We recently connected with Zach Young and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Zach, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about the things you feel your parents did right and how those things have impacted your career and life.

My parents are American born Chinese. My mom, first generation. My dad, second generation. My mom was fostered at a young age by a catholic woman of Irish-descent in East Oakland. This catholic woman, we called her Grams, had raised my mom on a foundation of love from the ground up. My dad had lived on his own since he was sixteen. When his family decided to move from Oakland to Union City, he stayed behind and worked various jobs from butcher to gas station clerk to delivery driver. My parents went to Oakland High and it was through their circle of friends they met and eventually fell into each other. We all have baggage we carry whether we realize it or not, but when we decide to start a family, we let pieces of ourselves go to make space for things that are worth growing. I think that’s what my parents did when my sister and I were born. They made sacrifices, checked their baggage at the door and supported each other with one goal in mind: to provide a better future for us. Not sure where I heard this from but it resonates to this day: “When you decide to raise kids, it’s not your life anymore.” They’re still extremely different people (mom—extrovert, social butterfly. Dad—introvert, independent) but they agreed to walk the same path. They guided us, in their own loving ways. They never pressured us to live beyond our means or scolded us for the choices we made…they let us define what happiness and fulfillment would mean to us. As a result, my sister and I are both wildly creative, both very opposite of each other like my mom and dad, but it’s our values that bind us together regardless of the paths we take. They treated us as adults, were honest and transparent when they needed to be, respected our opinions, encouraged our curiosities and put all the stuff that didn’t matter to rest. They taught us compassion, to imagine what others go through and to put ourselves in other peoples’ positions so we can be helpers, lovers—loyal to kindness and grace. I think the values they taught us mean a lot more than what money, fame and recognition can ever achieve. In the end, we’re all just splashing around in a pond and it’s not so much the vastness of our ripples—how far they may or may not travel—but instead the quality of them, and who they affect. I remember in third grade one of my teachers made a remark about how I wasn’t like my sister (three years older than me). He mentioned something about me not being an extrovert like my sister and my mom told him that we’re very different people, and that doesn’t make either of us better than each other, we’re unique in our own ways… The teacher got the point. Of course, I didn’t hear about this story until later but I give my mom credit for sticking up for me. As basic as this example may be, my parents have always been fair and they’ve always empowered me and my sister to be fair to others and to always do the right thing. I think it is far more beneficial to focus on emotional intelligence, spiritual well-being and interpersonal relationships so people can be set up to attain happiness rather than status.

Zach, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I grew up in Fairfield, CA. I’m thirty-six years old. I’ve always been very observant so I think I knew I’d eventually pick up drawing and writing. I’ve always drawn. I went to the Academy of Art in San Francisco and graduated with a BFA in Traditional Illustration. I only wrote a few stories as a child but after taking narrative storytelling and developmental psychology, I found a fascination for writing.

After graduating college I was coming to terms with addiction and other unhealthy choices. I managed to expunge that, traded my unhealthy habits for healthier ones and improved my routines to naturally rewire my brain. I got a job at Costco for a bit and then decided to ride my bicycle across the country in 2016. My sister lived in Brooklyn, NY at the time so I stayed with her and delivered food and packages on a bike. I loved being in New York. Or maybe I loved leaving an old life behind? I don’t know. Eight months passed, I rode a train back to the Bay Area and tried doing art commissions but it wasn’t fulfilling. Then I became a delivery driver to pay the bills and support my new passions…

I actually didn’t start writing until around 2020 when my friend introduced me to the world of comics. To get better at writing I’d practice writing fictional, five-hundred word stories every morning, whatever came to mind, mostly scifi stuff (I was really into Ray Bradbury at the time). I got into constructing a few short stories I felt good about and then I wondered what these stories would look like as comics. Since then, I’ve collaborated with my friend to self publish a one-shot scifi comic—a fictional take on how consciousness began (apes and aliens, yipee!). I still love writing that kind of stuff and it won’t ever leave me. There’s something about the mysteries of the universe and pondering our existence that makes me feel alive. And on the other side of it, the tragically comedic side of it, there’s my sense of humor, and I can’t ignore that either. So I’ve written a couple of comics (sort of a coming-of-age into adulthood type comic) as a personal project, separate from the deep, scifi stuff. It takes the edge off.

I don’t often think about turning my hobby into a career. I’m more interested in seeing improvement and creating what hits me the hardest before I ever “go all in.” I feel like once you can master your craft, you create your own little niche, something that hits other people hard, that’s when the answers come to seek you and you can stop chasing it so much. One of my figure drawing instructors said you do it until it becomes second nature. I can pick up a pen and draw, it’s become second nature at this point, so that’s what I’d like to do with writing. The more you do it, the better you become. You can read all about how to do something but none of that matters if you don’t put it into practice. So that’s what I tend to do when I want to get good at something. I learn about it, practice it, learn about it some more, observe, practice, rinse and repeat, improve and excel.

My friend and I created Deep Theory Studios–our comic book publisher name. We’ve taken a break from creating for Deep Theory but in the meantime I’ve created my own comic book publisher called Green Pizza Comics. So far I’ve created two comic book issues in a series called Sex Life: Zero (coming-of-age anthology). Two different artists have illustrated the first two issues. I’ve just self-published a collection of my journal entries that document my cross-country bicycle trip, a 252-page book you can find on my website (www.greenpizzacomics.com). And my next self-publishing project will be a 96-page novella, written by me and illustrated by Jesusa Diaz. That will be released next year in 2026 via Kickstarter. What I’ve been working on recently is a 6-8 issue comic book series about a young psychiatrist who travels back in time to kill her grandfather before he kills her father and unknowingly hands humanity over to a mysterious entity plotting extinction. That won’t be released until 2026 or 2027 but I’ve been working really hard on it and I think it’s a really good story involving the Mandela Effect, the Akashic Records, the Zodiac Killer and a twist at the end that involves the purpose of humanity. No, I didn’t just spoil the series, there’s much more to it. It covers themes of nature versus nurture, and whether or not psychopathic killers are born or made. I hope people will give it a shot when the time comes.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I mentioned my addictions and unhealthy habits. This was during high school and college. About a year after graduating college, I quit everything pretty much cold turkey, including art. I felt like I couldn’t do art without using, so that’s why I stopped and took a short break (from drawing, painting, etc). When I did get back into art, I made some cool stuff but I felt I needed to approach life from a different angle. Sometimes when you shift focus toward something else, you give the overworked area some time to breathe. Up until this point, since quitting everything and then getting back into art, I’d been working at Costco for a year and eight months. That’s when I got this random idea to ride a bicycle across the country. You can read more about my travels in my travelogue (I recently ran a Kickstarter campaign to print a collection of my journal entries, visit www.greenpizzacomics.com for more information). This trip helped to put things in perspective. I ran a GoFundMe campaign that promised artwork to donors. Once I’d arrived, I pumped out the artwork and started drawing new things in my sketchbook, mostly portraits. It was here I found a love for pen and ink. I owe it to this trip, and to my sister for her hospitality and support. I think when you’re an artist starting out, you need to find not just a favorite medium, but a medium or set of tools you feel confident enough to use for any type of project. It’s like finding something you can stand on, or a good pair of shoes that can help you go the distance. So I’d say I didn’t give up on myself. It took a change of pace and direction to find something new, and maybe it won’t be exactly what you’re looking for in the long run but it’ll lead you somewhere, the more unexpected the better. Just take a leap and whatever you’re looking for will come, as long as you’re looking for something and you promise to love it, even if it’s not what you expected. If you don’t love it, toss it, or put it on the backburner. You can set your sights on one thing but that one thing may not pan out, so follow your feelings, the things that compel you to lose sleep, those are the things waiting to be freed from the captivity of your mind.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

I like seeing stories come to life. I’m a big process fan, how things were created. There’s this thing in my head that always wonders if creation of anything is by chance or by design. It’s a little of both. Everything has a little bit of chaos and a little bit of order. It all works together and caramelizes over time. What I’ve learned when commissioning artists to work on my stories is that you have to give them creative freedom. Some artists prefer it and others don’t. But it’s a collaborative process and it never pays to be an asshole no matter how genius you think you are. I’ve been on the side of being an artist and I loved creative freedom because it felt like the client trusted me with the result. On the other hand, I’ve worked with people who were very particular and even if they got what they wanted I felt bruised in the end. That’s not a good feeling. So I try to get a feel for the artist before I jump into anything, and the past two artists (both of which have completely different preferences, one prefers art direction, the other doesn’t) have been amazing to work with. I’ve made it a rule to put people over projects (I’ve been blinded by the opposite in the past, unfortunately) so that everyone goes home happy.

It brings me joy to work with an artist and to see my stories come to life. That’s the most fulfilling part of the process. If people gravitate toward it then something is going right. You can say universal truths or concepts of beauty don’t exist, but I think they do. And I think there is a code to crack with everything. It’s fun to try and chase that. It’s a part of the game. I was thinking about how music is composed and how animals perceive music differently. I asked myself what it may sound like to them. It may just sound like a bunch of noise. String together a bunch of random sounds and yes it sounds like a bunch of noise. But use an instrument and play sounds that relate to each other, in a way that sounds meaningful and transcendent to our minds, when animals are attracted to it, I wonder if they wonder if there’s something else behind the sounds? Like they must know these notes we carefully composed connect in some way, each note belonging to some kind of “beautiful” frequency family, the animals must know. Because a single loud sound would be displeasing. But a series of orderly sounds actually makes something meaningful, and I wonder if they know that, too. Or maybe we really did find a universal truth or form of beauty or pleasant feeling that everyone and everything can agree with.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.greenpizzacomics.com
• Instagram: greenpizzacomics
• Other: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/deeptheory/deep-theory-1-ardipithecus

  https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/greenpizzacomics/ba-to-bk-a-travelogue-cycling-cross-country