Tom DeLonge is best known as a musician, currently the frontman for Angels & Airwaves and as a longtime member of punk trio Blink-182. Earlier this year, DeLonge added comic book writer to his resume, releasing the three-issue sci-fi fantasy series "Poet Anderson: The Dream Walker" from Magnetic Press alongside co-writer Ben Kull and artist Djet Stephane. At Comic-Con International in San Diego, the San Diego native spoke with CBR TV's Jonah Weiland about why he made his first foray into comics and why several musicians before him have been able to successfully make the transition. DeLonge also elaborates on what the story of "Poet Anderson" means to him and how the story goes far beyond comics, expanding into a full-on transmedia experience with animation, music and much more to follow. Plus, he answers the age old question: Is writing comics scary than playing live music in front of thousands of fans?

Magnetic Press to Release "Poet" from Blink-182's Tom DeLonge

On why so many musicians have had success creating comic books:

I could tell you straight up why this is the case. It's because musicians, everything about us is knowing who we are, what we think, what we feel and communicating that back. Actors... I don't think they know who they are. [Laughs] They're always acting as different people and I don't think anybody wants to know who they are. If you really knew who this actor was, you wouldn't believe his next role as much. The last thing you want to know is what's going on in their head. At other times when you have directors and producers making comics, they're doing it after the fact just because they want to monetize something that's coming out in film.

Musicians, our entire thing is to be as real as we are, to not stray from our fundamental belief system or how fucked up we are as people, and then people out there go, "Okay, I really understand that musician, his music, I'm gonna dress like them, I'm gonna try to hang out with people that like that band. I'm gonna be a punk rock kid or a heavy metal kid." And, granted, now things are all fusing together, but rock and roll, it's entire legacy is for the musician to really be himself. So when they come into storytelling I think that kind of translates.

On what "Poet Anderson" is and why it's taking on so many forms:

At this point in my life, I'm not like a master of any one thing but I know a lot about a lot of different things. The company I started, To the Stars, that's putting out "Poet Anderson," and really which is the next part of my life with the arts -- how do I apply all these things I learned in business with all these things I learned in communicating my weird thoughts -- how do I apply all these things together and do one thing? That's why it's a big transmedia property, "Poet." We might have six of those we're developing. Five really are far along. To me it's like you take one core story and you assemble artists from all over the world that are interested and you get them all working on one thing. "Poet Anderson" just happened to be the one that was furthest along. The novel comes out, we just put the pre-orders up on TotheStars.media a couple days ago. People have seen the animation, we put out the Angels & Airwaves soundtrack.

These kids, Sergio & Edgar [Martins], they're twins, they're so talented. And they're such great directors themselves. The guy doing concept art, Gustavo [H. Mendonca], he's coming from "Halo" and Lucasfilm. These guys, they get out of their full-time jobs and we work nights and weekends together. Suzanne Young wrote the novel with me and Ben Kull wrote the comic books. What we have basically is seven or eight people coming together to have it exist on all these different pieces of media. What I'm able to provide -- and I'm talking so much, I'm so fucking sorry -- what I'm able to provide is I understand how to put this thing together and create a real business out of it and have it succeed. But people are really responding to it. This is exciting. I mean the movie -- I can't talk about the movie but it's coming and it's gigantic. It's a little scary. It's scary to see things happen that you thought could but then it does and you're like, "Wait a second... I better not mess this up."

On whether new projects cause him anxiety and his advice for those who are afraid to take chances:

I've trained myself to not care about what people think, which is really hard to do. If you probably searched inside yourself the anxiety would be because you're worried about what people might think or you're letting somebody else down or you won't live up to the expectations people might have of you. Once you learn to get rid of that, you just gotta prove it to yourself and only do things that you really care about, then you'll do them really well. I always tell kids, a lot of people come up to me and they always ask me like, "How did you become successful?" or "How did you win?" or "How did you know when your band popped?" And I'm nothing compared to like the Steve Jobs of the world, but I always tell people number one, make sure you do something you love, because you'll stay awake at night. And if you're not staying awake at night because it's not something you love, somebody else is gonna take it from you because they're up at night. So if you're sleeping fine, then you're not doing the right thing. You just gotta do what you love and not care about what people think. And that's hard to do, I get it, but it's possible.