Aditya Bidikar came onto the show to talk about the first issue of his mainstream comics writing debut, In Your Skin, from Image Comics. Now that the Bollywood body horror identity and parasociality exploration In Your Skin has reached its conclusion, writer Aditya Bidikar is back to talk about the story as a whole, free to spoil as necessary to get to the heart of what he was going for…and he brought backup: SOM, his Mumbai-based artist & collaborator who brought In Your Skin to life. While he has worked primarily in film, animation, and VFX, SOM has done comics work before, most notably with Philip Kennedy Johnson on BOOM!’s Crocodile Black. But In Your Skin doesn’t read like a book from early in someone’s career. It reads as a work of confidence from all sides, and this episode peels back a layer (or three) on its life and legacy.

[This episode is number 842 in a series.]

CHAPTERS

00:00 – Intro
08:22 – Serialization and Reader Confusion
14:55 – Coffee Shop Sketching Method
19:31 – Key Poses
25:23 – Coloring Collaboration
29:39 – The Physics of Skin
34:31 – Unlocking the POV
37:34 – The Epiphany
40:38 – Issue 4 Reveal
48:38 – The End Mirroring The Beginning
53:34 – Where Reader Sympathy Lies
58:23 – The Dude Playing The Dude Playing The Other Dude
01:03:26 – Realism and Art Influences
01:06:44 – Decisions and Options
01:12:56 – That Last Page
01:17:40 – The Necessity of Hope?
01:26:11 – Outro