In recent years, Chip Zdarsky's name has become synonymous with some of the biggest characters in superhero comics, from Daredevil to Batman. But between Sex Criminals, Public Domain, and now Time Waits with DSTLRY, Zdarsky is just as committed to creator-owned comics as the Big Two. ScreenRant spoke with him at New York Comic Con 2024 about Time Waits and so much more.

Launched earlier this fall, Time Waits by Zdarsky, David Brothers, and Marcus To is a time travel story about a man, Blue, who's desperate to leave his violent past behind. Though Blue has made a home for himself in the present with his partner, Grace, and their young friend, Duke, he can't seem to shake - literally and figuratively - the ghosts of his militaristic past.

Time Waits is the first of four miniseries Zdarsky has planned to publish with DSTLRY, a publisher who has become known for their oversize and art-forward slate of creator-owned comics. Sitting behind the DSTLRY booth at NYCC 2024, Zdarsky chatted with ScreenRant about his collaborators on Time Waits, how his creator-owned titles differ from his work with Marvel and DC, the role of violence in genre stories, and so much more. Check out the full interview below, edited lightly for clarity.

Time Waits Writer Chip Zdarsky Talks About the Importance of Creator-Owned Series to His Career

Time Waits #1 by Chip Zdarsky, David Brothers, Marcus To, Matt Wilson, Marvin Sianipar, and Ariana Maher

ScreenRant: You've had a couple of big years now with licensed work in particular, you know, Batman, Public Domain - I love that book, I read it every month - and everything else that you're doing in the indie sector. What does it mean to you to keep coming back to the original work, especially at DSTLRY?

Chip Zdarsky: I mean, obviously the history of the medium is littered with people who only did work for DC and Marvel and then end up doing Go Fund Me so they can get medical treatment. It's super important. I got into comics in a big way with Sex Criminals [with Matt Fraction]. That was my first big thing, right? And so I knew right away the importance of creator-owned, because that book paid my mortgage. And so doing Marvel and DC was always fun but, financially, creatively, the creator-owned stuff was immediately satisfying. So I've always known that.

Creating wholly new characters - that's tricky.

It's more of a challenge. [Doing] Marvel and DC has challenges, obviously, but creating a whole world, creating wholly new characters - that's tricky. When I was working on Jughead, it was very easy for me to write Jughead and Betty and Veronica because you have the voices in your head. But to create new characters is challenging, new worlds - it's important to do that so you don't become complacent.

Chip Zdarsky Reveals More About His Process with the Entire Time Waits Team

Time Waits #1 Variant Cover by Adam Warren

SR: We're definitely going to come back to that, that's the stuff I'm interested in. But for Time Waits in particular, you've got a really great team on the book. It's not just you, obviously. What's it been like working with David and Marcus and everyone else on Time Waits?

CZ: It's cheesy to say it's a dream, but it really is. It sprang out of my podcast, Mangasplaining, which I do with David Brothers and a couple others. And David and I, during the course of the podcast, we realized we have very similar sensibilities and touch-points in of entertainment. And so we came up with this idea, and it was like— I tend to shy away from co-writing, because it actually is more work than just writing on your own, I find.

SR: Yeah, I’ve been there.

CZ: But with David, it's just great, because we get on these Zoom calls and spitball. And because he's like a professional and an editor, he understands the process, so we were really able to collaborate seamlessly. We do these Zooms, figure out the story, then we keep going back to it until we have the story. Break it down into scenes and pages. We split it up, we smooth it together. We handle the edits together. It was very, very straightforward and easy and delightful.

And Marcus To, we were just talking about how we circled each other in Toronto for so many years. Like, I knew his wife before I knew Marcus, and she was always like, “you guys gotta do something together!” And I was like, “oh, yeah, this is the book. This is the perfect book.” And Marcus is a professional. I was just telling him, he is just one of the top people drawing. He's so good, great storyteller. Does it on time, is really great with notes and .

It's so easy. I almost feel like I'm robbing DSTLRY in a weird way because this project has been so easy. And the fun part is, because we have total control over this, I kept thinking, like, “Marcus' work is great. How do you make it even better?” And I was like, “well, Matt Wilson on colors.”

SR: It’s really great colors for this book, yeah.

CZ: I had it in my head. I’d be like, “Oh my God, that's going to be amazing.” Seeing Marcus's line work and Matt’s colors - and especially in the format, the oversize format.

SR: It looks so good.

CZ: And Ariana [Maher] doing the lettering - it all works so well together. And, not to go on about it too much, but we also have the situation where it's like, well, we’ve got to come up with variant artists. And so I just said to David, “well, who's your favorite?” And was like, “well, Sean Phillips?” Yeah, for sure. Adam Warren, Emma Ríos. Let's just shoot for it. And they all said yes! It's amazing to see pages come in and covers from people that you have just long loved.

Time Waits Is a Sci-Fi Story Based on Zdarsky's Real-Life Observations

Time Waits #1 Variant Cover by Steve Lieber

SR: Something I've really loved about following DSTLRY and covering it for the past year is that it really seems like this culture of people who enjoy making art together, making art together. Everyone I've talked to from DSTLRY, making DSTLRY books, seems to have the same vibe and sense of that.

CZ: Yeah, I mean, it's very ive, and the product looks so good. Especially seeing it now, it makes my future books feel even better. Like, this is great that I'm seeing it on my screen, knowing it's going to be in print like this. It’s awesome.

Check out more of DSTLRY's still-growing slate of critically-acclaimed comics, including horror story Somna by Becky Cloonan and Tula Lotay, sci-fi story Gone by Jock, mystery story One For Sorrow by Jamie McKelvie, and so many more. Ask your local comic shop for more information!

SR: Let's talk a little bit about the actual book. So can you tell us a little bit about the relationships between this kind of almost-family in Time Waits? You've got Blue, Grace, and Duke. This is a sci-fi story, but in what way are they actually the center of the comic?

CZ: We're playing off the idea of the trope that Dave and I both love: the violent man on the run from his violent past and trying to start new. So doing that with a time travel twist made sense to us. But also the fact that Grace pushes [Blue] to advance farther— like in the story, he's given up that life and he's kind of slowly like gardening and trying to figure himself out. And she's like, “Okay, that's good. But there's more to life, let's keep going with this.” Duke presents this opportunity to take that next step up.

And a lot of that is also kind of based on my observations of myself and my friends as we were growing up and how the women in our lives tended to hit stages before us. My wife used to call me— when we would have discussions about buying a house and having kids or whatever, I’d shut down, and I’d become what she calls “floor void,” where I would like, slide onto the floor and stare at the ceiling. I couldn't talk. I couldn't engage with that. And I think it’s a phase a lot of— not to gender it too much, but men definitely go through that, especially in my circle and my age group.

And so it was a way to reflect that in this book: that there's more to stopping doing something bad. You have to start doing something that's good as well. But yeah, it's been a fun dynamic to write, especially since Grace is the sheriff, there's an inherent violence to that profession. And then how she deals with it in relation to Duke and Blue…

From Superheroes to Creator-Owned, Chip Zdarsky's Characters Are the Heart of His Storytelling

Time Waits #2 Cover by Marcus To

SR: You're building these really meaningful character relationships that have that kind of depth that you're talking about. In Time Waits and elsewhere - they're often the heart of your storytelling. Where do you start in building those kinds of characters? For you, how does that happen? Especially going back to what you were saying about the creator-owned stuff, how hard that is.

CZ: Every project is different. I tend to start with just like, “what's the theme that I'm trying to tell?” [Pause] I'm thinking about a lot of the DC and Marvel stuff now. Like with Daredevil, I re-read a lot of Daredevil and I was like, “oh, what's the theme?” Oh, the theme is violence! When is violence justified? Exploring the superhero world through Daredevil, and I started reading books about violence and books about the violence of a prison system, what that does to people - and recidivism.

If the general idea feels strong enough, then all of a sudden the characters kind of— not write themselves, but present themselves.

So that's generally where I start from. With Time Waits, we really started with the conceit of the violent man on the run, and then the time travel angle. And then from that, the character springs from that. If the general idea feels strong enough, then all of a sudden the characters kind of— not write themselves, but present themselves. [Blue’s] reluctance to move on wasn't the first thing we thought of, but it definitely came about after we came up with the time travel constraints.

SR: It's really interesting to me— I come from a creative writing background, poetry, stuff like that. So talking to my friends who are writers: who comes up with the character first, and who comes up with, you know, plot, theme, idea, and how those stories grow from there. It's just interesting how different people tackle it.

CZ: Yeah, every project's different. I sometimes worry— I find I write a lot on instinct. And then sometimes I'll only notice a theme after I've written it.

SR: Well, yeah!

CZ: Which, I mean, if it happens, it happens - great. But sometimes I worry that maybe I should pull back on that instinct and actually flesh it out a bit more before I dump in. But yeah, if it works—

SR: [Simultaneously] If it works, it works. [Laughs]

CZ: That's exactly it. Exactly it.

Chip Zdarsky Discusses the Role of Violence in Genre Comics - And His Next DSTLRY Project

Time Waits #3 Cover by Marcus To

SR: You touched a little bit on the violence of the story and the way the characters come from violent backgrounds or live with violence in their lives. What did you want to accomplish with that violence - violence as a theme - and also the action sequences in this literal action story?

CZ: I mean, I don't want to give away the end too much. There's a real push and pull with violence in media, because I love it. I grew up on action movies and stuff, and there's that element in here. We enjoy writing the action scenes, but also we want to show that there's a cost. And it's such a fine line between glamorizing it and also coming down against it. Hopefully we pull it off by the end of it. I can't really say until it's done, you know. [Both laugh]

SR: So the DSTLRY books: you have Time Waits, but when you announced Time Waits, it was also announced you had a few other projects coming down the pipe. Is there anything you can tell us about what you're working on next for DSTLRY?

CZ: The next one is… I’m trying to think of what I can give away.

SR: [Laughs] Take your time!

CZ: The next one is the closest to me writing a novel, I think. Like in of— there's no genre to it, I think. I mean, there might be a little bit, but it's very much real people dealing with a situation and their relationships and where do they go from a tragedy. How do they move on? And how do they reflect on their actions prior to the tragedy? Yeah, I don't want to give too much away. The artist is so good. She's relatively new in the North American market, but it's someone I noticed, and I was like, “God, she'd be perfect for this.” And so far it's gorgeous.

Time Waits #1 and #2 are available now. Time Waits #3 is available January 8th, 2025 from DSTLRY Media.