Mookie welcomes to the Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory the acclaimed comic artist and storyteller Don Ellis Aguillo, known for his striking emotional style, energy-charged imagery, and powerful storytelling across Spawn, Superman, Aquaman, Green Lantern, indie titles, and his own beloved series Rise. What starts as a conversation about art quickly evolves into something deeper: identity, vulnerability, creative rebellion, AI's onslaught, gratitude, fearlessness, and the raw grind of doing the work no matter who doubts you.

From LA Comic Con to DC Comics, Don charts the real journey—nerves, hustle, imposter dread, breakthroughs, and the humanity behind the page. He opens up about rebuilding his earlier work with new wisdom, rekindling his love of traditional art in a digital world, and stepping boldly into his next creative frontier: horror. This episode isn’t just about comics, but about being seen, owning who you are, and refusing to hand your creative soul over to the machine.

You’ll hear Don talk about:

• The emotional DNA behind his art and why every image must feel like a story, not just look like one
• The fight for artistic integrity in an AI-saturated era—and why the rebellion is going analog
• The power of vulnerability, community, and gratitude in a tough industry
• His personal journey with identity, courage, and finding belonging
• Why horror is calling him next, and how he plans to crawl inside readers’ minds and stay there
• How discipline, obsession, pacing the room, and losing sleep all fuel real his creative life

Don also opens up about coming out later in life: how finally living openly, honestly, and without armor didn’t just change his personal world, it detonated a creative one. He talks about shedding secrecy, and letting go of inherited expectations. That emotional freedom fueled his artistic freedom, sharpened his storytelling, deepened the humanity in his characters, and gave his work a pulse that feels unmistakably lived-in and unfiltered. His self-discovery isn’t a side note in his journey, but a turning point, and you can feel it in every page he creates.

The Artist

Illustrator Don Aguillo is a comic, gaming, and literary illustrator and graphic designer, currently living and working in San Francisco, California.With a background in fine arts along with production and stage design, he entered the comic industry through self-published independent work and entries into anthologies with IH Studios, which he co-founded.

Don moved heavily into comic cover work when he was brought onto the stable of Todd McFarlane Production’s artists, currently providing covers for Spawn, King Spawn, Scorched, Gunslinger, Misery, and Sam & Twitch. His DC work includes contributions to titles like Aquaman, Superman: Ghosts of Krypton, The Atom, The Outsiders, as well as the DC Pride anthology with covers for Killadelphia (Image) Beastlands (Dark Horse) and Power Rangers Prime (BOOM).

Aside from being an established creator-owned comic writer and interior artist on Rise, he is currently prolific in indie comics and is a mainstay on projects from a host of independent publishers. He has provided concept art and illustration for Adi Shankar on the Netflix production Guardians of Justice, game art for Disney & Ravensburger’s Lorcana, Upper Deck & Marvel’s Legendary, Second Dinner’s Marvel Snap and Lazarus Rising’s Overpower.

He is in current development for a self-published horror anthology to explore Filipino-American immigrant experience with Philippine urban legend and horror

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Welcome to a celebration of indie writing recognition!

The Outstanding Creator Awards is one of the most visible and influential platforms recognizing independent authors who deliver quality, originality, and emotional punch. These awards aren’t participation trophies—they’re competitive, professionally judged, and taken seriously in the indie community. They don’t just validate a book; they amplify it. And Ingrid Moon wasn't only nominated… she dominated. The Warrior’s Shade and The Tempest's Fury both took first place honors, and the judges openly called her Saxen Saga among their favorites.

The end of the year SFFF episode has Ingrid chatting with fellow sci-fi writer and host Mookie Spitz as they dive deep into the craft and psychology of writing and marketing novels in 2025. Ingrid lays out how the trilogy evolved from a standalone novel into a full-blown, emotionally brutal space-opera epic, why character-driven stakes beat spectacle every time, and how she balances massive political systems, dark emotional journeys, and relentless tension without ever losing readability. She talks about building worlds without bloat, grounding readers instantly so they never feel lost, and constructing arcs where victory costs something real: Turner Boon rises, falls, and breaks. Elion is lethal, vulnerable, and human all at once. Ingrid is clear throughout: characters should suffer, because pain forces honesty and consequences create meaning.

They also drill into her process. Ingrid breaks down how beta readers literally reshaped critical scenes, how feedback forced her novels to evolve, and why “listening without surrendering your voice” is the writer’s tightrope. She’s brutally candid about how life’s darker chapters fed her fiction, about grinding for years before the recognition came, and about the emotional toll behind “overnight success.” Writing isn’t glamorous. It’s work. But when a reader “gets it,” and loves it, it’s worth everything.

Then the episode pivots to her next big creative leap: fantasy. Not cheesy dragon-prophecy escapism. Real, psychologically complicated fantasy. Ingrid dismantles “lawful good” clichés and instead crafts morally compromised paladins, assassins with conscience, flawed royalty, and deeply human stakes. Her worlds are immersive, but never indulgent. Her fantasy isn’t built to impress, but built to feel.

Mookie meanwhile delights in contrasting his own approach: Ingrid’s storytelling is disciplined clarity designed to please her readers via clean prose, strong structure, and respect for audience focus. Mookie? He’s super dense, multi-layered, often surreal, employing intellectually feral storytelling that demands breathtaking yet sustained attention and refuses hand-holding. Ingrid engineers gravity; Mookie detonates reality. Opposite philosophies, both legitimate, both powerful, making their conversation dynamic.

Check out this year's Oustanding Creator Awards winners

Visit Ingrid's Website to join her mailing list and buy her books

Dive into Mookie's Website to trip on the Transfinite Reality Engine

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In the 17th episode of Science Fiction & Fantasy Factory, Mookie Spitz chats with Steve Gibson (S.A. Gibson), the prolific indie science-fiction author, editor-in-chief of a globally sourced science-fiction anthology, and writer whose work asks an uncomfortable question: what survives when technology doesn’t?

Gibson unpacks his journey from voracious sci-fi reader to author of more than twenty books, many set in a post-collapse world where steam power, printing presses, libraries, and human memory matter more than algorithms and apps. His stories span continents—India, North America, Africa—and explore how societies adapt when advanced technology is lost, hoarded, or dangerously rediscovered.

The conversation goes deep into:

• Why short stories and anthologies still matter—and why they may be more relevant now than ever
• How Gibson and his editorial team built a successful, high-ranking sci-fi anthology with authors from around the world
• The realities of indie publishing, reviews, algorithms, and why “friends and family” still move markets
• The tension between hard science fiction, speculative fiction, and genre purism
• A blunt, unsentimental discussion of AI in creative writing—where it helps, where it threatens, and where the panic is misplaced
• Why science fiction remains one of the few genres capable of seriously modeling future societal collapse, technological displacement, and ethical failure

Mookie also brings his own perspective as a novelist and contributor to the anthology, connecting Gibson’s post-technological worlds to multiverse theory, AI disruption, and the long tradition of science fiction as cultural warning system—not escapism.

Authors with speculative skin in the game, they brainstorm on:

• creativity under pressure
• writing without illusions
• adapting to a media ecosystem that’s eating itself
• and why science fiction still matters when the future starts arriving faster than we can process it

The upcoming Science Fiction Anthology (2026 edition) is available for Kindle preorder now, with print release scheduled for February.

The Guest

S.A. Gibson is a doctoral candidate in the field of education and has studied communication and computer science. He has lived in Northern and Southern California. He has published 20 novels and short stories. Some have been translated into Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, and French. He has helped edited The SciFi Anthology of Science Fiction Novelists for 6 years. His Facebook page is ProtectedBooks.

2026 SciFi Anthology: The Science Fiction Novelists

Featuring short stories set across distant systems, fractured timelines, and unexpected waystations, this annual anthology charts the ever-expanding frontier of speculative storytelling. Inside, you’ll uncover bold experiments, quiet marvels, and fresh returns to the mythic corners of science fiction. Some stories strike like lightning, others bloom gradually with layers of meaning, but each offers its own sense of discovery. Step into this year’s collection and find a universe of voices ready to surprise, challenge, and delight every kind of sci-fi explorer.

Pre-order Your Copy on Kindle

https://www.amazon.com/2026-SciFi-Anthology-Science-Novelists-ebook/dp/B0G62WP5Z6

Visit SA Gibson's Author Page

http://amazon.com/author/sagibson

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