While everyone knows Oscar Isaac from his fantastic work in front of the camera, he now has a new title: comic book creator. That’s because Isaac has teamed up with two of his childhood best friends, John Alvey and Bob Johnson, to release their graphic novel, Head Wounds: Sparrow, with Legendary Comics. The graphic novel is available in stores now.

Head Wounds: Sparrow is about a detective who wears the wounds of those he’s failed to protect, with only way to stop the pain: vengeance. As a divine battle of good and evil between Angels and Demons rages around him, he must decide whether to save his own wounded skin or humanity.

The graphic novel was developed by Isaac through his production company Mad Gene Media, and created by Robert Johnson, with a story from Johnson and John Alvey. Head Wounds: Sparrow is written by New York Times best-selling writer Brian Buccellato (Detective Comics: Batman, The Flash, Chicken Devil) with art by Christian Ward (Invisible Kingdom, Blood Stained Teeth).

During the fun interview with Isaac, Alvey, and Johnson, they talked about creating Head Wounds: Sparrow, their 90’s high school ska band The Worms, Andor, that Ex Machina GIF that went viral, D&D (which they still play), and Moon Knight Season 2. In addition, Alvey and Johnson talk about what it’s like having a childhood best friend become a great actor who gets to be in Star Wars and Dune.

Watch the conversation in the player above, or you can read our conversation below. Head Wounds: Sparrow is now available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Comic Shop Locator, and Indie Bound.

COLLIDER: So, let me start by saying, I have a lot of questions. But I have to start with John and Bob. What is it like watching a childhood best friend become a great actor and someone who's been in Star Wars and Dune?

ROBERT JOHNSON: I’m terribly jealous and very bitter.

JOHN ALVEY: Yeah, so bitter.

JOHNSON: And I stalk him... No, it's great, man. Oscar's been like family most of our lives, and to see him do well is... John and I cheered more than anyone, and we collect all the stuff with his face on it so we can deface it. And we do what friends do and-

ALVEY: We made dart boards.

JOHNSON: And…

ALVEY: I have this anecdote about how talented he is. When we were kids in Ska band, there was 12 people in that band.

JOHNSON: Yeah.

ALVEY: And we all knew where to stand. Some of us had to be told what to play, because of him. He was all over it.

JOHNSON: Right.

ALVEY: So for me, that was that indication that... Just the drive, man.

JOHNSON: He was the great director of a poor orchestra.

John: Exactly.

So I have to ask you, did you give him any feedback after that GIF of Ex Machina went viral, of him dancing or did you say, "No, that was good?"

JOHNSON: Well, we learned the steps so we could make fun of him later.

ALVEY: I asked him if I could get a sex robot.

OSCAR ISAAC: That's true. You did ask me if you could get one of those.

ALVEY: Yeah, yeah. I want my own.

So you guys were in a band together, and I'm curious, when you look back now, are any of the songs any good? Or were they all like, "Oh boy, we all need to do a different career"?

JOHNSON: We were amazing, man. The world was missing out. They just never figured out how great we were.

ISAAC: Some people figured that out, right? A lot of the songs still hold up. They really do.

JOHNSON: A good two dozen loved us.

ISAAC: Yeah.

So for people that actually want to hear them, are they online?

ISAAC: Yeah. Right? There's some YouTubes of The Worms songs.

ALVEY: And there's a Facebook page too that has quite a bit of stuff.

JOHNSON: Yeah.

I read that you guys, in the ‘90s, also worked, or tried to create comic books, did a whole bunch of things together. Are any of those ideas that you did back then things you actually want to pursue now that Oscar has a production company, and can actually make some of those things happen?

JOHNSON: Only in private.

ISAAC: We've been sharing stuff with each other ever since we first met back in '94 or whatever it was, and so I was also just really excited to be able to finally find a way to share Bob and John's unique voice with a much broader audience than the South Florida Ska scene in the '90s.

Sure. Oscar, an individual question for you: As someone who's been in Star Wars, are you watching Andor and are you as impressed as I am?

ISAAC: I haven't been watching it because I've just been watching my kids poop mostly, but I'm excited.

ALVEY: I love it, It's amazing.

ISAAC: You’ve seen it?

ALVEY: I’m with you, I'm impressed. It takes... I don't know, it's a different window into Star Wars, right Yeah. It's badass.

ISAAC: Well, Diego is such a badass, and he's so great, and it's amazing to watch a Latino lead in Star Wars, just running the whole show, it's fantastic.

ALVEY: He's smoldering.

ISAAC: And I do... Gilroy, he's hard to beat, so I'm excited to see it at some point.

Yep, it's the best Star Wars show on Disney Plus by a mile. Tony Gilroy is a genius. He really is.

ISAAC: Yeah, he's amazing.

Jumping into why I actually get to talk to you guys, for people that actually don't know anything about the graphic novel, what have you been telling people about it? What's your log line that you've been telling friends and family?

JOHNSON: It's about a detective who is rotten. He's a rotten person, he's a bad cop, he's a bad friend, he's a general piece of crap. And he has a higher purpose. He has something that he must achieve on this Earth and he is not willing to change on his own. So higher powers come in-

ISAAC: And kick him in the mouth.

JOHNSON: They help him, they really help him. They shoot him in the head, but nobody else can see the wound and he's not going to... The wound will not ease until he starts to protect the people he's supposed to. He's getting the wounds, essentially of the people that he is not protecting, people that he's not serving. So it's kind of like an enforced empathy, and that's Leo's arc. He’s got to become a better person.

And then there's the concept of Sparrow, which is... For us, what we took it, of course there's the biblical sparrow, the lowest form of life is still loved by, we said universe or God, whatever you like. And this idea of a Sparrow is someone who's been so beaten down that they are not afraid anymore. And he's beaten himself down, he's given himself this coat of scars, but it's still a hell of an armor as he's walking toward what he has to do. And so that's our concept.

ISAAC: And behind that, there's an incredible world that John and Bob have built of spiritual warfare, spiritual classes within that, different hierarchies and it's pretty profound how deep it goes. And so this is really the tip of the iceberg to that whole story.

How did you guys decide on the title and was it almost something else?

ISAAC: I think it was always Head Wounds. It was always Head Wounds, because of the head wound, the particular form of stigmata.

JOHNSON: It's also double meaning because fucked up head, head wound.

ISAAC: Yeah. And then as he said, the Sparrow is kind of a rat with wings, and if that can have redemption, then that's a story.

JOHNSON: We totally missed out on Headwinds Parrot. It's all your fault.

ISAAC: It's true. That would be good. Headwinds Flamingo.

That's the next book. Stop giving it away. Oscar, I believe you produced this through your production company, Mad Gene Media. Can you sort talk about what you're trying to accomplish with your production company?

ISAAC: Yeah, just giving our friends work, basically. Giving our friends-

ALVEY: Could you put "talented" in that sentence?

ISAAC: Sorry! Talented friends? Yes. Very important. No, my wife, Elvira Lind and I, we just got excited about... We have a community of artists and friends that are so creative and have such unique voices and have a lot to say. And so we really just got excited about making a place, making a collective, where those things can come to life and we can help each other. We can tease out all these stories that we have to tell. And so the fact that this is the first real thing that our company has officially put out into the world, we couldn't be happier, and it couldn't be a better example of what we're trying to do.

I recently spoke to Keanu [Reeves] and some of his partners about his comic book called BRZRKR. They are developing BRZRKR into an animated series at Netflix and a live action movie. Keanu told me he might direct it. For you guys and with this material, are you already thinking about other mediums where you might take it? Or is it sort of one step at a time?

ISAAC: I mean, we're really excited about the ice sculpture version of Head Wounds.

JOHNSON: Interpretive dance, underwater basket weaving, this sort of thing.

ISAAC: Maybe like a video game with Leo versus the berserker?

JOHNSON: Demon and angel porn. Oh, I went too far. I'm sorry. It already-

ISAAC: Sky's the limit, basically. Sky's the limit. Poor Gunner. We'll see. We'll see if there's an audience for it. We'll see how people respond to it. But there's a lot of story to tell.

And that's something else I wanted to know is when you are coming up with it now for the graphic novel, how much are you already thinking about the long-term arc on where you would ultimately like to go and how much are you sort of just like "Well, let's write this and then we'll see what happens.”?

JOHNSON: Go ahead.

ALVEY: That pool’s deep. We've thought about it a lot, Bob and I. Just the Bible, the characters, the demons, their powers-

ISAAC: The story Bible.

ALVEY: The story Bible. The whole. And every step that Leo takes along the way to redemption. We thought about it a lot. There's more. If people are interested, there's more.

JOHNSON: We're very sick people. We're D&D dorks from a long time ago. We roll out characters, we make factions, we create worlds on a daily basis. We were walking around New York City thinking of role playing scenes in the alleys and all kinds of shit. So we never stop. And Leo's the same way. Head Wounds: Sparrow, John and I are every day coming up with ideas and the world is already made and it's tailor-made for more.

What do you think would surprise people to learn about the making of a graphic novel?

ISAAC: Maybe just how, it's not surprising, but just how fucking exciting it is. When Christian Ward would send us a new drawing, every few weeks we get a new panel and just the giddiness that would occur, to see these things that we've talked about for a long time. I mean, especially for Bob and John, to have it just come to life in such an expressive and beautiful way. Just the art book, the art in this book alone is astounding and I'd say worth the price of an issue.

ALVEY: Yes. Yeah. I had to find new words because I found myself emailing him every two weeks when we got pictures, "This is so badass. This is so badass." And after about a month, I was like, "I need something else.”

JOHNSON: I was seeing my own sick fantasies in paintings and drawings that belonged on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. So the guy's amazing. It even transcends comic book art. The guy is an amazing artist.

ALVEY: Visceral.

JOHNSON: And he's got the soul for it.

ISAAC: Anything surprising working with Brian?

JOHNSON: Brian taught us not to be so up our own asses. We're just learning to do this-

ISAAC: Brian Buccellato, the writer.

Totally.

JOHNSON: So we were talking to Brian and he is like, "Why are you using this big word here?" And he taught us to bring it back down so that we were working with other people instead of trying to prove we were smarter than the next person who might read this. And we're eternally thankful for that lesson. Brian Buccellato is also a badass.

ALVEY: For sure.

I'm also curious, obviously you guys played D&D when you were younger. What is it like for you guys-

ALVEY: We still play D&D.

JOHNSON: Wednesdays.

ALVEY: Every Tuesday.

JOHNSON: Tuesdays and Wednesdays.

Oh, for real?

ALVEY: Yes sir.

ISAAC: For real.

I know a lot of people who are still playing. I'm just curious, what has it been like seeing the popularity of D&D especially the last few years? It seems like it's exponentially gotten bigger.

ALVEY: Do you remember what it was like being a nerd in the nineties and not telling everyone that you were reading R.A. Salvatore, that you were addicted to Faerun and putting maps of Forgotten Realms on your wall. It’s amazing. Everyone's a nerd now, or at least it's okay.

JOHNSON: It's terrible. I was an ogre and so I got away with saying I love Melniboné, or I'm reading Stormbringer and telling everyone about it in school, and I was bigger than them so they couldn't beat me up. But no, now it's great. I love that they're opening up to everyone. They're making it more accessible to different types of people to create different types of characters. The systems we're working on have really opened up. It's crazy, almost culturally and subculturally for everybody be able to create the character that they want within those systems and play their fantasy, whatever the hell that is. And that is badass man. We've loved seeing the evolution of that stuff.

Oscar, as a fan of your performance in Moon Knight and the series. I feel like I've been teased about a Season 2, but it's confirmed, but it's not confirmed. Can we just definitively say that you are making Moon Knight Season 2?

ISAAC: We can't definitively say that. I need my teasing abilities. Can't drain me of those. What a cock tease I am. Always been.

ALVEY: That's true.

ISAAC: No, I hope so. We'll see what happens. But at the moment, there's no official word.

JOHNSON: Well, if there isn't, we're going to riot. If there isn't one... You, me and everybody else is going to riot if there isn't. I'll tell you that.

I guess I'll ask you, what are you possibly filming in the upcoming future?

ISAAC: Possibly filming-

JOHNSON: Your kids pooping.

ISAAC: My children pooping?

ALVEY: Don't film that.

ISAAC: I'm not going to film it. I've got enough pictures. Nothing. There's nothing in the works. Moon Knight was so amazing, but also so incredibly draining. I just put every bit of myself into that. Every bit of output I could. That it's just been a year of input, just taking stuff in as opposed to having to put anything out other than headphones. So at the moment, I'm going to do a play next year and then we'll see what happens after that.

How did you guys end up with Legendary Comics? What is it negotiating with a company like that and how much are they sort of saying when they sign on, "Hey, we want to have the merchandise, we want to have..."? How does it all work in terms of that negotiation of thinking about long term IP?

JOHNSON: There's a lot of intimidation involved. They've been, they were awesome.

ISAAC: Well, I was shooting Dune and that's when we first really started talking about it. And it was Cale Boyter over there. I brought him this story, first started talking to him about it and he kind of opened the door up. And then we started talking to Robert…

JOHNSON: Robert Napton.

ISAAC: Robert Napton is amazing at Legendary Comics. And that's where the idea really started picking up some steam. And they were just so generous in the way that they approached this, so helpful and so excited about the creative part of it, and making it come to life. So as far as the ins and outs of the deal, I'd be happy to connect you with my lawyer. But no, it was nothing but-

JOHNSON: Robert is our Gandalf. Our Yoda. Not that ugly, but that type of…he guided us in this medium majorly. Without him we would've been lost as hell. So the guy's a brilliant guy and he helped us a ton.

ISAAC: Yeah, I'm very excited to continue that relationship.

On that note, I'm just going to say congratulations on your first thing together and I wish you guys nothing but the best and hope it's a huge hit.