DF Interview: Amit Tishler & Elliot Sperl to launch new gritty horror miniseries, ‘The Last Wardens’

By Byron Brewer

With an alcoholic father and a hole in her wallet, Danielle Pryer's life in the rustic town of Bleakwood goes from bad to worse when her long-lost brother Bruce returns from the Vietnam War. While Bruce is being plagued by a mysterious and monstrous mutation, he is also being hunted by an incompetent team of paranormal misfits, which leads to Bleakwood quickly becoming ground zero of a supernatural battle that forces Danielle to choose between everything she holds dear and the fate of the world as a whole.

From Mad Cave Studios comes The Last Wardens, a gritty grindhouse miniseries from writers Elliot Sperl & Amit Tishler and artist Rui Silveira. My friend Amit got in touch with me, Elliot joined us and here we are. Here is what the scribes told me about the book.

Byron Brewer: Amit & Elliot, what was the inspiration for your coming miniseries, The Last Wardens?

Elliot Sperl: Aside from the obvious, which is that we’re both long-time horror and supernatural fiction fans, there are multiple things that led to the creation of The Last Wardens as we know it today. The best way to explain it is actually by focusing on this title’s core theme: failure! And there’s no better metaphor for failure than the journey of the creator. Whether you’re a writer, a visual artist or a critically-acclaimed award-winning finger-puppet master…failure and rejection are the status quo, and we wanted our story to revolve around that cheerful concept through and through.

Amit Tishler: On that note, The Last Wardens is actually one of our oldest and most iterated-upon concepts. We pitched its first iteration all the way back in 2018 after spending months developing it. But with each rejection we got, we took the feedback, interpreted it, and iterated on the story until its final, ultimate form came to be. Throughout its creative evolution, the story maintained its supernatural roots and fantastical lore, but the characters' personalities, backstories and journeys evolved as the theme of “failure” took center stage, because “failure” is a universal experience. It marks and defines us as human beings.

Byron: What can you tell us about the canvas you guys and artist Rui Silveira are building in this book, the “world” readers will find themselves in come mid-July? I noticed one character is just back from the Vietnam War, so a period piece?

Amit Tishler: Much like my previous solo title Edenfrost, The Last Wardens is indeed a period piece. But unlike Edenfrost, the choice of setting this title in America during the mid-1970s was part of the story’s evolution and came from pure pragmatism. The Last Wardens tells the story of a group of paranormal misfits that come into town on a hunt, wreck it and get out without leaving a trace. This framework would be difficult to sustain as a story element in a current day setting. Cell phones and the internet would put the story in chains and shift the focus away from the mystery and the action. However, once the choice was made we milked it to its full extent. We used elements that defined this time period and incorporated them into our characters’ backstories and the setting as a whole. It helped reshape the Wardens’ universe in ways that really anchored it in reality.

Elliot Sperl: In order to make sure everything fit that 1970s visual aesthetic across all six issues, a ton of time and research went into designing the characters, creating the original art guide and hyperlinking specific references into the script. From there, we passed all our materials over to Rui Silveira who really dialed the original designs up to “11” and made all the visuals pop off the page! On top of everything, the colors Francesco Segala used leaned hard into matching that 1970’s grindhouse “feel”, which really heightened a lot of the over-the-top moments present in each issue. It ended up being something Amit and I decided to focus on when it came to marketing this series in particular, so you’ll see a lot of fun shout-outs to grindhouse posters and trailers across our social media accounts leading up to the big release date.

Byron: Introduce us to your protagonists, siblings Danielle and Bruce Pryer. Who are they when we meet them and what is their relationship like? Apparently Bruce has been away at war for some time before “current day”.

Elliot Sperl: Remember how we mentioned the multiple iterations this concept went through? It may be hard to imagine, but Danielle and Bruce Pryer weren’t even a part of earlier versions of this story. For better or worse, the group known as “The Wardens” are a force of nature in this world and they are the source of its conception. We eventually decided to tell their story through an audience proxy, because we believed it would be a more compelling way to introduce this group and their violent adventures. This first story arc simulates what it feels like when this group smashes into town on one of their missions and throws everyone's lives into chaos.

Amit Tishler: We created Danielle to be the readers' POV character, and her brother, Bruce, became the catalyst that brings the Wardens into her life.  As Danielle desperately searches for answers, the readers learn more about the Wardens and the threats they face alongside her. Her motivation is her brother Bruce, who went MIA in the Vietnam War but miraculously returned, only to be hunted down by this incompetent group of so-called "protectors". But the version of her brother that left all those years ago is now gone, and Bruce, who the Wardens define as a “Drifter”, loses control, and devolves into a terrifying monstrosity. Throughout this story arc, Danielle is torn between her loyalty to her brother, her fear for her friends and her distrust of the Wardens, who are on a mission to take down the Drifter by any means necessary.

Byron: What is the meaning, if any, of the book title, “The Last Wardens”? I know the book is supernatural in nature. Is Danielle among a group of wardens or guardians of some demon’s imprisonment or perhaps safekeepers of a mystic device of some sort?

Amit Tishler: While unknown to the general public, events such as Bleakwood’s devastating paranormal devolution aren’t exactly an uncommon occurrence in this world. Luckily for the average joe, the Wardens’ job is to cut down these types of outbreaks before they become unstoppable, with minimal collateral damage. But the havoc wreaked during their visit tells Danielle that this ragtag group of idiots heavily prioritize the end over the means.

Elliot Sperl: So to answer your question, when the story begins Danielle stands in opposition to the Wardens and their relentless hunt for her brother. But as the grim reality settles in, she learns to accept the group’s role as a necessary evil but decides to become their new captain in order to turn them from a rusty chainsaw to a sharpened scalpel.

Byron: Does Danielle’s father have any role in this mini at all?

Elliot Sperl: Joseph Pryer’s role in this story is both active and passive. He is a perfect representation of generational trauma and the dangers of dumping your baggage on those around you. His toxic personality and abusive conduct shaped his children’s lives and set them up for failure.

Amit Tishler: Under his roof, Danielle became independent, overprotective, and bull-headed, becoming the only reliable member of the family. Meanwhile, the abuse Bruce endured filled him with feelings of inadequacy, eventually pushing him to enlist in the army in hopes of making his father proud. But when he “comes back from the dead”, Joseph immediately picks at old wounds and causes all the trauma to resurface and destroy everything in sight.

Byron: Not to get into spoiler country, of course, but what is the mysterious mutation Bruce is undergoing?

Amit Tishler: All we’re willing to reveal at this point is that Bruce underwent the same process that turned our so-called “Wardens” into the freakshow posse they are today. The world of The Last Wardens is plagued by an unnatural phenomenon called “The Great Drift”, which spontaneously rips holes in the fabric of space, which twist and terraform our reality in unpredictable ways. Anything and everything affected by these Drifts usually withers within seconds, but every so often…something stays behind. These “Drifters” can warp and mutate in a variety of unexpected and potentially hazardous ways. The Wardens are all rehabilitated Drifters, picked up by an enigmatic leader called Riddle, who through extortion and manipulation, weaponizes them to save the world from their own kind. But how this order endured throughout history, and what makes this team their “Last” are all topics for another time.

Byron: Talk about the powerful penciling of artist Rui Silveira.

Elliot Sperl: Rui is incredible! Not only can he juggle the large amount of action and chaos that can happen on the page, but he can do it while mastering the characters’ expressions as they battle it out across the small town of Bleakwood. It was also Rui who made Amit and I stop in our tracks halfway through issue #1 and forced us to go back in and re-write the layout direction across the rest of the series. He intuitively drew  “balanced” panels where our protagonist takes the lead, “chaotic” panels where the Wardens mess everything up and “disruptive” panels where our villain takes center stage. Once we saw it all in action, we knew we had to go back in and apply that same direction across the rest of the series. Brilliant work all around! Also, I’d like to give a shout-out to our main cover artists Zach Howard and Nelson Dániel who have been knocking it out of the park for every issue. We have an amazing team all working together making this dramatic-yet-slightly-comedic-gore-fest an absolute masterpiece.

Byron: Elliot & Amit, what other projects, inside or outside comics, do you have that you can tell readers about?

Amit Tishler: In addition to the Edenfrost’s trade paperback release, and The Last Wardens upcoming debut, our collaboration has spawned two more original graphic novels with Humanoids Publishing that are currently in production, and that are slated for a 2025 release. We just signed a deal for an adaptation of The Last Wardens to another medium, which we plan to announce this fall. On top of all that jazz, we are developing and shopping around a whole new slate of original titles that we’re hoping to unleash upon the world in years to come. Excited yet?

Dynamic Forces would like to thank Amit Tishler & Elliot Sperl for taking time out of their busy schedules to answer our questions. The Last Wardens #1 from Mad Cave Studios is slated to be on sale July 17!

2. 05/06/2025 - MARC GUGGENHEIM

3. 04/29/2025 - DAVID PEPOSE

4. 04/22/2025 - CURT PIRES

5. 04/15/2025 - MILES GUNTER

Show All