With this week’s release of Template issue #4 on ComiXology, QAM Comics are half way through the first season of their Guided View Native cyberpunk action series. They’re also hot on the heels of an ‘honorable mention’ in our digital comics of 2013 and so we caught up with Template’s Quinton Miles to find out what is next in the world of Alpha, Beta and the mysterious Oversight private security firm.

Issue 4 comes to a head with Beta being captured by Alpha and the story about to head off in an exciting new direction, can you give us any hints about where this might be going? 

QM: Things definitely get a bit more psychological for both sides in the back half of this run. Up to this point, Beta, and the readers, have only really heard one side of the story as far as Ina Britt is concerned – and it was a vague one at that. Alpha touches on it a bit in the fourth issue, but that certainly gets some more attention in the next four.

At Oversight, those guys are going to be busy with getting Beta back online (even though her signal’s just blocked to them) as well as dealing with the actions of Dr. Harding. There won’ t be a cavalry coming for her, though, primarily because they don’t actually know where she is. Bryce has already shown a reluctance to put his human agents in Alpha’s way, which was one of the reasons for bumping Beta up to full-time field agent early. So it’ll be interesting to see how long he’s willing to maintain that line to preserve the company’s big investment project.

Obviously fans of the web comic will already know this, am I right in thinking that has reached it’s conclusion already? Have you found much of a split between people getting the collected editions on ComiXology and the fans who read online? How do you deal with spoilers in this instance?

QM: The webcomic run wrapped up in late November, so yeah, the whole story is out there for people who “really” wanna see where all this goes right now. That said, ComiXology‘s a much bigger platform, so I expected the majority of our audience to be those discovering us there. That’s mainly been the case, but either way, I haven’t really had to deal with anybody posting spoilers or anything. First-world problems for creators 🙂

That’s one area where I, and by extension our team, really wear those Thrillbent influences on our sleeve, though. Regardless of when it came out or how they’re reading it, I think if the audience likes it, they’ll support it if they think it’s worth supporting and want to see more. Buying the collected editions on ComiXology is the best way to do that right now.

You’re half way through the run of collected editions of Template on ComiXology, how has it been received so far and are there plans to continue it on after this run?  Anything you’d like to change looking back on early issues? Will you put together a ‘collected edition’ of season 1?

QM: I won’t have any hard data for another month or so, but it looks like the reception has been great. The first issue hung around the best-sellers list for about a month and even managed to work its way into the Top 100 (#84) at a point. The second issue wound up making the list too, with the third and four issues looking like they’re on track to maintain their engagement in terms of ratings.

There are a couple of things I’d tweak, but nothing major that I’d change. And those basically boil down to having more time. That’s something you get better at as you work on more stuff, so I’m confident we’ll get better with it in the future if we do come back to Template. Which, as I just mentioned, mainly depends on the sales/reception.

The collected graphic novel that about 50 folks are getting from our small Kickstarter campaign is the only collected edition we’ve got planned for now. I definitely wouldn’t rule out a digital collected version once the ComiXology run’s done, and I’d probably even release the standard version for folks who prefer to read it that way, too. I’m all about giving people options, so we’ll see.

Are you getting more confident of using Guided View the more you use it and how important is it to you when thinking about how you write a story or do you just let Andres worry about that?

QM: Aside from the lettering, I handle the Guided View Native production of all the issues myself. That said, Andres has always done his panels separately before putting them together to construct the original pages before I gave them to Nathan, so that definitely made things easier for laying things out since none of them bled into the other. After doing the first issue of Template that way, I’ve kind of figured out what works for me so that’s been applied to everything else. I don’t think it’s changed my writing approach at all, though. For me, it’s mainly just another way of presenting the story that’s more targeted at the audience that’s going to read it first.

How has working on your other series Xeno Trip helped you with producing Template (and vice versa?) Obviously the genre and style is very different but have you learnt anything from the process of writing in a different genre that has helped you with Template?

QM: Not much since Template was winding down as Xeno Trip was ramping up. Xeno Trip has definitely benefited from lessons learned on Template, production wise, though. It had the distinction of coming after I had figured a lot of stuff out from Template’s webcomic and ComiXology run, so that certainly helped. On top of knowing it would be on ComiXology in the first place. We started work on Template in late 2012 before Submit was even announced, so it wasn’t a factor for us at the time.  Now it’s a part of the business model for everything, and Xeno Trip’s the first real example of how I want to release most of my creator-owned stuff going forward.

Template #1-4 is available from ComiXology for £0.69/$0.99, and to read the rest of the story for free then visit QAM Comics