DAVID PEPOSE Takes TEN-TON TITAN TERRIER off the Leash

Today, Luis Godoy II sits down with David Pepose, creator of the graphic novel, Ten-Ton Titan Terrier, out October 7th through Papercutz, ready for young readers.

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COMIC BOOK YETI: Welcome to the Yeti Cave, David Pepose! I am excited to talk to you about Ten-Ton Titan Terrier, your new graphic novel from Papercutz. I’ve been a big fan of yours for a while now. I think if I first became aware of your work with The O.Z., Scouts Honor, and "Roxy Rewind" from the Project Big Hype anthology. It’s been really great seeing your career just skyrocket ever since. From what I’ve seen you’re working on… four titles right now; Space Ghost, Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Speed Racer, and now Ten-Ton Titan Terrier. 

DAVID PEPOSE: Yeah, it’s definitely been a busy couple of years! But I think lately I’ve really been in a fun groove, where I’ve been working on a ton of different books in a variety of different tones and genres with just a stellar lineup of artistic collaborators, each with their own distinctive style, personality, and voice. I’m always trying to find new ways to reach audiences, and to try new things to challenge myself and broaden my range as a storyteller. It’s just one of many reasons why I’m so excited about Ten-Ton Titan Terrier — I think this book will show readers a different side of me that they haven’t seen before.

CBY: Now before I get into the question about Ten-Ton Titan Terrier, I don’t know if you remember me but at WonderCon 2024 (possibly 2023), I lost a copy of Planet of the Apes under your booth that had a remark from Joshua Cassara within, so I just wanted to publicly thank you for getting the book back to me. 

DP: Any time! Always glad to reunite a comic book with a loving home.

CBY: Now for Ten-Ton Titan Terrier, I knew you had a terrier named Ruby, but I did not know you had another terrier named Holly, after whom you also named the lead character of TTTT. I’m glad you were able to honor Holly this way, and wonder, when did the idea come to you for this book? And what made Papercutz (a Mad Cave Studios imprint) the perfect place for it?

DP: Ten-Ton Titan Terrier has been a long time coming, and its creation was really a confluence of a number of different elements. Firstly, I’d been thinking for years that I wanted to work on a book that was kid-friendly — it always bummed me out to go to a convention and not having anything that I could sell to kids. I grew up on ‘90s Marvel when I was a kid, and that idea of writing a book that was accessible and approachable for younger readers but didn’t talk down to them felt kind of like the missing food group of my bibliography. Meanwhile, I always love injecting different strains of pop culture into my work, and sci-fi is such a vibrant genre to draw from — I’ve written stories before about time travel, space opera, villainous A.I.s, and post-apocalyptic dystopia, but the subgenre of giant mechs and kaiju had always spoken to me in terms of their bombastic, larger-than-life action.

But the story didn’t really click until my own terrier Holly was diagnosed with melanoma in 2019. Holly fought for nearly a year, and she had a slew of appointments as we worked to keep her healthy and comfortable for as long as we could. Holly was a little dog with a truly massive personality — she was incredibly feisty, affectionate, funny, and above all else, deeply loyal. As I sat in the waiting room during each of Holly’s appointments, I couldn’t help but feel powerless — I wasn’t sure if I could save my dog. So I decided to make her immortal.

Very quickly, the story came together after that. The idea of mashing together the boy-and-his-pet dynamic of Ash and Pikachu from Pokémon with an age-appropriate version of Pacific Rim really felt like I could explore all the emotion and excitement that a pup like Holly brought into our lives. I’m used to writing books that have a sense of escapism to them, but this was a rare occurrence where I felt that same escapism writing it. Holly was a fighter in real life, and being able to create a story where she battles such larger-than-life foes, it just felt like such a perfect way to encapsulate everything that was so special about her.

CBY: How did Ornella Greco become your collaborator on the book? The art fit the story perfectly. Please let her know when you can how amazing it all turned out. 

DP: I believe I discovered Ornella’s work on Twitter, and I was so blown away by her designs, her expression-work, and her beautiful use of colors. I reached out to her as soon as I saw her work, hoping that she might join this project. I didn’t realize at the time that Ornella herself was a dog lover, and you can see how her dog Wilma influenced the book in everything from the look to the character acting to perfectly capturing the emotional dynamic I was shooting for.

But I also want to praise Ornella’s spectacular sense of range for this book — she was really able to switch on a dime between the endearing character beats, but she also did a sensational job with the Ten-Ton Titan Terrier battle-mech, as well as the crazy monster designs. This is ultimately an action book — if you’re a fan of The Incredibles, for example, then you’ll be good to go for this book — but the reason why it all works is because Ornella struck such a perfect balance with the art. 

Like I said before, I never want to talk down our fans — I know from my own childhood that they can smell it a mile away if the book feels watered-down to just be “kids' fare.” The goal was to invite younger readers to the big kids table, but to keep it accessible and appropriate without sacrificing any of the fun and excitement. And I think Ornella is the reason why I feel confident that Ten-Ton Titan Terrier stuck the landing.

CBY: Which Bio-Titan (the Kaiju-like villains of the book) did you think of first and which is your favorite name you came up with? Were there any that you just couldn’t fit in the book? (or you’re saving for a sequel?)

DP: You can actually see the first Bio-Titan I came up with in our preview pages! Irradigator was the first of our alien monsters that I came up with — I felt that if I was doing a mechs-versus-kaiju story, having our first monster be a love letter to Godzilla felt like the appropriate choice. As far as my favorite Bio-Titan names that I came up with, I’m pretty fond of Howlitzer, Javelinsect, and the Cryonoceros — although I think the best of the bunch I think has to be Sporantugan, which was our shaggy, mossy nod to King Kong. 

CBY: As usual, you really got to the emotional core of your characters. The connection between Holly and Sam was put through some really tough tests. At first, I was going to ask if having a conversation between a human and animal was tough to write but then I remembered you also wrote Spencer & Locke so I had to rephrase this. Was it difficult making the emotional connection seeing as only half of the characters can talk? 

DP: Honestly… it was actually much easier! (Laughs) The thing I’ve learned with my own terriers has been that even though they can’t talk like humans, they have their own unmistakable ways of communicating — beyond barks and growls, you can tell a lot about an animal from its body language, its expressions, the way their ears move when they’re listening or flatten when they’re happy or concerned, the way they tilt their head when they’re not sure about something. It’s very much that kind of bridge between silent films and comic books, in that the goal is to be able to convey as much of your story visually, without any words.

In a lot of ways, it really streamlined the process for me in the scripting stage, because rather than searching for the precise words to convey a specific feeling, writing for Holly meant pinpointing precise emotions — you know exactly what she’s thinking at any particular time, it’s just finding a way to convey that visually. So a book like Ten-Ton Titan Terrier is really kind of a trust fall exercise for a writer — while you have to think about any sort of character acting choices you might have for a protagonist like Holly, it ultimately comes down to finding the right artist who can actually sell these moments visually. Without someone as talented as Ornella bringing this book to life, it all falls flat — you need to have a collaborator who doesn’t just understand the vision, but truly embraces it, and adds their own personality to the mix.

CBY: You’ve made a name for yourself with rough characters with names like Space Ghost, Cable and Moon Knight, to name a few, but how was it jumping (back) into a child-friendly tale such as this? Roxy Rewind was your last YA/Child friendly story, right? 

DP: That’s a nice deep cut with Roxy Rewind — who originally debuted in one of the very first scripts I ever wrote! So in a lot of ways, a book like Ten-Ton Titan Terrier does feel like a breath of fresh air to me. I know that I’ve been known for darker books in the past, but I personally don’t see myself as a naturally gritty writer — having a character with angst can lend drama to a story, but if I’m being honest, my work in books like Fantastic Four and Avengers Unlimited are really where I feel most at home. 

With a book like Ten-Ton Titan Terrier, there’s something really freeing to me about not having to add that layer of darkness, to just embrace the brightness and joy of these larger-than-life characters. My core philosophy as a comic book writer is that there’s always room to build a bigger table, and so I write with the intention of being accessible and engaging on a core human level, versus purely continuity or spectacle-driven stuff. To me, character and concept are king, and I think a book like Ten-Ton Titan Terrier is a perfect way to invite new readers of any age to get hooked on this medium I love so much.

CBY: From what I’ve read, writing stories geared toward children, you have to use fewer panels than most comics (like 5 or less). Did you have to change up your pacing a lot versus your other recent comics? 

DP: Yes, but not in the way you’re probably thinking. I knew that given the subject matter (and the title of the book!), I wanted Ten-Ton Titan Terrier to feel, well, titanic in scale — so I built this book in terms of extra-large chapters, to come together in a story of 150 pages total. So that I think gave me some room to add in extra big moments, to really give the story room to breathe — not quite as decompressed as a manga like, say, Akira, but certainly expanded at least in terms of my usually hyper-compressed style. I wasn’t necessarily counting panels more back when I originally wrote this book — I was a little more liberal with the six-panel pages versus necessarily how I’d write today — but Ornella did a tremendous job at keeping everything smooth and legible. And I think having a dog as a lead character also certainly helps rein in any impulse to overwhelm readers with too much dialogue, so you can let the visuals do the talking.

CBY: Was this story always planned as a graphic novel with chapters or was it planned as a mini-series?

DP: When I first started writing Ten-Ton Titan Terrier, I was still fairly new in my career — if I’m remembering my timelines correctly, I’d begun working on this concept before the COVID pandemic. So this was before The O.Z., before Scout’s Honor, certainly before any of my Marvel or licensed work. And because I knew this was such a personal book, a project that I had sworn I would self-publish out of spite if necessary, I knew I needed to write this in a flexible way to cast the widest possible net for distribution — could this work as a standalone graphic novel? Could this work as single issues? Could this work on Kickstarter? So breaking it up in terms of individual, 30-page chapters gave me some options — the story could work as individual chunks if needed, but also would work as one cohesive whole. This might be my single-issue writing history talking, but I think having chapter breaks always help me quite a bit — it means I can write for the cliffhanger to keep fans excited and invested, but there’s also discrete chunks so readers can still feel satisfied if they don’t finish the whole book in one afternoon.

CBY: I’m always on the lookout for the Pepose name on the cover of my comics now. Are there any upcoming things you’d like to let people know about? 

DP: Beyond Ten-Ton Titan Terrier, I’ve been keeping very busy on a number of other books — we just relaunched Space Ghost at Dynamite with artist Jonathan Lau, as we kick off our epic second volume of the series. I’m having a ton of fun as we’re expanding Space Ghost’s universe, adding some killer twists to some of the more Silver Age-infused villains from his rogues gallery, including the toy-themed supervillain Toymaker, the Viking warrior known as Tarko the Terrible, and the cosmic threat of the Space Vampires. I’ve really fallen in love with writing Space Ghost, Jan, Jace, and Blip over the past two years, so I’m excited for fans to see what Jonathan and I have planned as we continue to raise the stakes.

Meanwhile, artist Eman Casallos and I are heading into the home stretch for our blockbuster new origin story for Captain Planet and the Planeteers, also for Dynamite. I’d been lobbying for this book for years, and it has been a tremendously fun property to bring into the 21st century — the characters are so fleshed-out and compelling, the action is sensational, and I think the core concept is even more relevant today than it was in 1989. Eman’s been doing a killer job on the artwork on this book, and I’m hoping more and more people learn his name after this.

And not to be outdone, at Papercutz’s parent company Mad Cave Studios, I’ve been tag-teaming with artist Davide Tinto on their new relaunch of Speed Racer, which has been such a joy to work on. As primarily a sports drama with some crime undertones, Speed Racer is very different from anything else I’m working on — the best way to describe Speed as a character is that he’s like Hamlet and Rocky had a baby… who was born to drive a racecar. Speed Racer is such a character- and dialogue-driven book, but it’s also a book that always challenges me to step up my game on a technical level as we choreograph all our high-octane races, which Davide absolutely knocks out of the park in the best possible way.

Finally, I’m working on the final lettering pass of The O.Z., which will be gearing up its third and final Kickstarter very soon. Our fantasy-war mashup of The Hurt Locker and The Wizard of Oz has been a long time coming, but artist Ruben Rojas and colorist Whitney Cogar’s sensational pages have made it absolutely worth the wait. I’ve always been so grateful for the Kickstarter community’s enthusiasm, support, and patience, and I always want to make sure that I’m working on books to serve this often-overlooked demographic.

CBY: On behalf of everyone here at Comic Book Yeti, I’d like to thank you for considering us. Where can people find you on social media or other places?

DP: You can find me on Twitter/X, Bluesky, and Instagram at @peposed, on Facebook at @DavidPeposeComics, and on my website at www.davidpepose.com.

CBY: Thanks again, this was Luis from Comic Book Yeti, signing off with another interview from the Yeti Cave. Be good, do good, and read comics! Find me on the CBY discord  or BlueSky ‪@luisgodoyii.bsky.social‬

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