Release The Geek

Matt Hawkins is a veteran of the initial Image Comics launch, and has worked in the comic book publishing industry since 1993. Since that time, he's had many roles including creator, writer and executive, and currently serves as the president and COO of Top Cow productions.

Matt was gracious enough to share with us his path to geekdom, how he got into the comics industry while never having read a single comic, and describes his first torturous job interview with Rob Liefeld and the team.

Being a geek is about the passion you have for your chosen fandom, and being able to celebrate it with those who share that interest.

Release The Geek co-host Vittorio Leonardi recently travelled to the US to experience the ultimate in sports entertainment: Wrestlemania. A long time wrestling fan, Vic sat down with us to share how it felt to be a part of this massive extravaganza, and what it was like to chat to the heroes of his youth.

Competitive esports in South Africa has been around for a while, but only now is it just starting to take off, with at least four separate tournaments offering prize money in the millions to best players around. But, as is often the case, the current generation are indebted to those who came before, and one of those names is Barry "Anthrax" Louzada. During his tenure as a competitive gamer, Anthrax held South African national colours multiple times and garnered a reputation as one of the country's best gamers both locally and internationally. His experience as a player at the highest levels has him in good standing for his next major challenge as part of the MettleState team, a multi-gaming and esports organisation that is bringing state of the art production values to esports tournaments in an effort to bring greater professionalism to every aspect of South African competitive gaming.

Morgane Leleux is a much loved and respected South African cosplayer who started SA's first dedicated cosplay event, Kin Con. We spoke to Morgane live at the spiritual successor to Kin Con, CosXP, and found out about her path to geekdom, how she got into cosplay, and her advice for budding (and not so budding) cosplayers.

This week we continue with YouTube as our topic focus, but we're going to look at it from a different angle. Carla Harris is the Social Bard - a consultant who focuses on helping businesses and creators grow their YouTube and online video audiences by helping direct more traffice and activity to their video content.

How effective is Carla? Well, since he started consulting with the 'How To Be A Great Game Master' channel on YouTube in March 2016, their subscriber numbers have risen 2083%, and they're currently sitting on over 11,000 subscribers.

This episode, we step into the world of YouTube creators in South Africa. Chantelle Alexander (or Chani_ZA as she's better known) is not only a YouTube creator, but also one of the co-hosts for the NAG podcast. We sat down to chat to this console gamer girl about her path to geekdom and why she chose to jump into YouTube content creation.

Tayla Barter, otherwise known as Kinpatsu Cosplay, started cosplaying for the first time just over four years ago. Since then, the South African has gone on to amass over 100,000 followers on Instagram and Facebook alike, and is now looking to make cosplay her full time profession.

There's a lot going on at Release The Geek, and GeekXP in general - too much for an intro, but not enough for an hour's discussion. The answer? Our first Sub-Podcast!

Chris Jordan has built a successful career in radio broadcast, stretching back from his days at Tuks FM at university through to be the producer for 'On Air With Ryan Seacrest'. Chris is now giving back to the community, helping young announcers find their way with the first text book in South Africa that covers radio broadcasting.

The esports space in South Africa has changed dramatically over the last 10 years. At the coalface was Steve Whitford, former GM of the Telkom Digital Gaming League (DGL). We chatted to Steve about the origin of the DGL and some the fiscal truths behind competitive esports in South Africa.