By: Riley Golden
Cover of “Space is Awful” #1, which was released in February 2019. (Photo Courtesy of
Derrick Fleece)
Sequential art encapsulates a lot of different things, but probably two of the most prominent mediums are children’s books and comics – two types of books the guys at D&D Studios have been pushing out in recent months.
Derrick Fleece, a Lubbock resident, had independently been developing a comic for a few years when 10 years ago he was comic-shopping at Hastings and met Derek Moreland, a Lubbock local and the then books manager, who at the time had been working on a novel.
“I was stalking him,” Fleece said jokingly. “I had just moved to Lubbock; I didn’t have any friends to talk about comic books with, and I run into this guy that’s got similar interests.”
New to the area, Fleece wanted to pursue a friendship with Moreland, and while they did develop one of those, that chance meeting opened so many doors for the two creatives.
“The first couple of times we hung out, it was literally just chatting comics,” Moreland said. “Eventually, Derrick said that he was actually working on a comic, and I offered to help with the script.”
Moreland didn’t expect much out of this, but over the course of about 6 months to a year, they dove into Fleece’s passion project, “Legends of Streaming.”
They didn’t finish “Legends of Streaming,” and there was a lull production, but Fleece came across an old message from Moreland in the fall of 2018 that lead the duo to where they are now.
While “Legends of Streaming” is on the back burner for now, D&D Studios is in the middle of publishing their first run of “Space is Awful,” their largest project to date that came about the same way their relationship did: by pure happenstance.
Moreland originally wanted the story to get published in 2000 A.D., but Fleece told him that he thought the story could go bigger than the constraints that 2000 A.D. has on their submissions.
John Dennis, created by Derrick Fleece and Derek Moreland, is a man down on his luck, until the events of “Space is Awful” #1 kick off. (Photo courtesy of Derrick Fleece)
“Honestly, it came out of me trying to clean out my email box,” Fleece said. “I saw this email from him from, like, 6 years ago, and it was literally four pages of script for “Space is Awful,” which was meant to only be a 20-page story.”
Moreland expanded the story to a 20-page one-shot, but Fleece pushed him to go even bigger than that.
“So, I took each 5-page section, and built each 5-page section into a 20-page story,” Moreland said. “I really got into the characters; got into some plot points that I hadn’t really considered before.”
On top of the impending release of “Space is Awful” #2, D&D Studios also published a children’s book recently and has another in the works.
“The book that just came out before “Space is Awful” issue 2 is called “Miki’s March,” said Fleece. “It’s a little children’s book about a robot that’s having self-acceptance issues, which is pretty fun.”
Fleece said that while he isn’t pushing his kids to read the book, they still want to be for bed, and his 4-year-old has even quoted it, but the children’s books aren’t the only books they make for kids — Fleece wants his kids to be able to read the comics, which places Moreland on a tight leash as far as cuss words and other adult themes.
“That’s a boundary that I’ve actually really come to welcome,” Moreland said. “Something like “Space is Awful” is honestly funnier keeping it PG-13 than if I had gone hard R.”
While the comics and children’s books are developed with younger audience members in mind, Moreland’s novel, SongWeaver, is more mature, and the duo has a few books on the backburner for 2020, with no sign of slowing down.
Josh Ramirez, who worked with Moreland at Hastings years ago, said that he’s happy to see Moreland doing what he enjoys and getting recognized for it.
“He was always a real creative dude, he always had a real creative mindset, and he was always really enthusiastic,” Ramirez said. “He got a lot of enjoyment out of those comics, so I’m not surprised that he did start writing comics. But I’m happy he got to that point.”
The guys at D&D Studios are just getting started, but they’re showing a lot of promise in the publication business, and they’re doing it by building onto each other’s skills and creativity.
“I don’t know how all writers and artists work, but for us, it’s entirely collaborative at every stage,” said Moreland.
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