing?

Connecting with the fans. That’s the biggest challenge. Most people are fans of Marvel and DC. They don’t know anything else beyond that. If you were to walk down the street and ask a hundred people if they like comic books, I guarantee you’re going to get about ninety yeses. But if you were to then ask those hundred people how many comic books they own, most of them wouldn’t own one. If you ask what was the most recent comic book they read, they probably coun’t tell you. People know that they like comic books because of the work of Marvel and DC. I mean it’s in your face and everywhere you go. You can go into just about any convenience store and find something branded with one of the Marvel or DC characters. People are primed to these mega icon comic book characters and I’m trying to get noticed in a sea of material with them on it. Pretty tough for our small operation.

Also, catering to the collector market is much more difficult than people think. Collectors are very different and each one values something different from the other. Some don’t care about your comic, they just want your stickers. Some don’t care about your stickers or your comic, they just want the figure. Other people just want a poster while others are pin hunters or a combination thereof. So trying to find that right balance of items and project investments can be kind of tough.

Finally, I think just being a part of the indie market presents its own set of challenges. Most people aren’t attuned to checking out the indie market. You have some people who go indie just for indie sake, but that is pretty rare. For the most part you will find that people who are afraid of the indie market think it means low quality items. Again, that’s why conventions are so important for us. It gets us out there in real life spreading our work and stories. Not just relying on social media and paid advertisements.

On the other hand, what has been the happiest moment for you? When did you feel the most proud of yourself?

Probably when I held the first printed Ragnar comic in my hand. It was an amazing feeling. Every update from the artists, every update from the colorist and the letterer, even the little proof copies, they were all significant. They were the evidence I needed to see that it was happening. However, it just doesn’t compare to coming home and finding two thousand copies of your comic sitting on your porch with your name and company logo on it. I remember flipping through it, tangibly just feeling it and thinking to myself in that moment “Oh shit, this has always been a childhood dream of mine and I just made it come true.” It was amazing and it’s why I’m willing to spend every penny that I have until the day I die doing it again and again.

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