Dallas, Texas — 1973
Chance Priest was born in Dallas in 1973 and raised all over Texas — Canton, Bryan, Dallas, Lytle. The whole enterprise starts at a drugstore comic rack in downtown Canton, where a three-year-old Chance stationed himself while his dad ran the Western Wear store up the street: hand-mixed sodas, a Western Auto toy aisle, Weebles and Megos and twelve-inch G.I. Joes. His grandmother, a doll collector, believed every child should keep a collection. His grandfather, a WWII Marine, taught him to fight when he had to and be kind the rest of the time. Both grandfathers were veterans — and decades later, the character Eagle 8, the commando whose story every other Victory Comics character spawns from, would be built from their memory.
The childhood was not gentle. The family was broke, then broken, and for long stretches the boy's whole security system was a dog, a stack of comics, a shelf of toys, a television, and a sketchbook. He has said that pop culture was his warm blanket on a cold night. He drew constantly. He never took an art class. He never used a reference. He never stopped.
Twelve Lives — 1991 to 2008
Before the toys, Chance lived enough lives for a full toyline of his own. Teenage restaurant work at fifty-plus hours a week. A martial arts education tough enough that the bullies switched sides. A horror-filmmaking crash course in Pittsburgh taught by George Romero and Tom Savini — followed by a screenplay stolen and sold out from under him, which shelved the movie dream for decades. Then the run: cowboy on an East Texas bottomland ranch. Early-era cage fighter. Professional wildlife tracker who could follow pig, deer, or panther through swamp timber for days. Custom knife-maker. Antique-mall operator. Dealer in early Texas pottery. Exotic-animal wrangler. And twelve years behind a badge — small-town deputy, city cop, U.S. Border Patrol tracker working smuggler trails alone through the Laredo scrub for fifteen hours at a stretch, SWAT team leader. Through all of it, a sketchbook stayed within reach, filling up with monsters, aliens, and characters waiting for their world.
The Dream — 2008
In 2008 he woke in the middle of the night from a dream: a WWII hero fighting Nazis, then Frankenstein, then crossing into another world. He started writing and drawing that night and never stopped. His four kids piled in behind him, producing hundreds of characters and stories of their own — because, as he puts it, kids make up the impossible, and the impossible was exactly what the world needed. The same year he made the vow that defines everything since: no references, no templates, no computers. Just let it flow.
Bells, Texas — 2015 to Now
When the recession wiped out his income and law enforcement finally lost its shine, he sold everything he owned — except the toy and comic collection — and bet it all on art. A broken-down for-sale sign on a dark back highway led to fifty acres in Bells, Texas. The family moved onto the land in an RV. He rented a warehouse ten miles up the road in Sherman and disappeared into the work.
He sculpted thirty character heads, then got stuck second-guessing what buyers might want. So he quit guessing and carved the simplest body he could — arms that move, nothing else. His kids saw it the next morning and declared it perfect. The ZAPI was born: Zero Action, Pure Imagination.
The System
Everything is made by one man in Texas from Texas materials: hand-sculpted, cast in high-impact urethane over aluminum through-rods, hand-painted, triple-sealed, signed, and numbered. Each head sculpt is destroyed after a hundred castings or fewer — then he sculpts the character fresh. Over 160 characters. More than 250 distinct toys. Body styles from three inches to nearly three feet. No 3D printing, no AI, no computers anywhere in the process — a position he holds the way other people hold religion. His artistic north stars: Jack Kirby, Eiji Tsuburaya, Basil Wolverton, and Vincent van Gogh, the patron saint of making the work whether or not anybody buys it.
He'll build on his world until the day he dies. If it sells, wonderful — he wants to share it. If it doesn't, it changes nothing.
“Buy my toys and you’ll live forever.”— Chance Priest
If for any reason you do die, contact us for a full refund. This guarantee is non-transferable.
Sources: Art Whore interview (2018) · KTEN News profile (2018) · told in Chance's own words.