After their panel on storytelling, the creators of Dark Horse’s newest expanded universe, Minor Threats, sat down with The Beat to discuss how they invite new creators to play in their sandbox. In the upcoming, Minor Threats: Welcome to Twilight — Villains and Vignettes series, creators such as Mark Waid and Mike Mignola will be contributing work for the newest anthology. Series creators Patton Oswalt and Jordan Blum were joined by Heath Corson and Timmy Heague to talk about what it’s like to see other creators build off of the world they created and see their series grow.
ISAAC SWINDLE: One of the things that really struck me in the panel today, you all are very open about inviting people to play in your sandbox. Tell me a little bit about how that mentality shapes how you think about comics and about your own creative endeavors outside of comics as well.
PATTON OSWALT: Well, I mean, I come from a background in stand-up, and a lot of my best stuff has come from hanging around with my friends and going, “I got this premise, and I kind of have this,” and then they add to it, riff on it. So I’ve always been very, very open to, “oh, we’re gonna build on what it is. we build on.” I just showed my daughter the original Alien that Ridley Scott and Dan O’Bannon did. And then see how James Cameron expanded on that, in that world. That’s a great way to improve your own writing. So that’s always been an ongoing thing with me.
JORDAN BLUM: Yeah, similarly, I came up through writers’ rooms, and the most fun is collaborating and “yes and-ing.” And we’re really lucky, we kind of say, “Look, you can come with a fully formed pitch and you can use us as much or as little as you want, to help develop it, be a sounding board.” So, it just varies book to book where, like with The Brood, [Heath Corson] came with all these little cards that we put down on Patton’s floor. And we all elaborated on it and broke that. Other people were just like, “I got this” or some are like “I have a kernel of an idea. Let’s meet and talk about it.” So what we always try to do is just be kind of supportive creative partners.
TIMMY HEAGUE: [I] came from comic shops and the thing you always hear in a comic shop was, “Who would win a fight? Wonder Woman, Supergirl?” Whatever, right? And so the way I look at it is you’re telling your answer to that question, but you’re also telling it in a way so people outside that conversation would enjoy the stories.
HEATH CORSON: It was just fun to play in there, in this sandbox [and] to get invited, and Patton and Jordan have curated this amazing community of just like-minded and fun people. It’s great to be able to bounce ideas off, and it’s actually spun off into different projects like Minor Threats/Archie, Witness Point, Big Shakedown. These are all people that we’ve worked with and stuff, and we’re all friends and buddies, and now it’s really fun to be part of that community.
BLUM: Yeah, we try to treat it like a family. We have a family dinner at Comic-Con every year where anyone who’s worked on the books is invited and we just talk. Out of that, like you were saying, I think a writer and artist who had never met, they were like, “We’ve got to do a book together.” So it’s just kind of like, these are some cool creative people. You may not know these people. Let’s all come together, and maybe something else comes out of it.
SWINDLE: That’s fantastic. Is there anybody you would want to bring into the family that you haven’t yet?
BLUM: You know, we’ve opened the door, and we hope people want to come, there’s certain creators. We really go after people whose stuff we respect and love and go, “Look, you influenced us. So it’s an honor to have you come and play in the same box.” We’ve been lucky, [Brian Michael] Bendis, [Matt] Fraction, people like that who inspired us to make us do this. Like, you know, “I can’t believe you actually are gonna come to us with a story.” I mean, we joked at that time Fraction delivered his script for Welcome to Twilight, and we were like, “Oh, that’s how you write Minor Threats.”
OSWALT: I don’t want to name names because if you see who we’ve worked with so far, you’ll know [who] else we want to work with, but that’s open to them. They get an idea, bring it to us. It always feels weird going to someone else going, “Do you have an idea? Bring it to us,” Because then they’re on. But if someone comes to us organically, the way that Tim Seeley did, and the way that Kyle Starks did, the way that Heath did, where they were inspired by what they read, rather than us going, “Think of something and pitch it to us,” that’s always amazing.
SWINDLE: Tell me a little bit more about the development of Welcome to Twilight. There aren’t too many anthology books that stick around for too long anymore. But you have so many creators that are champing at the bit to work with you guys in this sandbox. Tell me a little bit about how that came about.
BLUM: I think we wanted to open it up to, like, “Do you have a story that was either too weird, or niche, or small, or perspective on superhero stuff that didn’t work at Marvel or DC?” We’re open to that. And then some creators, like Gail [Simone] was like, “I want to write Crab Louie. We’re like, “Go nuts.” And then other people, like Fraction are like, “I have a completely different sort of character and setting I want to play with that works well for the tone of Minor Threats. Brian was like, “I want to add to Frankie’s story, and I want to make something that counts.”
OSWALT: Add to her background in a way that makes sense to what you see her doing now, and the decision she’s making and he did it so beautifully.
BLUM: Yeah, and then Gerry [Duggan] had this thing that was like, “Well, this is good. There’s so much meat on the bone here. I think there’s more to this.” And now we have The Cleaner series. It’s just sort of that way where we go, “What do you want to do? We’re not gonna assign you anything.” And people kind of choose how much they want to play with Minor characters versus just making something that fits into the world or adds to it.
SWINDLE: What made Dark Horse the place to bring Minor Threats?
OSWALT: Their history, always trying to do character driven, new, uncategorizable stuff. They’re a company that is very, very aware of all of the tropes, and all of the states of graces that comics existed in, and they clearly thrill to people that can work around the margins. So, it was such a perfect fit for us.
BLUM: It’s a place where you go to take risks and do creator-owned stuff. Yeah, it’s a friendly house for that.
SWINDLE: My final question, who pitched Archie vs. Minor Threats, and what was it like joining your characters to the Riverdale gang?
HEAGUE: So, Patton and Jordan were doing a store signing, and I was hanging out with them, and we were talking about the next year of plans for Minor Threats, and someone said “We should do a crossover.” Well, what’s the craziest crossover? Archie would be funny. Well, who’s gonna write it? And Patton just points at me and I go “Okay. Yeah.” And then we just got the houses together, and the crazy ideas just started bouncing off everybody.
SWINDLE: What kind of notes were given on how you could treat Archie and the gang?
BLUM: It was funny. We could blow people’s heads off and do the craziest things, but they’d be like, “Archie’s a little too nerdy here.” And I was like, “He’s a nerd to me.” Yeah, yeah. “Make them cooler.” But that was about it. It was very light stuff and like tiny continuity things that we’ve tweaked, but there was never anything like, “Whoa, we can’t have Archie in a scene where this happens.”
HEAGUE: It just made it funnier in the end that like the stuff that we would get notes on was the stuff that like they never saw coming. Like we reversed Archie’s superhero name with Betty. So Betty was that character and they’re like, “Why are you doing this?” And we’re like, “Because it’s cool? You know, it’s what we wanted to do.”
SWINDLE: Are there any other crossovers that you all would like to make happen?
BLUM: That’s a good question. One being discussed tonight. So stay tuned.
HEAGUE: Stay tuned, True Believers.
Stay tuned indeed for more coverage of this past weekend’s Rose City Comic Con 2026 from The Beat.
