An interview with Dusan Zica, Founder of 2142 Comics

Zica: 2142 AD is our website and it's very easy to connect your Metamask wallet to the website. Once you do, then you will get to instantly mint a small free bundle of NFTs. Then you’ll be able to see how it works. The mechanics are simple to understand. It's like a sticker album, but with comics and you can buy them in bundles. 

Inside the bundles, there is a probability that you're going to get covers, which are unique, then you can have the empty page for the comic book panels. Each page has about 4 or 5 panels on it, so there is a lot to collect.  

When you have all of them, you can read the comic?

Zica: Yeah, when you have everything, you can read the comic, and then you can burn them. A lot of the value depends on the comic’s cover which is the most unique part of the collection. The covers are made by rarity models, you know, that's typical. So, they're a combination of 20 elements; and when you burn it, you have one comic book issue, then you will get a free airdrop of characters or locations which allows the holder to receive a share of the profits when they are used in the comics. 

We also have a tabletop RPG that we've been working on actually, based on our worldbuilding. We are deeply in pre-production for the video game and are talking to a couple of VCs right now to kickstart production of our video game. We’re still in the early stages of that though, so we can’t say much more yet. 

Do you have experience building video games?

Zica: I was working as a copywriter and creative director for 11 years in BBDO, and then six years ago, I switched to video games, actually. So this is where I started to do marketing with video games on a large scale, selling one game for 150 million downloads. Then I went into the creative direction of video games with narrative design. I've been playing tabletop RPGs since I was like 13. You know, Warhammer, Dungeons and Dragons, things like that and I’m 42 right now. So, it was a fun switch. 

You said tabletop games and video games. So are you doing two different things? Or are they going to be one?

Zica: It's the first logical step to do the tabletop RPG because we’re already doing that.  We need to make all these things during the pre-production of a video game, right? So, it’s very logical for us.

Our tabletop RPG will be at least like 30% or 40% of pre-production for the video game. Which means all the technical game designs like skills, abilities, dice rolls, man mechanics, our inner mechanics, will be defined on paper. We already have super cool art for it too. 

It's like we're part of the indie RPG community with friends who have been writing for Dungeons and Dragons or Dungeon Crawl classics, this stuff. So, we are familiar with those communities.

What are these character, location, and item rewards exactly?

Zica: Once you’ve assembled the whole comic book then you are rewarded an airdrop like the Goddess Kali or her bubble metaverse. Then you can get rights to get a revenue share with every single piece featuring that character, the application, or the title.

This is one of our practical utilities. All these things will be featured in the tabletop game and there'll be featured in video games, too. So, we will gladly share the profits with the current owners of these items. 

And if someone were to get one of these characters, they can sell it to someone else?

Zica: They can sell them on our website, we have a marketplace. What is cool is that since people are buying bundles you will have a lot of doubles because bundles are randomly generated. You will get more doubles eventually which you won’t need, but others you will. Our idea was to help the community to buy and sell specific NFT items and this is why we have a marketplace. 

Can you talk more about the DAO you’re creating, too?

Zica: We were thinking a lot about that. We want to use all the advantages of NFT technology. We want to engage our crowd. Anyone who buys at least one bundle of NFTs will get a download, of course, and access to our DAO to vote on the next comic book issue that comes out. We are giving the opportunity to the community to vote where the story will go, what location is next, where our heroes will travel to, and what's going to happen next. 

How long does it take you to make a new issue?

Zica: It takes about three months. We have one lead director, and he illustrates it. I write the comic book. We have one coloring artist. We have one lettering designer. We also have a native editor and proofreader for English too. So, there’s a lot of work that has to be done across the team to get everything ready for release. 

I guess that gives time for DAO members to vote without being rushed, too?

Zica: Yeah, and now we are opening the voting for episode three because when we released episode one, we were already in the process of making episode two. We cannot make instant changes because we need to plan at least one episode in advance before voting becomes effective. 

So, we’re asking the community, ‘what will happen in episode three?’ We will engage them to vote for things that will be reflected in episode three.

Where do I vote as a DAO member? Is it on the website?

Zica: Yeah, on the website. We're still getting votes. We recently released the first comic book issue like a month and a half ago, so a lot of it is still early, but the community is strong. 

We already have about 1500 people in our Discord and we never bought a single person. We don't want to buy fake accounts, bots, and stuff like that. We want real fans, people that like sci-fi, cyberpunk, mythology, you know? Stuff like that excites us and it’s who we’re trying to attract.