Spoiler Country

Casey got a chance to sit down and chat with writer Jason Starr about his comics and his novels. This one is a lot of fun. Jason is an incredible writer and we are lucky to get him on the show to share with us some of his time. Find Jason online: http://jasonstarr.com/ https://twitter.com/JasonStarrBooks Transcript by Steve the drunk robot. Transcript Jason Starr Interview with Casey – EDITED [00:00:00] Kenric:Citizens for the Republic comes back to sport, the country. I’m kinda Gregan VAT is mr Horsley and today on the show. John: Oh, Kenric:Jason star, isn’t it? John: It is. I gotta say, I laughed so hard to enjoy. I snorted. Kenric:I love it. I love John: Those those were listening. Can’t see it. We’re we’re on the video with the toast so I can see Karen can, you can see me and he’s doing his thing. He does miss his intro and I’m copying them and it’s making me laugh. And it was what today’s about Dixon star. Kenric:today is about Jesus Dar a novelist. He’s done some TV writing John: Yep. Comic books, graphic novels did some tie ins to the show. Gotham. He’s pretty prolific. It’s in a lot of stuff he’s written, um, you know, a lot of good stuff in case he sat down with them and had a conversation. And, uh, we’re excited for you to hear today. Kenric:Cool. Well, instead of listening to us as spouse, a [00:01:00] bunch of bullshit, why don’t we just get right into it and listen to Jason and Casey in their own words? Okay. Casey: Alright, everybody. Welcome again to another episode of spoiler country. My name is Casey Allen and today I’m talking to author Jason star. Jason Starr has written a ton of Hardwell detective and mystery novels. He’s written horror. He’s written comics, he’s written for the vertigo line. He has written Wolverine max. He has written Punisher. This guy has done it all. He has movies in the works. And he’s going to talk to you about his career, about what he’s working on and what’s coming up. Jason, how you doing, man? Jason: Sounds great. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. Casey: That was a terrible intro, but we’re going to make up for it with the conversation. No, no, man. People can see how awful I am. I. Because I’m going to the light that you shine off. Everybody else off of my bullshit will look so much better. [00:02:00] So you start, how does a, how does a playwright from New York city eventually, right. Wolverine. That’s what I want to know. Jason: That is a, you’re right. That is an interesting path. I started off writing after college. I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t call myself a a playwright. I had some off off Broadway plays and that was my goal at the time, but it was all reading a lot of crime fiction and pay paid, written a lot of short stories. He’s in college and always had. I did my back of my mind, that novel. Eventually, I got my first novel published after trying to evolve this toward writing Wolverine. And after that novel was published, I had, I must have published about like nine or 10 novels over the next like 10 years. And then because of my crime, I’d hang, um, some comics editors started approaching me about writing. Introductions to graphic novels. One of them was a hundred bullets, spine as irrelevant, [00:03:00] and by doing so, by doing that, I got into conversations about pitching some original vertigo in. The first one I did for them was the chill, which was a graphic that was published about 10 years ago. And yeah, from that, it evolved where I was doing some. Some work for DC. They did a a series with doc Savage, Batman and the vendor, and as a mashup series, and I wrote for that series and did a couple of one shots for, for DC, and then an editor at Marvel approached me, or I think actually a friend put us in touch and started pitching ideas there. And then, yeah, it evolved to do a hundred to one shot and then Wolverine and then an ad map. Some other things. So yeah, so there’s no set path. I think that’s probably true of everyone in comics. It’s not like there’s a set career path than any comics writer I’ve met gone on. It’s just sort of [00:04:00] an ad hoc on the fly sort of career that everyone seems to have a different path for how they went about it. Casey: I love that though. That’s so amazing that you’re able to go from, you know, one genre to another to, you know, you’re not, you’re not allowing yourself to get bored and, or boring even in, in a one particular thing. You, you want to constantly evolve and. And stretch your legs a little bit and Jason: yeah, I’ve always done different types of writing. I think the one consistent thing is that I’ve always wanted to write like dialogue stories, so that’s why I was doing plays. My novels are very dialogue driven. I was, I guess influenced back Elmore Leonard crime novels and Thompson. He’s fantastic. Jay James and McCain. Yeah, definitely that sort of dialogue driven, action oriented. It sort of fit in for writing comics as well. And I, you know, it was interesting when I was writing for Marvel that a lot of [00:05:00] people who were, um, at Marvel, we went and had a conversation and had like, theater backgrounds. Like a lot of the editors, like they had worked in college, they’re involved in theater. Yeah. So it’s sort of like a parallel that some people don’t talk about, but when you think about it, they’re both very collaborative. You know, you’re not doing it alone in theater, you know, the direct actors, and obviously the actors are involved, and it’s very similar in comics where it’s a team effort to create a, to create a comic. So it’s that. But I think it’s also. And the writing stamp, how you set the scenes and you’re learning how to move a story forward just with dialogue. I mean with, with comics, it’s also the images obviously, but I think for me, one consistent Quincy to all of those different genres. I’ve written for is dialogue driven fixture. Casey: Yeah. Yeah. And so just because you, you’ve done so many types of of writing, it’s all dialogue driven, but the, the [00:06:00] collaboration isn’t always there. Like when you do your novels, your, your crime stuff and you, you’ve also done some, some horror stuff as well. What, what do you get the most out of it? Jason: When I write, when I’m, when I’m writing my novels, I do a series character that goes from book to book. And part of the reason for that is, as you were saying at the beginning, is that I kinda just, you know, I don’t want to be boring for myself. Like I just find it more interesting to start in a new world. Each time. So when I write a book, so I’ve never really had a detective hero that goes from book to book. There’s some writers who have long careers doing that. Like with just writing one character. Yeah, basically. So I’ve always wanted to make, to mix things up. At this point in my career, I really like working on a novel. It’s sort of my, you know, long. It takes like a novel and a comic book, but also doing comics. So it sort of energizes me to go back and forth from different. [00:07:00] Private object. Casey: I kind of picked Jason: some out. I don’t feel like just by doing one thing. Yeah. Casey: I kind of picked that up from, from Greg Rucka the other day. I was talking to him and he kind of, it takes them a while to get into that mode for writing a novel because it’s, he’s in his head a lot are, do you find that this, that’s kind of the same thing for you, that it’s just, it’s really an insular thing? Jason: Yeah. I mean it’s, you’re usually, you’re not sharing it with anybody. I mean, sometimes you might have to discuss it with an editor. For the most part, you’re working on something for a long time. We’ve got an officer just in your own head, and it’s nice to have the, I don’t know if Greg mentioned this, but to have like the gratification of finishing something to kind of give you a boost as you get along and you getting feedback. So like we’re working on a comic or that some writers novelists working on short stories, something where you could feel the sense of complete for something that. [00:08:00] Kind of keeps you a little energized cause otherwise the only sense of completion comes when you actually finished your novel or it gets pumped process. So I think you kind of hits of a validation feedback. You know, you, you’re in comics. Casey: Oh yeah. I bet. When you’re writing like a large novel or something that it’s, it can feel like a Sisyphean task. Jason: Just Casey: pushing that Boulder. Jason: Exactly. It’s a, uh, it’s a longterm thing. Almost like working out, like going to the gym. Like you don’t see DV results like on a daily basis, you know, you start to see the results. You know, a month or two and it starts to feel kind of, it starts to feel like it’s going to be a book, but from a day to day basis, it’s hard to sometimes feel like you make this progress. So I think you have to figure out where it, like psychological treks with yourself to keep yourself engaged, engaged. Casey: So what do you, what do you do to keep yourself engaged? Or is it changed every time? Is it something you have to constantly adapt to? Jason: Well, [00:09:00] again, like I like the back and forth and have overtime comics at the same time, but I think part of it, if I was just working on a book alone, is just to set like the short term goals, you know, really focus on what you’re trying to accomplish for that day. It could be a word count, like you want to write like a thousand words for the day. Hey, you could have a particular scene that you want to write. You might want to end on a high note, like when you know what’s going to happen. The next day to keep them a man. I mean, they’re also, I think every writer has their different strategies for doing that, but I think the key is that you, you want to stay engaged because it could be like a long lonely process. Casey: Yeah, I bet. I bet so. Do you have anybody that that you can kinda count on to bounce stuff off of? Or are you, you’re just on your own when you’re writing those novels? Jason: Oh, I don’t really like to discuss any works in progress, anything to anyone. So that’s another reason why it’s sometimes feel like you’re in an [00:10:00] abyss and yeah, some days you’re not as confident about what you wrote is other days and you kind of have to fight. But yeah, I mean, some writers. Like just share their work. Some, even writers who are outside of creative writing programs like that, to have a book group where they could share their work, get some, get some feedback, and I could see why that would be valuable. For me, I just kind of feel like the more I talk about something, the more like energy is. Getting released from the project and I just like to leave it all locked in and some days you’ll have negative emotions about it. You won’t be as good as other days, but as long as you keep going, I mean, you have the short term goal. Eventually. You start to see the results. Yeah, like analogy, it really has like, you don’t see your big muscles until you’ve been doing it for a few months. Casey: I hear ya. You’re, you’re starting to break up a little bit. I kinda got a little fuzzy for a second Jason: and give you Casey: a heads up. [00:11:00] I’m going to, let’s see, eight 43 1805 okay, cool. I’ll tell them to, to cut my idiot self breaking in. But so yeah, you were, you were talking about, you know, having people that you talk to. So it says on your Wikipedia, you’re a member of a literary circle. That has a bunch of big folks in it, the right Jason: way. Smarter. I mean, who knows? I don’t know why Casey: that’s such a like, like what did you guys just all come together? Let’s be a circle. What does that mean exactly? Jason: Yeah. It sounds very King. Casey: Yeah. Yeah. Or I’m Jason: sitting around, Casey: or the, what is the Niagara falls. Group with, uh, so, Jason: uh, yeah. Casey: So Jason: yeah. No, I mean, I know everybody, I know everybody who’s listed there, and certainly [00:12:00] people who I’ve hung out with at bars, I know everybody pretty well in that group. I wouldn’t say circle. Casey: Yeah. Yeah. It’s such an odd. Jason: Exists. There are, Casey: I don’t Jason: know, man. Internet is, I think the internet has replaced it where we shared. Casey: Yeah. I used to have a circle and then I got married and now we just get on Facebook and bitch about streaming videos. That’s, that’s about it. Jason: Exactly. Casey: Talk about. His, you go see that show? No, I have two kids. I didn’t go see that show. So yeah, you start, you started off with, with the, the, the crime stuff and you, you’ve done horror and you got into comics. And one thing that, that I’ve noticed. You’ve done some stuff with, with Batman. It seems like the people that get Batman the best are people who have a crime writing background. Jason: Well, he is. [00:13:00] Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead. Casey: Oh, no, no. It’s just like, it seems like that style of writing is, is kind of something that. That button need or else it is. It’s just silly. Jason: But I think he’s a Batman this to him. And, and so in that sense, he does have like similar classic hard-boiled hero who kind of has some darkness in his past that he’s, I mean, you could certainly make. And analogy between Batman and classic detective heroes from crime fiction. And also like the idea of like, you know, being though, and the hidden identity and, yeah, I mean it’s, it’s, it definitely has elements of, of classic crime fiction. I could see why, uh, you know, crime writers involved and also the whole world whole, you, the dark city, Gotham is almost, has filmed war sort of, I think. Casey: Yeah, yeah. And in so much that like, what is it, Raymond Chandler books, San Francisco, I think is, [00:14:00] is kind of a character. And in Batman, Gotham is also very Jason: much a character. Exactly. And that’s typical in a lot of. Crime section right there, like Michael Connolly’s Los Angeles or in, in modern times. But yeah, it would definitely be, I think that that’s one reason for sure. Casey: So when, when you did your Punisher max series in 2012 did you utilize any of, if your, your background with, with the crime fiction in that, did that kind of come in. Come in handy as a tool for your Punisher series. Jason: Well, the pressure was basically just a one shot. It was part of the Punisher max series. Casey: Oh yeah. This Jason: comes from AXA. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So that was like one that was definitely in fact, that Marvel will wanted me to make that similar to some of my crime fiction. That was one reason why I set it in Brooklyn. I mean, a lot of Punisher stories are set in Brooklyn [00:15:00] anyway, but several of my novels are. Set in Brooklyn. That’s where I’m from. So I definitely really wanted to write like Punisher meets a Brooklyn crime novel in that story. And then for Wolverine, when I started doing Wolverine, I think it was more, I don’t mean some polarity, crime writing I would think I could think of, is that just like a first person crime ruler from the point of view of Wolverine, like he literally fully, I think in every panel comic he narrates. It’s totally his story. Almost the way a crime novel with like unreliable, viable. No, right or unreliable. Casey: So I really enjoyed your, your, the returning that you did in 2014 with boom, boom comics. The, with Andrea Moody as, or I don’t know if I’m saying her last name right. I’m terrible with Jason: Andre. Sorry. Casey: Sorry. Um, public school, [00:16:00] Alabama. So Jason: now. Florida. Yeah. He really, he’s an Italian. Yeah, he’s done a ton of it. He’s on star Wars. He’s got a lot of good comics. Super talent for, yeah. He’s done stuff for boom, bro. Like a lot of surfing for Marvel and dark horse some lately. And Casey: so what was your inspiration? Jason: Very easy to work for. Um, Andre and I came up with turning was an idea that. Andre and I came up with together and I just thought it was a really idea, and that was an idea that we pitched around and got it to an editor at bloom eventually. So that was a lot different than sort of the work for hire stuff I had done. At Marvel graphic novel, but this was definitely something we just came up with the characters and the story completely created him. Then we, yeah, we were just very excited concept and [00:17:00] felt for me create a plea that was like a super, essentially the show had a supernatural element. So I got, yeah, I guess I was just following it with the chill and it’s sort of interesting that like the first two graphic novels I did were heart-based cause I really hadn’t. Written much pure horror crime fiction at that, uh, go to, uh, novels, which were werewolf novels, which also had a supernatural, uh, nothing is like far out as the, which was really like the most supernatural thing of it. So. Casey: What is your interest in Indies and near death experiences? Was that just something that you thought was kind of cool to write about or was there anything more to that? Jason: Well, obviously, yeah, we thought it was a cool idea. That’s always the most important thing for me. Dramatically. Like we had a very, I don’t want to give any spoilers to seek Casey: out. Yeah, Jason: exactly. We thought we [00:18:00] had like a twist on near death experiences that sort of like near death experiences meet the walking dead. There weren’t really that UMBC in it, but we had a zombie. Like I’ll say, that sort of interested me like a way into a zombie story that wasn’t a small. Way in like using near death experiences for sure. Yeah, we’ll weigh in. And I was just sort of real cool or high concept I thought was just unusual. So yeah, for me, it’s always about the story and like, you know, sometimes I’ll come up with a concept that we’re theme that interests me, but I don’t really have like a great story for it. So for me it’s like more important, like what the. Is the story going to be exciting and is it going to be a good twist? Casey: That’s, that’s awesome. So I understand that your, your work has been, has been optioned. You’ve had several of your, your novels option for, for film. Jason: How’s that been. [00:19:00] Yeah. Over the years I’ve had many tens. I’ve written a bunch of screenplays. I usually try it again and it’s had to be the screenwriter sometimes that I’m able to do that. Sometimes I’m not, it depends on the, who’s involved with the DOL is taped color. I mean, currently one of my books, the follower. There was a re just totally adapted. It was part of my, my circle. Yeah, right before that Casey: guy, I never heard of Jason: him. And he, he was, he adapted the follower for H it was set up at HBO and then it was. It has like a long, I mean, I was involved working on that with Brett so long and on this podcast for anybody wants to check that out. He has the Bret Easton Ellis podcast. Casey: I’ve heard Jason: him and we went in depth about the follower, but it was, it was set up at ours and then even it Showtime, we made like eight [00:20:00] episodes. Lionsgate was turned, hired him to write. Eight episodes. I mean, he did like a tremendous amount of work, like what was that like 400 plus pages of script and it was actually green lit and then it just didn’t the, they, they, we thought it Greenland for about a week, but suddenly we got the write back and I wrote a version of it and we have a new show runner and it seems to be. I’m moving ahead at a new, at a new studio. So fingers crossed about that. That’s awesome. And the other one I’m excited about is cold caller a Baptist viruses. So, you know, I think everyone’s hoping that their Hollywood projects that were pre virus can continue on afterwards. So we’ll see what happens with that. But yeah, and PA panic attack under by Ted Griffin who wrote. Ocean’s 11 but he’s adapting that himself. I’m not involved in the screenwriting of that one, and [00:21:00] a couple of other books are just in various stages of development over the years. They’ve had, you know, different level of involvement in those projects. I, as much as I can in the writing, I can, depending on the project, I can’t always do that. You know, sometimes I’m, sometimes I’ll step aside and someone else will be the writer. Casey: Is it hard to let go of your babies when that, when that occurs Jason: times. I think the plus side that having written a decent number of books and having, you know, and having different comics project control, right. A little bit more than others in development does that I’m almost only attached to anyone. A project, so it’s easier to elect. I think if I had written like one or two books that I really spend checking on and yeah, I know people who write, who are memoirs and it’s extremely personal and they can’t let go of that and understand. But I think it’s a little easier for me because I figured like, Oh no, I’ll write the other [00:22:00] one. Or sometimes they have like an attitude, you know, I’ll just, some, it will be optioning at it. I’m not. A hundred percent sure. I’m confident that that’s actually didn’t get made, but there I wanted the option money, so I figured, well, let’s see if they could actually do it and then I’ll get the up. If I get the rights back, I’ll try to do it myself. You know? I’m able to take more of a stand like that. Having the number of books that I’ve written. Casey: I hear ya. I hear you. So I really want to ask you about, I don’t know if it’s too soon to talk about it, but you have, uh, I, I’m guessing is tentatively now expected to be released in October. It’s a comic called red border with, with Jason: artists, Conrad red borders out right now. Really? The first issue was last two weeks ago. Casey: Holy smokes. How, how has that been? Jason: So I can talk about that. Casey: Awesome. Awesome. Okay. I looked at the, on the thing, Google is wrong that maybe that’s when the end of it as expected, but they said October Jason: six maybe. Maybe you’re looking at [00:23:00] the trade. Maybe you’re looking up at the trade paperback. Casey: Oh, gotcha. Jason: Yeah. Yeah. So you could ask me, ask me about the boardroom. You want to edit this? Casey: So, so tell me about red border man. Jason: A red border, a new comic series that’s just out that you want is out. Huh? Um, expired, a company called AWA, uh, upshots. It’s a new comics company that you’re going to be hearing and it’s, it’s set up by Axel Alonso, who was editor in chief. Amazing mobile of Marvel. Yeah. And who I worked with at Marvel on Wolverine and a man, man, a novel that I wrote there. And also build JMS. And who was also at Marvel and. Yeah. There’s an incredible list of writers who already have involved, including some personal heroes like Garth Ennis is move out, but at [00:24:00] there, the first set of novels was just a, I’m sorry, a comics was just published. They include food in red border, which is the one I did with will Conrad as the artist, and we’ll, Conrad’s done some amazing work at DC. Marvel. Just about everywhere. Casey: Yeah, his style, Jason: his fashion, and yeah, so that right now on the Mexican border, and it’s, it’s about a young couple with water and Corrina, and be basically a cartel because one of them was going to testify at a cartel in Juarez now that now their cartel is after them and they have to make a run for it and try to get across the border and they wind up in a worst situation across the border of hiding in this. House and on the Texas side of the border. So it’s sort of like getting out of the frying pan and like getting right into the fire and action horror novel. It’s sort of like a comic. It’s sort of like Sicario meats get Casey: out. It’s Jason: nice describing it to people. Casey: That sounds [00:25:00] fantastic. And yeah. The, the thing about axle Alonzo, every creator that I’ve seen that he’s lined up for AWA, it seems there’s nobody on that list that I’ve seen that’s been like, I’ve been lukewarm about. Everybody that he has lined up is Jason: just Casey: fantastic. He has an eye for talent, so I can’t wait to see what this company is going to be, what else they’re going to be doing, because it’s Jason: really. Right now, red border is out hotel, which was an anthology horror series is out. It’s getting great reviews. Archangel has is getting some great reviews and the the, the resistance is the beginning is a comment that was just, yeah. Which was, is the beginning of a new universe of. AWA superheroes, and it’s sort of an opportunity to build out a superhero universe with planning involved rather than it, it’s happening the way it did Marvel in sort of like a more ad [00:26:00] hoc way over the years. The advantage that we have is axle and some of the creative council they have have at. AWA, they have really done a lot of planning and working out like every details of how this universe is going to evolve and it’s going to be many. New heroes and Conex coming out of this university for one was the resistance, but they’re also doing comic, similar to red border, which are high concept thrillers, could easily be action movies or horror movies, or definitely genre oriented movies. And yeah, so they have a big plan of how to break out in Hollywood. With some of this stuff also, and it’s an exciting company to be involved with. Casey: Oh, I bet. I bet. So do you mind if I ask you just like a writing question, just and sure. In general, so going from like the, the more like ground level, like [00:27:00] thriller and like crime stuff that you’ve written. And then going from that to writing superheroes is it? And you’ve like, you’ve done it, man, you’ve done other stuff like that. Batman. Is it, is it hard to make that transition? Do you have to be in a certain head space to go from, I don’t know, writing, you know, a crime novel to justice incorporated or whatever. Is it. Jason: Yeah, to some degree. Um, I think some of the comics have coincidentally or not coincidentally, have been on the darker, edgier side of the comics genre. Certainly Wolverine and the hundreds per day 17 and up. We, there’s the chill was definitely a way that the fraternity, but then I didn’t do the ant man novel, which is definitely more teen. Oriented. That was the one I would think of is superhero novel where the heroic, and there’s really not any, I mean obviously admin that has to have a tough, fun, dark side compared to. Wolverine, who [00:28:00] has like a deep anger or, or even bad man, and it’s more of, you know, he has a crime past, but like, he’s definitely a hero in more traditional Marvel and, but not for me. It’s always a challenge to do something different that I haven’t necessarily done before. Some of the stuff I’ve done in the past I seem to wind up doing because I’ve done it before and I think editors know I, I can do that type of story. But yeah. I know myself that I’d all hero stories and the Gotham novels that I wrote, um, based on the TV show Gotha I wrote two Gotham novels that tied into the show. One was a prequel for the sheriffs took place between seasons two and three. So they actually fit into the timeline of the, of the series. Those, those books. Definitely. I had to have like more of a, uh, you know, a traditional. It’s good to hear a perspective because, um, I’m writing for like a different audience. So to me it’s, [00:29:00] it’s a challenge to do something. I have, particularly those two I mentioned with the Batman and Gotham, because I had to really tie into an existing world, which was, which is a challenge. Like it was something I’d never done before. Like having to really see every episode of a show. Oh. And or. Really know ant man’s character and know it was going to happen or that movie to be able to write that novel. So for me, that’s also something that sort of energizes me, like coming up with the challenge that they haven’t done before. Casey: That’s, yeah, I can imagine. So when you, you did the Gotham stuff that was based off of the television series, did you, who did you work with to, to. To write those D, were you under like, I guess like WB or foxes purview or was it, Jason: yeah, it was complicated. It was, it was Fox and then WV was the, and then Titan, which is a publishing company in England, but also from the U S they publish [00:30:00] widely, both in England and North America. Yeah, so they do arrive. How to tie in novels at time. They were doing TC. Now, lately, the Marvel, now I’ve also, ironically, they published a paper back of my aunt man novel as well, but that’s how I was dealing with, mainly with the editor at, but we had to get everything approved by the producers at Warner brother and the writing staff. For the TV show. Awesome. So, so yeah, so it was, I just told you how, I don’t usually like to talk too much about my ideas. I like to keep the, Casey: if you’re under a microscope, they’re Jason: so totally out the window. Yeah. That project. Yeah. Casey: So, so one of the guys Jason: discuss everything. Casey: Say one of the guys that I, forgive me, I do not know how to say his name. He’s the co founder of TKO. Yeah. He, he’s, he was one of the, the head guys on Gotham. He, I [00:31:00] think he was the other writer, director, producer of, of Gotham. And I wonder if you had any, any direct involvement with, with him? He seems like a really cool guy. Jason: Yeah. Casey: And TGO is putting out some amazing stuff. Jason: We did it. It was definitely the head writer there. They would always, I think on one company, another color. It was two writers who were kind of just the vetting to make sure, basically. We didn’t give away any plot points that were going to be. Uh, revealed on the show, which totally makes sense. I understand that they wouldn’t want me to spoil, and that was the main thing, but sometimes they were particular about something that, yeah, there have a particular note about something with Bruce Wayne or housework. But yeah, no, it was tough to have, to not only plot out book with the Aflac. Like a very long on an outline, but then too, when, when the book was written, I, I think actually now I’m recalling [00:32:00] it was various stages. The writers had to approve the outline and then they had to. Approve the actual novel, so, Oh wow. Casey: That’s like the literary equivalent of like writing with, you know, one hand tied behind your back or what? I don’t know. So it sounds Jason: like a lot of it’s definitely with work, you know, because it wasn’t only the writing, it was also watching the show, which I enjoy. And when I got involved in writing them, I was watching the show anyway, so I was like, Oh. Oh yeah. Yeah. But I wouldn’t describe it as being, Casey: no, no, not at Jason: all of them. And more challenging was definitely one of the more challenging projects I’ve done because of all the different moving parts. Casey: Yeah. It’s like putting together a puzzle that. You know, you, you, I don’t know, you’re missing pieces or you, you don’t know what it’s supposed to look like or something. It’s, it seems like a lot of hard work, whereas, you know, you’re doing it your regular stuff and you can do whatever you [00:33:00] want to cause it’s your characters, but, Jason: well, yeah. Yeah. And then on top of getting approval for everyone, you have to still now the, you know, come out with a hope spot to come up with the whole plot. And then the. Yeah, the getting down the mice and the attitudes of all the different characters on the show. It was fun. It was fun to do that, but it was definitely not like an easy and easy job. Casey: So when you started in writing, like what, what was the thing that, that got you that made you realize, Oh, this is what I want to do for a living. This is what I want my life to be? Jason: Um, that’s a good question. Was very idealistic and I liked and just loved creating characters and writing dialogue and telling stories and making shit up. Right. So, uh, I guess I just found it fun and I wasn’t, um, thinking all that logically about like, what. Career would look like [00:34:00] because definitely either net navigating, writing career to have done basically full time for years, but doing various different. Writing work, you know, it’s not the, it definitely is not like, it’s not as predictable. It’s like having, you know, your salary is every year and you know, so there’s definitely probably career side of it from just a pure writing standpoint. It was just fun and it was what I loved to do. So I’ve seen, yeah, it doesn’t even seem like work sometimes to be writing, you know? It’s just fun. Like writing a common, it’s fun. I’ve, I’ve heard, I’ve had. Right or phone. I said, fine offer or opportunities to adapt their screenplays in certain situations. Like there was option, there was an offer to be the screenwriter, and I’ve had, I know there’s some people who have like turned, it turned down like writing the screenplay. They would say like, no, they’re too busy and I just can’t understand it. Like I’d be like, what? That’s like. [00:35:00] W when I was starting writing, like if someone I would write, like I would adapt, like one of my novels is a screen and play for free back then. Like now if someone’s hiring to do it, like how could you even a part of me is like, how could you possibly turn that? Yeah, I understand. There’s sometimes like there’s business reasons why you can turn it down. It might not be enough money, but, but just collate the idea that you’re going to be paid. Adapt your novel as a screenplay like seems like a dream come true to me. Like how does anyone want to turn that down? Casey: So I really, do you mind talking about the Maxon Angeles series you did with Ken Bruins? Oh Jason: yeah. Sure, sure. Casey: I look like, okay. As somebody who appreciates like the covers to the old pulp novels, these are fantastic. I love it. So how did you end up working with Ken Brewin? Jason: Well, those books are published by Hart case crime and the publisher. really has like a really interesting background [00:36:00] himself. He works as an investment bank or during the day. He still has that day job and hard case crime has, I think it’s over 100. Books at this point, and they’re in there on their list. And yeah, they’ve published a lot of great novels. They publish a lot of Lauren’s block, a lot of Macs. Alan Collins, their biggest books with a couple of Stephen King novels that they published that were obviously major bestsellers. Um, so these hard case crimes started, I think it was around 2005, 2006 and. I can’t remember if he wrote to me or somehow we can online and he asked me to, if I wanted to write. Something for them, but at the time I was sort of under contract with another publisher and my agent didn’t think it was a good idea to just write under my own name. But Ken and I can ruin, we’re talking just amongst ourselves about co co writing a novel. [00:37:00] And so I thought like, Hey, like if we could write something that would be like different than it wouldn’t really be competing against my own books. What can ends on books. So Charles at heart case, like the idea and form was called bust. Bust was actually, I had that, I had not published that. I wrote like after my second novel, and it was. I just didn’t feel like it was all there yet, but it was something I always liked, but it wasn’t all there yet. So I talked to him like, actually, I have this book, sort of rewrite it together because it is basically a plot, and that’s what we did. It was like a rewritten book that I’d already written. Wow. I mean, we moved, we did some heavy on it, like it basically had this 10 plot, but a couple of characters were different. Ed. Candice from Ireland. So through the characters became Irish. And then part of the challenge of writing with Kenmore, because we have very, not only different backgrounds and styles, he writes novels. He writes the Jack Taylor. [00:38:00] Novels. If anyone has, might’ve seen someone might’ve seen, like on the, on Netflix, there’s a series that’s Jack Taylor. That’s basically, they’re nice, but that’s there’s of novels that came up. Yeah. But his, his novels are definitely written in a very vernacular Irish style, and. Much different than my sort of straight hard-boiled style that I have. So we had to merge our styles. So at first it wasn’t working and I just told Ken, I think it’s only going to work if you try to write like me and I tried to write like you, and that’s what we did. Like we sort of like met in the middle that we definitely occasionally alternate chapters. Sometimes I would start a chapter and he would finish it or he’d be working on my chapter 10 while I was writing, writing chapter two like. Even now, like I’m not sure how we actually pulled it off, but we did it and then we did like three other. Novels together. So yeah, we wrote were written four novels together. Casey: That’s amazing. That’s [00:39:00] amazing. And I love that Jason: you, you, you Casey: both kind of had to learn to adapt on this. And, and it’s a teamwork where we’re normally, you don’t get much teamwork. So I’m, I’m sure it was a, a learning experience for both of you that were, it Jason: happened to work in me. I’ve tried to collaborate in other situations where it didn’t work out as well. For whatever reason. It’s hard to predict cause like on paper it would seem like this would be a situation where it would not work. Like our styles. We’re not. So he’s in Ireland, have a New York, like it seems like how possible. And it occurred to me, I mean, the main, these sorts of collaborations, and this might be one of the reasons why it’s often, uh, a, a mother, daughter, team, father, son, team, or it’s off from relatives or people who know each other. Well, who would collaborate. Yeah, but we had similar, definitely. If you can have a different vision for where we’re going to go, [00:40:00] like someone can’t be wanting to write something like dark and edgy and unrelenting and somebody wants to write like a romance comedy, like it would more. Right. So you have to have the same, I think the having the same vision as much important, more important than the same voice. But the other factor I think is key is that like each writer there has to know what their role is in the process. I’m involved in situations where there’s so much ego and evolved, or even, I just know of other situations where someone would eat egos involved with writers wanting online in or their, you know, their. There’s a version of a chapter and the way Ken and I did it, like if he did something better or came up with a better line, and I did that. Great. We were both and same, same way. It worked the other way also, like we didn’t really, we weren’t trying to like one up. Each other. We just, and I think we had this conversation when you said, once we, it’s just by both of us. Like, it’s almost like we’re not the [00:41:00] authors anymore. It’s like the new author. Oh wow. So like, so like we can’t, there’s really no reason to have any, uh, go involved or, or any competition. And sometimes working works and sometimes doesn’t. But I think if you’re collaborating with somebody and it’s endless emails back and forth in your, you know, arguing. Silly points, like you’re not going to get it done. Like in Ken and I, like we never had like one con, like literally no conflict about anything. Somehow just worked. Casey: Any plans for a fifth book in that, in Jason: that it would be, I mean we took us, I think the first one was like 2006 and in 2008 2009 nine and then we did like 2016 for 2017 we did like a 41 but. I doubt it. Like I don’t think I would probably do too, but I don’t think he wants to. I wouldn’t suggest rewrite a scored story and he just wanted me to do it. So I don’t know. I think he’s, I think he’s beyond [00:42:00] working on this, but I do think like if we were just, if we were never writing our own books and we’re just writing those books, like we could have done like four or five a year. Oh yeah. It was like we wrote themselves fast, like, yeah. Casey: It looks like you had fun in the process of it too. Yeah. That’s amazing. So do you have anything else on the horizon that you’d like to talk about before? I don’t want to take up too much of your time. Jason: What else do I have? I have for my last crime novel was called feud red, and now hardcover and paperback. But I have a novel that I. Just to finish that. I’m just working on edited. I’m not really talking about too much, but it’s, so it’s different from previous books. It’s another departure for me. It’s more of a scifi. Oh really? Ultimate reality thriller. So it’s definitely another thing I haven’t really done before. So. We’ll see if I pulled it off. I respect Casey: the hell out of that, that you’re, [00:43:00] you’re able to just kind of move on and try new things and that’s just fun, man. That’s so cool. Jason: Well, sometimes it’s fun, but sometimes one is to mix it up and keep myself challenged, like I was saying earlier and keep it fresh. But. Also, I think, and this is key, like if anybody out there is trying to have like long careers here, there’s going to be points in your career. Really have to reinvent yourself and it’s very difficult to just do the same thing at a rager a, I think it’s more difficult now than it used to be because editors are constantly moving around. It’s hard to find that sort of consistency. I had a publishing company and the publisher, as we all know, the publishing world has changed ebook, etc. I think there’s going to be times in your career where just from a marketing standpoint, you’re going to want to do something different to sort of get it, you know, if you’re switching public poachers to get a new publisher interested in you, you scored an agent’s, you have any, um. You want to show that you did, [00:44:00] the book you’re writing is going to be different than the other books. And just from a selling standpoint, you know, now like if you were pitching, have like the same type of TV show all the time, you’d want to say, this one’s going to be a thriller. This one’s gonna, you know, this is a sitcom, you know? So you want to have different things on your slate. I think it’s similar to building a career. As a writer. Awesome. Casey: And is there any one genre that you’re really wanting to explore that you haven’t had a chance to yet? Jason: Uh, definitely. And that’s why I’m doing this, uh, this book. You know, I, I, I guess, you know, I went, you know, fugitive read, which was a crime novel that was somewhat in a similar style of stuff I’ve done before. Somewhat similar to books like twisted, sturdy, or cold caller. Some of my earlier novels, I would definitely write more crime fiction. I’m just not sure if it will be that sort of crime fiction. I think one thing I have not done that it also touched [00:45:00] on earlier is write a. A series character, like a detective hero, or even even, even if it was a Ripley, Tom Lee S antihero, they just went on from book to book. That is something I’ve not done in crime fiction or thrillers like having a recurrent character set. I think that’s something I would, uh, Casey: well, one thing’s for sure with our current situation. You have plenty of time to think about it. Have you been any more or less. Productive in writing since, so in anybody listening in the future right now, this is April 6th, 2020 we are in the midst of the covet 19 outbreak. Shit is bad. New York has shut down a bunch of other places are all the coastal places. The sensible coastal places are shut down. Alabama, where I live is the wild West. People don’t know what to do because it’s our [00:46:00] governor’s a moron. And everybody listens to the president and just praise. So yeah, we’re dealing with that. Sorry for that. Commentary, but have you been any more or less productive since all this stuff has happened? Jason: I think pretty much about the same. Yeah. I think the, the post, uh, code 19 publishing world, I think, well, first of all, I expect everyone’s books finished and. Agents and publishers might be initially in India with books and with an unpredictable supply chain. Because at this point, if I’m right now, like no one, no one’s score exactly what’s going to happen, how long this is going to last, how it’s going to affect the bookstores and the book industry. So I think there’s going to be a little uncertainty. After this, but from my point of view, I’m just, I’m trying to finish my book and stay and stay focused. I’m still, I’m working on red border, you know, still [00:47:00] coming out. One thing I’ll say is like, because of covert 19 and diamond, not distributing to comic book stores, if you want to read, water’s come out. The other issues of being published, but we’re also releasing them on. And you can actually, and you could download. As of right now, the first several episodes are up right now on web tune. You can just go to a web tool type in red boarder scribe. I start reading the series, an entire series going to be up there. This was part of the plan before. Yeah, the virus outbreak there was, uh, they wanted to simultaneously publish on, on web tune in different format. Um, and you’ll see, check it out. Amazing job of like adapting the comics to like the web tune format and also get your hands on. Try to get your hands on red border, number one, because I think because of the virus, it’s going to be a big collector. I don’t think the, the usual [00:48:00] distribution was out on, uh, when it, when it was released. Casey: Oh, yeah. Yeah. I was actually thinking not long ago that the collectors market for comics during the, you know, the past few months are going to be pretty interesting. Just purely for the reason Jason: that the AWA ones, the first, the first one, yes. The number ones. Casey: And I’m glad you talked about how AWA is handling, you know, putting that comment up online for people to get it. And so one thing I always ask bef before we head out. We want comic shops to stay open. We love comic shops. They are the, the lifeblood of the comics industry. No shops means that you can’t sell the comics. Do you have a particular comic shop that you, that you’re fond of? Jason: Well, cause I’m living in New York. Midtown comics is my direct comic shop. Nice. Casey: Nice. So yeah, mid town, good people there. I’ve heard a lot of good things about this store, especially, never been to [00:49:00] New York. I think New York would kind of freak my Bain. It’s too big. And Jason: there’s. And Midtown is very active at Comicon, at New York Comicon. Also. They have like a big w, but yeah, they’re definitely going to be under a lot of strain as, as the whole industry in the hall, one of the whole country. So everyone’s just hoping there’s a sense of normalcy when it comes, when, when things return. Casey: Oh yeah. Yeah. So, so you guys, red border number one find that. Get it. Jason Starr, author of twisted city, a tough luck. The craving, which is fantastic werewolf book and so many other novels. I’m looking at all the covers of your novels right now and Oh my gosh, man, you could, you could. Worst case scenario, you could use them in and hit people with them if they try to run into your house because of, you have a ton of books to throw at people. If, God forbid, things get really crazy and people [00:50:00] are breaking into houses, these are fantastic. But dude, thank you so much for talking to me and it’s a crazy time right now for, for writers in the comic industry and you know, just writers in general, I guess. So thank you for taking time out of your day and I really, I really can’t wait to read a red board cause that looks amazing Jason: and I hope you like it. Casey: Alright. Thank you very much, Jason. Sorry you have a good evening. Okay, you too. Thanks. Bye. Bye. Kenric:Hey, we’re back. John: were black. What’d you think. Kenric:uh, Jason seems cool, man. You know? So I’m excited. I’m going to try to pick up some of those books and check out what he’s got to offer because I’m always down to learn about new people and new books. John: When you always want to read too. I mean, our, our tagline opened your mind, read more. We’re always reading. Yeah. And. Yeah, I think it’s funny. Cause like everybody listened to him. I was like, Oh, that was cool. Oh, that was cool. I, [00:51:00] I feel like, I feel like we’ve been, we’ve been lucky to have a lot of really cool people on the show and it’s a lot of chill people that have great conversations. And I don’t know if it’s because. I think it’s because, Um, we just attract cool people. That’s all. Kenric:Yeah. We just attract the coolest. Oh, they’re cute list. Yeah. I love it. It’s a lot of fun. We have a lot of fun on the show. We’re really lucky to meet John: We do, we have too much fun. Kenric:Yeah. Well. John: Yeah. Yeah. Kenric:you guys enjoyed that, then I highly suggest I highly implore you to go over to spoil the verse.com and not only check out what spore the country has with all the authors and all the artists and all the directors and producers and sound guys and engineers and Oh my God, all the pop culture phenomenons that are on that, that we’ve interviewed. We have other podcasts that for you guys to enjoy, we have, if you’re a star Wars fanatic, go check out shooting the SIF. Robert Salinsky is talking star Wars all the goddamn time. He loves it. If you’re [00:52:00] into geek culture as a whole and how things cross contaminate each other, go check out, bridging the dictum. They were just a huge instrument and getting the, what’s it called, the, the Snyder cut release. And John: Cut. Yeah, he was so Kenric:that show was all about that, that movement for so long, and now that they’ve announced it, the Snyder cut is going to happen in 2021. On HBO max. It’s huge. And if you want to learn more about that, George checkout, bridging the kingdom. And if you’re a video game fanatic, you mean you know, maybe you love playing, sitting down, playing some games. I’ve been known a time or two to waste many an hour and fallout 76 and others. And if you’re like me, go check out polygon warriors. Hell, if you love music, and he tends to concentrate a lot on like metal. And death metal and speed metal and all the different metals up your ass that you can think of, but he also has [00:53:00] other people on that you would not expect to be on that show that has a country and pop and everything else. Check out misery point radio with Mike peacock. It’s, it’s amazing. John: Yeah, and you should go to dot com and you should also check out articles by Sarah K on the paranormal and by Jay Roach on what he had for lunch or what music he likes or all this kind of fun stuff he writes about, or all the articles that Colton and Robert Wright as well. There, there’s just so much for you to read and to listen to, and you can watch there’s more there’s videos of us and our pretty faces out there. You can go do that and took it all out. Kenric:maybe you’re a fan of spoiler country and you listen to us all the time, and you notice that during the interviews that 99% of the time it’s just Kenrick and you want to hear this guy, mr Horsley. Well, he has a whole other show. He’s got actually two other shows. He’s got one that he’s just talked to himself into the ether called that comes out every Saturday. And then he’s got one that he hosts with my niece, his wife, Kailey called the haphazard adventures. And maybe you’ll be into [00:54:00] that. So lots of stuff there to go enjoy. So they’ll check it all out please. And if you do all that, and you do like it, like us on Facebook, like us on Twitter, and when you go to your podcast and you type in spar the country, hit subscribe, leave us a review. It helps us out tremendously. John: Yeah. And download all the episodes to just hit, download all it’s it’s it’s not going to figure a phone up too much. It’s only 360 episodes Kenric:them there. John: Get all the phones, download them all. Trust me. It’s it’s for the best. That way. If you, if you have no service, you can still listen to them. It’s not a big deal. It’s Kenric:It’s no big deal. It’s all good. All right guys. I think that’s a show, Johnny. John: That’s a, that’s a Kenric:Alright, well, don’t forget then it oceans or podcasts. John: We are to do Lou. Kenric:And browse you to do John: Open the mind. Kenric:rude more. “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry Interview scheduled by Jeffery Haas https://twitter.com/jhaasinterviews Theme music by Good Co Music: https://www.goodcomusic.com/

We are lucky enough today to sit down and talk with Walt and Weezy (Louise) Simonson about their respective careers in comics, each a giant in the industry in their own right. Hear all about Walt and the creation of Beta Ray Bill, his deep dive into Norse mythology on Ragnarok. Hear Louise tell you all about Magik, and X-Men, and The Death of Superman! This one truly is a treat! We also have video of this over on our youtube channel! Go check it out! “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry Interview scheduled by Jeffery Haas https://twitter.com/jhaasinterviews Theme music by Good Co Music: https://www.goodcomusic.com/

Today is a lucky day because we are talking with the creator of Dreadstar, Thanos, the Infinity Gauntlet and so much more, Mr. Jim Starlin himself! Be sure to check out the new Dreadstar Returns form Ominous Press! Find Jim online: https://dreadstar-returns.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders https://www.facebook.com/JimStarlinfanpage/ “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry Show More Jim Starlin Interview [00:00:00] Kenric: [00:00:00] All right, guys, we are back. Today is super, super, super special. Uh, he kind of wrote the storyline of my childhood, grew up reading all the comic books as I was growing up, and I believe for, for John as well, he’s got a brand new Kickstarter out for dread star. Jim Starlin, thank you so much for coming on. [00:00:18] Jim: [00:00:18] My pleasure being here, and I apologize for warping your young lives like that. [00:00:24] Kenric: [00:00:24] You know, you gotta have a tinge of chaos to have to see what’s going on in the world. So you kind of [00:00:30] Jim: [00:00:30] have been accused of being kicked outta here on more than one occasion. [00:00:35] Kenric: [00:00:35] So you got a brand new Kickstarter out. It’s doing really, really well. [00:00:39] Uh, you only had a $28,000 goal. And you blew that out of the water. [00:00:43] Jim: [00:00:43] Yeah, we got that in 14 hours. Uh, I guess the Corona virus slowed things up a bit. When we did the, we did it 12 hours. [00:00:53] Kenric: [00:00:53] That’s incredible. [00:00:54] Jim: [00:00:54] It’s still good. It’s still good. I’m not complaining. [00:00:58] Kenric: [00:00:58] How can you write? You get everything going [00:01:00] on there, and this is back kind of almost, I don’t want to say to your roots. [00:01:04] But 30 years of dread star is a long time to be writing a character. Well, 30 years in between the last two stories. That’s a long time. [00:01:12] Jim: [00:01:12] Well, we had some other come out in between. Peter. David did a couple of runs. May, uh, yeah, I, I started it, threw him into an issue of breed at one point. But it’s been a long time since I’ve visited this character and that made it kind of interesting to work on. [00:01:27] I decided I. What has he been doing the last 25 years? And, uh, the beginning of the story is catching up on all the characters and where they have been and where they are now. And dread stars got an interesting little job he’s been doing for the last few decades. [00:01:43] Kenric: [00:01:43] How’s it doing the Kickstarter for you? [00:01:45] Is it. It’s something different, something unique. Since you’ve obviously been in the business a long time, people who don’t know, you’ve been instrumental in Marvel’s creation of their whole galaxy and the space and time continuum of what they have going [00:02:00] on even today and now you’re doing independence. [00:02:03] What’s that like? [00:02:04] Jim: [00:02:04] Well, uh, it makes me look like Nostradamus is this, uh, uh, Corona virus going around. Every old comic book shops are closed up and, uh. Who knows what’s going to happen with the two big publishers once the thing’s over. So, uh, working on the Kickstarter is a maybe a, the wave of the future. [00:02:26] It’s hard to say at this point cause we don’t know what’s going to come down. I am not Nostradamus I just got lucky, you know, my friend Ryan Marsh was involved with this and, uh, talked me into doing, uh, I’m the best with him and, uh, this seemed like a great place to do a return and it’s all been working out quite well so far. [00:02:45] Kenric: [00:02:45] That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Now, before you actually got into comics, you’re in the Navy. My father was in the Navy. He was a sub. He was a submariner for 20 years. [00:02:55] Jim: [00:02:55] I never got on the ship. [00:02:56] Kenric: [00:02:56] You never got on a ship what you do for the Navy? [00:02:58] Jim: [00:02:58] I was a [00:03:00] photographer. Oh, fun. That’s, um, uh, aerial photography, uh, chasing Russian submarines around with a P two squadron insistently, and then later on, uh, the Pacific and, uh, there’s more photography then, you know, just taking pictures. [00:03:19] Kenric: [00:03:19] How did, how did you get into wanting to know, I’m going to write and draw comic books. How did this start? How did that love affair even begin [00:03:27] Jim: [00:03:27] where my dad was a draftsman at Chrysler and dashboards and seats and steering wheels, uh, got him out of the service during world war two. He was one of those essential, uh, jobs that had to be kept. [00:03:40] He worked on tanks at that point, but he figured his. One big side benefit that the company didn’t have to know about was that he, uh, every night he stacked it, he packed his briefcase full of tracing paper, number two pencils and all the masking tape he could steal. And he [00:04:00] was going to use this in his woodworking hobby. [00:04:01] But he soon found out that I was taking more of this stuff then he was using, because I found I could trace off the characters in the [00:04:10] Kenric: [00:04:10] comic books. [00:04:11] Jim: [00:04:11] And, uh. That Blair that turned into a sort of an obsession. I had my wall covered with Tracy paper and my joint bedroom of my brother or my, my wall was uncovered with JC paper and this was bear. [00:04:23] Uh, and, uh, eventually stopped using the tracing paper and the obsession became a hobby, which became, uh, a passion and then eventually a profession. And that’s more or less how I started it off. [00:04:38] Kenric: [00:04:38] That’s pretty, that’s pretty incredible. I used to trace. All the time. Transformer comic books was what I always traced way back in the day though, back in 81 83 84. [00:04:47] Jim: [00:04:47] Yeah, he was comic books and then later on was Archie and we had to take the clothes off. Betty and Veronica. [00:04:56] Oh, those drawings are hidden in the loft in the garage [00:05:00] [00:04:59] Kenric: [00:04:59] as any young man. I used to take my buddies, my, his dad had like every, had just a ton of Playboys and we used to take those. I had them in the woods. [00:05:09] Jim: [00:05:09] Well, I played boys up in the loft also, [00:05:13] Kenric: [00:05:13] so we had Jerry Conway on back in December. And w. W he was, he was a great guy to talk to. [00:05:18] He had, you know, and he started really, really young in the comic industry, but he had some really interesting stories about who took him under his wing when he started. And I’m wondering, do you have any interesting, you know, who took you under their wing when you started off with DC and con and Marvel? [00:05:33] Jim: [00:05:33] Yeah, I say Frank, JIA Korea to a certain extent, but you know, there was kind of limited, I sort sorta got there and they put me to work. Marvel didn’t have an art director. At the time. Yeah, no, I mean it was, it was a Roy Thomas and Stan was there sometimes, and then John from Barton was the production manager. [00:05:52] And uh, so they sort used Frank at first and then Frank wanted to go back to inking. And so I sort of became [00:06:00] their de facto, their first real defacto art director up there. Uh, designing up covers with Stan and, uh, you know, for other artists to draw and, uh, you know, occasional corrections and things like that. [00:06:14] And, uh, I did that for a couple of months and finally got some jobs in my own because this constant drawing and doing things, uh, I got good enough. Finally. And so I started getting some, you know, horror stories, love stories, and eventually I got a beast cover to do. And, uh, that led into iron man 55. That was my first full book. [00:06:36] Kenric: [00:06:36] Oh, wow. [00:06:37] Jim: [00:06:37] And then I did 56 with Steve Gerber and Stan fired both of us. He hated it so much [00:06:43] Kenric: [00:06:43] was it the iron man knows. [00:06:47] Jim: [00:06:47] No, that came later. This was a, this was a funny iron man story and he was outraged and we did a funny iron man story and we both got canned. Fortunately, really needed somebody to draw captain Marvel. [00:06:59] Linda, [00:07:00] Steve. Steve worked out okay too. That’s [00:07:02] Kenric: [00:07:02] funny. That’s how long were you fired for [00:07:05] Jim: [00:07:05] the afternoon? [00:07:06] Kenric: [00:07:06] The afternoon? [00:07:09] Jim: [00:07:09] I walked off in orange. Brown. I guess we’ll go and get drunk and halfway through the drunk, or I called up and said, Hey, I got this book that’s probably not going to last. We need somebody to pencil it. [00:07:21] Yeah. That’s one of the first issue. We weren’t sure if we were going to get it out before it got canceled. [00:07:25] Kenric: [00:07:25] That’s so funny. What was your initial inspiration for a dread star? [00:07:30] Jim: [00:07:30] Well, when I met Jack Kirby, he told me that the Holquist stupidity, that the Hardy who ate audit strawberry becomes, [00:07:37] Kenric: [00:07:37] yeah. [00:07:38] Jim: [00:07:38] And I always saw it after that, that if I’m going to create a character, it’s gotta be able to be synopsized. [00:07:46] Then a sentence, you know, just sort of summarize and upperly is with Santos. He was appetite that never can be satisfied and address dread star. He was an anarchist who has no second hat. He’s very good at breaking, uh, [00:08:00] governments that he feels are unjust, but, uh, not very good at, uh. Operating within a renewed, a governmental structure is one little stint as a cop proved that it was miserable failure at that particular endeavor. [00:08:14] He’s much better at throwing bombs. [00:08:17] Kenric: [00:08:17] That’s interesting. [00:08:18] Jim: [00:08:18] And there’s this magic sword call God, but you know, that’s, that’s, that’s peripheral stuff. [00:08:23] Kenric: [00:08:23] So Kirby was, was a big part of your inspiration for him. That’s kind of interesting. Now. [00:08:28] Jim: [00:08:28] Oh, Jack was one of my favorite artists when I was back in high school. [00:08:31] I just thought the power of his drawings were incredible. Followed closely by Steve Dicko for other reasons, mostly his storytelling and his calligraphic line. You know, there were a couple of other ones. Later on. John Carmine, Infantino, Joe Kilburn, cocaine. These are all, all these guys who I learned how to draw comics and how to write comics from looking at their stuff. [00:08:55] Kenric: [00:08:55] Yeah, yeah. All the greats there. So you really loved Kirby growing up, and then [00:09:00] you go to work at Marvel and you’re working with Kirby. What was it? Was it, was it surreal? [00:09:04] Jim: [00:09:04] Actually, I never worked with Kirby. Oh, really? He was overdoing work at DC at the time when I first got there. And, uh, he came back later, but he was out in California and I was in New York at the time. [00:09:16] Yeah. And so, uh, he was doing the devil dinosaur and stuff like that, and I had just come into the office and occasionally see him, his work. But, uh, we only met later on. Um, Elle Milgrim hauled me off to his place to, for a visit one afternoon. And, uh. That’s one of the thrills of my life. Yeah. I mean, it was such a laid back and nice man, uh, doing this incredible work. [00:09:40] Uh, then as we were sitting there by his drawing board, and he looked at this huge picture window that overlooked this Valley, and he said, you said, you know, I work in here sometimes in the UFOs go by and they really distract me. And then the jets come up after him and the hoes take off, and I’m going. [00:09:56] Yeah, this is Kirby. [00:10:02] [00:10:00] Kenric: [00:10:02] Did you guys talk about fairness and dark side? Cause there’s always been the, the how closely resemble that they could be. My, my take on  dark side is they remind me of the Baron from dune. So it’s, it’s, it’s all relative. [00:10:18] Jim: [00:10:18] No, we didn’t talk about that. But actually. Uh, Santo started off more looking like Metro and at the beginning, man, uh, dark side. [00:10:27] Kenric: [00:10:27] Yeah. [00:10:28] Jim: [00:10:28] Um, uh, my original drawing had him in a chair and, uh, you know, looking is a much blacker outfit to look much more like metros. Um, when we did the iron man 55, uh. Roy Thomas, the editor, said, beef them up a little bit. You know, so it just look so and so. And as the years have gone by, both sat hosts and the dark side have inflated markedly. [00:10:56] Uh, you look back at those early Caribbean things. He’s, he’s a stocky [00:11:00] fellow, but. He’s not all that much bigger than your average human. And Sandoz sort of started off the same way, and they both sort of independently went off and just grew into these massive menaces. I did probably throw things off at one point, uh. [00:11:17] And doing the same interview jokingly said that he was dark side, but never really mentioned it. [00:11:22] Kenric: [00:11:22] See what you started. Yeah. Well, are you surprised how big the characters you created with the, you know, dominoes and all the, [00:11:37] Jim: [00:11:37] cause Santos was so esoteric and weird that, you know, I figured no one was ever going to put money up to do this. [00:11:43] Something this strange. You know, Draxxin and Gomorrah more mainstream in their own sort of alternate way. But, uh, you know, them going into the guardians, you know, it was a good fit. And, uh. But that was a surprise, and then going off the [00:12:00] duty infinity goblets, you just never saw the movies when we started being able to do this sort of thing. [00:12:06] Kenric: [00:12:06] It’s a gigantic space opera. You get you, you did a wonderful job. That’s finals quest. Oh, I read that book. I don’t know. I can’t even tell you how many times I read that thing. [00:12:16] Jim: [00:12:16] That’s my favorite Santo story. [00:12:18] Kenric: [00:12:18] Definitely mine. When he’s looking into the pool, when he’s looking into the, uh, the pool, the abyss, and he has the whole conversation with themselves. [00:12:26] That is brilliant. [00:12:27] Jim: [00:12:27] I have to go back and read data. Yes. Yeah. We’re doing these things. The movies couldn’t hold a candle to what we can do in the comic books. We could do much more complicated things here. Spaceships would wobble on the strings and they would go across the screen. And so, uh, now. Any 30 seconds a shot, a ten second shot in a movie is something far beyond what we could do with a comic book. [00:12:54] Kenric: [00:12:54] It’s kind of crazy, right? Cause it’s kind of flipped over. What do you think of their changing of [00:13:00] him? The law for his love of death to more of a, like an ecological terrorist? [00:13:07] Jim: [00:13:07] Well, the way I understand it, Kevin, find you didn’t feel comfortable yet, uh, putting in the abstract characters like eternity. Or mistress death into the Marvel cinematic universe cause they weren’t sure that how the, uh, movie going public would take them. [00:13:24] Uh, they’ve obviously gotten past that because, uh, there had been a casting call for eternity for the next doctor strange movie. So that. That cat is out of the bag, and I didn’t do this. This is not me spoiling anything. It’s out there in public record, so I guess we’re going to be seeing them. So, um, if we see the analysts again, there’s a good chance we may eventually see mr staffs, which I’d like to see happen. [00:13:48] Kenric: [00:13:48] That would be cool. [00:13:49] Jim: [00:13:49] I have no trouble with where they went with the thing because of those dictates. Um, I understood that they had to change stuff. I’ve worked in movie [00:14:00] scripts before with other folks and, uh. Seeing that if you go in there thinking dance, you’re getting the good carbon copy of your written a story or a fool, it’s just not going to happen, right? [00:14:11] So, uh, I went in there and, uh, when we were at SEPTA for the end game, uh, the writers and, uh, Joe Russo’s were really opened. Talk to me about everything I knew. I knew practically everything about those things before the movies ever came out and had to keep my mouth shut for a year and a half. Uh, but, uh, you know, I understood. [00:14:32] Uh, no, but it, it, it only the, after the movie came out that somebody pointed out to me that his. Is a new motivation that the movie was something out of the silver surfer that I had written back in issue, I think 33 or something like that. Oh, interesting. Yeah. PIM, Connie, the silver surfer. And uh, was that, [00:14:52] Kenric: [00:14:52] was that silver surfer, the 1987 volume two series or the first series [00:14:57] Jim: [00:14:57] of the one I wrote, whatever that is. [00:15:00] [00:15:00] Probably the second series. [00:15:01] Kenric: [00:15:01] I think it’s 87 series. Yeah. [00:15:03] Jim: [00:15:03] Yeah. It was somewhere around there was obsolete into the infinity gauntlet. [00:15:06] Kenric: [00:15:06] Yup. Yup. Yup. That’s that. Seriously. [00:15:08] Jim: [00:15:08] We would have to say around that time, uh, but they, uh, they took, uh, the bullshit line that, uh, Thanos was feeding to the surfer and used that as his motivating force, you know, uh, you know, escape. [00:15:20] Cool. [00:15:21] Kenric: [00:15:21] That is kind of cool. That’s very cool. So you did a lot of work for DC as well, not just a Marvel guy, but you’re kind of run the gambit. How was it like working on like Adam strange and Batman and Gilgamesh and some of those classic DC titles [00:15:34] Jim: [00:15:34] depended on the editor? [00:15:38] Kenric: [00:15:38] Isn’t that always? [00:15:40] Jim: [00:15:40] Yeah, unfortunately that’s a, that’s a big thing. [00:15:43] Um, you know, some of this stuff, at the beginning I was working with Bob Strack and later on Tom Palmer jr and they were really great to work with. We, I think. Say I have a mystery in space run and the, [00:16:00] the aesthetic Iran, the Holy war, kind of fun. ROPs uh, after that, it sort of went to pieces. By the time we got to bizarre adventures are gonna say, you gotta stick everybody into it. [00:16:11] It just became a mess. [00:16:12] Kenric: [00:16:12] Yeah. You got too much. [00:16:14] Jim: [00:16:14] Yeah. And, uh, plus we added different artists over the other issue, so it was [00:16:19] Kenric: [00:16:19] driving me nuts. If you’re, if you’re, if you’re riding an arc and they’re changing the artists like that, does it, does it make it too difficult? [00:16:25] Jim: [00:16:25] Uh, yeah. Because, uh, it doesn’t look the same. [00:16:29] So they went with this one artist who was doing a terrific job, uh, whose name is escaping me at the moment. And suddenly we have this Brazilian artist who didn’t speak English and uh, uh, didn’t understand half of what I was asking them to put down. And, uh, they were constantly having to get things re drawn and it’s just a hassle. [00:16:50] Some stories are really nightmares and some go really smoothly. [00:16:55] Kenric: [00:16:55] What, when you, when you look back over your, your career besides dressed [00:17:00] R right now, cause I’m sure that’s probably your favorite project right now because it’s all you right. You’re doing basically everything. Uh, you have a team and you get your Kickstarter, which has gone really, really well. [00:17:10] But when you look back before that, is there a favorite storyline that you really loved? I know he said a fan of the fan is quest, but, or is that the answer? [00:17:19] Jim: [00:17:19] The Marvel is probably my favorite. Oh, nice. Uh, that had its drawbacks. I just located the finger in the middle of that job and, uh, when I was already committed to inking it, so every morning I’d have to, uh. [00:17:34] Take this a filter pen into my, onto my hand and draw for a few hours and then take it off for lunch and then take myself back up for afternoon works session. [00:17:45] Kenric: [00:17:45] Oh [00:17:45] Jim: [00:17:45] man. So there are, there’s just always a good story there. So probably probably the worst was the death of the new gods. That was just a nightmare from beginning to end. [00:17:54] Oh really? Oh yeah. It was just terrible. [00:17:57] Kenric: [00:17:57] We made it so bad. [00:17:58] Jim: [00:17:58] Okay. I’ll tell you, [00:18:00] uh, grant Morris made it bad. Oh yeah. He kept on requesting he was going to do the follow up series where they revived him and Christine adds things to it. And some of the answer wasn’t really crazy about like, merging the apocalypse and a new Genesis because, uh, John Byrne had already done that, but he wanted it. [00:18:23] And so I said, okay, I would accommodate. And uh, then when. He came out with his, uh, his version that had nothing to do with anything we had done and he said, well, I had never attended to do that. Why did you keep requesting these things? Write up my story. [00:18:38] Kenric: [00:18:38] Right, right. What’d you take away from that? Like, I’m there. [00:18:41] You’re not going to compromise on that kind of stuff unless it’s completely outlined, or is it moving forward? [00:18:47] Jim: [00:18:47] I think I, shortly after that sort of stopped working for DC. It was chaotic period at that point. I said, I’m getting too old for this shit, so I just [00:19:00] worked off and did something else. I don’t remember what it was at this point, but I just sort of, I think I finished off as our adventures and say, let’s, let’s get. [00:19:07] Do something else. [00:19:08] Kenric: [00:19:08] Yeah. He back on the Provo Brovara series, Peter David tick on the, uh, the unenviable task of continuing the story. Is there, was there something about David that like entrusted you to, to allow him to do that? [00:19:23] Jim: [00:19:23] Well, he took over the series when it was first also. Uh, I like Peter’s work. I like Peter most of the time. [00:19:30] Uh, [00:19:31] Kenric: [00:19:31] and we had him on. He was great. [00:19:33] Jim: [00:19:33] Yeah. If you, if you’ve got a fever, you know what I mean? And, uh, you know, I just trusted him to do it. I was busy with breed. Uh, they wanted Redstar up at first, and, uh, so I suggested Peter and he connected up with them and he called them. And, uh, it ended up that we’re a unique issue, six issue run, uh, seeing that we’ve got to. [00:19:54] I’m devastated and has been doing so well. I think we have some plans. Nothing definitely that set [00:20:00] or that at this point. Uh, Peter’s ran on the series two and [00:20:04] Kenric: [00:20:04] basically, yeah. Yeah. How did you, did you have to wrestle the copyrights away from Marvel to be able to do this stuff? Was dread star? [00:20:14] Jim: [00:20:14] No, no. It was always mine to create her own right from the start, [00:20:18] Kenric: [00:20:18] because it was on the epics in print. [00:20:20] Jim: [00:20:20] It was in the Epic imprint. Our a work for hire agreement was such that I kept copyright and checked. It started off at Epic illustrated and then went over to eclipse publishing for awhile for one new graphic novel and then back at with Marvel, and it was going to be a. Uh, one story inside. I think maybe this is bizarre adventures. [00:20:43] Uh, Denny O’Neil had a black and white book and it was going to be in there. And then RC found out about it. He scouted with it back to Epic illustrated and then talk to me about doing a regular series cause he wanted to start a new line. So, uh, you know, it’s [00:21:00] all over the place and it was always mine. [00:21:01] Kenric: [00:21:01] Yeah. That’s awesome. Do you think working on the Omni bus kind of put that desire back into you to to do a new dread star story [00:21:09] Jim: [00:21:09] on a lot of different levels of about three years ago, I injured my hand. Oh, compressed air action. A big crater between my thumb and forefinger on my drawing hand. [00:21:20] Kenric: [00:21:20] Wow. How the hell do you do that? [00:21:23] Jim: [00:21:23] Uh, compressed air explosion. [00:21:24] Kenric: [00:21:24] Oh my God. [00:21:26] Jim: [00:21:26] And, uh, so basically, uh, I didn’t draw for three years. That’d be strange. I could have dreams that made a drawing to wake up in the morning and go, Oh damn. And uh, but all this time I was squeezing this little ball that we had, uh, on the coffee table when they were watching the news or a movie and, uh, you know, stretching and, uh, yeah, first I could do about 15 minutes and then a cramp up and head after. [00:21:55] Running under the cold water, but it’s only got long growing longer. And what do we [00:22:00] got to be habitable? Um, I had a remaster of color on it and the stylist was a much easier thing to handle in a pencil because you don’t have to put the pressure down. And it took me about six months to go through and get the colored remastered in such a way. [00:22:16] I mean, working mostly, it was a mix of, uh. Uh, photos, you know, I’ll be in the actual, uh, negatives from the Epic illustrator run and then going through the actual books and scanning them and then retouching and making it look so it didn’t look like it was reprinted out of the comic book. Select all the blacks and then blur everything else. [00:22:40] A lot of works. It was, like I said, about six months ago, as soon as 1500 pages. [00:22:45] Kenric: [00:22:45] Yes, it was a hundred [00:22:46] Jim: [00:22:46] page. Each page, I spend at least an hour a day and I get, I think that built up the hand again. So when I was at a convention, then somebody asked me to do, [00:23:00] try and do a drawing for this charity. I managed to pull it off in a half hour up in my hotel room that night, and I went, gee, this is pretty cool. [00:23:08] And then I met Jamie Jamison, who is my anchor on the dread star return book to him. She had been working with Keith different and thinking his drawings at the convention. And I thought, well, let me try doing a couple of these things. And I had the covers for the omnibus books and it was real pain. And it took him about two weeks, at least one of those books. [00:23:31] Each one of those covers. Yeah. So I said, I do not want to eat. Uh, and I talked to Jamie about inking some of my sketches, and she did that. And I really liked what she had done. And, uh, then they have the video. So if you’re drawing, how would you, would you do a, um, alternative cover for this middleman? Uh, SIG them, do it and show them. [00:23:53] I said, huh. Okay, let me see what I can do. Can Jamie naked? And it came out really [00:24:00] nice. And so I was already started on Jetstar secretly. It was about 20 pages into it and I said, awesome. Hey Jamie, how would you like to become a full time anchor? And she jumped at the chance and she’s been working. She was working on it up until six weeks ago when she got pulled in 19. [00:24:22] No, seriously serious about it. She was recovering. Now [00:24:27] Kenric: [00:24:27] that’s some scary stuff. [00:24:28] Jim: [00:24:28] It’s a little bit of a lag and going to be a little bit of a like, yeah, we thought we’d lost her a couple times. She, everything that you could get wrong with this virus. She got a, they say it’s a miracle that she’s alive and she didn’t do that by herself. [00:24:42] She lives by herself out there in California, and, uh, basically, uh. You know, uh, a couple of folks, Joel Adams and, uh, Spencer back and I were on the phone with her over a daytime to get her through there. And we went through the terrible hacking into the [00:25:00] pains, hallucinations to the problem is going. And she hung in there and she’s a on-demand now. [00:25:08] Uh, she actually thinks she may try doing a little inky today. She was telling me, [00:25:13] Kenric: [00:25:13] wow. Well, I’m so happy to hear that she’s doing better and got through the worst of that cause. That’s scary. [00:25:19] Jim: [00:25:19] Yeah. You know, uh, it was a real eyeopening experience going through it with her, and she was the one that suffered, but I got the education out of it. [00:25:28] Kenric: [00:25:28] Yeah. You know, I, I’ve watched people around me. I leave the house. I have a painter’s respirator that I purchased. Before everything, just right before everything really started going down and we got gloves and I don’t leave the house to go to the store without wearing that respirator. When I walk into the store with my gloves that, and I don’t get the people that walk around with no mask on, and I have friends obviously, that I grew up with and they know, and they’re on my Facebook and they’re talking about how they just can’t wear a mask and they won’t go into the store if they require a mask. [00:25:57] I’m like, that’s your line in the sand. Not wearing a [00:26:00] [00:25:59] Jim: [00:25:59] mask. Where are you located? [00:26:01] Kenric: [00:26:01] We’re in Seattle. [00:26:02] Jim: [00:26:02] Okay. You started it off. [00:26:04] Kenric: [00:26:04] I know, right? We’re the, we’re the cause of everything. It feels like sometimes [00:26:08] Jim: [00:26:08] I say, you know, I’m in New York. [00:26:13] Kenric: [00:26:13] Yeah. That’s even worse there. You guys took the, I mean, it hit New York and it would just went like wildfire, but you guys is a governor, governor Cuomo. He’s, I think he’s done a good job. [00:26:24] Jim: [00:26:24] Oh, he’s been a PIP. You know why to run for president. Throw this out there right now. [00:26:34] Kenric: [00:26:34] You won’t hear anybody on this podcast disagree with that. [00:26:39] Jim: [00:26:39] This has been a nightmare on so many different levels. [00:26:42] Kenric: [00:26:42] I just don’t understand how you can listen to it and open his mouth and not realize all the lies that are coming through. I would have more respect if he would just admit when he’s messed up, like firing the, the, the group of people that get us prepared for a pandemic and says, Hey, you know, I, I thought I was cutting costs. [00:26:59] I made a mistake. [00:27:00] We’re going to try to correct this right away, but he never admits to anything wrong, you know? No, no. [00:27:07] Jim: [00:27:07] It’s just that animal, [00:27:08] Kenric: [00:27:08] which is just, it’s, it’s really bad. [00:27:10] Jim: [00:27:10] Well, there’s November coming, [00:27:13] Kenric: [00:27:13] right? November is coming [00:27:15] Jim: [00:27:15] until November until January. [00:27:17] Kenric: [00:27:17] I worry though that this first round of Cobra is going to go away, come the summer, mid summer people to be like, Oh, it’s all good and everything to go out, and then we’re going to hit another round of it in the fall. [00:27:27] Jim: [00:27:27] There’s a good chance. Yeah. We’ll watch. We’ll watch what’s going on in Georgia right now. [00:27:32] Kenric: [00:27:32] Yeah. I don’t like taking, letting people go back to work. I was like, this is crazy. I have a friend, she cuts. She texted me today. She’s like, Oh, I’m back at work. I love it. I’m like, really? They already opened it up. [00:27:42] That’s kind of crazy. [00:27:44] Jim: [00:27:44] And they haven’t even hit their pinky yet. [00:27:46] Kenric: [00:27:46] Yeah. University of Washington did a scale. They, you know, they’re. That’s a great school, and they actually ran a model to try to figure out what our tipping point is, and it looks like we’ve [00:28:00] already hit that bell curve for us. And they’re saying May 18th could be the. [00:28:04] The soonest date that we might be able to go back. Everything’s in, nothing’s accurate, right? Everything’s just in assumptions and very round numbers. Like, we could do this, we might be able to do that. But they said the earliest could [00:28:20] Jim: [00:28:20] be made. [00:28:22] Kenric: [00:28:22] Yeah. Well, you know, I read an article today where there’s 90 different vaccines being tested right now. [00:28:30] So you know, you gotta kind of weigh that when someone releases a statement is now we’re going to have vaccine. Yeah. Well, you and 89 other people. So, and it’s interesting. [00:28:41] Jim: [00:28:41] Oxford group has a head on this coronavirus research before this all began. They’re, they’re, they’re most hopeful at this point. [00:28:52] Kenric: [00:28:52] Oh, that’s good. [00:28:53] Oh yeah. Big fingers crossed. Big fingers crossed. Well, Jim, man, this has been really exciting. I very much [00:29:00] appreciate you coming on today. Uh, I don’t. I don’t know how much to tell you how much you, I’ve read so many of your stories growing up. Uh, I was a Marvel kid, so you know, my favorites were Spiderman and X-Men. [00:29:12] And then when, once you released FENOs quest, I telling you, I read that so many times, I can’t even recount how many and. Big part of it. And when they, when they did the Avengers movies, I was so excited that they were doing the pheno storyline and I thought they kept the spirit of what you did in there. [00:29:32] And it was, it was cool. So is there anything that we need to let people know about besides get over to kickstarter.com look up Jim Starlin and you guys will find the dread star Kickstarter going on right now. And really back this project cause it looks amazing. [00:29:48] Jim: [00:29:48] It’s a ripping good yard. I have to say I’m quite pleased with it. [00:29:52] It’s a love story, a death of a familiar character in it. And I think it’s quite fine. Yet by the time [00:30:00] he hit that page 100 and, uh, it’s, uh, the start of a whole new story lab. [00:30:05] Kenric: [00:30:05] Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s awesome. Well, thank you so much, Jim. I really appreciate your time. [00:30:09] Jim: [00:30:09] My pleasure.

Today after the Man of Steel watch along with Zach Snyder he announced something big. Robert from Bridging the Geeksdoms and Shootin’ The Sith joined John for a live stream to talk about it! See the Livestream on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/spoilerverse/permalink/2897497210369939/ “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry

It’s an awesome day here in Spoiler Country! Jeff and Casey got to sit down and chat with the one and only Cullen Bunn about his new book Rogue Planet (which is GREAT) and his career in comics! Check out Cullen online: https://www.cullenbunn.com/ https://twitter.com/cullenbunn “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry Interview scheduled by Jeffery Haas https://twitter.com/jhaasinterviews

Incredible writer Kelly Thompson stops by and talks with Casey and Jeff about her amazing career – past, present, and future! Find Kelly online: https://twitter.com/79SemiFinalist https://www.1979semifinalistcom.store/ “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry Interview scheduled by Jeffery Haas https://twitter.com/jhaasinterviews

OH MAN it’s time for another Tangent of Tangents, but this time we are doing it live! I honestly don’t remember what we talked about, but it’s live and on video so you can see our pretty faces! Listen to it here! Listen to it on your podcatcher! Watch it on Youtube! “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry

Today we spotlight what is technically the oldest show on the network, having started way back in 2009, with John and Kaylie! Join us as we talk about Haphazard Adventures! Hear a little bit about how the show got started, how John gets Kaylie to do a show with him and about y2cl Radio, a show Kenric and Kaylie didn’t know John has been doing for over 6 months. Find Haphazard Adventures online: http://scpod.net/podcasts/haphazard-adventures/ https://twitter.com/haphadpod “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry

John had a chance to sit down with prolific indie creator David Whalen, artist, writer, and founder of Correct Handed Comics! Check out Correct Handed Comics: https://www.facebook.com/correcthandedcomics/ Transcript by Steve, the drunk robot. Transcript David Whalen – Interview [00:00:00] Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: Join the culture this morning. Welcome back to the country. I’m kinda Gregan that. That right there is mr Horsley and two day on the show. What’s writer? Artist, owner of correct hand comics. And today we’re talking about offspring and a bunch of other ones. David Wayland. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah. Yeah. But before we get into that, why don’t you tell them about what we want them to do and about, about what we want them to tell us about their compelling, Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: Yes, this is fun. So if you’re a fan of the show, then you have heard us many, many, many times tell you how much in the oceans of podcasts that work at Hulu. And that just means that we like to break up the monotony and be a little bit more crazy and then have a little bit more insanity going on in our lives while doing this podcast. And it’s true, and I think it’s true for a lot of people. One of [00:01:00] the things that we hardly agree with is something that we’ve actually said for probably over 300 episodes now, and that is to open the mind and read more. And that’s what cathedral compels us to do. But. I want to know. Johnny wants to know. The spoiler verse wants to know, what does cut-through Lou compel you to do? And you can hit us up on Twitter and Facebook and you know, we will probably do as many as we can that come in and we will use your compulsion at the end of our podcast to say an ocean’s a podcast. We are and can through Lou Capels you to your line here. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Exactly. Going to be a lot of fun. So please hit us up on Facebook or Twitter, even Instagram if you want to, and tell us what Kathryn compels you to do and we’ll, we’ll see what we can do. Add that to the end. Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: love it. Let’s do this. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: now let’s talk about David Whalen and Crittenden kind of books and the offspring. And I had a chance to sit down with them and talk to him [00:02:00] about all that he does. And you know, we, we’re, we’re, we’re a very prolific podcast here. We put out pretty much an episode a day right now, and we’ve, you know, in, in less than three years, we’re over 330 340 episodes. So we Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: is insane. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: do a lot and it’s awesome. And that’s just kind of the way we function. We don’t do anything half-ass. We do it with all of our ass. And David puts out a ton of books on his own with, with his, with some people he works with, but he puts out, you know, books, cons, and I’m not as worried about the offspring, but he went through other books where he works on a one shots here and there under Crittenton comic books and this, if you go check them out, look them up online and see all this stuff he puts out, you’re like, how does this guy have time. To do all this, plus, you know, have a family and have everything else that he does. And it’s because he’s up the minus like we are. But if you’re passionate and you love something, you just find a way to do it and make it work. And that’s just, it’s, you’ll, you’ll hear that passion come through in this interview with me and it’s, it’s, it’s a lot of fun. Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: did you guys go, well, let’s sit back and listen to David in his own words. [00:03:00] John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: All right. Welcome back everybody. I am here tonight with David Whalen, creator of the offspring I doing tonight. I am doing good. Doing good. So you are a book called the offspring. How many issues do you have out so far? David – David Whalen Interview.output: I am a 10 out. I’m currently in the middle of issue 11 John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Nice and you’re doing the art and the writing for it. David – David Whalen Interview.output: I do everything. Yep. I do the, the art, the writing, the coloring, the lettering. I have a great editor named, Patrick van Lewis, who has been helping me out probably for the last, six issues. really helping me to, hone in that story. And, so yeah, so that’s where we are. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: So doing it all yourself. , I’m an artist writer myself too, and I, I kind of, I tend to not what I do when I do work on stuff, I try not to do anything myself. I try to spread it out from a personally. [00:04:00] Right. How do we, it all yourself, do you find yourself getting, like, leaning more towards one aspect of it is feeling like you’re a strong point for you or do you find like that it all kind of melds together? Well, when you kind of know what you’re doing in the whole, the whole scheme of the thing. David – David Whalen Interview.output: I think, you know, like, but like you said, there’s, there’s pros and cons to doing it all yourself. I would always say that I’m an artist first. so I went and whenever I get a story going or, or a concept or a, or a book, that I want to start to develop, it always starts with the art first. It always starts with a visual or character or something that I want to, a concept that I want to get through. And then it’ll all kind of wrap itself around that. So the good thing about being both a writer and the artist is, I work from, from usually work, from a rough outline of thumbnails. So halfway through, if I think of a better idea, I can, I can do it without having to consult anybody. So that’s definitely one of the pros. I’m doing the doing everything yourself. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Oh, for sure. [00:05:00] Yet, you’re your own, your own voice of reason, which means you have more free to do it at one do. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Oh, yeah. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: So when, when did you start doing the offspring? How long ago did you start that David – David Whalen Interview.output: I came up with a concept, about 30 years ago. Well, I’m an old man and, I wanted to do a book that had, cause I was a big superhero guy, big deal of DC, anything DC, I would pick it up. But I, I liked, the idea more of Marvel’s grounded characters grounded in reality. So I wanted to do a book that had superhero aspects to it. But, I guess you kind of, I guess you could say now the phrase is no flights, no tights. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: right, right. David – David Whalen Interview.output: So really I thought of that 30 years ago. Okay. I’ll take credit for that one, I guess now. But I John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: and in Smallville, Smallville store from you then, right. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Exactly. I want to characters that look a little bit more like me, that looked a little bit more like the people that I knew growing up. and characters that [00:06:00] had a more, more down to earth struggles. And struggles from people that I knew when I was growing up. So I came up with these characters that had to not only fight their inner demons from the struggles that they had growing up in, in, torn up families and, problems with views. but also, fighting outer demons where they’re literally fighting. Demons and monsters and, and, spirits and ghosts and things like that as they, as they went through their journey of trying to understand why it’s happening. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Nice. Nice. So are you doing all of this self published David – David Whalen Interview.output: Yes. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: and how’s that been? How’s that journey been for you? David – David Whalen Interview.output: a roller coaster ride. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah. Ups and downs David – David Whalen Interview.output: is a great learning experience. It’s, it’s, an opportunity to be able to do the kind of stories that I want to do. but being, being the sole engineer of all of it is, is, it’s tough. I have, A wife and two kids who are very understanding. [00:07:00] When I shut the door in my art room and say, okay, I’ve got three more pages I got again, I’ve got to get this downloaded into a PDF. I’ve got to do this. I’ve got to do that. They, they, they’re pretty lenient with me. So I’m very lucky to be able to have a wife and two kids that no one, that door is shut. I’ll be out in a little bit, but you’d be tired. , John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: You’ll have to teach me that trick is I shut my door to work on some pages or work on the podcast or to work on something, and my youngest who just walk in, no matter what, they don’t care. Like, hi dad, I’m here, and I’m like, I told you I’m doing stuff. We’ll play in a minute. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Yeah. The biggest problem is we move the kids, X-Box into where I draw. So I’ve been pounding on the door a little bit more in the last couple of months. So that’s a problem. I’ll probably have it fixed. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: yeah. We had that at our last house. We had our X-Box is in my office slash studio area. I was doing everything at, so the kids were always in there wanting to play Xbox Xboxes nose for the most part. If I was just drawing, it was fine. If I was trying to do like recording stuff, then it became problematic. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Yeah. They don’t need to be on those X-Box as much. Anyway, that’s my John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah. No, not all the time. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Go read a book. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah, [00:08:00] exactly. Read a book. There’s lots of great, there’s lots of great books out there. So, is it, you’re out, you’re working on issue 11 right now. You said David – David Whalen Interview.output: I’m on issue 11 yes. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: she was 11. Is this a, I asked this of everybody who has a series out there. Is this a, is there a finite end to this series or is this, it was just an ongoing, it’s going to keep going until you run out of ideas. David – David Whalen Interview.output: No, I’ve got a plan. I’ve got it all outlined. and I, I’d say I’ve probably around issue 100, 101. depending on, depending on stories that I want to maybe try to get in there. I have three or four stories that are like two to three issue stories that’ll, that’ll, that’ll be two, three issues long. that’s, that I think are good stories, but they’re there, but they’re not, they’re not hooked in with the overall storyline. So I’m trying to decide if I want to maybe do those a little bit later or do those in between, but aren’t actually maybe as just graphic novels, but aren’t actually in the app, the actual run of each individual book. So, so yeah, [00:09:00] I’ve got a story in my, my plan is, I hope. That from issue one to issue 101 that, people look back on things that I have referenced or seen and said, Oh, he did have a plan. So he wasn’t just making it up as he went along. There’s a, there’s a story here that he was trying to get to and and that’s, that’s the overall plan to be able to make sure I go step by step and, and the hope is to get it all done before, before I can’t get it all done anymore. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Right, right. It’s a hundred issues or 101 issues. They’re very ambitious plan. I respect the hell out of that cause. That’s cool. most people. David – David Whalen Interview.output: see what happens. I hope, John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah. David – David Whalen Interview.output: hope, John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Well, it sounds like there’s only the passions there. And then passion breeds creativity, which breeds, you know, getting things done, which is awesome. so how often do you release an issue David – David Whalen Interview.output: I’d say I’m on, doing everything myself. I get an issue out every two months. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: that’s really good, actually. How many pages are for issue? David – David Whalen Interview.output: 23 to 24. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah, that’s a pretty good turnaround. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Yeah. Issue four was 35 pages, just because, just [00:10:00] because I had so much to say and as before four 35 pages. So, but usually, yeah, 23 to 24, maybe 25. I try to stay in that, in that area. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: That’s awesome. That’s a great turnaround. Keeps it keeps vendors engaged. Now, are you just releasing them on like a website yourself or do you do Kickstarters for them or how do you release this? How can people find these. David – David Whalen Interview.output: I don’t do Kickstarters since it’s just me. I don’t really have anybody else to pay. So, so, and I, like I said, the only thing that it really costs me is time. So I don’t keep scars. I don’t do crowdfunding. I don’t do any of them. I hope it’s just that I have to put out the books and hope that it catches an audience. it gives them, the audience just keeps growing and gets bigger and bigger and bigger. I have, the individual issues on, on Amazon. Dot com and then I have the trade paperbacks on lulu.com John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Nice. Nice. David – David Whalen Interview.output: so, and then we have a website correct handed, comics.com you can go on there. There’s links to every book I’ve ever published to be able to get to where you need to go to purchase it. [00:11:00] John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: so I guess by that title of the, of the publishing house, their crate hand that you’re left, you’re left handed. David – David Whalen Interview.output: I bill lefthand, I’m correct handed, yes. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Pretend you’re my, my youngest son’s left handed two or correct. 10. And I guess he, he. David – David Whalen Interview.output: No, until that left hand to the chair and make him use his right hand. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Oh no. We encourage it cause he’s, he’s been left-hand dominant since he was born pretty much. And we’ve encouraged it since then. Cause my, my grandpa’s left handed, my cousins left hand. We have, and my wife’s grandma and her brother’s left hands. We have a lot of lefties in our hand and our family, David – David Whalen Interview.output: That’s awesome. I was the. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: I would say I always wanted to be lefthanded growing up, so I used to like practice writing left-handed and drawing on left hand, but I was definitely good at it, but I’d still, I wouldn’t feel like in college, I swear to God, fuck. A year and a half I would assign my name and all the receipts with my left hand just because I wanted to be left-hand, not right, not right handed. David – David Whalen Interview.output: That’s awesome. That’s awesome. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, my son, my son, he’s, he, she’s drawn everything right now and he’s, so he’s starting to draw it at six years old and he’s using his left hand, which is, which is cool. but he’s, he’s learning, he’s learning quickly that, you know, when you, if you draw with what inks it smears is, you run your hand over it. So he’s slowly [00:12:00] me not to try, try not to do that spreadsheets. Yep. Yep. Yep. So you’ve got the offspring going, you’re going, you’re going to get on that. What else you got out. David – David Whalen Interview.output: I have, a forest humidity here is actually, I just put out, the mini series is completed, just put out the second printing of it called evolution utero. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Okay. David – David Whalen Interview.output: And it’s a little bit more of a traditional superhero cause there is flights and there is tides in it. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: all right? All right. David – David Whalen Interview.output: It’s about the, the concept was about, Jay came off of being a parent for the first time 13 years ago. And, and how being a parent changes you and how, or how it should change you to want to be a better person, to give your, you know, your life really isn’t your own anymore. Now you’re in charge of this little person that you need to raise to hopefully be of, the, a, Good person and an outstanding member of society. So my idea was, what if you took the worst person in the world, the person that [00:13:00] was selfish, you didn’t care about anybody else, didn’t care about, about growing or learning or changing, and that person, this young lady becoming pregnant and then finding out that the fetus inside of her is developed developing superpowers. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Interesting. David – David Whalen Interview.output: So the fetus through the fetus, she is developing super powers and trying to decide whether she wants to, how she wants to use these super powers if she is going to ignore it, if she is going to do it, to use it for selfish reasons or if she’s going to do it to use it to help other people. And John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: cool concept. David – David Whalen Interview.output: yeah, and it’s, it’s, it went real well. I really, the first four issues, my plan is it’s going to be in volume. So the plan is to be able to get out the next four issue mini series with it, and the next three or four years. but the first issue is a, it’s a, crazy, there’s crazy time travel stuff going on at the end too. So it really, it’s really kind of a, more of a traditional superhero book, but I’m really proud of the way it came out. [00:14:00] John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: That’s cool. That sounds like a cool concept. It’s a cigarette, the first four out and you’re planning more. How do you balance that with having your ongoing as well, doing all of this yourself? David – David Whalen Interview.output: Very carefully. Yeah. What I try to do is I’ll work on a, but a side project, like a mini series or a one shot or something. I’ll work on the side project intermittently. Through working on the offspring. So, so if I, if I have some nailed the whole book of, one issue of a mini series or a one shot, I’ll go through and I’ll try to pencil out two or three pages and then I’ll take, you know, the next week and do offspring. And then I’ll try to ink those three or four pages, and then I’ll go back to offspring. And then I’ll color those three or four ideas and that will go back off. So it really is a juggling act. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: It’s a very delicate balancing act. Sounds like. Yeah. So are David – David Whalen Interview.output: to be able to go like, you know. So you said you keep yourself really focused on the one thing. So with your, if I’m working on offspring going, I need to, I [00:15:00] need to step away from this to be able to get the other thing, keep the other thing moving forward. And then by the time I get those pages done that I’m ready to get back on the offspring a hundred percent. So it’s, so I found it’s really good to be able to mix and match what you’re doing, to be able to, to keep yourself, going and moving forward and interested in what you’re doing. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah. Keep it. Keep it fresh for yourself. Don’t, don’t get stale on one idea. That’s nice. so do you, do you do your penciling and stuff all, pen and paper or do you do on, on, on a tablet? David – David Whalen Interview.output: I do. I do do. I’m, I’m, I guess I’m more traditional. I’d do it all on pen and paper. I do everything. The only thing that I don’t do on, with some, with a marker or something in my hand is the Keller Andrew that coloring digitally, like most people. but yeah, I really enjoy the pin, the paper and the ink and being able to have it right there in front of me. I know a lot of artists are going digital and that’s great. but I, I really, I really enjoy having the paper and the pencil and the, all that stuff in front of me and doing it that way. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: I’m the same way, man. I can do, I, I color in on my tablet. You know, I’ve had pro that I color on or the Photoshop or whatever, [00:16:00] procreate and stuff, and I do it on the computer and too, but if I find myself, for the most part, when it comes to like. Sketching or drawing or penciling and thinking that I, I prefer the feel of the pen to the paper and the pencil to the paper. Even with coloring and painting. Like for me, I find that the ability to undo on a computer makes me take it less seriously. So I’m not as, I’m not as, I’m concerned of my color choice or of my inky and choice, whereas when I’m thinking a page on my drawing table with, you know, a Quill or with a, you know, with the, a paper mate pen or whatever. I’m very conscious of the lines I’m putting down and not just not just, you know, doing it quick. I’m paying attention to what I’m doing, so that’s why I like it. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Yeah. Mostly I’m the same way. Yeah. You want to make sure. Trying to make sure, and you know, as an artist, you are all perfectionist, but try to make sure it comes out exactly the way you want to, but not pull your hair out that 100% John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Right. Right. The old old adage of complete, not perfect, you know, or done not perfect is very true, but sometimes you really want it to be perfect. [00:17:00] David – David Whalen Interview.output: Oh yeah. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had an issue done and I flipped through it and getting it all format and go, I can do that panel better. I’m going to do that panel again, John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: I used to do web comics. I did web comics for 13 years from Oh three to 2016 and in that time for the retirements where I would finish a page and I would go, then publisher that I got back with, no, no, no, I need to fix this. I’d go fix it. I get caught in this loop of fixing pages all the time, and I’m like, no, I just need to just get them done and get them to where they look good and then release them and just like not think about them for a while. So I don’t go back and waste time fixing stuff that is actually just fine, but I’m just trying to perfect it. You know? David – David Whalen Interview.output: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, yeah. With with 10 issues out of the offspring, I, I always go back and I’ll flip through issue one, you know, for reference, for something that I see that it’s character set or a character did, and I will look at it. It’s a panel here. Wording of a, of a dialogue there and I’ll, I’ll just think, Oh, I can do that better. Maybe I should just go back and do it again. And re really? I’m like, no, I can’t do that. You gotta keep moving forward, which [00:18:00] is very difficult to have that. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: So do you find after 10 issues of this, of the offspring that you’ve, you’ve grown as both a writer and an artist? You’ve either, you see yourself learning a lot from that David – David Whalen Interview.output: Oh yeah. There’s, it’s, it’s been such a learning experience. I, I had, with small press when I was probably five, six years ago. I’m an art teacher also. I work, I work with elementary, and as an elementary art teacher. So I’m drawing all the time. and, I found that when I was really ready, when I really thought my sequentials were ready to go, about five years ago, I started reaching out with some small independent publishers and, some, I had some really good experiences with, some I had some really bad experiences with, but, you know, made some connections and some friends that I still talk to now. But, definitely from issue one of the offspring to issue 10 now and all the other books that I’ve put out, I really do think there’s always, there’s always gonna be growing and learning and changing, and one of the better and better and better. But I think that for me as a artist [00:19:00] first, my goal was always to, if there’s no dialogue, can you tell what’s happening in the story? And John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah, that’s the key David – David Whalen Interview.output: Yeah, I think, I think I’ve gotten to the point where, where you can tell, I mean, it’s, it’s, you know, trying to, obviously you’re your own worst critic again. But, I had an editor a few years back now where I was turning in pages and, and he gave me a great compliment. He said they were without, without any dialogue or, or were balloons or anything. He’s like, I can tell exactly what’s going on. So this is great. Thank you very much. And I said, Oh good. I am moving in the right direction. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: That that’s, that’s one of the hardest things to do as a, as an artist and a writer too. And I’ve found, not everybody can pull it off. Right? Cause w what you’re saying that if you can tell a story in art in your sequentials that tells the story that is only enhanced by the words, but not. Not, you know, made a story about the words, then you’ve done something special with the art. I wrote a story a couple of years ago, that’s in a book that’s coming out here next month. that is, I, I wrote it and I wrote it for myself to draw. I ended up, I ended up having a friend of mine, Rick bug trod, cause he’s, he’s, [00:20:00] like leaps and bounds, better artists than I will ever be in my life. Right. And, he took it on and he, he ended up doing it. There were, now it’s like, it’s my story that I wrote for sure, but. All the stories told in the visuals. Now I feel like he just kind of made it this own thing. And it’s, it’s weird when you’re, when you’re a writer and an artist doing both parts and you do that, cause then it’s like you may have to take both worlds, mesh them together like you did for yours. You talked about and tell that story you wanted to tell. But then when you’re, when you’re writing one, have somebody else draw it. It’s a different level because you wrote this and then all of a sudden you’re seeing it with no words and it’s just. It tells that story you were trying to tell, but it does it in a way that you didn’t. I, for me, I never saw it going that way. So it’s, I love stories that don’t have a lot of words in them because it makes you think more about what’s going on. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Good. Yeah. That was one of when I started developing the overall. Concept for the offspring. There was, I wanted to do a, I guess it’s called now, a silent issue to where there’s no dialogue, maybe a few sound effects here and there to be able to drive the point home or certain things that are [00:21:00] happening. But, I do probably, I’d say it’s going to be issue 35 36. Where there’s not going to be any dialogue at all. And there’s a, there’s a reason for it. It’s not just because I don’t want to let her that day. the story hitting the store is like develop to be able to have these hedges of situation where they are for this situation. They are unable to talk. they’re just not talking, but they’re unable to talk. To be able to, and have to communicate with each other eventually in the story, in the story to be able to figure out how to get home. So, so yeah, finishing the story and having it be clear without any, any words or cues is, is tough. But I, but I love the challenge. I love it. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah, it’s definitely a challenge. Yeah. If you haven’t read this book yet, there’s a book out called forte, by Kevin Joseph. It’s an indie book. Kimra, I think source point might’ve printed out or some other publisher put it out that was, wasn’t source print, sorry. But it’s a, pod mortar MRT, and it’s a, it’s a graphic novel [00:22:00] as there’s no words in it. There’s like one letter in the entire thing and it’s, it’s, it’s a beautiful exploit. A beautiful example of, of. Story with all art and no actual words in it that conveys an emotional story. And it’s, it’s what I always lean to when I think about writing a story without words, because it’s, it’s just fantastic. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Check that out. Thank you. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah, it’s, it’s a, it’s a great book. so back to your stuff here. So you’ve got the two, do you have anything else out that you or anything else you’re working on. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Yeah, I did a 100 plus flip page, graphic novel. it’s black and white, so a little bit more indie flare there with a black and white book, but I did it with a writer that I met through one of the small press companies that I was talking about. I’ve known him now for four or five years, and he’s got his own company called dojo, Coon comics, and it’s, his name is Brian Menard. And he’s a, he’s a writer and we’ve done some stuff here and there, some that came out for that small press stuff, some that didn’t come out. but we, decided to develop together a [00:23:00] 100 plus page graphic novel about w we’re both big fans of classic movie monsters. Dracula and a Frankenstein’s monster and the werewolf and Wolf man and stuff like that. So we talked about, I had a concept, but I didn’t quite know what I wanted to do with the story, so I just kind of threw it to him and said, do what you want. I don’t care. And it was, if the children of these classic movie monsters are banned and by their parents and then go hunt them. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Oh, turn it back on the parents David – David Whalen Interview.output: It’s called the loved ones. and it’s out right now. While you can find it on our website, you can find it on amazon.com or on blu.com. And I’m really proud of the way it turned out. We, he did a great job of really developing these characters and really, doing stuff that I didn’t even think of doing what I, when I was coming up with the major concept. but he, he set it up in a way to where, there could be sequels for the rest of our lives. We want to, [00:24:00] so, it’s, I’m really proud of it. It’s a, it’s a great read, I think, and a per a hundred plus pages and one graphic novel. It’s what’s not to like to go John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: right, right. So is this the one where you, excuse me, you did the, you did the, the art and stuff for it. David – David Whalen Interview.output: under the art and the lettering for it. Yes. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: I, I’m looking at the art now. It looks great. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Thank you very much. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: I just probably just, I just, well, Amazon has a preview of it, so I pull that up real quick and look and look at the preview of it. That’s cool. That’s cool. what do you find time to do all this with, having a job and a wife and kids and putting out these comics like this? This is, you have a pretty good, a pretty good turnout rate for different stuff you do. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Yeah, I, I worked at pretty bad. I tried to work fast, but, quality and quantity is what I try to do. you know, my grandpa is only, it’s important enough. You make the time. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah, that’s true. David – David Whalen Interview.output: sometimes it’s, so like I said, sometimes it’s, it’s hard to be able to find the time to be able to do. I’m really lucky that as a teacher, there are designated breaks throughout the year. [00:25:00] To be able to, to be able to, to be able to, you know, move, move forward at a faster rate than I would say during Christmas time. Christmas time is, for most people, I’m sure a no go it goes to try to get stuff done. And I still try to get stuff done here and there at the time. So it’s, it’s, it’s tough, but fun. I, If I could do it all day, every day and get paid for it and not have a full time job, even though I love teaching, I would, I would totally 100% do it. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: That’s the adaptive dream right there to do what you love and yeah, I just, they just want us to know the cover for the loved ones. once I get to the, second printing cover that the silhouette one, that’s a fantastic cover, by the way. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Thank you very much. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah, that is really good. David – David Whalen Interview.output: I tried to capture the, the, each character of each, each child without, without giving away too much of what was going to happen. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: I mean, you can tell who each kid, who his character is supposed to be, which is good. That’s good. So do you have anything else you’re working on or anything else you’d [00:26:00] have to have out there? I feel like if like you asked that question that you’re thinking, you’re going to say no, I’m done. If you have more to say. So David – David Whalen Interview.output: I’m going to say, yeah, I’m not there yet. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: I keep going. David – David Whalen Interview.output: I started a, kind of an imprint inside of the correct handed comics, imprint, called correct candidate. One shot. because I always have those little stories that aren’t, and they’re not quite many series. It’s not an ongoing series of, maybe not a hundred pages. So I started, crept handed comics one shots, and it’s going to be, throughout the year, sprinkled throughout the year, just one shots of 23 to 24 page comics of different genres, different styles. And the first one I put out, put it out, probably had to be at the beginning of January. and I, it’s called shady lady. And I’m a big fan of new are thrillers like Frank Sinatra. Suddenly, if you’ve ever seen that movie, it’s a, it’s a great, just slow, dark thriller, or anything out for Hitchcock. Rear window is one of my favorite movies. [00:27:00] Love it. so it’s kind of a thriller with a strong female lead. and a kind of a twist. Turn ending, to try to show the motivations of the character and why she’s doing what she’s doing. but, my next one is going to be more of a superhero, straightforward superhero genre. I have a, it’s probably gonna be like July that that comes out depending on the schedule. that’s going to be more of a superhero genre, but also deal more with the physical, with the emotional and psychological effects of. Being a superhero on trying to save the world, John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Nice, David – David Whalen Interview.output: I’m done. I’ve got that bad. The covers done, the thumbnails are done. It’s just a matter of getting, moving forward with the actual influence of inks and colors and or pencils and inks and letters. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: nice work, all that into the other things you’re doing all the time. I think that David – David Whalen Interview.output: So, John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: that’s really cool, David – David Whalen Interview.output: up and ready to go on Amazon. and I have a little issues, [00:28:00] 1112 and 13 of the offspring that I’ll have done hopefully before Christmas, and I’m going to put it all together in one trade. So issues 11, 12 and 13 of the offspring along with shady lady. It’s going to be in trade, hopefully by the summer. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Oh nice. Nice. That’s really cool. So do you have anything else? David – David Whalen Interview.output: I do have one more thing. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: I’m good. Good, David – David Whalen Interview.output: I have a, I’m just a writer also, so I have a novel that I wrote. and I’m a big fan of westerns, so I wrote a Western with some twists and turns and some good shootouts and some, some funny one miners and some funny stuff. I think that is maybe never been seen. And this type of spaghetti Western, it’s called the last ride to Tiber and it’s, available on amazon.com and I’m really proud of, it’s the first time I’m in the middle of my second book, which is more of a ghost story. but, I sat down probably. Seven or eight years ago and said, I’m going to see if I can write a book, and for years later I finished a book. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: there you go. [00:29:00] David – David Whalen Interview.output: So I’m real proud of it. I’m real happy with it. I think it’s funny and I think it’s action and I think it’s, it’s a traditional Western with a kind of a modern twist. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: That’s cool. A Westminster fine. I think westerns westerns aren’t going to come back because a lot of people are, are, are waiting them again, which is cool. And cause there’s a lot of stuff you can do in a Western and you can’t do that in other things. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Oh yeah. Yeah. I love westerns. Always have, I’d say it’s my second favorite genre, but if, one of the movies that I have to sit down and watch when I see it on TV is tombstone. I can’t, I can’t, I will not turn it off. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Oh, that’s such a good movie I wrote that came out. I remember I was, I was younger when it came out. I was a preteen teenager, and I remember watching with my dad and being like, just, it was just awesome. And I watched it again and again and again. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Well, I mean, we grew, I grew up with, John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart westerns. My grandpa was a big fan. You would actually take me to see some of the, the old school Western, she wore a yellow ribbon and a, and the [00:30:00] high noon and things like that. And that’s awesome. It’s awesome stuff. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: that is cool. So is that all you have out right now? Working on his remorse? David – David Whalen Interview.output: That’s it. I’m done. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Okay. So I have a question for you. So on Amazon, you know when you click on like your name and the author, it lists everything. Everything you’ve done, right, but it’s not always accurate. There’s a book, there’s a book credit to you or to somebody with your exact name, call it cat house connection guide to brothel collectibles. David – David Whalen Interview.output: I wish that I wrote that. I wish that that was mine. No, that’s not my, like, now I have to go read it. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Right? It’s from 2002 and it’s a guide to broth David – David Whalen Interview.output: That’s amazing. That’s an amazing title. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Right? David – David Whalen Interview.output: so that title, John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: It’s, it’s, you know, when you go to a brothel, what items to pick up to have, you know, we’re the one be worth money someday. David – David Whalen Interview.output: What do you take with you and what do you leave there and what you take out of that place? That’s amazing. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Oh, it’s David – David Whalen Interview.output: up my world to a whole bunch of questions. Not sure where to go with. [00:31:00] John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: See now, now you can incorporate that into one of your stories from your books as it being a thing, you know? David – David Whalen Interview.output: There are, there is. There is a couple of rat holes in the last ride to Tibor and so John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Well, now if you need to do that again and have a book in there about it, you have the reference there. David – David Whalen Interview.output: perfect. Perfect. I love it. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: So do you go to, or do you go to cons? Did you go to conventions and sell your books too? David – David Whalen Interview.output: I go to cons. I, I haven’t been able to, like, like I said at the time restraints, I haven’t been able to get tables at cons really with the correct handed comics. has only been up and running for about two years, John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Oh, okay. David – David Whalen Interview.output: so I put out a lot of content in two years. So I was really focusing on the content. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: right? You’ve got tons of content now. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Oh yeah. So now I think I’m getting to the point, there’s a, I’m going upstate New York. So there are, there’s a handful of cons that I go to every single year and have met friends and have fun and all that stuff, and gotten to the point where I think I need to start getting tables John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah. You should with with how much content you have, we should definitely start, get some tables and you’d, [00:32:00] I’m sure you’d, you’d sell quite a bit David – David Whalen Interview.output: I think so too. And I really enjoy the aspect of it. I, my, my kids usually come with me to the cons, so we’ll see if they want to come with me with a table and sit there for 12 hours for three days. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: I can tell you from experience I’ve taken, I’ve taken my kids to cons that I’ve done sell my books and stuff. they do. Most my kids do good most of the time, but after like day two, they’re ready to go home and be done. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Oh yeah. We’ll see. I bet my 13 year old would be five and my 11 year old will go a little answering her pantsy. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: yeah. Yeah. My older boy was fine. He’s like, I don’t care. I’ll sit here all day. My younger one was like, alright, I’m, can I go walk around? No, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re eight. You can’t walk around. I’m sorry. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Yeah, and maybe in 1982 of your eight you’d walk around, but not now. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah, no, no, no, no. But they’ll, they love it. My kids love it. My kids would try and get them started to try and sell books and be like, Hey, you want to buy my dad’s book? You? Which just always kind of fun. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Awesome. That’s great. That’s awesome. I should, I should use my kids to peddle my wares, John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: I mean, why not? That’s, [00:33:00] that’s kind of what you have kids, right? So to make it, to make you make things easier for you. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Oh. I tell my kids all the time that when I tell them to clean up this or pick up that or do this, I sometimes go, why do I have to do it? I say, because until you’re 18 years old, you’re essentially my indentured servant. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: exactly. I pay, I pay your way. You do your chores. David – David Whalen Interview.output: They hate it, but it’s true. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: I have a seven. I have a 17 year old and he’s at that stage where I was like, he’s a good, he’s first off, I’ll say this, he’s a great kid, right? He’s a good kid. But he’s at the age where he’s 17 he wants to backtalk and feel like he’s the big boss of the house, the, you know, the in charge. And I’m like, dude, I pay your phone bill. Like your, your ability to talk to your girlfriend and see your girlfriend relies solely on you making me happy. So do your dang chores. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Yeah. The phone, the phone, and the girlfriend. That’s probably great leverage. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: It’s, it’s such good luck. I mean, for the most part, but sometimes it’s like, well, whatever, I don’t care if it’s me, what a bad, and I’m like, no, don’t, don’t, don’t go to bed. Do, do what I ask you to do. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Yeah. It’s funny how eating would probably wouldn’t be the same amount of leverage. [00:34:00] John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: no, he doesn’t care. He’s like, whatever. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Either. Yeah, I will stop beating you, but okay. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: that’s fine. I’ll just eat tomorrow. Mom or mama feed me like, yes, you will, but stop. So do you have any big plans for anything new that you’re like holding them back David – David Whalen Interview.output: Yeah. Oh yeah. I’ve always got a thing. I have a list of. There’ll be times where I just hear a phrase or a word and I will, and I will, come up with a story idea in the span of 30 seconds and I’ll get up. My wife would get mad at me and I’ll get up and start writing down. She’s like, what are you doing? I’m like, I just stopped talking to me for a second. Let me get this down. So I would say that as far as trade paperbacks or mini series or one shots go, I’m, I’m going to be busy for the next 10 years. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: So I have a feeling that if we talked again and pretty much one year from today, you’d have like three times the amount of content out. [00:35:00] David – David Whalen Interview.output: Probably probably as a, as a school teacher, I was thinking the other day, probably about two weeks ago, I was standing in, the kids were doing their stuff and I was walking around and doing my job as a teacher, quote unquote. And I thought when I was in my brain, not saying it out loud, cause that would distract them and that’s problem. But I thought, what if aliens invaded right now? And what would I do? How would I, how would I handle it with these, with these second graders? John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: right. David – David Whalen Interview.output: about two hours later I had a script. I was ready to go on it. So, so that’s, that’s gonna be one of my, probably, I think I, I think I was going to be a one shot. I’ve got a bunch of extra like B storylines and stuff, but I think that might be a 24 to 25 page one shot. We’ll see. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Nice. Nice. So do you use your comics or any of your comic art or stuff in your class with your kids? David – David Whalen Interview.output: All of them. They love it. They love it. They, we [00:36:00] do, especially with fourth and fifth grade, we do comic books and we talk, or we, first of all, we really focus on the mechanics of drawing, using shapes to make forms and forms to build objects in the real world. So, and then we start talking about how we use forms to build people. And it’s tough for him, but I think it’s really important. They love it to be able to really see and understand what people look like because I tell them all the time, people think they know what things look like, but they do not know what things look like. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Right? David – David Whalen Interview.output: getting it from your brain. So that paper is, is where the challenge lies. So then we, from there, we start to build, you know, start thinking about the other teachers. I’m lucky enough to have other teachers, do that when they do reading and writing and say, Hey, can you have them work on a comic book? And they go, yes, let’s do that. So a though in their reading and writing classes, they’ll work on their own scripts and their own characters and we’ll do character designs and we’ll put together a one page four to five panel story that they’ve come with [00:37:00] on all their own. And, and I’ve gotten some, some great stuff from them. They’re, they’re usually excited about, even if they are complaining the whole time, I can’t do this. I don’t like this mr whale and I don’t know how to do that. Then there’s your story. If you hate me and you hate this assignment, there’s your story. Write it down. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: man. I would have loved that assignment as a kid. I would have ate, I was told by my art teacher in, in school that comics weren’t real art and that, there was no, no one respected client book artists because it wasn’t traditional artwork. And it wasn’t like. Museum quality art. And I was, I got so mad that I got in trouble at him. And then I had a teacher in college told me the same thing. I mean, I quit his class, but I, I, I grew up, I grew up on camp. I learned to read by reading Batman and X-Men comics, you know, in the eighties and nineties. David – David Whalen Interview.output: I was at Archie comics is what I grew up going to. Sorry. Yeah, John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: I started on RJ, but I didn’t read them. I just looked at the pictures and it wasn’t until I got into Batman and Wolverine that I actually heard reading the stories and like comprehending it. And that’s about like, that’s about like eight, nine years old. And that like got me hooked. David – David Whalen Interview.output: I [00:38:00] was very lucky. growing up I had, art teachers. And not in elementary school. We didn’t have art class in my elementary school, which I really hated, but my parents were very, very, accepting that’s wrong, where I’m looking for a very, happy to help me in my process of learning. So in middle school and high school, I had teachers that saw that I love comic books and they said, turn it into a comic book. I said, okay, great. And, my parents, by the time I was 13 or 14 years old, amazingly my parents let me take new figure drawing classes at the local community college. I’m sure I’ve had, I had friends 20 years, 20 years later, who I would go take just for fun, take a life drawing lessons, new figure drawing classes and friends would, who didn’t know anything about art or anything would say, you mean they don’t have any clothes on? I said, well, yeah, how’s she going to see her body? It’s like, there’s, there’s employment and they’re like the girls and boys. Yeah. It’s cross and boys and you draw them. They just saved. Some people can’t wrap their brains around it, so I was very [00:39:00] lucky to be able to have parents who supported me. and John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: really cool. David – David Whalen Interview.output: I knew that that’s what I wanted to do. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: That’s really cool. Because doing new new life artwork, no matter what you think about it, you know, outside work, outside, when they’re doing it, it’s one of the best ways to learn to draw people. It’s, it’s you learn. So I want to, once you get past, like the first time I did new artwork and our new drawings in front of somebody, it was probably, I think it was in college. I was probably 19 or 18 fresh out of high school and it was, at first it was a little weird, but then like after the first session I was like, no, no, this is great because. If all these, the poses in the shield that can see real shadow with shades, and it’s not like doing from a picture, it’s like it’s live in front of you. So you’ve, you feel that rush of having to do it to make it right, because if they change poses, you’ve lost this pose you’re looking at. So you’ve got to like, you got to get it down and, and not waste time and it’s, it’s exhilarating. David – David Whalen Interview.output: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. It’s amazing. I’m still from time to time, there’s a bunch of art teachers that I know here in the area. We get together and we’d do three to four weeks of new figure on classes. I love it. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Nice. [00:40:00] Anybody listening to that wants to get into drawing and drawing people? It’s a great way to learn. David – David Whalen Interview.output: 100%. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Well man, I’ve had a good time talking to you tonight and I really hope that everybody listening gets out there and checks out your books. I will have links in the show notes to all of your stuff, and if you ever have more stuff that’s coming out that you want us to throw things to, just let me know and I’ll be happy to do it for you. David – David Whalen Interview.output: I really appreciate y’all have a good time. Thank you for having me on. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: We’re back from the interview Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: That was a lot of fun. It sounds like you had a lot of fun talking with him. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Yeah. Yeah. Another one I sat down did, did solo, which is funny, you know, it’s the ones I do solo or ones where it’s like. More discovery of what they do. I don’t have to know anything going in, so I have to do, I don’t have to do research, but that’s fine. Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: wow. That is such a bullshit statement. I [00:41:00] don’t even know how get into that one, but it’s alright. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: But it’s fun. I like, I liked the discovery. I liked the discovery of who people are and how they, and how they do what they do and why they do it through. That’s a lot of fun for me. Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: Yeah, I think that’s always fun. That’s, that’s a good thing. It’s kind of funny too, because you don’t do a lot of solo interviews and this is like the second one in like a week and a John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: Right. Right. There’s a couple. I mean, I did a couple and I had fun doing them, so maybe I’ll, maybe I’ll do some more. I don’t know. We’ll see. Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: Yeah. Maybe. We’ll see. We’ll see. All right guys, I hope you enjoyed John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: yeah, that’s a show, man. That’s a show. Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: is a show. Hey Johnny. You know, one of the things that people can do for us is go out to their podcast, search for the country, hit subscribe. That helps tremendously, but on top of that, go to iTunes. You know, go to Google play and write a review for us and just say how much either you enjoy. It could be a one sentence, it could be two words. You suck. I don’t know. Whatever it needs to be and [00:42:00] share that out. Cause that helps tremendously. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: it does. Those reviews tell people, one tells us what you think about some to helps people find our show. So we’d hope you’d give us five stars or for a full great review, but you know, if we have something to improve upon, you can put it there, or you can shoot us an email at spoiler verse. Nope, she does. Even at smaller countries, you might not come. And you know, we’d love the feedback you have for us. Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: You guys go? How was that? John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: that was good. I asked you asking me or the audience, cause they Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: I’m John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: they can’t answer you. They Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: anybody that’s listening. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: if you want, if Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: you’re hearing the words coming out of my John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: go to Twitter and tell Karen how you, how it was. Cause he wants to know Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: Alright guys, that’s a show. Don’t forget there are notions of podcasts John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: are getting through Lou Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: and that’s good too. Little compels you to do John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: go to Twitter and Facebook and scream and tell us what clue compels you to do so you can put it here. Kenric – David Whalen Intro Outro.output: You guys go, one of us. John – David Whalen – Intro Outro.output: all of us. One of us. “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry

Casey got to sit down with artist/writer Terry Moore, creator of Strangers in Paradise, Five Years, Rachel Rising, Motor Girls and so much more! Casey and Terry talk about creating comics, working for the big boys and doing indie books. Find Terry online: https://twitter.com/TerryMooreArt Transcript by Steve, the alcoholic robot. Transcript Terry Moore Interview  [00:00:00] Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: Citizens that are public customer the verse, or I’ll come back to, or the country can agree that is mr Horsley and today on the show, well, it’s 1996 Eisner award-winning crater writer, artists of strangers in paradise. Terry Moore.  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: Yeah. I feel like we should have mentioned that he went back to back Harvey awards, two one for lettering and one of her best cartoonists. That’s impressive and awesome with its two different categories now. That’s awesome.  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: That is awesome. That is awesome.  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: Yeah. And Casey had a chance to sit down with them and talk to him about his career, about his work, on terms of paradise, about his work on Spiderman, all this stuff that he’s done.  This guy’s got a great career. He’s an amazing artist in, you should definitely check them out if you ever heard of him before. But if you’re coming in listening to this show and you know client books, you’ve probably heard of him, or at least you’ve seen his work. If you, have you ever heard of the name?  Cause that was some people. I know there’s people out there who read the books, but don’t ever look at the craters names and that. For a long time, that was me.  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: That was me [00:01:00] too.  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: Now as we do more of this, now that I do more, I actually take more note of who works on books, but it’s, yeah,  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: Some of that’s fun though, cause sometimes you’ll read a story like,  okay, like today, this morning you and I are having a conversation about Jim shooter and you didn’t know that at 16 years old he wrote the first Superman versus flash race.  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: Yes. We’ve been one of nine. I had no idea of the classic issue of drawn by Curt Swan. I have that. I have a  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: of the classic storylines of all time are Superman and  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: Yeah. We’re talking about with, that was Jim shooter and I looked it up. I’m like, yeah, it is. Tim should, Oh my God. That’s awesome.  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: Yeah. It’s really cool. Hey, before we get into this interview, I have an amazing idea, and this is new. Johnny does not know what I’m going to say right  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: I don’t,  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: does not know the words coming out of my  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: I don’t.  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: so. If you’re a fan of the show and you listen to the end, you hear us always say, and an oceans of podcasts, we are  and as construe Lou compels you to do, open the mind and read more.  But what I want to know is [00:02:00] what does Catheline compel you to do? Hit us up on Twitter or Facebook. Tell us what it is, and we will add that into, and maybe we’ll pick yours and instead of our. One that we always use, which is opened the mine and read more, which I think is important because you should open your mind, but what maybe we’ll use yours and what come through compels you to do.  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: Yeah. I like that. That’s cool.  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: Yeah, I knew you would. That’s why I didn’t even bother telling you, say anything, but after this, let’s sit back and listen to Terry Moore in his own words.  Terry Moore: I care more about reading the story. If I can get attached to these people, like a TV show, you know, as opposed to, Oh, look, here’s my really wild style. And they look like balloon animals and they say wacky things and you know, a little bit of that goes a long way. Yeah,   Casey Allen: yeah. I can imagine. so. You, you didn’t really have a formal education [00:03:00] in illustration other than like the, the core.  So, so when you, when you finally decided to make that leap, did people think you were crazy? Did they think you were nuts or were you just, what, what was the impetus for you to go like, this is what I’m doing now?   Terry Moore: Yeah. You know, there were two, there were two responses. Normal people. I guess you could call, you know, regular, normal people that don’t think about these things.  they’re called muggles in Harry Potter, right?   Casey Allen: Yes.   Terry Moore: The Mughals thought this man’s having a midlife crisis. You know, I might as well been saying, you know, I want to be a professional football player, and they were all like. But when I would show things to say a comic shop owner or another artist, paint would be impressed and they would concur with me.  And so those were the people I was trying to get to. So I listened to them and did not listen to the, [00:04:00] you know, the sensible adults around me. So I had selective hearing.   Casey Allen: but, but you also, you had the wife and kids at home was what, what was the progression there?   Terry Moore: Well, the, there was the rule you can imagine from anyway.  which is, you better keep your day job and don’t change.   Casey Allen: Yeah,   Terry Moore: we better not go back one penny backwards. And it took me, I did both for a year and a half before the comic book was more important than the day job. You know? Um, when I was in, I was editing freelance by that time. And when you do that, the, it’s, you’re charging the client $300 an hour to be in a video editing suite.  And. I had a phone call that was trying to get to me from my comic book distributor, and if [00:05:00] I didn’t take the phone call to the shit in my entire shipment of books was going to have to wait a month. And that phone call was worth $10,000 to me, and I had, so I had a $300 video problem or a $10,000 comic book problem.  So you can tell which one I did. Oh yes. That’s when I knew it was time to stop. So I stopped editing at that point and just focused on the comics and never went back.   Casey Allen: That’s, that’s amazing. And with your, with your job as a video editor, did that help you? Did you take anything from that in terms of like.  Storytelling and pacing and stuff like that. It seems like it might kind of feed into, uh, at least a little bit in the, in the back of your head while you’re putting together a page.   Terry Moore: You are, you nailed it. You’re absolutely right. I did.   Casey Allen: Well, I’m a very smart man.   Terry Moore: I mean, there’s just you and Einstein. He sounded   Casey Allen: just [00:06:00] like you and he, you know, uh.  It doesn’t surprise me one   Terry Moore: bit.  No, you’re, you’re exactly right. , I, you know, if I hadn’t done the editing, they did the job with me as an editor was to sit all day and watch these actors. Every single tape that the actor made. So you’re watching every nuance, you know. So I’m watching 30 hours of footage to get to give you that 20 minute documentary.  And I watched, you know, all the good ones and the bad ones and all that. And it just really, I learned that the people who seem to be great actors, their face was in constant motion. Even when they looked like they were static, something was going on. That was giving off this radiation, this, this Berg, , charisma that you could not turn away from.  You know, so even if you think, say like, say Robert [00:07:00] DeNiro is giving you the glare on the screen and you think, well, that’s just a freeze frame. No. If there’s a difference between the live version of the freeze frame, and there’s something about that live version that me with my art artistic. Bent, I would look at it and think, how is he doing that?  Is one eye a little narrower than the other? Is it the little set of the mouth? Is it the flare, the nostril? You know, and I really had years to think about it. So it was something much better than going to art class and somebody has drawn circles and connecting them, you know, and going over gross anatomy, you know?  By that I mean big picture anatomy. Yeah.   Casey Allen: So, so you were literally paid for for a long while to look like seriously. Deeply. Look at people.   Terry Moore: Study people.   Casey Allen: Yeah. So a   Terry Moore: toddler walking, how they dress, how the clothes hang, how their expressions work. And I remember one time, like, you can’t try this. [00:08:00] Here’s something everybody can try.  , you have a next time you see a copy of American pie. With Alison Hannigan talking about band camp.  We’re just run through that. Put your finger on the, on the freeze, on the clicker frame and run through it frame by frame slowly and watch her face run all over the place. I mean, no two frames are alike and it did two things. It showed me. That how alive the expressive faces are. But it also showed me how much distortion there is in a face.  Because one of the things I noticed about people who grew up say drawing is hero comics only. Say, for instance, , they learn one way to draw the X. Men and X-Men has two expressions, grim or grimmer. And when you look at photos of the family over the, over the last five years. Every photo can be different of your, you know, your siblings.  And when you look [00:09:00] at say, actors and look at their freeze frames and run through them slow-mo, their face is very elastic and all over the place. And it really freed me up when it came time to drawing, could chew and it was hard to figure out how to make her pretty, and then how to do it again and again.  And then it realized that I didn’t have to memorize it one way like you would if it was a comic strip, like for better or worse. They really only are three or four expressions, you know, that she learned how to draw. But if you’re drawing something like strangers and paradise, you’ve got to draw a hundred expressions and there’s going to be attractive ones and not attractive ones and gross ones.  And I mean, in my book, people can sneeze and pick their nose and pull their mouth apart and you know, it’s just roll their eyes. It’s everything, you know, and that I like that freedom. And I learned it all in the editing suite and an art class   Casey Allen: that is SI [00:10:00] my initial, you know, earlier when you were talking about your job that just came, I didn’t even think it would be that much like that deep.  Yeah. Of what you pulled over from, that’s amazing to me. ,   Terry Moore: you know, I didn’t notice that the first year or two or three. It was when I was burned out and near the last four years and I was starting to draw comic strips at home and I was working on character designs a lot. And how do I keep from drawing that same cartoon face over and over like amateurs?  And how do I get, you know, how do I get liberated with this? And that editing suite answered my problems. It really was the catalyst to. Go home and, and, and think outside the box. You know, it was the, it was the, I think if you only have, if everybody had the same two or three influences would all be the same.  But when you get somebody unusual, cause they had a weird, [00:11:00] weird ingredient and the recipe, you know, that was my weird ingredient.   Casey Allen: That’s, that’s amazing. So, yeah, you, you started, you speaking of Kitu and stringent in paradise, you started that in, in 93. Yeah. And, Not very long afterwards, you, you got the Eisner award for best serialized story.  that is, , starting off strong man. Holy smokes.   Terry Moore: I, you know, once I hit, once I got started and the book came out, , I had like a golden boy summer for about three years, you know, it was just wonderful. But I, I hit at a time when everybody was looking for things like that. You know, there was a lot of indie comics and there were a lot of comic shops and a lot of money and everybody was buying everything.  So it was just a good timing. I was lucky.   Casey Allen: Yeah, there was, there was a really great, . In the resurgence at the time, but I’m thinking like pure bags, hate and eight [00:12:00] ball and all these other fantastic comics, and then you come along and people go nuts over it. And it had something, a lot of, , other comics at the time didn’t have.  , I remember, so my first exposure to your work was, uh, an article I read about it in, um, in wizard magazine, which, , when you grow up in Alabama and there’s not a comic shop around, but the grocery store has wizard magazine, Holy smokes. That is a, a window into   Terry Moore: a   Casey Allen: world that you don’t really get, .  So, yeah. Yeah. I just remember being fascinated with your work through that and actually went to a comic shop, when we went into town and, picked up an issue of, strangers in paradise. And I loved how you, specifically how your illustrations were and they, they were not like they, [00:13:00] the atypical, capes and punches comics and.  So it, it always, I can see how people really latched onto that. Did you get any pushback from people when you first started out? Just by virtue of being different?   Terry Moore: Not from the quality of being different. I, I always felt like, I had people who were fans of the work, but then there were a lot of people who were, who were purist.  And they found the work sloppy because there wasn’t consistency and consistency of design and things like that. so from a critique standpoint, there were, they would, they would see that, you know, , so I definitely was not accepted in all circles in terms of like, just being a cartoon is that shows up.  , and. I, you know, and I focused on the story instead because I felt like if it’s just about the art, , there’s [00:14:00] only so many there that’s a small room to talk to play too. But if it’s about the story, you’re playing to everybody. And so I was writing this drawing for people that didn’t care what the art looked like as long as it worked, you know?  So w   Casey Allen: what was your inspiration behind, , the, the storylines that you did? Because I mean, you’ve really broke a lot of ground, , in comics, just picking up some of the issues that you did. Like, , I mean, you talked about the AIDS crisis a little bit. You talked about, , rape and prostitution and all kinds of other, , body image, which.  , isn’t it a very important thing for people to talk about and nobody wants to talk about it. So what, how did, how did you go there, especially it just as, I mean, as a, as a dude, how did you know to that that was something that you might want to write about?   Terry Moore: Well, I, , I’ve grown up in a house with [00:15:00] women and, , I liked women.  , I mean, even. From young teenage, you know, I was always, , I had a lot of favorite actresses. You know, when I was 12, I had a crush on Natalie Wood and all the other actresses of the time, you know, so I was just always looking and noticing what women were dealing with and what they were going through, you know.  , and of course my sister would bring her problems home from school and I would hear what it was like to have your feelings hurt, you know, and see all that. So, and then my mom dealing with, you know, , strange man getting too close and talking and they won’t go away. And so, you know, you’re a little boy standing next to her.  You see this crap, you know, and you think sticks with you. So I had all this and that point of view in my head already that, well, how tough must it be to be a woman on this planet of predators? And not know if the next guy walking up is okay or trouble. And, , so I kind of had that standpoint in my mind, [00:16:00] writing about a story instead of it being apartment 3g like, Oh, do I love him?  Do I not love him? It was more like my attitude was, love is absolutely the worst thing that can happen to you. And if you realized you fell in love, you’d go home and cry about it for a week and your friends would go, Oh my God, no, no, no. Oh God, no. So I took that standpoint, you know, like a, like a comedian.  And, , but then I just kind of played it. I kind of wrote the scenes and, and with respect, you know, like. These are real people and that the damage is real. The situations may be funny, but the damage is real. And you have to be very careful here and treat people with respect, you know, so I can kind of have this old Alabama Christian training in me, plus the modern world of everybody’s, , wants to, you know, loosen up and do I want to, I feel like I need to walk this way.  I feel any like I need to walk that way. And. What is everybody going to say? You know? [00:17:00] So I was, I was kind of like the guy, I felt like the drummer boy at the revolutionary battlefield, like just watching all this go on around me and I’m just kind of writing about it at night, you know? That’s how it fell.  I wasn’t personally involved in any of it, but I was surrounded by it. I mean, how could you not write about it? And I didn’t grow up, you know, just. Totally all about superhero comics. So I, all I cared about was Neil Adams and Greenland and Jim Lee. That wasn’t me. I was surrounded by artists like that, but that wasn’t me.  I was more like, you know, when you’re a rock and roll musician, you’re in everybody’s house all day and you hear all these problems and you go play and you see wild things and people make bad decisions and, and uh. Yeah. You have all this other world, you know, another exposure to a different exposures of the world, you know?  So I brought that with me. That was my baggage. [00:18:00] That’s,   Casey Allen: , that, that’s, that’s amazing. , ,   Terry Moore: some   Casey Allen: of the situations that you, that you’ve put your characters through, did you ever get any pushback from fans? Like how dare you do this to cut you or anything like that? Because I can, I can see people. Easily getting really attached to these characters.  I mean, they, they’ve stood, how long has it, have you had them? You’ve had them over nearly 30 years.  so,   Terry Moore: yeah. Well, in the beginning when it was, will she, won’t she, , you know, the first five years, especially, Mmm man, if I had people would come to the show. And they put their hand out to my wife and say, I love your book.  And she would say, Oh,   Casey Allen: okay,   Terry Moore: this ball guy next to me was Terry.   Casey Allen: Yeah.   Terry Moore: And it’s as if they, she had pointed to a turtle, they would turn and see this bald guy [00:19:00] and they would go, Oh. And I mean, if, if the Terry Maura was my wife, she would be, you know, have a much more successful career. So yeah, it was difficult, but I got to tell you that the gay community was very, sweet to me, very respectful for the fact that, here I am, this guy coming in from.  The other side of the Lake and, and coming in and trying to tell stories. And, I was accepted on the basis of the work and not on, you know, here’s a straight middle aged white guy, bald as the last person in the world. You’re six. I look like your dentist, not like the cartoonist, you know? And, but I think they kind of realized that, you know, Hey, maybe this guy is trapped.  As well. You know, like some of us don’t feel like we’re in the right scan and maybe he’s got the same syndrome in his own way. So, I kinda just, they took it, they accepted me and I, [00:20:00] that was   Casey Allen: great. That’s it through such a, through with, with so much respect and it seems like you also did your homework.  On stuff. And   Terry Moore: I’ve always been, I grew up with creative people, so, you’d have to be very sheltered not to have grown up like this. And my cousin bin, in Arkansas was gay and we knew it from where we were when we were five years old. And you just grow up that way. And he was one of the first victims of, the AIDS crisis.  And so that really bothered me a lot. And I started that age story with out of respect to him to show that, you know, these lives matter. And, so it was always something like that, you know, there was always something behind it   Casey Allen: that, that’s, that’s amazing. And, My wife’s, her uncle was the first man in Alabama to, to die of AIDS.  And it’s because [00:21:00] they have a very, very, culturally, kind of a conservative family he is not talked about. And it. It infuriates my wife   Terry Moore: as painful   Casey Allen: to know. And just, just because, I mean, he, he was a person. He, he deserves, uh, compassion and love, and he shouldn’t be a secret. Right. So,   Terry Moore: and that’s what, , Ben had to leave Arkansas and he moved out to San Francisco.  And, you know, he was out there three years before he. Got that and started all thoughts. I’ll start it up and he passed away. And you think about all the sweet things he did for us, our family. it was just, it’s really tough pill to swallow. So I, my heart was in it when I was doing the story.   Casey Allen: Wow.  Terry Moore: And I’ve had a soft part. I think that maybe that, you know, I. There [00:22:00] were characters in our lives and we just always accepted them. But that really, stuck with me and that kind of set the tone for my, passionate case for these, for this arrangement. You know, in the story. Now, I may not have been quite that way if it hadn’t been for Ben and knowing Ben   Casey Allen: that that’s, that’s amazing.  In so. You, you did strangers in paradise and, and, you’ve, you’ve came back to them a few times. Do you think you have any more, any more stories for, for them in the future? Or are you in a place where you’re happy where it’s,   Terry Moore: I’ve of, I came back to them last year for sip 25 for the 25th anniversary and kind of put them in a story that kind of.  Brought together a lot of my books. And then this year I’ve been doing this book called five years that they’re in, but also all my other characters are in it. You know, I’ve put all my comics [00:23:00] into one big, big picture story. And I think at the end of this, I think that could chew and Francine, my original characters will have kind of passed the torch because there’s a younger set of characters that are kind of a little more REL relevant to today.  And at some point you want to hope, you always hope and believe that you’ve earned the right to, to be in a happy place and stay there for the rest of your life. You know, and I kind of feel that way about Francine. You could shoot, like, you don’t want to go in there and undo that and mess with that.  You know? they’re not either, not James Bond.   Casey Allen: Yeah. Yeah.   Terry Moore: But I do have, I have, you know, some other younger characters that are happy to walk across the street and blow up a building for me. So I think that’s, you know, at this, at the end of this, I will let them get some rest. They deserve it. I don’t wanna I think it can ruin something if you go back and mess with it, you know, and whoops. [00:24:00] So suddenly everybody’s, you know, got leprosy or something. Nope. Yeah.   Casey Allen: Yeah. So, and this kind of, we’ll put a pin in, in that for now, outside of, I’m wondering. In 2017 there was a, a script you were working on for, for a possible film adaptation.  Has that, has that progressed any further or is it, is it in limbo or,   Terry Moore: you know, ironically, The really brief answer is that that was a first draft and I, the second draft was sent to me last week.   Casey Allen: Oh wow.   Terry Moore: Yeah. This is why they go up and accept their awards and say thank you for having faith for nine years or 16 years, or it’s just unbelievably slow.  And the problem is the people you need to work with are already working and they’re busy. So. I [00:25:00] mean, it’s just like, it’s impossible for some guy like me at my level, which is nothing for them to get the ticket, the time needed to move on these things. They see something, they love it. They say, Oh, that has a lot of potential.  They grab it and then they sit on it and it’s their pet project and it’s been on the fridge for five years. You know? It’s that, that kind of thing, you know? But, the good news is that. everything is spoken for except for echo actually. So everything lives somewhere and it’s all in various stages of process.  And now my motto to everybody out there is in my lifetime, please. So I’m not even trying to get at anything this year as like in my lifetime. Please. Cause if, if all this stuff comes out after I’m dead and gone and it’s a big hit, I’m going to be mad.   Casey Allen: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the artists for preacher, like [00:26:00] he at least got to see it on the small screen before he, before he passed.  , but. Yeah, yeah. We, we need to see, we need to see a stranger’s impair is, is Rachel rising, , getting, Oh   Terry Moore: it lives somewhere. , and my girl lives somewhere.   Casey Allen: Really? That is, that is awesome. So can we talk a little bit, cause you, you moved on from, strangers in paradise and, and started just. , doing a few other, personal  create our own projects.  But you also went and did, you, you wrote some runaways, you wrote Spiderman loves Mary Jane. how was that going from your creator on work to, to working for one of the big two and then. Bye bye. Virtue of that, having a huge team of editors over you, was that hard to do? [00:27:00] Was it   Terry Moore: a, it was two different experiences I did.  okay. When I, I did two Marvel books and they gave me all the freedom in the world, and then I did a DC book and. It was a night. It was very difficult. like there was so much continuity going on with the various crisis stuff that, I would say I would turn in a script and to have a lot of characters and 17 scenes in my script and they would send it back with three scenes.  And I can’t use any but this one character because all the other ones are in the middle of some other continuity. So it was very difficult, to do that. Who is, I’m sure you’re pulling your   Casey Allen: hair out.   Terry Moore: I eventually, I quit. I couldn’t even finish my run on the book. I just, I said, okay, that’s just too much.  But I know work in the Marvel, the two Marvel books were, um, a tremendous fun. Yeah,   Casey Allen: yeah. And the, uh, those [00:28:00] books in particular, same like, Oh, that’s a natural fit. Because I mean, they, they could see what you, you’ve done and, and go like, Oh, this is why we hired you.   Terry Moore: You know, the one that was the most fun was the spider man.  Unless Mary Jane, they, I guess they just let me do what I wanted and I just had fun. And I liked the spider red Spiderman as a little boy. And I liked this. My favorite period was in high school. during those years of discovery and, you know, and cockiness. And, so I, I was happy to do that. The one that was tricky was runaways because you were following the great, originator, Brian Kayvon, who was, you know, could do no wrong and loved it.  And, so he was ready to move on and go to Hollywood and start working on stuff. And they needed some. Sweden did a short run and then they passed it to me. And so I am set up for failure and I was really, really thinking I have to [00:29:00] be stupid to take this one on, but I did my best. And the thing, the problem was that you’re working so far in advance.  I did my entire run without any feedback. So I did all of it and never knew. It’s like, okay, is this just awful?   Casey Allen: Just to be very disconcerting nugget.   Terry Moore: And then I, I can’t remember if somebody did a short run after me, but shortly after I left it, but the book died and then I thought, great, I killed it. And, The book started coming about the next year and it got, you know, people responded to it and they liked it. And I thought, well, I wish I’d known that then I would have been a little more humorous or something, you know? But, yeah, it was difficult working so far in advance. Cause when I do my stuff, I worked right on top of the deadline.  and when I finish a book back in those days, it was in the shop two weeks later. So I could. Yes. Say go Clinton was in trouble. I could make fun of it in my book.   [00:30:00] Casey Allen: So can we speak on that a little bit? The difference between writing for your creator on stuff and then writing for, um, for a company like Marvel or DC in, in specifically, even even more so than that, writing for a different artist.  Terry Moore: Oh yeah. The best thing about running for an artist was that I could write all those things. I didn’t personally want to draw. Like, you know, when I’m writing for myself, My nightmare is to draw like, downtown New York, you know, suddenly every window in New York blows out. That’s in the script and you have to draw that.  Well, that’s a nightmare. But when it was in Berto Ramos. I could, right. Oh, a nice helicopter view of Malibu beach with all those houses. I don’t want to draw that, but he was happy to draw it. And I wrote scenes like, Oh, okay. It’s the long beach pier, and you could see the queen Mary too and all that. You know, Peter Frank job, you know, if it had been me, I would have [00:31:00] had, okay.  Close up of head, barely in front of a queen Mary sign. Oh   Casey Allen: yeah.   Terry Moore: That was the big difference. I could use the fact that I was using a fantastic artist and just take advantage of that. Yeah. so that was the good thing about that. But in terms of treating the characters, you just have to, I really did my homework.  I read every page and every single, I read the Bible and everything else that was associated with runaways. And, you know, you really try to get in the swing of it as if you’re suddenly working on. The Seinfeld show. So you can’t show up and it’s your first week on the job at the Seinfeld show and right.  Something doesn’t fit, you know, the problem is you now, so you don’t want to be that guy. So it’s like a new job. You know, you do your homework and try to know your job.   Casey Allen: I want to talk about, , how you compartmentalize, , your, your creative time with your family time cause you, you, you also worked with, , and did a very creative job. While [00:32:00] also having, having kids. But before we do that, can, can we talk a little bit, did you, so when you did the stuff with Marvel, I’m sure you had some carry over fans from, , strangers in paradise and the other stuff that you’ve, you’ve done, creator owned.  Did you get any, , any feedback from them? , w did, were they bothered by you moving to one of the big two or doing stuff for the big two.   Terry Moore: No, I don’t. I never got any flack for it cause I wasn’t like a purist, wasn’t like a door on in quarterly Fantagraphics guide, you know, live into your die. You know, it wasn’t,   Casey Allen: and I’d   Terry Moore: already done some spot jobs for all everybody.  over the years I’ve done a little something with everybody, so it wasn’t out of the norm. And everybody understood that after, you know, a 12 year run on sip, I needed a break and I think I kind of announced it too. So I took a year to do that other stuff. And, then came back to do my own book again with echo, [00:33:00] but I think they kind of went okay.  And, I didn’t catch to any real grief over, I didn’t notice that I wasn’t like the purest, you know, I was never going to be an art Spiegelman’s magazine or anything. And there was, I knew people who were peers and. I was friends with him, but I wasn’t, I never claimed to be. So I w I was just happy to work for a living, you know, to draw and make comics.  you know, I’m facing the crisis right now with the collapse of diamond comic distributors. I’m not quite sure how to go forward, so I may end up, I don’t know, you know, going to work from our is not out of the question, although I can’t see that happening, but I mean, everything’s on the table again, you know?  Casey Allen: Yeah, yeah. And I mean, well, you, you have the proven ability to consistently put out products. So, I mean, I wouldn’t blame them at all for scooping you up [00:34:00] because you   Terry Moore: are, most important thing in my business is to. Is to live in the now. the minute you start all your stories is happened 10 years ago, you’re done.  You know, so you have to work in the now, live in the now, be making material now. Know what waiters, you know, the readers today are very different than 10 years ago. So, if you hadn’t been working every week, I think it’d be difficult to make the jump, you know.   Casey Allen: Yeah, yeah, I’m sure. Are you still getting people picking up strangers in paradise and rediscovering it or discovering it   Terry Moore: a new, yeah, and I hope that that’s, I assume that that’s how books work, that it’s just around now and it’s like somebody reading a classic for the first time, you know?  You know, everybody discovers it the first time at some point in their life, so. you just hope for a lot of that from now on.   Casey Allen: I think a lot of the, the themes in it are [00:35:00] universal and, so it, it’s kind of evergreen in that way.   Terry Moore: it’s how a book is supposed to work. I mean, the kind of like my job has done and it’s out there now, and it’s.  It’s just there for people to find or notice or whatever. Then other second life it has now. Yeah, there’s two lives. There’s that production life. When I’m putting it out, like the best example I can think of is, think of Louis Louis Carroll, writing his stories, as periodicals and newspapers, and then it’s collected into a book and we see it as, you know, the Scrooge story and it’s a big book that you go find now and, or whatever.  And. Are Alison Wonderland or whatever, you know, and, those were written, there was a production era where people of his time were reading it as it was written, a chapter at a time. And then for the rest of this, it’s the book era where it’s on the shelf. It’s waiting for you, calling to you at some point in your life.  That’s where they are.   [00:36:00] Casey Allen: So as a, as a writer, like what is. What helps you to, to kind of recharge and, and get renewed to, to have new stories.   Terry Moore: It’s, I think your mind has to keep, being interested in the world around you. Your worst enemy is nostalgia, as a writer. So I, I’m very. I pay attention to what’s going on now.  And if, if, you know, the, the most nostalgic thing I have in my life is my love for jazz music, which goes way back so that I’m still looking at what happened in the fifties and sixties because of things like that. But I’m not looking at the comics of the fifties and sixties anymore. You know what I mean?  And I realized the difference between, say Robert Heinlein and. [00:37:00] Norman mailer, the way those guys wrote back then, would not work today. You know, it’s kinda their, their, their prejudices would show their, their pro style would not read well in today’s faster world because everybody is read all the, it’s not an, it’s not a new book anymore.  They’ve read everything that was. You have to assume your reader is ready, everything you have. So in it, in order to entertain them, you’ve got to launch from that high point. Not think, well, this is the first time they’ve ever seen disjointed sentences. Well, yeah, they’ve seen them all. This needs to be your attitude, so you need to do something brand new.  And that’s the joy actually. That’s what makes you keep writing every day is when you can think of. A scene that you’ve never seen before in a book or on the screen. a moment I had like that I’ll give you one is, [00:38:00] cut, you went to visit her stepfather’s grave and she squirted lighter fluid on it and set it on fire.  And the key was the guy, you know, that had abused her. And I have never seen that scene on screen before, and I’ve never read it in a book. And I thought, I think this one’s mine. And I was really happy, you know, to have that scene and to draw it and everything. So those little things are keep it going. You know, like I, it’s, the more you write, the more you’re trying not to write.  Like people you admire, the more you’re trying to find your own voice because it’s only when you say something original that it seemed to matter, you know, and you can write a thousand pages that read just like Hemingway. Well, we’ve already had a Hemingway that’s like hearing somebody play Jimmy page.  We’ve already got a Jimmy page and he’s out of work. Why do we need you? The client, even Jimmy [00:39:00] can’t get work doing that anymore. So, you know, play something new. You know? And that’s, that’s how I feel as a writer and a cartoonist.   Casey Allen: , I’ve asked this to a few different, , writers and artists before, but you.  Do you listen to music while you write or do creative stuff? Does that kind of help propel you? Some people just like to have nothing. Nothing on at all.   Terry Moore: When I’m writing, I need silence so that I can let my mind, work, concentrate. But when I’m drawing, I need music to keep me in the chair. it’s hard to sit in the chair for, you know, all day, every day for years.  so the music helps keep you in the chair.   Casey Allen: Awesome. Uh, and, and I’m assuming it’s jazz, right?   Terry Moore: Well, it’s, I love everything. So it’s, I can go all the way back on all these different kinds of things. Jazz, blues, rock, you know, yeah. even country, you know, I. [00:40:00] I have as, and it’s the same thing with movies.  You know, I have my faith, I have my heroes from every decade of the 20th century. I’ve been through every old movie, and I mean, I’m just as big a fan of William Powell and Myrna Loy as I am of Russell Crowe or somebody, you know? And so, yeah, you, when you’re in the studio with a drawing board and a TV screen and a headphones.  You go through all of it over 25 years. Wow.   Casey Allen: Well, one thing I’ve been doing lately is, we have like the, the NASA channel , and, I turn it on to ,  international space station and have that on while I’m writing or, you know, doing creative stuff. And it’s, I don’t know. I like the, I like the glow of it from, it’s peaceful and just kind of like helps me to kind of focus on what I’m doing, just, you know.  [00:41:00] Otherwise I’m just looking at clouds.   Terry Moore: Yeah, it’s peaceful until that big shadow comes in, that object comes from around the moon and it’s slowing down   Casey Allen: there. There’ve been a few times where I’ve seen lights in the distance. I’m like, what the hell was that?   Terry Moore: Oh, that was definitely a shift. Yeah, for sure.   Casey Allen: A big media.  Terry Moore: So   Casey Allen: your art process, I heard you talking about. Just the, it’s just decisions you’ve, you’ve put into, um, how you, you do your artwork and the materials that you use. Was it always like that with specifically when you started with strangers in paradise where you, uh, were you as conscious of that stuff?  Because I remember reading, I think, uh, you said that in Rachel rising you did, um, mostly brush cause you wanted a rougher field.   Terry Moore: Oh, the other way around. Yeah. I was [00:42:00] using brush, because when you’re grew up loving cartoon strips, you know, everybody’s doing brush. And so I’m an animation. So it was all brushed and standard paradise was mostly all brushed.  And, and then when I did, and I kept brushed for echo because it’s, you know, silver stuff. And. When I got to Rachel, I wanted to, have a more frenetic, earthy, scratchy feel. I wanted the page to look nervous and I want, cause I was a big believer, still am in some subliminal messaging. So I wanted everything that the, I was seeing and putting into the brain to be edgy.  You know. And I would try to, so I went for more of a penance ink approach and harsher lines and straight lines. You know, there’s not a lot of straight lines and strange and paradise. Everything is [00:43:00] art. But when I got to Rachel, I started using straight lines, things like that because it’s not normal to nature, you know?  I’m not sure there are any straight lines in nature, so. Even if you think they are, you put a ruler up there and you say, Oh no, it’s not. So I was doing things like that. You know, I think it through, because I had a lot of time to think about it, but, you’re trying to put that stuff there, not for the first read, but for the art teacher who goes back and reads it the third time and tries to explain why that page worked.  You know, why is it a sin? Why is this any different than somebody taking a big pan and trying something real quick? Why is this seem to have some sort of impact on you emotionally? You know? So that’s, you start thinking like a painter. You know, you start thinking about, what do I put in here? So if somebody stares at it for 10 or 15 minutes, they can get lost.  There’s something to look at. You know, there’s something, there’s another layer behind the first layer. So that’s, [00:44:00] and that was, you know, part of the thing you get to do as a cartoonist, you know, you’re not just drawing Batman and the Cape and those boots. You’re, you get to draw all kinds of stuff in there that it may take somebody two years to notice.  Oh, my word. Did you notice bat Mike was sitting in the backseat of the Batmobile this whole time? No, I didn’t see that look. You know, so stuff like that, you know.   Casey Allen: I, I never considered that, the, uh, the type of, paper or the pin you used or whatever would help set a mood. But it, it totally comes through.  Terry Moore: Yeah. Because the, the, we see it firsthand when we pick up these materials. There’s the rough paper and the smooth paper and the different look between what tool you use about making a line. Um. It has everything to do with the personality, you know, and when you’re trying to figure out why does my drawing suck?  And Frank chose look great, you start looking, [00:45:00] first thing you look at his past, the talent is a, what’s he using? And then how does he draw and who are his influences and how does he make the head and how does he make the arm the arm? So yeah, you get into the details.   Casey Allen: So it is funny you, um, you brought up Frank Cho because you both are known and, and well known and well appreciated for, for your depictions of, of women in your art and, and for completely and totally different reasons.  because Frank likes to draw, you know, really, um, Very attractive, big booty women. And, , you draw people from a more like, grounded, realistic perspective. and, and you’ve even gone so far as to do some, uh, some books about that. What was your inspiration for, for doing that in the first place [00:46:00] for, um, for teaching people how to draw women correctly?  Terry Moore: Hmm. I don’t know if it’s, I think, I think I kind of picked that up from my exposure to the European graphic novelists when I was a kid. You know, when I was, in the English school system, that was the books I was reading where people from France and Belgium and all that. So,   Casey Allen: yes,   Terry Moore: that’s how I got an early chance to.  To look at the graphic novelists from Europe, you know, before I was really making my own comic. And so I always thought that that was very admirable. I love 10 10 and, and the way those figures were, as opposed to say, America’s Dennis the menace. Where her mom, his mom has a wasp waist, you know, and just that old fifties cartooning style.  It’s too icon. It’s too, not iconic, but, it’s just, it’s symbolism. It’s not the real thing. [00:47:00] It’s just a symbolism of a woman. You know? It’s a symbol of a woman that, and I wanted more like reality, so that if somebody said, my heart is breaking, it wasn’t always a joke. You know? So that she could have more emotional range than just, you know, be a straight, straight woman in a straight man’s for a comedy gag in a comic strip.  You know? so it was striving to get a little bit more realistic, but still maintain. I, you know, it’s like more Drucker. His, his people were more realistic looking, ban a comic strip. And I loved it, you know, cause he had a little more room than many magazines.   Casey Allen: What Drucker? Who is that?   Terry Moore: He was the cartoons that did in mag magazine that did satires of the movies and the TV shows.  Casey Allen: Yes. Did he,   Terry Moore: did he just pass? He did, yeah. So he’s fine, but he was a big influence on me for his characterizations of people, you know. [00:48:00] Mmm. So his hands had five fingers that worked, you know? Yeah. I like that.   Casey Allen: That’s, that’s awesome. And it’s, especially in the nineties when, when strangers in paradise was, was first coming out and into like the early two thousands, um.  Women looked ridiculous in comics and, uh, the, the amount, the sheer amount of pressure just put on their spines, um, was, uh, mind boggling stuff.   Terry Moore: There was a medical Marvel.   Casey Allen: Yes. Yes. It’s like the, uh, I can’t think of the name of, I think it was from the,  might’ve been a Ruben. But it was, they, they took the painting and figured out she would have had like 11 extra vertebra or something if, if she were a real person.  But, uh, it, [00:49:00] it’s really interesting to me that you, you seem to come from a pure art perspective, uh, even though you don’t really have a, a formal art education. But, uh, you, you did the class and I’m assuming you, you went. Got other stuff elsewhere and picked up stuff along the way. Are you still, um, exercising those muscles and doing stuff to help exercise that other than your regular comics work?  Terry Moore: yeah. It’s kind of like a, you know, class one Oh one class two Oh two class three or three thing. Where you don’t go back to one Oh one again, but you’re always learning. And, when I was, drawing as a hobby, I certainly went to the library and got one by one, got every book and went through the mall.  And I’ve heard other artists say that as well, that they also went through every book in their library, their local library. so I think that that’s pretty common. it’s [00:50:00] something like somebody being interested in anything in particular. You go find all the stuff you can about it. So that’s a constant self-education.  And even today, I’m still looking closely at anything that is good, you know? and I follow artists on Instagram. Who do totally different things than me and just admire the work so much. So, yeah, you never stopped that love for, and you have to keep looking outside your own world, you know? Otherwise you make the same thing over and over.  Casey Allen: Who’s inspiring you right now?   Terry Moore: Uh, gosh. I don’t know. I’d have to, I’d have,   Casey Allen: I mean,   Terry Moore: yeah, and they’re not, I’m thinking I have a list of artists on,   Casey Allen: are there any comics that are, that are blowing your hair back currently? Um, are you able to enjoy and read comics now?   Terry Moore: I’m not, reading, the big story crossover stuff, but I am always finding and discovering new [00:51:00] cartoonists who have their personal work.  and they’ll hand it to me or I go see the show and pick it up. an artist’s alley at the conventions is full of great new talent. You know, it’s a very lively scene. It’d be nice if the public could see what we all see in artist alley   Casey Allen: a bit. I bet. And hopefully you’ll get to experience hardness and again, some time soon.  As we are deeply entrenched in the covert virus. so, I’m going to start wrapping it up. I do have a quick question as to, how do you compartmentalize your, your time that you spend, in, in your creative zone and you know. Being especially, you know, I’m sure when you’re, when your kids were younger, uh, being a dad and a husband and being there for your family is how do you, um, [00:52:00] how do you achieve that work life balance?  Or is that something that you constantly have to struggle with?   Terry Moore: Well, it was easy, because I work at home, so I was just always here and available. and it got to be here. Here when the kids came home from school and you know, every day, and it’s worked out pretty well. And I’ve noticed with that, with other, guys who are dads with kids in the house are cartoonists, men and women who are cartoon is with kids in the house and all that.  It’s, it works out actually better than you might think. So. And their mind just kind of rolls with it. This is just how we do it.   Casey Allen: That’s awesome.   Terry Moore: Yeah. So,   Casey Allen: W, you know, diamond distributors right now, things are crazy with that. Comic stores are shutting down. We need comic source. Comic swords are the lifeblood of the comics industry.  do you have any that you, that you were particularly fond of? I always like to ask people where they go.   Terry Moore: What stores? Oh my gosh. I have a store in [00:53:00] almost every city that we love. I hate to leave anybody out with a list. It’s a Sophie’s choice, right?  So my local one here in Houston is, I can, you know, God’s for them. Of course. , he has been rock city comics and they’ve been great supporters all along, and they carry a complete diverse line of comics and have great workshop. So they’re available to anybody that’s wants to check them out. But there’s a store like that in every city.  I think.   Casey Allen: Oh yeah. My, my favorite one in Birmingham has, say, combination tattoo parlor and comic shop. It’s called sanctum and it’s fantastic. It’s a few miles away from my work. So it’s, it’s great.   Terry Moore: It makes great sense, doesn’t it?   Casey Allen: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And so, , what can we do right now do you think, to, to kind of help our, uh, our local comic shops because it’s kind of on shaky [00:54:00] ground right now.  Terry Moore: I think what they’re looking for right now is a business. So supporting your local comic shop is really important right now. And, everybody’s there. Everybody’s website is open, and the mail still works. So, yeah, everybody’s happy to sell you a comic and we can get it to your front door.   Casey Allen: So everybody, , go out, , order changes in paradise 25 and, uh.  Terry Moore: Well, no, actually that would be fine, but also the current series, five years, , check it out.   Casey Allen: Awesome. Awesome. Is there anything else coming up that you want to, , talk about?   Terry Moore: I’ve got some special, special, uh, edition books coming out this year and don’t, we’re not promoting them yet, but, you know, there’s.  There’s a lot coming up, so stay tuned. Awesome.   Casey Allen: Awesome. Terry Moore, thank you so much for, uh, for chatting with me today.  And, , if you have anything coming up that you want to promote or whatever, by all [00:55:00] means, let us know.  And, , we will, , utilize our, , our social media and all that other fun stuff.   Terry Moore: Thank you. And, uh, send me a link and I’ll boost it. Thanks so much for this exposure. I really appreciate it,   Casey Allen: man. Thank you. Oh, well, we, we are the kids on the block and it’s been an honor to be able to talk to you because, uh, I’ve always been kind of fascinated with, with you and your story because you really.  put out stuff that not many people are, uh, are doing. And it’s, it’s always cool to talk about to the person behind that, uh, behind that book.   Terry Moore: So that’s, thank you very much. You’re very kind. Thank you.   Casey Allen: Alright, well, again, have a good one. Please stay safe. You too. Yeah. Wash your hands.   Terry Moore: Okay. All right. Bye.  Casey Allen: Bye.  [00:57:00] [00:56:00] Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: Alright. We’re  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: We’re back at listening to Casey talk with Terry and as his illustrious career there. What’d you think  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: I want to go back and read strangers in paradise because I’ll be honest, I never read it.  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: if you honestly, I’ve read the first, I think a half of it. I never finished it out just because one, I  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: A lot of  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: thought reading and it was, it was, it breaks out in 2007 what’s a time when I was getting married, I wasn’t reading comic books. But I want to read it because it’s a really good story and you know, I think you’ll actually really enjoy it.  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: Yeah. He seems like a really cool guy. I, I’d love to have a conversation with him.  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: Yeah. I mean, again, like I said before, every time I hear an interview with somebody that I’m not on for the show McMahon, I want to be on that one.  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: It was like, it’s not you and I.  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: Yeah.  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: You’re like, Aw, come  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: But I mean, I don’t want Casey or Jeff to think that I don’t love them doing what they do because I love their questions. I love what they do, but I’m always just jealous cause I want to be there too.  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: Right, right. It’s kind of funny. [00:58:00] There’s a lot that goes into this podcast and it’s more than just hearing us talk to the interviews that you guys hear, or even the, uh, the tots that we like to do, or the specific episodes where we bring up a concept and we talk about, talk something through, there’s editing involved, there’s websites.  We have a network which shows a ton of other podcasts. A lot goes into it. So having Jeff and Casey be able to run these interviews, like with Terry Moore, huge help, huge help, and we appreciate everything those two do for us.  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: we do a hundred percent it’s, it’s, it’s awesome. I just always want to be a part of everything. So  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: All right guys, if you enjoyed that interview, I implore you to go to  dot com and check out, Oh, we have. Yeah. To offer, cause there’s a lot of stuff out there on spore. The verse.com that. Man, you could sit, there’s over 300 hours of content just on spore livers, or sorry, just for the [00:59:00] country.  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: but it’s everywhere. I mean, we got, we got so much stuff for you to check There’s so many podcasts, our show, so many other shows out there. Like bridging the gate domes and haphazard adventures and misery point radio and the list goes on and on and on and so much content. No paywall all free to go check it out, listen, comment, subscribe, do all the things and why you’re there.  In the top menu bar in the middle is a button that says  Casey Allen: You, you normally,  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: on that and check out all the cool designs that are up there. Maybe you want to spoil of her shirt or Aboriginal geekdom shirt or a split country shirt, or you  Casey Allen: the cabin fever  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: or you  Casey Allen: you guys are mostly in chiller as as it  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: you help support us to pay the bills and make more of  Casey Allen: was telling somebody the other day, I being I still need to, uh,  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: right.  Casey Allen: check in on my, my artist  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: a  Casey Allen: because the little  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: we leave though, I want to let you  Casey Allen: to get out  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: you want to help us  Casey Allen: anyway has been taken away from them even more.  Terry Moore: That’s true.  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: of the country.  Casey Allen: So,  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: You’ll get all the [01:00:00] newest stuff. I think I say that the  Casey Allen: How have you been dealing with that  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: repeating it, but I think it  Terry Moore: Um, well, I have,  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: of that.  Go to iTunes, go to Google play,  Terry Moore: every three days, I have to go to the warehouse and get a few things, but I don’t see another  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: it tells us what you like of us,  Terry Moore: to do that, and  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: it helps other people  Terry Moore: once a week I have to go to the grocery store and I, it’s like  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: All right, guys,  Terry Moore: a run in a  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: don’t forget in an ocean is a podcast  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: are  Terry Moore: without the shotgun.  Kenric – Terry Moore Intro Outro.output: compels you to do.  John – Terry Moore – Intro Outro.output: go to Twitter and Facebook and tell us what compels you so we can add it right here for  Terry Moore: I get Too dissimilar and don’t talk to anybody ,   Casey Allen: I’m very sorry. Hold on one second. I have a very loud five-year-old.  Terry Moore: Hi   Casey Allen: to a man named Terry Moore. Say hello, Terry.   Terry Moore: Hello in [01:01:00] Alabama.   Casey Allen: Say, okay. Say now, say bye bye to Terry.  I’m very sorry.  That’d be   Terry Moore: cool.  Yes. That is so cool. They like that you’re willing to be around you and they’re interested in your, you know, like that. That’s sort of cool.   Casey Allen: I love being a dad. Yes. Amazing. And, uh, I have two girls, so, um, no. They, they keep me busy. Uh, maybe   Terry Moore: someday they’ll be the one taking care of you too. They’ll, they’ll be decide which, which home you’re in.  So the good one or the bad one.       “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry Interview scheduled by Jeffery Haas https://twitter.com/jhaasinterviews

Artist extraordinaire Liam Sharp stops by to talk with Jeff about his art process, his comic books, and more! Liam is a top level artist so getting him on the show to talk about his work is a true pleasure. Find Liam online: https://twitter.com/LiamRSharp https://www.sharpy.net/ Transcript by Steve, our transcribing robot with a drinking problem. Transcript Liam Sharp Interview  [00:00:00] Kenric: Join the culture that’s more diverse and welcome back to parlor country. I’m kinda creaking. That’s mr Horsley and today on the show, well he’s an artist that’s worked on green lantern. Judge Dredd, a bunch of other shit. He’s British, which I don’t know why he said that because it really doesn’t matter.  Cause you’ll know as soon as he starts  John: say that, but it does a little bit because I do think that British craters are. Creators, the country you’re from kind of helps determine not to turn it, but it does play into your creative and like how you do things. I really think that like, because an American artist or British artists, they’re going to attack things differently.  So I think it is. I think it is  Kenric: But they do look at things differently. That’s  John: Yeah. It’s relevant.  Kenric: today it’s Liam sharp, the ever prolific artist.  John: Yeah. And Jeff got a chance to sit down with Liam because it was early in the morning and neither one of us wanted to wake up because we were tired and sleepy. And probably had two more streets night before. I don’t know. But Jeff was a fan and Jeff took it [00:01:00] on and yeah, they had a good time.  Kenric: No. You guys go, well, let’s sit back and listen to Liam and his own words.  Liam or Jeff This is boiler country and you’re listening to. Very talented guest. Liam sharp. How’s it going, Liam? Hey Jeff. Good to be on. Thanks for, uh, thanks for having me on spoiler country. It’s, it’s definitely our pleasure. You are an amazing artist. Oh, you too. Thank you, ma’am. Oh no, that’s definitely our pleasure.  I’ve been looking forward to this for quite some time. Well, I know I kept you waiting, so I’m sorry about that. You know how it goes. No, it, like I said, it’s totally worth it. We totally understand how busy our artists are, and like I said, it just brought up the anticipation for you and we’re, I’m very excited to, to speak with you.  Good stuff. So where are you based, Jeff? Are you in New York state or? I’m actually in Rhode Island right now. Okay, cool. You’re California, correct? I am California East [00:02:00] Bay. How’s that going for you? What’s a little bit great? Looks like England sporting, but it’s been beautiful the last few days. So that’s been given us a little bit of relief having some sunshine during these peculiar times.  How it on these times in California, are you, are you feeling, the anxiety of what’s going on with the covert, or are you, do you feel you’re pretty safe, you’re secure, it’s not hitting like locally for you yet? It’s, It, everyone’s being pretty sensible about it. To be fair. it is weird outside, but that’s the funny thing, you know, because we, we don’t move out of our house is very much as freelancers.  You know, I’m, I, I’m used to this sort of self isolation as a natural state. So I only really notice when I step outside. On the other hand, it’s quite nice cause we’ve got all the family here so. My three kids, my, my oldest is 23 now. My youngest is 16, and they’re all at [00:03:00] home. so, that’s the one thing that they are getting used to working with a milling around in the background, but that’s, it’s actually, that’s the best side of it.  That’s the good thing of it. Is your family adapting well to the quarantine? Well, I think, you know, we’re fortunate, we all, we all get on, so last night we all made like a, a playlist of songs each and just work through them, picked eight songs each. And, we had a great night. We, we made pizza and drank beer.  And just generally. I had a chill time and, and it was, it was a lot of fun. That’s the second time we’ve done it. So we’re, we’re pretty good at getting along with each other, but when you do go out, everyone’s keeping their distance and, uh, and that’s not just me. It’s, it’s the general vote about, do you know when, when I’ve gone outside, I mean, it hit Rhode Island.  More within the last few weeks. before that, it kind of felt, you know, it was in Boston, it was New York, Seattle, but we didn’t really feel it here, but it’s now getting closer where we now [00:04:00] have, 30 cases in the County in which I live, so is now, you know, is home now. I must say walking outside, especially during or even during rush hour, it’s starting to feel like that apocalyptic feel where like you see a car, someone walking down the street, you’re like, Holy crap, there’s a person, you know, there’s another human being out there.  It’s almost the other way round in a way that seems to be, because everyone’s at home. People are getting out for walks here. So there’s a lot of people skirting around each other and dodging each other, and you know, we’re almost using the roads. There’s walking lanes at the moment, so it’s quite, it’s quite interesting.  Lots of dog walking. So nice. It’s definitely interesting times, but, let’s hope it gets better sooner rather than later, you know? But I don’t know how that’s going to go. Oh yeah, I mean, I, my assumption is from what I’m hearing is, you know, this is going for a few more months and if there is any bright side to this, and it may not be one much of one, but it does seem like it gives [00:05:00] us the opportunity to spend time with the family that we have and kind of renew the bonds that may have loosened .  Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, we’re just making the most of, uh, being together really. So, as you say, silver linings. Well, you gotta find a way you can, right? Yeah, absolutely. So, tell me a little bit about how you got involved with green lantern. Greenland.  It’s like, it was such a gift, really. The thing with grant was I’ve known him for years, but not sort of on any deep level. We just, all from the same industry and he’s from Scotland. I’m from England, so we would occasionally bump into each other over the years. and I had actually been doing it.  I did a podcast when I was doing wonder woman. Um, and I ended up talking about, my novella is called paradise Rex press. Okay. So really sort of weird meta, quite experimental book and very, very personal. [00:06:00] And I ended up talking about this and the guys that are on the podcast were like, Oh, it’s grant Morrison read that.  He’d love that. And I was like, well, I only know grant sort of peripherally. He’s more a colleague. But I don’t know him that well. And I have to be honest, I get, I tend to get a little bit tongue tied around him cause he’s kind of a legend. You know, even when you’ve been in the industry a long time, he still Revere people.  And, uh, they said, Oh, he’s lovely. You should, you should talk to him. And very strangely, about three days later, it was San Diego comic con and I was there, it was the first night and I was at the higher, and it was literally the end of the night and now the dark loomed grant. And he just went, gave me this great big hug, and I was like, Whoa, that’s weird.  And then we had like this really lovely five minute chat. And then I didn’t see him for a couple of, well, no, that was, I kept seeing him after that, so I saw him at the wonder woman premiere. we did, we just kind of shut the bar down. Just chatted [00:07:00] away for ages and ages and that, and I kept banging into him after that, you know, it was really funny.  And then we started talking about, Oh, let’s do a. Correct our own project together. And we kind of initially said, well, you should do something like maybe 40 pages. That’s really, really dense that I can spend hours on the art. Cause I’d been doing the brave and the bold and that was getting more and more kind of dense and, and symbolic and detailed.  And there was, it’s great doing that. But when you, when you’re in a a long run in series, keeping up the. Momentum on on that kind of detailed work is, is pretty wearing after a while talking about what can we do that you know, that would allow me to really go to town. Anyway, we kept talking like this and then I finished the brave and the bold.  I was looking what I was going to do next. Dan was like, well, we want you to do Hawk man, and I was like, that’s cool. Yeah. Scott Snyder was like, well, I [00:08:00] want you to do JLA. And I was like, Oh, that’s cool. and then   Dan came, literally phoned. I was pondering which of those two I would do, cause I could see that either of them would be good.  and then out of the blue, Dan called and said, okay. Total change of plan, how you feel about this green lantern with grant Morrison. I was like, what course? I’ve been talking to grant all along anyway. Right. And it seems like rather than do something small, the opportunity to do something. You’re know, really Epic and ongoing for a while, at least with grant, was just a no brainer.  There’s no way I was going to say no to that. Um, and, and so let me think. There was like, okay, yes, I mean, as long as I can, and it’s not about being. Controlling or like denying other people, but it’s like I said, I want to be the only artists on it because you [00:09:00] spent so long building these universes and building these worlds, and if there’s suddenly a fill in, for me at least it really throws you out of the series, or it can be, yeah.  And, grant had said, he probably wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t going to draw it. So we were quite sort of like. Let’s go in as a team and let’s make sure that we can do all issues together and really nail a singular vision of, of what this character is going to look like while we’re, while we’re doing the book.  So we managed to, to swing that somehow we’d, we’ve got them dates knocked back a little bit for the launch and,  I just worked like a, you know, a maniac to, to. To stay on top of it all, and to deliver on time and to be, . Conscientious about the book. Really. So that’s, that’s how it happened.  And it’s been an absolute joy. It’s really cool when you use the here, someone who’s as well known as you are, and you know, definitely a name in your own right in the industry. [00:10:00] Still feeling tongue tie when talking to another artist. You know, you kind of assume that once you get to your echelon of a notoriety.  That all of you guys, you know, or just feel like you’re at the same level of everybody else. Oh no. You know, that’s the thing with comic people. We’re all still fan boys and fan girls at heart, you know? Yeah. and a lot of us were those shy sort of solitary kids as well. So we, we had that as part of our nature, I think.  And, and it’s interesting too, cause we’re all still. One of the interests. One of the things that happens in this business as you do seem to, especially at conventions run into. Actors and celebrities and directors and people that are in other media that are also, you know, well known people and we’re all just this kind of what’s around those people as excited as anybody else.  You don’t get too cool for your own boots, you know? It’s like, [00:11:00] it’s still good to appreciate excellence in whatever industry it’s in. You know? So you could say the same about. Many, many different walks of life. So is the combo community in many ways, like smaller than it you would think? Like is it like a really small, tight community or is there, you know, cause I mean, you know, on one hand the industry seems quite large, but it does seem like there’s so much, interaction between the companies and the talent.  Then it must, is it a smaller company, like a small community and used to feel a lot smaller these days? It’s, it’s pretty huge. Back in the eighties when I first started, you know, especially in England, cause this was before any of us really started moving out to the U S or coming to conventions over here.  The world’s got a lot smaller since the eighties. Back in those days there was sort of regular guests to get together. So there was really not that many conventions. There was one, a big one in London called UTEC, [00:12:00] the UK comic art convention. Um. And you’d go to that and they’d be, you know, Alan Moore and Dave givens and all kind of legends of, of Brian Bolland, the generation above us, and really a lot.  We all pretty much worked for 2008 so we got to know each other, and it was definitely a community. And then there was a. I used to be at a pub called the Valiant trooper in London, and they’d have a monthly drink there. So that was a kind of open door to industry people. So you did get to know everybody who, who was able to turn up to those things.  So, so you knew Alan Moore, what was he like? Oh, I met him. I met him at that convention. That’s the only time I’ve ever spent any time with him just drinking Guinness. And he was very, he had this suit on that was slightly too short. When the arms and legs, he’s a tall guy. [00:13:00] and even, then of course, he was already a legend.  and, uh. He was, he was very charming. easy company. Again, I was probably slightly in or, and tongue tied. So, you know, I’ve probably left it to other people to, to talk and just sort of sat there grinning units. But like I said, that all comes around. I’m sure there’s many artists now who are that way around you when you go, when you are at these conventions, who are afraid to talk to you, afraid to.  Yeah, I’ll say hello. But you never sort of bear that in mind when you go to them. And I always try to be as, welcoming as I can be. So I definitely try to be approachable,  well, last year, I know you were a terrific con and I actually was a terrific, and I try finding you for an autograph, but I could not find you.  The numbers were wrong. I was like, where’s Liam sharp is and I couldn’t find you. I asked you to ask for help and I couldn’t, and I, I was able to pull it off, unfortunately. Oh, I was on the hero initiative stand, I think. Is that where I was at tricycle? Oh no, hang [00:14:00] on a second. We were, yeah, I’m remembering now.  I was down with. there was a bunch of us with our butt, my, and, he’s, he’s my art dealer, so we were, bright there. So it was good fun. Con, that one’s had a great time. Yeah, it must have. Terrific. I had, I had a lot of good time. I got most of the autographs that I was looking for, like I said, so for years, unfortunately.  yeah, we were right by Michael Cho. I think that was, I think, I think it was different than what it said on the, the book that showed you where the tables were, it happened sometimes. The Portland one that I was on the heroes initiative stand and people couldn’t find me there either. So I’m obviously elusive, welcoming, but elusive.  Well, like I said, if you ever come back to Tribeca, I’m going to go, I gotta definitely go hunt you down. so you’re talking about the size of the industry. Is it, is it because of the nineties, like independent comic book from the nineties and two thousands that you enlarged it so much? I think so.  Well, I think the world is generally. just a smaller place. I [00:15:00] think the internet has done a lot for that. So it’s meant that location isn’t so important, particularly for work. so people can be anywhere in the world and still be working for, you know, a major, one of the major companies, if that’s the direction they choose.  You know, it, of course, if you. Wanting to go independently. It really doesn’t matter where you are and there’s a increasing number of independent creators out there. Do you, do you find it better that it’s. The industry is enlarged like that, or do you feel that there’s something missing with the size have expanded so much to know?  It is what it is. nothing ever is perfect and everything always evolves. So I, I, I don’t tend to look at it in those terms. You know, things become what they offer, the reasons of, of, of everything around them. The way things are distributed the way where the shops are, the, the, the fan base, 1,000,001 things, [00:16:00] it’s easy to point fingers and blame stuff when things don’t turn out quite hell.  You would like them personally to be, but it never stays one way. It never has stayed one way. It’s always been in flux. It’s always been in change. And it seems like my whole career, it’s been on the brink of dying out, except for maybe the early nineties when it went completely bonkers for awhile, you know, and, and had enormous sales.  Um, but I think it’s actually been really healthy price pricing, just in terms of the amount of people doing it. we can talk about, some people say, well, there’s too much stuff out there. Let’s, they should have the title, so should do this. But then what are all those people going to do?  You know? Yeah. Probably we’re passionate about it. Yeah, I remember, I, do my own comic book. I mean, obviously I’m nowhere near at the level of where you are, but I do my own like indie comic and I would call stores individually at a combo called the nightmare patrol, or have still have a combo called the nightmare patrol.  And, I would. [00:17:00] Well, thank you. And I would call a story individually and be like, you know, to sell my Chromebooks to them. Cause, I didn’t have the, the money to do diamonds, like 3000 limit or wherever it was. And I call it, I still remember what one store told me. And when I called him and said, you know, you wanna buy my comic book,  for your store.  And he, and he said. I have had enough with indie people, you guys, there’s too many of you guys. You guys need to stop. And I told him, you first, you know which ones of us do you want us to quit? Just let me know. You know? And I thought that was kind of almost a ridiculous statement of like, which artists do you not want to pursue their dreams?  Like, which one should just be like, all right, I’ll back out for everybody else. You know? I can’t imagine anyone doing that. Well, exactly. That’s where people don’t sort of think about it. And it’s the same for like. You know, when you see people online occasionally calling for someone to be fired and to be kicked out of their job and it’s like, hang on, what do you expect that person to do for a start?  They there. They’re doing what they’ve been asked to do, and they all fans and they [00:18:00] love the industry and they love the comic that they’re working on. None of us just do it out of spite. You don’t get into this industry because you’re, you know, you don’t like it and that you just want to make everyone mad and draw a comic that everyone hates.  Nobody does that. Right? And so when people are called for somebody to. To lose their job and be fired, whatever. It’s sort of not taking into consideration that that is their job. They don’t do anything else and that they have kids and family and they have mortgages to pay a rent, pay and roof to keep over their heads.  It’s like essentially saying, you get out of the business for good. If you, if you, if you’re asking for someone to be kicked off a book or something like that, it’s, it’s very, I don’t know. It’s kind of a knee jerk and very. inhumane. Nice thing to wish on anybody, whether you,  I mean, I don’t know what, I talked to a lot of creators about this and we’re, we’re all a bit, I don’t know [00:19:00] whether it’s, well, I don’t think it’s just creates, as I think most people, most normal people are like.  Hang on a second. I got into this because I love it. And when I was in the seventies when I read comics, if a comic changed direction and they changed the artists and they changed the writer and I wasn’t feeling it so much anymore, just buy another title. I never just was a Marvel guy or a or a DC guy.  Yeah, I liked good stuff. and I didn’t really care which character it was. So I hopped around and I, I, I read lots of bits of runs when I really liked the team at any given time. And it never, ever occurred to me to get like mad if suddenly that team left and I didn’t like the next team. It didn’t, you know, it didn’t send me on a massive letter writing campaign to try and get the new team fired and get the old team back or anything.  Yeah. I mean, Oh, go ahead. Sorry sir. No, no, no. I’m just saying [00:20:00] that people, that, the mentality of that is a little bit alien to me, you know? Yeah, I mean, it’s, I find it interest in kind of a dual edged sword. The idea of ownership. I think it’s great that fans do feel an ownership to the character, which is where the loyalty comes from.  But I do think in some level they abused the idea of what that ownership is. You have. The right to feel the character important to you, to feel that you’re invested in the characters, to feel that you’re, that you are invested in the success of the character, but you don’t have the right to feel ownership over somebody else over that character.  It never occurred to me to feel ownership over anything really. You know, I don’t feel like I own led Zeppelin cause I love them. and they’ve let me down, God damn that. I don’t feel, Like I own the, any Netflix shows that I watch. I just, you know, enjoy them until [00:21:00] I don’t, and then it’s like, ah, this isn’t going where I wanted to.  Game of Thrones. It’s like, Oh yeah, I can say whatever. We got 10 years of amazing entertainment. It’s like, yeah, trailed off and. Still beautiful stuff to look at at the end and the characters where, you know, whatever, there’s a million things you could say, but, um, generally decisions I love to were amazing.  Right? And I sort of think of like star Star-Lord when I first came across Star-Lord it was done by, John Byrne and Claremont. And, there was an amazing story. They did, self-contained, just fantastic. Totally different costumes. Slightly different shit. So different. Five. He definitely wasn’t like comical character.  Did that mean that I hated God into the galaxy? Knows completely different character, but I loved it. Yeah. I really enjoyed the fact that star Wars was in it. The fact that he was [00:22:00] nothing like the character that I grew up with and I loved just didn’t matter to me. Yeah, I’m gonna say that. a couple of days ago, I interviewed with, Kenrick, Regan, Robert wool, and he has a TV show.  He had a TV show, a couple of episodes called assume the position. And one quote from the show was, everyone loves the country in a different way. And I think the same goes for comic books. Every one loves a character, a comic book in a different way, and each way is valid. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. We all, each generation has their take on it and that your generation falls in love with their take on it.  Um, and I am always confused when people think they have identified the singular vision of what any characters should. Uh, should be, yeah. And act as though they’re speaking for all of us, when patently they’re not, you know, so it’s just as confusing to me, but, again, you have to take away is that it’s real passion [00:23:00] talking.  And the positive is that. They love those characters to that extent, you know, they take it seriously and they take what we do seriously. And that fuels that. So do you think social media has allowed fans to get spoiled and far as perspective or control of these characters? There’s a lot of language that I just don’t understand, and there’s a lot of behavior that I don’t understand.  and the times like that when I feel sort of very old, like just from another world altogether. to me, social media or open spaces, you know, their parks and their halls, and they’re places where people gather their pumps and tap houses and they are social environments. And, um, with that, I tend to think of the, they should be a certain amount of decorum.  You know, you can have debate and then you can sit in a pub and have a good old debate. But [00:24:00] as soon as the fists start flying around, there’s somebody comes in and kicks you out and demands that you don’t behave like that and there will a place, you know, and that’s just, that’s just a. I don’t, I think, I think there’s an element of, like when we said don’t feed the trolls, in a way, we kind of let them just exist.  And they, they went away and they found other trolls and they formed tribes of trolls. And now you know, there’s, there’s, it becomes a voice at that point. And instead of just like, learn what keyboard warriors. And I think as well, those kind of responses when people were just saying. I ignore the keyboard warriors.  Don’t talk to them. That doesn’t help either cause that’s just as dismissive to, you know, there’s sometimes these people are like, I’m sure that if you just say keyboard warrior, ignore them. It just infuriates some people. I think sometimes the grievance is a real, and I found that actually if you talk to people, even if [00:25:00] their view is, is really.  Different to yours. You know, it might be strongly different, but you can be very reasonable back and getting in a conversation and that often is not, it will sort of calm down and you can agree to see both sides. I mean, of course there are points where we see that that’s never going to happen and people just cast themselves in stone and they’re never going to change, which again, is alien to me.  That’s not a life, that’s a pickle to me. You know, it’s just, I never got that. Just, never, never be prepared to change. For me, life’s all about change and all about compromise and all about growing and allowing new thoughts and new ideas to sort of permeate because. That’s how you can come and rich, you know?  That’s how you learn and that’s how you live a full life, I think. So that’s my view anyway. Have you ever been on the receiving side of that toxic toxicity? [00:26:00] Really more so. I think. So, I mean, when I was doing wonder woman, it was a fascinating time, of course, because me too was just kicking off in a big way, which is really important.  There hadn’t been a character of her statue who’d,  at that particular time, it was really a big deal. And, and, and so I was right in the middle of that sort of firestorm. and it, it does get confusing. I did have one. A message saying, you know, from, from a, a woman in Australia saying, dude, stop drawing women. And it was like, Hey, even mean. And I did sort of end up talking.  I ended up writing a long, long reply to her saying, you’re not thinking this through what you’re asking for, for a start. I’m on your side. You know, there’s a reason I’m joining the book, and if you read it, you know, you’ll see that hi, I’m being very respectful character. [00:27:00] Secondly, the book is not just for women and not just for the LP community.  You know, it’s, it’s for all people. It is for those people. It is, but it’s also for, for, for men and women, and you know, people of every single denomination and every single sexual orientation. Then this is a book that, yes, she’s an icon for those people, but she’s also a book for. Right. For, for, for, for people like me, you don’t fit into those criteria, but fully supportive of, of, of, of everything, you know.  so it was, and I’d said, you know, you seriously saying that I should say no women should draw a male character. Right, right. Or, you know, and you can, you can obviously spin out from that as much as you like in a load of different directions. I was so proud to be on that book. [00:28:00] And if there’s a single book that, that I know changes life lives is wonder woman because she does represent, sometimes she represents.  Something that a lot of people don’t have in their own families, you know? So then if, let’s say they might be in a community that, isn’t particularly tolerant. No, it was different sexual preferences. So did the fan, at least come to terms with your side or did it become, conciliation?  I think she just went away. She, she was an angry person. Um, yeah. Mostly people were really decent, but it is weird when it happens and it blows up because you’re just doing your best and you’re like, I get it. I get that. I’m, you know, it would have been. [00:29:00] Well we had, we had Nicholas got in the book too, so she was fulfilling that side of it as well, and she’s just great.  We were such good mates and became really good sort of piles. Well, we were working on that book together. Oh, she’s so talented. Yeah, she’s amazing. And she’s just a lovely person too. I like that. I’ve actually, unfortunately, ever had an opportunity to interview her, so I bet she seems nice on social media anyway.  Yeah. She speaks her mind. She’s a C or less and she just, she’s not afraid to say what she thinks. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks. Well, have you ever had low back on the green current green lantern series or have that been, has that been saved from that kind of a toxicity as well? Well, occasionally, you know, I’ll, I’ll see it.  It, it’s a curious thing too, like as a one person saying, I could draw the book better than that 12 year old. Really. Well, when are they getting the big paychecks then from DC. [00:30:00] Okay.  Well, that’s just stupid when someone says something like that. Well yeah, you’re kind of like, just that point. You could only throw your hands in the air and just kind of, it’s impossible. It’s impossible. So going back a little bit to, to green lantern, what was grant Morrison sales pitch to you on the title?  Well, he didn’t really have to pitch. The funny thing was as well, cause I’d said to him, no. I, um, what do you think about doing something, uh, at DC? Cause I was under contract as well, and he said, Oh no, I’m done with, uh, with superheroes, mainstream books, you know, I’ve got a few years left. Cause he’s just turned 60 and he’s like, Oh wow.  Seeing the F w I, I’m in my early fifties and that’s the same thing. It’s like suddenly the, the end of the road is more apparent to you. You realize that you, [00:31:00] cause the years fly. Past when you, especially when your head’s down and you’re churning out the comics, it’s just how fast they fly by. so you start to realize that you’ve got a limited amount of time to do a certain number of projects.  and he was like, no, I want to concentrate on. Correct your own stuff and things that are personal to me, things that matter to me. so I’m not going to do any more mainstream stuff. And he had a dinner with Dan video and Dan would say, look, why didn’t you do green lantern? And grant said what he did.  Just said to me, to Dan, he said, no, no, I’m not doing that, but if you weren’t going to do it, you should do it like this. And then he proceeded to talk himself into it.  That was lucky for everybody that he was able to study. I was able to do that. Yeah, yeah. No, he’s great. He’s great. And you know, I mean, it was basically. The, because, because we talked about it together right at the beginning it was [00:32:00] like, guys going to be a cop. We want it to be, have some of the European sensibilities that both of us love.  So that sort of metal along heavy metal sensibilities, some of the old 2000 ID UK sensibilities, but also, you know, it being the Greenland and it was going to have. Those elements of, of, of us superhero X as well. He said, actually, it’s almost as if those, those three said it’s like European comics, English comics and American comics got together and had a threesome.  That’s great. Well, I mean, the dangerous thing. How did you want, I mean, obviously Greeley entrance started with Alan Scott in the forties. But how you has been around now since the sixties. Yeah, and, and I mean, he’s gone through some changes over time. Obviously what he was in the sixth, it was wait very like milk toast.  Very. Um, they didn’t give him a whole lot of personality. But then obviously that shifted with O’Neill [00:33:00] and Adams. Why do you think Jordan has survived all those changes and has managed to still be popular. Yeah. What is that, six years from now? Six years now? Yeah. It’s, I think it’s true of any of those iconic characters that have been around for a good chunk of time.  You know, and I know I’m sort of, it’s not that I’m avoiding the question, but it’s odd that whenever someone asks what characters your favorite character. Like, genuinely, I’ve always found that the character I love the most is the one that I’m working on at any given time because, there’s, there’s something amazing about any of these characters that have existed for a long time.  So even if you’re not, if you haven’t done a particularly deep dive or haven’t really been a fan of it yourself, just because there’s so many different titles out there, uh, you can’t. I’ve read everything. You kind of become a huge Uber fan of, of every single character, right? Yeah. You [00:34:00] can come to a character, like how, it wasn’t a massive fan of wonder woman before I started drawing it, but when I did, I totally fell in love with her.   I got what she was about and understood the fundamentals of what this character represented and what she could represent. and then of course, while you’re in the process of doing that, you, you learn more and more about the character. You’ve read more about the character and you, you, you get to know it.  the same with Greenland and the character is so rich. It’s like you say, it goes back so far and you’ve got a university playing with this guy. It, there’s so many different worlds. And so many such a rich sort of set list of the characters. And you know, the sort of Greenland family in a way is a big,  by which I mean in his friends and his, relationships he’s had over, over decades now make you make him a really rich character.  But it’s just endless. [00:35:00] It’s an endless playground. Now. Now, what research did you do to prep for the sales order? I mean, I mean, or were you already a fan of me before? Oh, well, I, so my Greenland was the Neil Adams, Greenland. And when I was a little boy, you know, when I was a kid growing up, it was very much that stuff that I saw.  And of course it was striking. beautiful art. And they allowed him to really spoke to me when I was younger and then like to run. It was the, the, the guilt came stuff. Of course I saw, when he really, really, really invented himself and nailed that style that was used to see a lot in the seventies. and then they’ve givens as well.  His rom was, was one that I would dip into. so I had, I had this. I had a knowledge of the character and I was fond of him. I didn’t really read him during the nineties because I was, by that time I was sort of fully immersed in sort of Marvel and you know, that was, that was taking up. a lot of [00:36:00] my energy and time, so there’s a lot I missed in the nineties from DC.  Yeah. I’m going to view the nineties. Well, at least I obviously,  Emerald Twilight I guess, and I must make, my Peregrine answer was Carl Reiner from the nineties. So you didn’t miss him, right? Yeah. Cause lot lots of people say, Oh yeah, great coal reiners is the best lens. And of course, you know, and I can’t speak to that cause I don’t know.  but it’s fine that people love Kyle rhino. It’s great that they do. Of course, it speaks to what we were talking about earlier on. It’s that he was the, for some people, he was the Greenland and that they came across in the Greenland and that they, kind of connected with for me as well, for us on this series.  Grant’s name was like, let’s go right back to the roots. And so if you’re going to draw these alien races, you know, let’s look at the original versions and then extrapolate from that. Rather than look at the ones that in the nineties where everybody became like a [00:37:00] giant muscle bound kind of testosterone fuel beast, let’s not build off the back of them.  Let’s go right back to were really weird. Sort of Goggle lied in the John broom era, those really curious designs where they’d be wearing like almost like shorts and little Scouts outfits and weird little hats and things. It was just quite comical, really. So is that because of the oddness of that? We, there was a lot to play with them and um, it sort of seemed.  It made it, made it fun. I’m extrapolating from them. It gave, gave it a sort of fresh direction that was really not, um, visually quite different to how it had been for for a while, you know? Yeah. I mean, I’m sure a lot of people, have assumptions of what would it be like to work with grant Morrison. I mean, the idea that once you get to being that level of celebrity or legend in the industry, you assume some sort of ego.  What does he like to work? Is he. But [00:38:00] to work with him. Does he give a lot of freedom for you to do what you want? Is he more like, this is what I want you to do? Oh, he’s fantastic. He’s, he’s great. He’s been, I’ve barely changed the thing in the entire run. You know, I, I think I’ve had a veil and yeah. What am I on now?  I’m on my 17th sure. So,  yeah, I’m coming to the end of my 17th issue of green lantern right now, and in that time in that run, and three of them were 30 pages. Oh wow. I think he’s asked. He’s asked for maybe three tiny changes. That I, I just missed something or I accidentally got the wrong version cause he knows he’s, his brain is encyclopedic and he really, really knows his stuff.  Um, and so, so it’s [00:39:00] that when you’ve got a vast cast. Characters and all the alternate versions as well. Um, yeah, it’s it, it can be tricky to navigate cause there’s just so much research. But thankfully, you know, thankfully we have this thing called Google now, which, which is very useful. And also just DC have been great in terms of making sure I, I am sending the required reference for any of the.  Any of the books. So it’s been a real joy. He, he, uh, packs in the references. I try to be as, um, because everything he does, he does for a reason. Yeah, so I know he’s in the, in the past, he said it’s frustrating to him because he’ll ask for all of these very specific references in the background and for whatever reasons, whether it’s time constraints or just too much for some people to handle that, they might miss a bunch of those seemingly [00:40:00] extraneous details.  but what you find is that later on in the story. There will be a reason for that is that you might not have picked up immediately, you know? Yeah. I mean, so I’ve tried to put it all in and then add a bit more. I mean, I’m just like, I’m, I mean, I’m just looking at, like issue one, of season two and about two or three pages in, there’s a massive spread, like two page spread almost.  And there’s so many characters, I’m pretty sure I see Valor somewhere in the background. and, and just like how, I mean, you must be spending so much time with that much detail. I mean, this. It’s the details everywhere. So deep. Yeah. God. Honestly, after the first season, I thought, okay, Susan too. I need to pair it back a little bit cause I’m going to go blind and mad.  And then I started on it and it just got even more crazy and detailed, so I don’t know what to tell you really. It is what it is. And some you read the script and if it demands it, then you have to [00:41:00] go there. But I had a lot of fun. With that spread. I’d also have been looking at like Kim young, geeky stuff and seeing how he just channels, uh, his memories and.  When have you seen those amazing spontaneous drawings? He does, I must admit, I have not actually, he’s just an astonishing artist. And he will do these demonstrations where he’ll just draw a scene straight out of his imagination, straight in pen on a, on a large piece of paper. And, and it’s, it’s profound, but they’re so full of life and it’s so spontaneous and it’s so kind of characterful.  And it’s intimidating. We’re all like blown away by his work. So incredible. But, but, but actually he kind of was like, I’m going to try that approach of like almost standing back and trying to imagine the scene and trying to put myself [00:42:00] in it and just let, channeling. I’m channeling. My memory is really so, so there’s a scene with the apes, the big battle over the city where they were carrying guns, and I thought, okay, I’m not going to, these aren’t actual chimps, and they’re not actual orangutans and gorillas.  They’re, they’re an approximation of them, so I’m just going to, it. Do it from my imagination. I drawn gears of war, so I draw lots of guns, and so I’m not going to reference guns, not going to reference the city. I’m not going to reference apes. I’m just going to draw it and see what I can pull out of my imagination.  I was kind of really pleasantly surprised at how it turned out, and it’s the same with that spread room. Just this little little details in that like is that there’s a bear. In a, in a space suit and he’s sort of grinning and just behind him, there’s this alien that’s holding a penny off. He’s obviously just pulled the penny out [00:43:00] of the bear’s ear, and the bear was absolutely delighted and he’s never seen that trip.  And the idea that we’re in this like completely evolved, super civilized. Space environment and these sort of very simple little ancient tricks that’s still delightful to people if they’ve ever come across it before and someone’s playing rock, paper, scissors in the background. My dad’s, they’re actually showing some of his art to a couple of girls in the background.  No, seriously. Where’s that? He’s the big bold bird at Greenland at the back. That is a ma mailer. So you’re talking about probably on the details. I’m actually looking at even clothes. I’m like, Holy crap. You can see all that. I don’t even notice lot the Hawk, um, the, uh, thing Ariens in the background too.  Yeah, there’s, there’s so many, but you try to give each of them like they’re all doing something. So they’re all interacting and, you know, strong woman’s looking out over the city, chatting to the dog with the, with [00:44:00] the, a partner who is a squirrel on his shoulder and things like that. You know, it, it becomes fun.  And then there’s the invisible. Guys coming through the watch, the watch dogs being rude and knocking drinks over, and just me and grant sitting at the board of 12, which, so I’m now officially in the DC universe. Oh, that’s you. And grant in the corner. Huh? That’s awesome. That’s great. Welcome to the DC universe.  yeah, I mean, it’s so amazing. Makes, I’m looking at him just as you were mentioning, more detailed stuff that they may not even notice, and it really, it’s incredible. And. The one, I mean, the couple of things I think about when I see something like this, once again, I’m not an artist. I can’t draw for the life of me.   one is how do you balance the details with and making sure that the primary, the primary doesn’t get lost in like this awesome, you know, amount of characters that you create.  I think there’s sometimes where [00:45:00] you have to, you have to be thinking about in terms of the story. So in order to properly service the stories, sometimes there’s going to be a crowd scene, sometimes it’s going to be a city shot.  and I try to think of it as a director. Like it says, it’s as important to establish the feel of that environment to really make you feel like the characters got to speak on the ground. You know? So I try, I always think of the environment has been. As important. and there’s, there’s, there’s a certain amount of, like all of those little details I said to you, they’re there if you want to look.  But they’re, they really just make it seem natural. They make it seem more realistic because they are all behaving in ways that you, I mean, obviously we’re talking about aliens, so perhaps that would be more abstract to humanize, but ways that we as humans understand interaction.  make places [00:46:00] seem real.  Uh, and this society, like with cities, I tried to imagine precincts and buildings with, with real functions, or like areas that might be parks or buildings that might be hundreds of years old versus brand new ones and different architectural styles. All of these things are. Are important to, to doing a convincing environment.  Otherwise, I think they tend to look like a convention sets, you know, that have been fabricated in a, in a, in a warehouse a few months before an event and, and thrown up and are all a little bit sort of plastic and wobbly and, you know, not meant for, don’t, they don’t look like they’ve been lived in for, for eons.  So I try, I try to bear that in mind. But to your point, um. You have to be sparing about where you use that, um, those scenes. So you plunge the character into those environments, but then you have to [00:47:00] zoom the camera in on them so that, you know, you pick them out within it. I mean, no matter how big a character is, they’re all, everyone’s gets lost in a crowd from time to time, you know?  Yeah. So I think when the coolest characters you created, are you and Moore and grant created his bulk, the living volcano guy, how did that go? How did that come about? Well, actually he’s been around before I saw him in a, in a Kevo Neil story, but in the figures in the eighties or nineties, early nineties.  Um, yeah, there was like a tales of the core. Series of stories. Um, and he, he was in, he was in one of those stories, but I believe he was in another story even before that. But we were talking about how does he work, you know, is he literally. Is he a magma being, and then we thought, so he’s magma, and then he suits made of rock.  So that’s like the mountain. And, and these vocal chords would be crystal. So when the magma sort of passes [00:48:00] through the, you know, the neck of the volcano. And the fun thing with volt though is like, I’d drawn him. It was amusing, man, and my wife came in and looked at the drawing and said, Oh, I love this space.  I was like, what? I hadn’t realized. I drawn a face in the cloud, and so that kind of thing. Then it’s like, Oh, he’s got, he’s got this funny long little mouth and his little eyes and a very sort of rudimentary face, and it just gave him. Lovely character that was really weird and different than unique looking.  almost like cartoonish expression. And then we were, when, when he’s in space, you know, because there’s no gravity. We, we made this head more of a perfect sphere, but he’s still got a face on it. And Grant’s like, Oh, can you imagine the concentration it takes to keep a face on that, on that cloud. You know?  I love it. I love it. I love how his mind works like that. So, yeah, we’ve had fun with those things. [00:49:00] It’s pretty much funny that you can have creating these cars. Like it’s nice to know that someone who’s been in the industry as long as you have, doesn’t ever get bored by it. You know what I’m saying? I think the second you get bought by it is the second you should really consider looking at a different career because it’s extraordinarily, laborious and time consuming and you know, and it is an antisocial job. You are just alone with your drawing board for huge chunks of your life, Rooney. So you have to find the pleasure in it. And I think if you become jaded, then it’s like you can probably tell him the art when people. I just really not enjoying it and hacking it out and don’t care.   I find, I find every issue, especially work in grant, cause every issue takes off in a different direction. It has a different vibe. You’re on a different planet. There’s a different, sensibility going on, and, and even more so in season two, as you’ll see as the books are all out [00:50:00] there, that almost a bit more experimental and each book has got.  Even more of a unique vibe. and that will play into the story as it’s going along, but it’s like we’re doing a popup one at the moment, which is totally different to anything that came before. And then there’s the one issue, gosh, three I think. This is one that I pretty much sort of painted digitally, so it’s got a much more soft, almost a heavy metal type feel to it.  So it really, really has got a lot of different sides to, it keeps you from. Now, one of the interesting things about the green lantern series is that it’s divided into seasons. Like most serious, let’s go, you know, one, two, you know, 25 30 whatever, but Greenland, it’s divided into seasons. Now you were saying earlier that the agreement that you had was that you would take the title as long as you could do every issue.  But you don’t do the mini series that go between them, at least not [00:51:00] the first one. And about the second one least in the Blackstar one. Is that, was that for the benefit of time for you to help catch up on the next season? I mean, what, what, what that was that set up? That’s literally what it was the thinking of.  Well, the idea of Susan’s was grants right from the start because he wanted to do, he’s been. He’s been in the writer’s room for happy and, he’s doing a lot more TV work. So he was becoming really interested in those structures and having things work as seasons. And, and the whole idea of, of the book being like a TV series and it being a cop series, uh, that was, that was what he was thinking.  So green mountain becomes like a cop and a cop, two new series. And then he was thinking, okay, so we’ll have a break in the middle. And it’d be like, you know, dr who Christmas specialists. That’s, that’s, that’s what the brain, and it allows us to, [00:52:00] to be. Really consistent with our green lantern book, but, and give me some time to, to catch up between the two Susans.  So this is going to be consistent like the next, after season two, there’ll be another miniseries after season three and stuff like that. We’re finishing after season two. We’re just doing the two seasons cause it’s a, it’s a little while. Oh, you guys are stopping after season two, huh? Yeah, yeah. Oh, I didn’t actually know.  I thought this was gonna be a continuing thing. No, sorry. Yeah. I think, well, it will have been, it will have been a pretty Epic run from the pair of us by the time we’ve done 24 it’s like soap and 500 pages of, of, of our, it’s, it’s a big old do sliver a story. Yeah, I mean it, like I said, it was going to be a famous run, especially in the annals of the green lantern legacy.  I mean, like I said, it means six years old, but still, I think this will be well remembered. I hope so. I hope so. I mean, of course you want it to [00:53:00] have legs, you know. That’s the other thing. I think as you get older, you, you appreciate more that the, if you are lucky enough to get on a run of one of these icons, you’re breathing rarefied air and you’re very, very lucky.  And dudes, you know, it’s, um, you’re a custodian and you have to respect the character and, you’re part of a, an unbroken Roman of decades. So. We, we both came to it knowing that and, and it’s interesting too, cause I think grant himself said that how was not his favorite. Green lantern and not typically the kind of character that he would.  Right. So what we found in him is, is interesting, you know, who did he say was the saver? I think, I think it was Kyle, but I could be wrong. Well, points more for Kyle. Are there any Greenlanders that you wish you could draw that you haven’t yet? well, there’s sort of, a lot of them have popped up and I wouldn’t, [00:54:00] I wouldn’t be surprised if they. Sound all pop up before the end. You know, it was fun drawing kilowatt, the, um, in the first issue of season two, at the end there, he was always such an iconic looking character. Um, but honestly, I mean, for me, how was my Greenland?  And so I don’t have that. I didn’t have that. You know, he’s not my favorite thing. He was, he was the Greenland to me. And whether, whether or not he’s our favorite Greenland and Haley’s still, you know, when you, if you talk of the Greenland, how’s the one you think of? Yeah. And then it was established way back in the John broom.  Era that how was the Greenland? And that was the quote unquote, the greatest Greenland and of all. So then it was like, okay, why is that? [00:55:00] And that’s really interesting. Whether whether you personally agree with that or not is irrelevant within the mythology of the green lanterns. That’s what you’re working with.  So then that becomes like a fun. Aspect of the character. It’s like, okay, why is he considered that? What is what? What is the legend about? Or why did he have all of them become so great and so important and so central to the, to the whole conceit, you know? So that’s a good question to ask. Alright, well then I’m going to ask you, what’s your answer to that question?  Why do you think he became, he’s the greatest. I think he’s just like, almost like an idiot savant who’s junior. You know, he doesn’t always know why he’s brilliant at what he does, but he is, it’s like, he, it’s that classic thing. We, we joked early on, like, you could have a [00:56:00] Greenland and from a hyper advanced, Civilization who’s far, far more intelligent and capable than hell in many ways, but they could be struggling over a situation trying to figure out how to deal with it and how to turn up and then. In an instant, in a tiny split second, he would come drop a giant fist, hit it, and it would fix everything.  They could try and do the same thing and it just wouldn’t work. It’s not about it being a giant fist. He’s just, he knows how to act in the moment and it’s that, that’s what makes him unique. We talk about like, astronauts and the, you know, the, the, the Apollo. Lunar landings, all of those people, when you get to that level of reflexes.  Split the split second decision making the right stuff. It’s sort of that, it’s that it’s that level and he’s, he’s, as a test pilot, you know, he’s [00:57:00] got those reactions and he’s got those, that mentality that he thrives on it. He, he, he’s also, I mean, he’s a, he’s a pretty unreconstructed sort of seventies iconic character in lots of ways that we, we don’t get so much these days.  And that’s interesting. Trying to make that work and what’s, you know, who is this guy? Cause he’s, he’s not terribly reliable. He’s brilliant as a policeman, but he’s not brilliant as a person. He would be great fun to have a drink with, but probably leave without saying goodbye. You wouldn’t know when you were going to see him again.  And you’d always love seeing him, but you don’t always be slightly frustrated cause he just. Well, girlfriend, you never see him. And where did you go? I was just now probably won’t see him for like five years. Yeah. Now with everything that’s going on, in RC Komberg’s have stopped that being distributed.  You’re still producing the Greenland and pagers, correct? [00:58:00] Yeah, I mean, I’m not sure what’s going on there, I know DC is doing its best to try and help retailers and to keep everything taken along. Uh, I mean, I, it’s, these are troubling times and nobody has a solution because we’re kind of making it up as it, as it goes along.  There’s so many people losing work and out of work, and, um, it, it’s. It’s unprecedented. So I don’t think we can all sit around and come up with our own solutions, but there are many minds on this and many people thinking about it and there’s going to be mistakes made and there’s going to be things done right and things done wrong, but we, we, we won’t know.  We won’t know until afterwards. Again, we’re just going to hope that we get through it. Yeah. Now. I know you’ve been talking for about an hour. Do you mind going back in time a little bit and talking about some other other things if you don’t mind? Sure, sure. Cool. Cool.  one thing I wanted to ask you about, I’m going to, I’m probably going to get [00:59:00] the pronunciation totally wrong and I’m going to apologize ahead of time.  Um, mom tore publishing what is it and you did win an award for, so tell me about that as well. Let them to, publishing was born of a, basically a tricky time when the. We came out to the end of the nineties I’d been doing Marvel and I was doing sport in the dark ages, and I did a Superman graphic novel with Damascus at that time, Mt.  Damascus SU Superman, whereas they sting and so things were going really well and then suddenly work just dried up and just the, the, the print industry collapsed. Yeah. There just wasn’t enough books to go around. And I couldn’t get my foot in the door the right time, you know, there just wasn’t another title available for a long time and it was really rough for us.  We had, I had a year where I basically didn’t get any work at all. [01:00:00] I put in so many pitches. I think I put in enough pitches. We worked out that if they had all been picked up out of, had about 35 years of work, it’s ridiculous. And yet I just couldn’t, I just couldn’t land anything. So it was a rough year.  I ended up losing our house and having to move to a cheaper area. Oh, wow. Which actually ended up being a great thing. I moved back to my old hometown where the houses were cheaper than we could afford to live, and then we’d sort of looked around at everything, and you also ended up, you can get quite paranoid in those times because when the work stops,  there’s those.  Two things happen. you start to think it’s, you like your work, so you, so you get paranoid. And with paranoia you can get a little bit desperate. And with desperation, there’s nothing that’s going to send people running than a fight. With desperation, you know, next people. And then, and then another thing people start to, rumors [01:01:00] can be generated.  People can be thinking that like, there must be something wrong if you’re not getting the work. And, and so it’s like, okay, how do you combat all of those things? Yeah. In a positive way.  and we talked about it and I talked with my wife and we basically said, no, this is, I mean, another thing was I tried to get illustration work at that time, and this is how things have changed for the better.  At that time, I couldn’t get on an illustration agency because they all said. Oh, no, you do comics. We’re not interested in comic artists. It’s just, yeah, I mean, it’s just, it’s, it’s crazy snobbery. That makes no sense. But they basically were, very, very sort of, just. Just rude about comic artists. And there’s always been a snobbery about comics, you know, you know how it’s been.  I think it’d be, I think that is, it really is changing culturally, but it’s taken a long time and, Oh, sorry. I to say, it’s just interesting. it seems like in many ways it’s, [01:02:00] it’s these, cinematic movies that have changed that in some way. Like, you would like to think it’d be something like, the artistry the.  The great literature found a common look, but in many ways it’s the pop corn movies, like the Marvel cinematic universe that seems to have changed people’s minds of comic books. Yeah, definitely. It’s part of it, I think. it’s hard to know. I think there’s a whole bunch of stuff I’ll come back to in a second because I want to answer your question first about mentor.  Um, but that would keep that one on the back burner. Cause that’s, that’s, um, there’s a lot about that. So. So, yeah. So basically me and my wife said, okay, the best thing we can do then is to create a, is to publish something. I, I did it, we did it like an art book for me, for San Diego. Um, cause everyone was doing art books at that time and they were becoming a thing.  This would have been round about 2001 2002. [01:03:00] people were doing Kinko’s, you know, sketchbooks and things like that. And we did kind of high end sketchbook on, on glossy paper. And I took it to San Diego and we had quite a nice experience publishing the book. My wife was at Marvel UK and we met there and she was in production.  And so she knew about sourcing paper stocks and sourcing, you know, print printers and dealing with distribution. All of those things I, I knew about, um, obviously the comic creation side of things. So after we did that first book, we said, well, why don’t we do a proper anthology. Ma’am tour is, a healer in Darby, which is my County I’m from.  Yeah. So a tourism is a mountain and, uh, and ma’am is actually literally means moving mountain. The idea is like, we’re going to try and move a mountain by [01:04:00] creating this publisher. Nice publishing was born and we did the anthology called event horizon. Which was partly about letting well known people. So we had Chris Western and Brian hold green, and me and Glenn February was, had a bit in there and you know, there was some real fantastic people, but there was other people who weren’t getting breaks.  I’ve met, I’ve met Dave Kendall is a fantastic artist, but he couldn’t, he was working at yellow pages just doing middle. No design jobs, and he, he, he, he’s really should have been in the comic business. Anyway, we got him to do an incredible story in that, which was like, it was basically crossing the mid God serpent with Moby Dick cool for hunting him.  So it was, it was fantastic stuff. and it was great cause he ended up getting worked for magic cards and now he’s been in 2000. They do [01:05:00] doing, y

Kenric and John are joined tonight by Co-Producer and supervising editor of the hit show The Orville, Tom Costantino! We talk all about sci-fi, the OJ Simpson Trial, creating, editing, and of course The Orville. Now sit back, relax, and listen in as Tom regales us with his career and insights to Hollyweird. Check out Tom online: https://twitter.com/TomCostantino (The song at the end is form Damn The Cow, and it’s a cover of Shoop) “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry Interview scheduled by Jeffery Haas https://twitter.com/jhaasinterviews

Have you ever wanted to learn about Argentinian immigration? Well look no further on this episode of Nicieza tells you how it is! We sit down and talk with Fabian Nicieza about his life, his work, and we sprinkle in a little Deadpool and X-Men/X-Force at the end. This is a REALLY good episode, so listen to the whole thing! Find Fabian online: https://twitter.com/FabianNicieza John: Nope. Kenric: That was crazy. John: Join the cult or this, whatever, and we’ll come back. I’m Johnny. That’s mr Regan. Okay. And today on the Kenric: right now. John: and what you’re still, what, Kenric: I’m so lost right now. I was like full on getting ready to start, and then you were like, I was like, Oh, that John: it back. Kenric: took it. John: So, well, how about this? I did that. Why don’t you tell everybody who we talked to today? Kenric: Well today on the show, we have a John: So professional. Kenric: Yeah. Is it Fabian to Chessa and he was awesome. He’s actually a ton of fun to talk with. He is a course. You guys know his work because everybody listening to this podcast loves Deadpool. Right? Right. [00:01:00] John: yeah, yeah, Kenric: Right. So if you love Deadpool, you can thank Fabian for that because he’s the creator of Deadpool. John: he is. He is. He also wrote a ton of ECS books back in the day. He wrote a ton of stuff. He’s written novels now, and he’s got books signed out. I mean, it’s his career path and what he’s done is, is pretty insane. Kenric: it is. It’s really insane actually. And matter of fact, why don’t we just sit back and listen to Fabian in his own words? [00:02:00] Kenric: All right, guys. We are back and today we’re [00:17:00] lucky enough to have the creator of Deadpool joining us and what you did, shatter star and quite a few characters really over at Marvel, Fabian DCS. Uh, thank you for coming on. Fabian: My pleasure guys, how are you doing? Kenric: doing well, doing well. Fabian: This is a writer’s dream to be hunkered down and have to and have a chance to work, and that’s the one positive of a freelance writer. Like I can get paid to work from home. Like, you know, it’s like I can keep doing what I do and like that’s like normal operation for us. Kenric: That’s awesome. I mean, what, what are you doing here then? Fabian: Well, I worked, I worked already for the day. I made this commitment months ago. Right? So I feel obliged to fulfill my professional responsibilities. Kenric: Oh, well, we love you for it. We very much appreciate it. Hey, I, so we can talk about Deadpool and we can talk about all that, but [00:18:00] I’m sure you get those questions Fabian: I have never, I’ve never been asked a single question about, you know, Deadpool or the X men. So yeah, by all means, let’s do three hours on that. Kenric: Exactly. I feel like we would not be doing our due diligence if we didn’t touch on it for a little bit. For the people that tune in that are, you know, the fan boys. Fabian: skirt the fan boys. Screw the people. Kenric: I love you already. This is awesome. Fabian: I’m done. I’m done. Pleasing an audience. I want to point out where I just want to write for myself and it, and ever since I started thinking that way, I started selling more stuff. So go. Kenric: Just because people, people love honesty and truth, you know what I mean? And they see it in people’s writings, I think, Fabian: Maybe the latter, but I don’t know if the former apply. I’ve rarely met many editors in the column. Like honesty. Kenric: Oh my God. Hey, you started, [00:19:00] you worked at Marvel before, you’re even a writer, and I’m curious, what did you do there and how did you get your job? Fabian: Um, I got my job the way that most people get their jobs in New York city. Um, a friend of a friend who had a sister working at Marvel who was looking to hire an assistant and she worked in the manufacturing department at Marvel, and I was working at Berkeley publishing, which is a paperback book publisher. My first job out of college. And I interviewed for the job and I got it. And having zero, zero interest in being in manufacturing, uh, which for her, for her responsibilities, that meant, um, all the Marvel book, all of Marvel books, which was not trade paperbacks and hardcovers back then it was actually. A line of Fisher price books that had coloring books and sticker books and activity books. It was all part of Marvel secret. Desperate attempts to not be a comic book publisher in the mid eighties so [00:20:00] that the president of the company could, that could have Brandy at his social club and not feel embarrassed that he was a comic book publisher. Um, and I did not want to do that. The only touchstone that my job had. So Marvel comics was the press posters that Marvel used to do four posters a quarter. They released and they were really, really nice, great looking, full color at 22 by 32 posters. Great art. Either Reaper, either either covers that were really striking like my execs, Punisher number one or original art. Uh, like the Mobius pro press posters that were done back then. And my job was to get them between, between Marvel’s production department, editorial department and, uh, the, the printers and the sub color separators. Um, it’s not what I went to college for. It’s not what I had an interest in, but I wanted to get my foot in the door at Marvel. Um, I, I interviewed at both Marvel and DC out of college. Uh, but I didn’t get either job because I didn’t have [00:21:00] the experience they were looking for. Um, and that ties into the story of once I got the job at Marvel after four months, the guy who got hired stead of me in 1983 was looking to hire an assistant. And I talked to him about it. And he did agree. He decided to hire me as his assistant. Um. So I left my, the job that I’ve gotten after four months, I basically stabbed the woman in the back who hired me. Um, and I moved over to the promotions and publicity department cause that’s what I wanted to be doing. Cause that’s what I went to college for. Um, advertising, advertising and public relations and communications. The guy hiring me didn’t know that he was getting someone hired above him. Who was going to come in as a vice president or a director. I don’t remember what his title was at the beginning, and he was going to basically be entrusted to start a department that was going to be in service of promoting and publicity and promotion, publicity, [00:22:00] advertising of Marvel comics. And as a result, we had a three person department, like all or within a few weeks of me starting in that department. And then after about 10 months, he decided that, um, the guy who hired me, Steve, his responsibilities would be promotion manager. He did all the conventions, all the, all the, um, all the direct market press, all the magazine interview setups, all that stuff like, like comics, interview comics, readers, comics journal. Um, there was a comic shop news started a little soon after that. There was a whole bunch of stuff back then, comic buyer’s guide. So his job was to handle all that, um, reviews, publicity interviews. Articles, whatever I had, my job was to be Marvel’s advertising manager. I was responsible for all of Marvel’s house sets, promotional posters to the direct market, sell sheets, uh, co op ads for the, for the direct market retailers. Um, a [00:23:00] whole bunch of stuff, promotional giveaways in stores and for conventions. All that is all. That is what I did. Um, yeah. So I basically did, did that job for almost five years at Marvel on, on staff full time before I moved over to editorial. Um, I did that job and I loved that job actually, so much to this day. It’s my favorite job I ever had. Kenric: with promotions. Fabian: No promotions. Editorial sucked. Um, promotions was great. I loved it. It was a great job. I got, I got my fingers in the pie of every single department in the company. I got to know everyone in the company. I got to work on all different kinds of things, not just comic book stuff. I got to work on trade shows and presentations and licensing and international publishing and everything. I also. I also, they also learned that I was capable of holding a microphone in my hand and talking about comics to dozens or thousands of people at the same time. So I started doing marvels promotional presentations [00:24:00] at distributor meetings, licensing, trade shows, convention panels, everything. I was basically, I basically became the MC for a lot of those things. Um, which again, was great for me because it exposed me to a pretty, pretty large, wide variety of, uh, of the business in a pretty positive way. So, uh, that’s the one, one of the many reasons I love that job was, was that, uh, I got to learn every, almost every facet of the company’s operations. Uh, when you’re an editorial and you’re making comics. You tend to be a little myopic and you really only know for the most part, um, the process of getting a comic book mate. You don’t necessarily, but understanding what happens to that comic book once it leaves the office, you know, Kenric: you went from this wide amount of exposure and Marvel. Then you get into editorial and it must’ve felt like you were just confined in a box. Fabian: No, not really. I’ve got to be honest with you, because they gave me all of Marvel’s licensed books, so I had to, I [00:25:00] had, it’s nice in that you’re, you’re. You’re again, flex in different business muscles, but it sucks. They’re always harder to do. They’re much more time consuming, or they’re depending on the license or they’re a pain in the ass. So I was doing Ren and Stimpy. I started with Alf, and then I did run in Stimpy and Barbie, and then William Shatner’s tech war and a bunch of other stuff. Um, and so I was editing a lot of that. I edited it. A mainstream superhero book, which was wonder, man. I edited, um, uh, another book that I started, which was hell storm. Um, but for the most part, I was more of as licensing manager. And part of that was because I had an ability to speak to business people about the process of making comics. So I was able to go out to Los Angeles and have a meeting, a two, three day meeting, and the seminar teaching the Mattel licensing people. Why we can’t just use there. 12 black and white style guide fixtures as all of our [00:26:00] panels and all of our comics that we’re doing. Um, and why Barbie has to talk and her story, um, things like that. So, so I got to, I got to do that. Um, but it tell it was great cause I got to do that twice in one year since they fired the entire licensing department. I first, uh, did presentations to, um, and I learned that, I learned that. Fast the real fast and hard way that licensing is an absolutely cut throat business. I don’t want to be a part of, because they would just decimate entire departments a year at a time. If they didn’t meet the numbers that they were projecting or whatever, they would just, I’d be working with a group of like six people and all of them would be fired within a week, and I’d have six brand new people I’d have to deal with, you know? Yeah. So it always made it pretty interesting. And, and not, not, not coincidentally, the licensed comics that were stronger. We’re the ones that had a more consistent licensing department liaison. So running Stimpy had the same woman. She was great. Susan, who’s in the, actually was a young woman and she had, she was a lot of fun and [00:27:00] she got what we were doing. So she was with us for years on running snippy. So that kind of thing worked out well. Kenric: I can’t believe how Oldman’s Tempe is. It feels like it was Fabian: does snip has been around since the early nineties? It’s been around since like 92 I think. Kenric: But you did some writing in between that, right? Cause didn’t you work on PSI fours? Fabian: Uh, I, I started writing, I sold my first story to Marvel in 86, late 86 and it was published in 87, and that was Cy forest, which was, um, a new Kenric: he always said PSI for us when I was Fabian: Yeah. I don’t, yeah, cause you’re looking at pounds per square inch, and that’s just honestly a really stupid way to look at it. Okay. It’s PSI, it’s sign, meaning powers of the John: Come on, man, you Fabian: you’re a comic book reader and you don’t know sign Kenric: Yeah. Hey, Hey, Fabian: Um, Kenric: Let’s just move on. Anyways, Fabian: um, anyways, a little bit moving right along. Yes. I, I, uh. I inventory store inventory stories were, were complete issues that had to sit in a drawer until the [00:28:00] schedule in a wall and an editor needed a completed story to run. So the new universe books sold her such a horrific shape scheduling wise right from the get go. That they started needing fillings real quick, and so many people didn’t want to work on those books, that they were desperate enough to ask the advertising managers. He was walking through the hallway. Uh, Bob budiansky was the editor and he goes, you want her to write it? You don’t go. Well, yeah, I want to write on planning too. I sold the story to Jim Owsley, who was the Spiderman editor. It’s fine, but, but he got fired before it ever got finished. Um, so, but, but I said, but I’m just taking my time. He goes, what would you, would you like to pitch some ideas for side for us? And I said, sure. So I pitched them 10 ideas the next day. I had to read the first three issues first, cause that’s all that had come out at that point. And I pitched them. I pitched them a bunch of, um, inventory, story ideas, 10 different pitches. And the next day comes up holding the sheet of paper and saying, cause my, my, my desk was upstairs on 11 and editorials on 10. Um, he comes upstairs, it’s like [00:29:00] six o’clock at night. I see him walking down the hall at the paper. I’m thinking, Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap. Oh crap. And he says, I’d like to do this one first. And when those, when that word first came out of his mouth, that’s when I actually knew that I was gonna I was going to get to. Get to write for the company, um, because that meant he liked more than one of my ideas. And, and that was boom. So I sold the, another inventory real quick. Is that under start hearing from each other? Who’s, who’s selling what? And then the same for cider, but what he enslaved. And asked me to write another one and then shoot her how to cancel half the lines. So we consolidated the line from eight titles, the four titles, and he named me the writer of force as a monthly writer after just three inventory stories, um, and assign the four books to a different editor, Howard Mackie, who wasn’t thrilled that he was inheriting and creative teams that he didn’t have any saying much less. A brand new writer like me. Um, and, and at first, our relationship was a little [00:30:00] wary because of that, but then we, we, we started to get along great. And he saw that I could write and that night, and I, and I was really comfortable with them, so, so we became super good friends. But, um, but at first it was a little, a little weird. Kenric: That’s, that’s crazy. Fabian: then the, Kenric: were you a writer before all that though? Did you write stories like on your own, have short stories or did you just have a love of comics. Fabian: know I’ve been writing, I’ve had a love of comics and stuff. I was like six years old, but I’ve been writing. Since I was a kid, I never, I never didn’t draw or write. Um, and then, and then in high school, um, I started to take my writing in a different direction from my art. I still drew and I still drew comic book pages, but that was, I was realizing more and more. It wasn’t because I wanted to draw. It was because I was finding a way to tell my stories. Right. So then I started. Like summer between freshman year and sophomore year in high school, I wrote a book, uh, on loose leaf paper with pencil. I [00:31:00] slipped, definitely. It was 400. It was 420 pages total. I’m like front and back. 200, 210 pages front and back on loose leaf paper and a spiral bound note, a spiral binder, a three ring spiral binder. And I wrote, I wrote a book that summer. And then in sophomore year, my, uh. My English teacher, who was also my JV VAR and my JV soccer coach, uh, uh, gave him the creative writing assignment. That’s one of the things that had to be done over the winter break. Um, and I asked him if I could just submit this, cause I’ve written it over the summer and he looked at it and he looked at me like I was out of my F mind. Then he goes. Yeah, you can submit this, like, okay, so I didn’t have to write anything over the thing. Then I wrote something over the winter break anyway, and I said, can I submit this to when he goes, instead? I go, no, I just did this over the break and it was like a 40 phase Lavelle. I did over the winter break. So I, I just started writing. Kenric: That’s Fabian: Because I loved, I loved writing and I never stopped. So I always wanted to be a writer. I [00:32:00] also understood that it was a business and a profession, and you don’t go to college to be a writer and you don’t look at, um, classified ads in the newspaper back in 1983 when you get out of college and expect to find the classified ad that says hiring writers or writers wanted a novelist for hire. You know. It doesn’t Kenric: pay you to write your novel. Fabian: yeah, you have to, you have to find the job in a field that gives you the opportunity to learn, to meet people, to make contacts, and to get a chance to sell your writing. So I ended up getting a job at Berkeley publishing. I tried Marvel and DC first, but I got a job at Berkeley publishing and my goal was, okay, I’m here. I want to, I can write Bob, try to write books, I want to write books. Um, after, after a little while, I started to get to know the editors better and I started to get a sense of what, what some might be looking for. And they had a bunch of monthly series books that they did, two westerns and a spy. But the series, um. [00:33:00] Long arm gunsmith and Nick Carter were the three, and they hired multiple writers to write those under a pseudonym, and it didn’t pay much. It was like 500 bucks a manuscript. Uh, and the manuscripts were about, uh, 200 pages, 200, 10 pages long. Um, and I said to myself, this is how I’m going to break in. I’ll write some of these crappy series books they do. I’ll write slightly less crappier manuscripts, and that’ll give me the chance to show the editors that I’m professional, that I can string words together, that I can tell a story, but I can meet my deadlines, all of that stuff. And then I’ll get a chance to try to pitch some of these editors on book ideas I have. Um, and that was my, my plan and my goal. I was, I was actually about three weeks away. From approach you, the two different editors about their two series books. Um, and that’s when I found out about the job opportunity in Marvel. Um, so I didn’t do that. I, I didn’t, I and I, [00:34:00] anytime I started writing pros after that later, I always was disappointed in it and never followed through on it. Uh, partially because I’ve become, I’ve become so accustomed to writing in the comic book format. And the comment was style for, um, and I was earning a living doing it so. Trying to write a book when there’s no income coming in for it is kind of problematic. You know? It’s really time consuming, and if you’re not, if you’re not cashing a check for it, it’s not buying any bananas. So you gotta really, you gotta really juggle in a way, the decision making for yourself between, gee, I’d love to write this, or I’d love to try to write this, versus, gee, I have to write this because I got to pay my mortgage. You know? Kenric: right, right. When you, uh, you immigrated to America at the age of three with your parents from Argentina. Did you feel a lot of weight being [00:35:00] the son of immigrants because everybody I know that that has immigrated from another country are such hard workers. I mean, they make, like, they make a lot of people I know, you know, embarrassingly lazy, you know what I mean by the, the, the work that they put in and the expectations they’ve put on their kids. Fabian: Um, yeah, no, no. In a different way. Um, no, no, because a lot of the immigrants who come here. Tend to come from poverty. Um, and, and they tend to have that hard work ethic because they still attain more here than they ever had there. Um, my dad was, my dad was a college graduate and he was, uh, he was, uh, by, by like training. He was, uh, uh. Chemical engineer. Um, but he started his own factory in Argentina making, um, these really gorgeous bone China statues, and, and it didn’t [00:36:00] succeed. So he got all Argentinian dramatic and said, if my dreams can come true here, I will go somewhere where my dreams can come. True. Um, so, so he came to this country and he was, um. He was a, he became an engineer as a, but mostly as a director of, um, methods and standards for assembly lines. Um, cause he had a really keen, analytical, mathematical mind. Um, so, and he worked for a lot of toy companies in his career too, which was always fun for us as kids. Kenric: He’d bring home Fabian: but my dad was also very creative, you know, was a sculptor. He did a lot of work in clay. He created some beautiful clay stuff. He used to paint. He painted. Clowns, only clowns. That was his only thing. He only did clients until much later in life. Um, so he always, and he always, he never necessarily liked the comic books. He didn’t really care about the comic books, but he never discouraged our love of art. Um, my mom is a very practical, very, very. Very, uh, [00:37:00] uh, basic, you know, hardworking, lower class, um, uh, not as educated woman. And I got, I think I got my work ethic from her and I think I got my, my way of looking at things from my father. You know? So it was a good combination because I hope I got the best of both of them and less of the worst of both of them. Uh, but, but I know my work ethic comes from my mom cause my dad didn’t have a tremendous work ethic because of too much of his work was in his own head. You know what I mean? A lot of what he did was in his own head. Um, so he wasn’t a hard worker. He wouldn’t come home from work and on weekends want to build a, you know, build a fence. You know what I mean? It wasn’t what he had an interest in, but, but he was working so much in his own head that I. I, I kinda understand that. Appreciate that since I became a writer, because so much of what you’re doing is happening internally, not externally. So the typing time is nowhere [00:38:00] near the amount of time I’m working. So even to this day, I’ll have, you know, you know, my kids will walk down stairs and my wife will walk and I’m fiddling on my phone with a game and. Yeah, I’m not really even playing the game, you know what I mean? I’m thinking about something from a story standpoint or from a character standpoint. The game is just the distraction from the keyboard, you know, cause I’m not, I’m not a big fan of staring at the, at the screen in order to get inspiration. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so, so, um. So, so I got a little bit of that. It’s not necessarily the typical immigrant experience in that regard. Um, but, but I drew from both of them. Um, my dad, my dad was raised, I would consider it middle class by Argentina’s standards. Um, his dad was a barber and owned his own barber shop. Um, and, and his dad, my grandfather had gone to Argentina when he was 13 years old, is in Spain, is his, my great grandfather who I never met. [00:39:00] Put both of his sons on two different boats to get them away from Spain because the Spanish civil war was going on at Kenric: Oh, wow. Fabian: So I think the two brothers are like 13 and 15. My grandfather was younger and he put them on two different boats, one Argentina and one that were acquired. And then they went off and they lived their lives without family or anything happened. So my grandfather got a job at a barber shop and ended up owning the barber shop eventually, you know? Um, so. My dad lived a middle Kenric: that’s incredible. Fabian: My grandfather on my mother’s side was a house painter and she was born in like 1929 so she grew up, I would consider it lower class in terms of financial, uh, income that she grew up lower class. My dad grew up middle class. They were, they grew up in two different parts of Argentina. Um, my dad grew up in a very middle class neighborhood. Um, and my mom a little, a little less so. Um, so, so I, but I grew up my entire life firmly, squarely in the middle class here in this country. You know, it, it, you know, my dad never earned a [00:40:00] tremendous amount of money. We, I was, I lived in an apartment building until the apartment complex until I was in sixth grade. That’s when my parents bought a house. Um, so we moved to the house when I was in the middle of sixth grade. Um, so, so I, I definitely have a, uh, a little bit of a, uh, uh, you know. By the, by the Scruff of your pants mentality. Um, and, and the immigrant experience also influences you on that. You, you, you become very aware of how others perceive you. Uh, you know, the guy with the funny name, the guy, the guy who, you know, whose parents don’t speak English well, and you know, the, the guy who lives in the apartment complex, when all his school friends live in the housing complex, uh, in the houses across the road, you know, that kind of thing. You get a real sense of that. There was never any of them. There was never any overt, you know, you know, name calling or go back to Argentina stupidness or there was never any other thing like that, but there were birthday parties I didn’t get invited to, [00:41:00] which I knew. I knew that I wasn’t being invited to them. Uh, that there was mothers who, you know, would say, you know, do your parents speak English? Now they do, but not very well. Oh, well, your English is good. Well, I started school here. That’s why my English is good. I, I, I don’t remember first grades of this day because it’s, one of my brain was transitioning from Spanish to English. Um, but I never got left back. My brother and I both started school here and we both kept going. He’s three years older than me. He was seven and he never got left back. So it must’ve been some pretty intensive brains stuff happening that, that. You know, from probably mid sixties, mid 66 until mid 67, uh, there had been some serious brain adjusting going on because I do remember by the time we moved to New Jersey from, from New York and summer of 1968 I started school that September and I was speaking and reading and writing fluent English. So I don’t know how it happened. I just know that [00:42:00] it did happen. Um, but because I was, I was speaking. Normal fluid English for that whole time, you know, from that time on. Um, but I don’t remember the learning process cause I was only five years old when it was Kenric: kids that age, man, they pick up second language is so easy Fabian: Yeah, they really do. Kenric: know, I mean, like my, so my ex wife was from Brazil and we introduced my brother. To his current wife, Walter, is why I shouldn’t say his current wife, because that makes it sound like they’re going to get divorced, but Fabian: Just hedging your bets, Kenric: I’m hedging my bets. Fabian: just in Kenric: You know, 2080, 2080 no, he, John: so the episode age as well. It’s all Fabian: I’d like it. I’d like you to meet as next life, but she’s only in fourth grade right now, so what are you going to do? It wouldn’t, might not be appropriate. Kenric: Maybe appropriate. Here’s the hot tub time machine when Fabian: yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Kenric: But, um, [00:43:00] his kids, they speak English. I mean, that’s what they talk in the house and uh, and everything. But she speaks Portuguese to them. He speaks English to them, they go to school, but they don’t have any problems going back and forth between the two languages. Fabian: Yeah. Well, I, uh, my house sold by the time we, my brother and I were in high school. We were speaking English to our parents because we thought they weren’t learning. English fast enough or as well as they should. Um, and they were speaking Spanish to us in the house so that it was back and forth that way all the time. And I stopped speaking Spanish every day. By the time I went to college, so I was 18 years old and I stopped speaking Spanish every day. And I’ve never spoken Spanish every day since then. You know? Um, and even even to this day, like I was just in Mexico city a week ago for the lot Lake convention, and the first day is a struggle for me to speak Spanish because I’m trying to translate from English to Spanish in my brain. But I left on Monday. So by [00:44:00] Sunday night I’m speaking much. More and more, I’m much more ease with much more ease, a lot less hesitation. Uh, and I know that I’ve, I stayed there and spoke Spanish every day for a month. I’d be totally fine. I just don’t get that opportunity anymore. So Spanish is all in my brain. I just don’t get to use it often enough. And, and the older you get that does it. It’s like anything, it’s like a muscle. It really is. It starts to atrophy if you don’t use it regularly. So, so speaking it every day. You know, I can’t, I, the only way I could do it here is if I wanted us say stuff to my kids. And my wife said I didn’t want them to understand. That’s the only way I could do it here. Um, and I’ve learned a valuable lesson in life is just don’t say anything at all, rather than play games like that. So I just won’t say anything to them at Kenric: yeah. My ex, my ex, she, uh, she worked really hard to learn English. Right. And she went to the point of not hanging out with other Brazilians. Uh, because she didn’t [00:45:00] want to get stuck speaking only Portuguese everyday. She wanted to speak English every day. And if you talk to her on the phone, you can’t really tell. You can, you can hear a hint of an accent, but not, you know, it’s much more pronounced when you’re face to face and she gets excited. But other than that, um, she said, yeah. After about four years of being in America, she stopped dreaming in Portuguese and, and dreaming in English. And then that’s when everything switched for her. Fabian: yeah, and for me it was thinking in the language rather than, than anything else. And the dreaming is interesting. I don’t recall ever dreaming in Spanish. It’s too young. Um, but, but my parents and my mom was 40. She had me late, so she had me and my brother late. She was 38 when she had my brother. She was 41 when she had me. We came here when I was four and a half, so my mom was 45 almost 46 when she came to this country and she passed away at 97 she never lost her accent. She never learned English fluently completely. She [00:46:00] always had an accent. She, it wasn’t because of the, it’s too many ingrained years. Of of, of one language before you could change otherwise. So you enough about enough about my, my, my immigration Kenric: It’s super interesting though. I read, I read Fabian: and I gotta be honest from a writing standpoint, guys who came in super handy because I just sold my first novel at the end of last year and, and a lot of it, thanks. A lot of it is, um, a lot of it is about. Um, the, the changing, uh, cultural identities in, in suburbia. Uh, I wrote, it’s, um, it’s a, I call it a sarcastic suburban mystery, but it’s based in my hometown and my, uh, not till, not till 20, 21. Kenric: Oh my God, you need to come back on and promote it when it gets out, because Fabian: sounds like a plan. Yeah. I, I, Kenric: to, I, I’m super interested. Fabian: I signed them. I signed a two book deal with Putnam publishing. Ironically enough, they were the original [00:47:00] hardcover parent company of Berkeley publishing, which is a company I worked for in 1983. And, uh, and if it goes, if it goes, if it goes paperback at a platinum, the editor of. The editor, the senior editor, there may be a guy I worked with back in 1984. Um, it was, it was like a year younger than me. You got hired a year after I started working at Berkeley and it was a really nice guy. I liked that. We got along good and he was a good guy. Now he’s the senior executive editor there. Um, so anyway, I sold the book and it’s a suburban mystery set in my hometown and my hometown is now about 60% Asian. And in night and the early nineties, it was probably about. 20%, 30% Asian. So there’s been a real, a real steady change and rollover of cultural identity. And I liked, I liked the idea of setting it in, in my hometown because I had a lot going on here underneath the layers, you know, underneath the banality of suburban existence. There was a lot of stuff percolating here that [00:48:00] I could have fun with. Um, so if an Indian. Gas station attendant gets killed and are the white police officers doing enough to stop it and stuff like that. So, um, so I was able to apply a lot of. Subconscious stuff to it. And the people who have read it and the editors who, who read it and were discussing it with me, all of them saw that in it. Cause they were very curious about my background because they didn’t understand how a comic book writer. Who’s 58 years old could be writing about four or five different ethnic groups and touch on each of them in a slightly different way, and I realized that it wasn’t anything super, super superbly planned or anything like that. All of that that was coming out of me was my ability to recognize and understand how they. How they, how they think they’re being perceived by others. Because I also would [00:49:00] look and see how I thought I was being perceived by others, you know? Um, and, and I had like a cultural, cultural diversity group of readers. I picked like 10 local readers to read it and get back to me and make sure I got cultural references right. For the and families and for the Asian families. Every, not a single one of them has come back with. I got anything wrong, not a single one. Kenric: That’s awesome. Fabian: and I was pretty glad about that because it wasn’t like, it wasn’t like I was, Kenric: It’s a, it’s a fine Fabian: research or anything. Yeah. It is a fine Kenric: Especially when you’re writing against cultures that you’re not a part of. I mean, cause you’ll see that backlash all the time, you know? Fabian: Yeah. All of it’s based on observation. All of it’s based on observation, conversation. Because I coach my kids’ soccer teams for so long, I got to interact with a wide variety of parents and kids and students, you know? Um, and my is one of my son’s best friends is an Indian. Girl. And they’ve been, they’ve all, they’ve been best friends since middle [00:50:00] school, so she’s here all the time. She’s like almost a part of the family in that regard. So you hear her talk in a super sarcastic American way about her own family’s Indianness, you know, and she was born in this country. Her brother was born in India, but she was born in this country, you know. Um, so, so she is, her attitude and her approach is a little bit Kenric: she’s been infected. Fabian: Yeah. Well, you got to start thinking about it generationally too, because most of the kids have been born here and they have a different view from their parents who might’ve immigrated here and then nineties or whatever, you know, but, but now I’m writing about characters who are much younger than me. I’m 58 I’m writing my two week cards. You’re 33 and 29. You know, that means that they were born in the late eighties early nineties you know what I mean? So by that time, I was already writing columns from Marvel. So you have to, you have to put yourself in their shoes, not in your shoes, just apply some of your, your opinions, personalities, observations to them. But always [00:51:00] within the context that, you know, I’m writing a 29 year old guy’s different. He’s in a different point of his life than I was. I’m writing a 33 year old pregnant woman. She’s in a very different place in her life than I was, but when my wife was 33 and pregnant, I was just, you know, 35 and running a clinic comics, and she was pregnant with our second kid. So I get a fundamental understanding of that, you know? Um, so, so it was a lot of fun. It was, it was incredibly rewarding to after. After so many years of doing the different things I’ve done to just make a decision that I’m going to try to write a book and let’s see if I could sell it for a few shekels. I told my wife all along, we’re not going to make any money off this. Um, so I just need to do it. And she said, okay. Because I’d had a couple of really good years and around, so I was going to get her. I was going to get a year a year, 2018 was my year to not have to worry as much about making money, even though my, my. My youngest is still in college, almost finishing up in college. And it turns out that, you know, the book has five [00:52:00] publishers bidding on it. It went to auction. Between then between three publishers are kept upping the ante yet, and then it turned into a two book deal Kenric: What goes through your head when they, when, Fabian: they had. Um, Kenric: does your manager come back and says, Hey, we’ve got people bidding on it. Fabian: My agent yet my agent said that we, once we got the second offer, he knew that he was going to chart and be able to turn it into an auction because that he went to the other editors and said, listen, you go, you got to make a decision soon. You’ve had it for three days, now you better, you better get in on this because other people are getting in on it. So what happens is that some people get in on it just because they don’t want to lose out on something. Um, not necessarily because they’re really believing in it or passionate about it. Ultimately, the ones who are most passionate about are the ones who put the most money up for and stick with it. Um, and that ended up being Putnam and st Martin’s, the two companies really, the editors are the two companies that both really wanted. It really were really were willing to keep bidding against each other. Kenric: that is so Fabian: to, to get it. Yeah, it was really fun. It was [00:53:00] a really fun week. Uh, I, I haven’t, I haven’t had that in my, I haven’t had that level of excitement in my career since like the early nineties when sales sales reports are starting to come back on all the X books, and we saw what the numbers were and they were just phenomenal. And you get, you just get this adrenaline rush because it’s not just the validation of the work itself, it’s, it’s, it’s a validation that. That the interests can generate revenue for you because they think you can generate revenue for them, and then that means everyone’s waiting, you know, that, that that’s when everyone’s winning. Kenric: Yeah. That’s awesome. So are, are we going to see more novels come out of you then? If this goes like this and then Fabian: Well, yeah, I can’t, yeah. It, Kenric: a lot. Fabian: This is, I told my wife that if I can sell this book for $10,000 to a mystery paperback publisher, uh, and 10,000 was really reaching for the stars at that point. Cause most of these kinds of Kenric: This was the Fabian: books sell for 4,000. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:54:00] Then I’d like to do one every couple of years through my sixties cause then we’ll have social security coming in and all that stuff. And she’s like, okay, fine. You know? Um, and, and then when it turns into this. It really in many ways altered my perception of what my next 10 years are going to be because Kenric: famous. That’s so cool. Fabian: It’s a two book deal. There’s no guarantee for a third vote, but what that really means is that the books that either the writing of the book or the promoting and selling in the book drives me into. 2023 because that’s when the paperback version of the second one will come out. You know, if the first one comes out in hardcover in 2021 the second one, which I have to have written by summer of 2021 will come out probably summer of 2022 you know, and if the book is successful, the publisher will want to do more. So I’ll have to do the third book in the series. And part of the thing that really got me that. Got them to bite is that they, once it started to get really heated up, they start [00:55:00] asking, well, where is this a series? Are you going to bring these characters back? Cause we’re really liked these characters a lot. And I said, I got four books in mind already with a fifth percolating. And they said, really? And I gave them, I gave them paragraph pitch synopsis for each of the first four books and they saw, wow, he, he’s been thinking about this for a while and it’s, that’s my comic book experience. At work. You know that that’s me working in story worlds for my entire career. Understanding that if I want to sell, if I want to sell a series of novels or sort of sort of, you know, um, with the same characters as the leader, then I have to, I have to be able to show them where the story world goes. And that’s, that’s just, that’s comics one Oh one when you’re working in shared universes and comics, you know. Kenric: they probably love the organization and the fact that you have ideas already set in place. Fabian: Yeah, they were kind of surprised by that, which kind of surprised me, um, to be honest with you. Um, and we’re, I’m in the middle of [00:56:00] negotiating TV stuff on a book and so, uh, we, we got, yeah, yeah. The manuscript actually, there’s been Kenric: crossed, man. Fingers crossed. Fabian: someone who had a TV interest in this before the main script was even finished cause he got an a first look deal. First look at it in my agent’s office. Um, she got a first look good. And then she brought it back to LA. And talked to her boss about it. And her bosses is a well known actor who has his own production company and he’s interested in it, not as an actor, as a producer. Um, but I got, yeah know it’s gonna happen cause I got two offers on the table from too. Two major, major combinations of production production studios with, uh, with platforms. So, you know, without what’s, uh, they’re combined. So I got, I, my, my, my challenge right now is that there’s no wrong. Choice and there’s no right choice. So I really got to figure out which choice I should be making because both are both are pretty strong combinations. And Kenric: man. [00:57:00] Just go seriously. That is awesome. Fabian: so that’ll be John: Yeah, it’s really cool. Fabian: I’m hoping into my seventies. it’s cool and a part of me wishes, geez, I wish I’d done this 15 years ago, but there’s also no guarantee that 15 years ago I would have written it the way I did and it would have been received the way that the, but that whole thing has a huge, is a huge game changer for me in terms of people, Kenric: The movie. Fabian: people, just the characters success, the cash, the characters elevation. Not just the movie, but just the overall elevation of the character. When you say I’m the co-creator of Deadpool, that what that does then is it automatically shifts it in the minds of the people that you’re talking to from a, he’s a comic book writer too. He, this is the guy who. Co-created a character as a global financial phenomenon, right? So I could, I could [00:58:00] tell an editor who’s 40 years old that I wrote X man when he was 12 and he’ll say, wow, that’s really cool. But it’s not the same thing as saying that you’re able to go create a character that. Has 25 years of longevity before it explodes into a global phenomenon. So it just puts, it puts their perception of you on a different level and their perception of you, quite frankly, what drives their interest in whether they’re going to look at something or not, you know, um, it, it’s generally not the quality of the work that drives their interest because they haven’t read the work yet, whether it, you know, so, so it has to be something else that attracts them. And then the work has to stand up or hold up, you know? Um, so, so I, I will not deny ever in the least how, if I’m able to create a suburban Dix empire, cause that’s the name of the book, the support, suburban ticks. Um, if, if I can create a suburban Dick’s empire, [00:59:00] it wouldn’t exist if it, if it hadn’t been for Deadpool, you know. Kenric: What do you think of the way Deadpool is everywhere now? You know what I mean? Like you go to a con and it seems like every 10th person is dressed up as Deadpool. You go, you know the Ryan Reynolds is phenomenal now with Deadpool, and it’s, it’s really crazy. kinda exploded. Fabian: First of all, I’m really happy for Ryan because he promised me contractually that I’d get at least two zeros out of all the zeros he gets. So he gets lots and lots of zeros, every checkup, a lot of zeros on it. I’m guaranteed two zeros. He didn’t tell me what place that I’m guaranteed. To get them in, but at least I’m guaranteed to zeros. Um, I see. The thing is everybody, everybody looks at it as something that happened overnight. And I look at it as something that has been evolving for over 10 years now. You know, I saw it starting to [01:00:00] happen when I went to, uh, when I was actually writing cable on dead poles when I saw it starting to happen. Um, not because of the comical selling, but because there was more. Outside interest about the character than there was in the comic of the character. You know, um, they, they had the video game and percolation. That’s when cause flares for started posting stuff on YouTube. That’s, those are the things that actually exploded the character before the movie came out. The movie just took it to a very different level. But for years before the movie came out, there were already. End caps and Spencer gift stores and hot topic stores filled with Deadpool merchandise. There was already a group of teenagers who knew who this character was before there was ever a TV, a movie, a cartoon. A few more people were reading this comic, you know, between 2010 and 2015 but not such significant numbers that it would fix. You know that it would astound you. I, when I was running cable [01:01:00] Deadpool, we were selling about 30. 30 to 35,000 copies a month. Okay. After, uh, after I left and they split the two characters off into their own books, and Deadpool really started to take off in the comics. Um, I think it was selling around 40 to 50. Okay. None of those numbers are even remotely close to what the first Deadpool miniseries, salt, which has over 350,000 copies of an issue. You know? Um, so, so it wasn’t being driven. The character interested in character wasn’t being driven by the comics. It was being driven by social media, by YouTube, uh, but by, by memes that were being posted by conversations among, among, uh, teenage boys about the video game. All of that stuff is what was percolating. It, uh, the movie just took it to another level. And we all know it’s not like the Wolverine origins movie is what put dead tool on the map. Right. It almost buried him. It almost buried him six feet under. I left the, I left Marvel screening that we’ll be walking back to Penn [01:02:00] station to take my train home and all. I’m thinking to myself as, Oh, well, well, there goes that check. I’ll never. I’ll never go to check for the full movie cause they’re never gonna make one now. And Ryan Reynolds took the part because all along he wanted to spend the character off and do, it’s his own, its own series. He thought by taking the supporting role, he’d get an opportunity to show how cool the guy is and then spin it off and do his own series. And then when they did what they did with the character and the third act, I can only imagine he wasn’t all that thrilled about it, you know, because it just made the job of getting a spinoff that much harder for him. Meaning it took almost six years between them. Then the script was written to when the movie came out. That’s how long it took them to try and get this thing made. Kenric: That’s crazy. Did you have any input on the movie. Fabian: No, not the first one. They did all their on their own. I never, I had zero idea about anything I was going to see until I sat down in the theater at the movie premiere sitting next to ed [01:03:00] screen as the actor who did Ajax. Um, and, and, uh, Tim Miller, the director was two rows ahead of me. Um. Uh, I had no idea what the movie was going to be until that I had seen very little of it. Uh, uh, only online. I, I never, I never asked to read the script. Uh, nothing. I didn’t want to know. Um, because I have no control over what do I care. I, I wanted it to be a success because I knew that if it’s a success, they’ll make another movie. I say, make a movie, I get a check. So I quite got to be honest with you. If I’m not writing it, if I’m not directing it, if I’m not acting in it, I have no super vested interest in it because I have no control over it. So it’s going to be whatever it’s going to be. I learned that lesson after Wolverine origins, right? So all I wanted to be. Is perceived to be good enough make enough money to make another movie. And my frustration now is that because I got a check, a check, every time they make a movie, I’m a [01:04:00] little frustrated. They haven’t made a lot more movies. I would like Ryan to be making it that it, it will be every single year while he’s still in his forties for God’s sake. So. You know, the fact I get a check every time they make a movie doesn’t really come into play, but I want a movie a year. I want the deadfall all Marc channel. I want 50 52 Christmas Deadpool movies a year, and I want them to run once a week, all year long. Um, Kenric: I want them to do that for you, Fabian. I want that for you. Fabian: it. Thank you. Um, the, the, yeah, yeah, because I, I get, I get the pool, I get them full money every year. That’s just part of the deal I have with Marvel. It has nothing to do with the movie, but part of the deal is if there’s a movie you got check you. So I, you know, I want, I want, I want the checks. I want that. And it’s like the Anthony Mackie who plays Falcon has this big running stick. Have you ever see the, uh, the deleted scenes and all this stuff on some of the Marvel movies he has this bit where every time he finishes a [01:05:00] scene he says, cut the check, cut the check. So, so they, they, apparently it annoys the living daylights out of everybody on the set because he does it all the time. So they put together like a super clip of him saying, cut the check on all these. So it’s like 20 cut the checks in a row after every CD does, whether it’s a big scene, a little scene, whether he’s getting lifted up in a harness or whatever, he just goes cut the check. So that’s all I, that’s kind of how I feel about the Deadpool movies. Just cut the check. Kenric: It’s kinda like, show me the money. Fabian: think they’ve done a great job with the movies. I, I Kenric: are a lot of fun. Fabian: call and read the writers, uh, Tim Miller on the first one, and David Leach on the second one. Uh, Ryan, the cast. They’ve just done a really good job of putting it together. I don’t think it’s an easy character to translate the film. I think they’ve done a really good job of figuring out the balance between straightforward [01:06:00] action, adventure. Regular funny humor between, between interesting characters and then the excessive humor that comes out of the characters and sanity, and they found a good way to blend that because it’s not an easy thing to do. There’s lots and lots of comics that have gone too much mainstream, straightforward adventure. Uh, they’ve gone a little too much kooky, crazy humor. So, so balancing it out is tough. And I give them credit for how they’ve done it, uh, because I, I believe me, I know how hard it is to do on a regular basis. And these guys do it with a lot of grace. They really do. Kenric: Yeah, it’s good. It’s really good. I mean, did you watch that once upon a time and Deadpool, Fabian: I did not actually see that one yet. I did not. I, Kenric: good. Fabian: I wanted to, I wanted to, and I just could never get into it. I gotta be honest with you. I am. That was the second movie, right? That they were doing once upon a Kenric: that was the third edit or is this the second edit of the second movie [01:07:00] Fabian: But it’s the second Kenric: yeah, and they, they added a bunch of new scenes they Fabian: yeah, yeah. With Fred Savage and all that stuff. Yeah. I knew everything Kenric: it was Ryan Reynolds telling Disney, Hey, we could do this PG 13 if you let us. Fabian: If you buy Fox, but they made that before. No, this was Fox and wanting to make more money is what it amounts to you guys there. Kenric: Yup. Yup, yup. Someone tried to call in and I think that was on John’s side Fabian: I, I gotta be honest with you. I struggled to rewatch the second movie, not because I had an issue with it. That’s the week I found out my dog was going to die. So the movie and I found out that it was, she was going to die when I was in. In California for a convention doing a special fan screening of the movie. And with about five minutes left the movie, my phone rings and I realize it’s my vet calling me and sh and, and with the, with the blood test results on the dog, which I thought. We’re going to define, cause the dog was seemed to be in good health and that’s when, that’s [01:08:00] when he told me, I hate to tell you that she’s got about four weeks to live. I was like, what? Um, so I’m saying what to my vet as all the fans are coming out of the movie at the end of the movie to have a Q and a with me. Okay. So it, no matter what Deadpool to, no offense to the guys who made it, or the movie itself, that pulled two is always going to be associated. With me, it’s for the death of my dog. So it, you know, I did not watch the, the once upon a time because I did not feel like going through that in my head again, you know? Kenric: I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you. That’s that’s, I’m sorry you went through that. Fabian: But I just want Ryan Ryan to know then Colin Rhett and everybody that, I don’t have a dog now, so feel free to make that third movie. Okay. Kenric: It’s open. You can, you can do this. Fabian: Yeah. Yeah. You can do this now. Now you don’t have to wait. The grieving period is over. Let’s make that third caught the check. Kenric: that JAG money. John: I love Kenric: Fabian. It’s [01:09:00] been over an hour already. Can you believe it? Fabian: can’t cause we’ve barely covered any topics whatsoever. 40 minutes, 40 minutes on Spanish and immigration. What are we dealing with here? What’s going Kenric: so interesting though. I mean, it was fun to go through how you got to where you’re at. I mean, that’s. Yeah. It’s more interesting to me to see how you got to where you’re at and that the being this, this is actually the success that you are, as opposed to just talking about things that you did really well on. You know, everybody your fucking knows all that stuff, you know? Fabian: they should. They, at this point, for God’s sakes, just fricking read Wikipedia. Kenric: yeah, exactly. Fabian: hear you. Yes. And I appreciate it. I just don’t want to bore your listeners to death is what it Kenric: Nope. If they’re bored, then they’re listening to the wrong podcast. John: Right? Kenric: No, we really appreciate you coming on. I hope we can teach you to come back because when suburban Dick’s comes out, I want to, first, I want to read it and then I want to Fabian: we got it, but all right. But we, I didn’t even get a [01:10:00] chance to pin my juggernaut mini Kenric: Let’s do it. Let’s pimp it out. How’s Fabian: or may not be coming. I can talk more to you guys. You guys like set on an hour or can you talk longer Kenric: we can go as long as you want. Fabian: Let’s go a little longer just cause I want to talk about juggernaut. Um. A five issued juggernaut mini series is supposed to start in may, but with everything going on, I don’t know what’s going to happen. Um, that I got the labor day week of September last year was like the weirdest, craziest week of my life over for the last 25 years. So, um, that, that’s when I, that’s when the agent. My agent agreed to represent the book cause him and his agency have looked at the manuscript and really liked it. And, and that’s the week I find that they’re going to represent the book. Um, and then they were going to give me notes that I tweak us some things to those notes and then they take the book out, which they ended up doing in November. Okay. That’s the week that, uh, uh. A bow, an animation [01:11:00] Bible that I’d written nine months earlier for a company in LA, uh, involving Stanley and, um, Arnold Schwartzenegger called superhero kindergarten. That’s when I found out that, um, they were going to green light the pilot script and I had to write the pilot script. Um. And then Arnold Schwarzenegger had agreed to be the voice of the character, if they can raise the funds to turn it into an animated series. Um, that, that’s the week I think that we finalized finally the outrage season two, contract for web tune, cause we didn’t get a chance to talk yet about outrage, which is a digital comic I do on web tune with Riley Brown. Uh, the artist. Um, but that I did cable and Deadpool with, um, and then that’s also the week that I got a call out of completely left field from, uh, editor at Marvel offering me like juggernaut mini series. And I had not done anything for Marvel [01:12:00] of substance and well over two, three years. Um, and, and I wasn’t planning to either. Um, but when he said juggernaut, and he told me. The status quo and that’s the status and the current status quo is a result of everything happening in the X books. I said, yeah, I really would like to do that because I really liked the character, and ironically enough, it’s pretty much exactly the status quo that I wanted to set them up with 50 years earlier in my eczema forever mini series. So I broke down the juggernaut mini series real quick. Uh, it’s a really fun ride into the Marvel universe. It has very, very light, but necessary touches and connections to what’s going on in the X flux right now. But the truth is that the, the series is about how does juggernaut handle. Not to being a part of all of that in the X books because he can’t be, cause he’s not a mutant. So he has to find his own way. [01:13:00] And after I wrote the first two scripts, I find out that Ron Garney is going to take a look at them and see if he’s interested in drawing them. And Ron Gordon, he says, yeah, this is a lot of fun. I wanted to do this with faith because we’ve known each other for 30 years and Ron Garney has joined the series and Ron Garney is run going is freaking fantastic. Um. And so now the first two and a half issues of art are done. The first Jewish is, I have to written all five scripts. I’ve finished my skirts in January, uh, but I’m getting the art now little by little. And he finished the first half of issue three, and it’s just, it looks phenomenal. I keep sneaking. Sneak tweeting stuff because I want people to see it, because the art is just so cool and I’m really happy with it. It’s not, as with anything else, I write it. We’ll never win an ice. All it will do is entertain a bunch of people who read it. Um, so, so I, it’s, it’s, it’s a fun story about an interesting character. Who’s always been a bit of a lout and a moron, and he [01:14:00] knows it and he wants to be better, but he often fails at trying to be better. So he needs help in being better. So he starts to get some help in the series. Um, I, I, I created a new character called DSL, uh, which is really kind of short for deceleration. Um, and she’s basically, it’s like a, uh, Aria and the hounds kind of a relationship. Um, cause she’s a teenage kid. Um, and, and, and she ends up becoming, uh, his voice of reason. She’s the one who says, you should try doing this. And people will like you better if you do that. And you know, you need to get more likes on Instagram than the only way you’re going to do that is if you do something heroic, that kind of thing. So, so, you know, each issue is self-contained. Each issue has really interesting touches to the Marvel universe. Like with everything I write. Um, and, and it all has a running subplot, uh, going through it. That kind of culminates in the last issue, [01:15:00] uh, and kind of gives Marvel the opportunity to set up juggernaut in a new status quo if they want to. I don’t worry about that stuff anymore. I served them a plate that has food on it. If they feel like eating it. They can, if they feel like pushing all the peas off the plate, that’s their choice too. I don’t care anymore, you know? Um, uh, but, but I, but for the time I’ve done it, I’ve had a really good time doing it. Uh, which is not something I’ve been able to say as much about the big two over the last 10 years. So I really did enjoy it. Then the art by Ron Garney with colors by Matt Miller, just, it’s just super, super art. Kenric: sounds like a, like a, just an all star cast for juggernaut. Fabian: It’s kinda cool. Yeah, it came together real nice. I mean, sometimes you’ll get a great artist, but you don’t get a great color. Sometimes you get a great colors, but the pencil is not as good. I mean, Ron is, Ron is just, he’s runs a phenomenal artists. He’s always been a great artist. He’s one of the few artists that just keeps getting better as he gets [01:16:00] older. And his stuff right now is just phenomenal. And Matt, Milla, I am. The biggest complaint are about mainstream comic book coloring on the planet. Um, especially at Marvel. Uh, and Matt is not one of them. I got lucky as hell. I got the one colorist on their roster that I don’t complain about incessantly. Um, and that, that is really, really good. And he, he, he is able through color to. Do the simplest of things that were always what we expected. A separation of foreground, middle ground and background, so that everything doesn’t look like a gray smudge on the page. Um, and, and he does that. So every panel has a sense of, of, um, consistency and a sense of, uh, differentiation of planes and depth to it. He’s not, he’s not throwing grade. Grays, Browns and

As you know we have a series on YouTube called Drinks and Comics (which you can click the link below to watch!) where we have a drink and talk about a comic series! Well, we are gearing up for Season 2 and decided to bring you the audio for episodes 5-7 to listen to! Episode 7 is actually from what was supposed to be the first one for Season 2, but due to some video issues we wont be releasing that one. But you can listen to it here! So sit back and enjoy this and then go check out the videos on YouTube! Doctor Who and a Time Traveller Wonder Woman and Mole Spritz “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry

This weeks spotlight podcast here on the Spoilerverse is Bridging the Geekdoms, with Robert and Colton! Listen as Robert and Colton tell you a little about hot the show started and how it’s coming back! Subscribe to them on all your podcatchers! https://scpod.net/podcasts/bridging-the-geekdoms/ “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry

Tonight John sits down with founder of Wunderman Comics, Nate Wunderman! They talk all about publishing indie comics in the digital world and give you a little peak of each series they have! Visit Wunderman Comics: http://wundermancomics.com/ Transcript by Steve, the drunk robot.  Transcript Nate Wunderman Interview [00:00:00] Kenric: Citizens are the Republicans. Spoilers, or I’ll come back to spoil the country. I’m kinda Gregan VAT is mr Horsley and today on the show. Well, it’s wonder man comics. Nate wonderment John: Yeah. I’ve got just I, this guy right here, sat down, did interview with Nate Wunderman Kenric: that guy, John: It got right here. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And talked to all about wonder woman comics, what they have to offer. They are a indie publishing company that did publish primarily what? Not probably specifically all online. It’s all digital. They’ve got several titles out there for you. They’ve got over 50 issues of books you can read. Over@wundermancomics.com. And, uh, I got to sit down with him. He’s a, he’s an interesting cat to talk to. We had a, uh, we got some, some into some deep conversations about not only what he creates in how he does his stuff, but, uh, the comics, you know, the comic world for an indie creator in general, and it’s, uh, it was a lot of fun into, I think you’re going to learn something on this episode. Kenric: After this episode is done, we’re going to create a new series [00:01:00] called deep conversations with John Horsley. John: I like it. Kenric: All right guys. Well, let’s sit back and listen to Nate and his own words. John: all right guys. We’ll come back. I am here today with Nate, and we were going to talk about him and the stuff he has out there. So, hi, Nate, how you doing today? Nate: I sound like a villain. John: Nice. Nice. So for everyone listening out there, why don’t you go ahead and, uh, give us a little run down of who you are and what you do. Nate: Hi, I am Nate Wunderman, chief comics officer of Wunderman comics, which you can go on the web and take a [00:02:00] look@wundermancomicsdotcomwandermanx.com. We’re a boat peak digital comics publisher available on a myriad of platforms and exclusively digital. And we have right now a one, two, three, four, five areas in current release. John: Nice. That’s awesome. And it’s awesome. So you, uh, you’re available that digitally all over the place and you’re available digitally all over the place. That’s awesome. Nate: Yes, we’re a Google play drive through comics, Amazon, Kobo, comic solids, hoopla, digital, which I really love because you can get that through your public library. John: that’s awesome. Nate: And what’s great about them as well is they do something all too rare for IP [00:03:00] providers. They pay them. Consistently. John: That’s awesome. So get through your library and you still get paid for it. It’s great. Nate: Yes. And it’s, and it’s essentially, it’s for the price of your library card. John: that’s cool. I love hooplah. That’s an app is so great. I use it all the time for it with our library here. Nate: , it’s, it’s a great service. And what’s great is that they’re very open to independent comic publishers. Provided you have a catalog, John: That’s so cool. I didn’t, I didn’t know they did that. I’m going to have to check that out more because I love reading indie comics. Nate: uh, they have almost. Everyone you can conceivably think of in the comic book business that has more than 20 releases or so, he’s on hoopla. John: Oh, that’s good to know. That’s really good to know. That is cool. So why don’t you tell me about some of the comics you guys have Nate: All right, let’s, uh, let’s go with the newest [00:04:00] one first, which is boogeyman, which is eight takes place in a few. And it’s about probably Lucia. Libris rest are living on the future. Latin American megalopolis John: Nice. Nate: becomes a reluctant hero fighting against gangs and the corporate boss who runs the center, John: That is cool. Nate: created by comic book artists on Carlos. Got Acouto. And written by mosque Massimiliano grotty, and I was the editor of the piece. It’s a private issue, mental series that’s available on the, on all the platforms I mentioned. John: That is cool. That’s cool. I looking at the, uh, the, the, uh, covers for that series right now and the other, the art looks fantastic on that. Nate: Yes. Uh, [00:05:00] uh, Jean Carlo has worked for the ma for the majors on both sides of the Atlantic. He’s done work for Marvel and then also the usual suspects over in Europe as well. And, but he approached Wunderman comics for this project because he liked the way we do things. John: That’s awesome. That’s really cool. Nate: Alright. And. Okay, so now another mini bogeyman is a five issue mini series. Another mini series that we released last year is boundaral. I’m here for, this was to adapt William Hogarth series of pain, and it’s called Rake’s progress, which was about how a young man comes into money and gin women gambling. It comes poor and what ends up in [00:06:00] debtor’s prison. I adapted. We wonder. My comics adapted this for 1980s, Los Angeles John: Right. Nate: the, uh, and the protagonist is Latin American. John: that’s cool. Nate: And there were the, the artwork, it was re, it was, uh, the, it was created by me, the writer with a Hannibal taboo, the columnist for the bipedal, and the art was done by Doug and Ashton. John: That sounds really cool. Nate: Yes. And it had been something I had been wanting to do for a very long time ever since I actually went and saw the series of those payments, the great age, the timeline Grange is of man book that you used [00:07:00] to get when you were a kid. The great ages of men. You could elaborate, you can see it, and they would have his photo and it would talk about the debt, the decline of this young man. He’s 1740s London. Well, some things never change. John: It’s so cool to see how some things can spark inspiration, right? How seeing this as a series of paintings by William Hogarth sparked a comic series, right? Just the inspiration that that leads from one thing to another always, always fascinates me. Nate: Uh, I mean I that is true. It is. Cause I gotta tell you, I looked at it and I, as a kid, I said, Oh, this would be, do this right. This would be awesome. John: That sounds awesome. I want to read that one. Nate: Okay. It’s available on hoopla. John: I see that. I’m going to check that out on my hopeless. I have hooplah so. Nate: Done. Who bites on drive through comics and on Amazon? It’s on, it’s on. It’s on comics. Algae, Comixology [00:08:00] unlimited, so Bitlis so it can give you one Comixology unlimited, all of our series, except for boogeyman, he’s on comic solids unlimited. John: Oh, that’s cool. I have that too. So I have two ways to read this comic now. Nate: So I would suggest read boogeyman on hoopla and comics. Ology unlimited for the other step, and you’re good to go. John: yeah, there we go. I got it. Nate: Alright. Alright. Another, um, another limited series we did was, is called irrational numbers, which was the combination of. Time that with the early part of it takes place in the ancient world, and it’s about mathematics and vampires. John: Is it vampires to do by Clavix or. Nate: Well, the one w w it involves a historical figure pit in the beginning, the fag. [00:09:00] And it’s just how the people around him sort of formed the basis of a vampire war. And that was met the pre-qual, which was actually done in the style of those old prints. Those old, how, I forget the name, there’s old Prince Valiant. John: Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. Don’t strips. Nate: Exactly. And that size and that size. Exactly. John: Oh, nice. Nate: that sort of page layout, and that was the prequal. And then there’s a five issue mini series that’s done as a contemporary comic where the war between the two factions from this, this vampire love triangle essentially plays out. John: That’s interesting. Nate: Yes. And it’s, so the series was created by me. The writer was Hannibal taboo. The artist was Jean Carlos, a cuzzo. And [00:10:00] yes, it’s in vampire. And it was actually the first property of wonderment comics that wound up on comma, solidly on unlimited. John: That’s really cool. I mean, it’s cool that you’re crossing over, you know, one math. I’m a big math nerd, right? So when you cross from math to anything, it makes me excited. But the vampire, I told him, I also love you, the vampire Lord. I thought that sounds really interesting. Nate: And yes, it’s a unique take on the vampire lore that’s first starts off in the Greek world and then winds up in Romania. John: Oh, interesting. That’s cool. That’s cool. Nate: Now we have getting into our continuing series a second one. The second continuous series I created is called time course. You are P. S it’s about this group. Uh, people who are in charge, who are soldiers of the timeline, continuity department of the celestial [00:11:00] bureaucracy. John: That’s a mouthful, but okay. Nate: And the idea is if you’re not good enough for having a bad enough, a hell, where do you go? Well, one of the places you do go is the time core. And depending upon how you serve there, they decide your final disposition. What happens is there then becomes an antagonist who wants to redo history. His girlfriend dies of a disease and he decides this isn’t going to happen. I’m going to save her and he’s going to go back into time to do it. John: That always gets messy. Nate: very much so. Very, very much so. And. Would you and the steering’s focuses in on the, the crew of the Venice substations John: Okay. Nate: where [00:12:00] they are, and, and, and they, and they are, um, just people out of time. Not in that, that I’m just sort of hanging out in Venice. And we have the station chief, who’s the Roman calorie Centurion guys equities. We have dance hall, Gigolos, Garibaldi dealer, Borno, Russian Countess. From who? From the time of the French invasion of Russia. Pauline, Pauline Popova, and we have a mind ballplayers who played that. That mind version of basketball is called pits. Okay, Jaguar John: I love those names. Nate: And they, and they, and they crew the station here and they have a direct supervisor who Nella Jones, who is a very, very ambitious bureaucrat who wants to expand [00:13:00] into the bureaucracy. And, and, and there’s also a bot, Alexandra Kronos was overly fond of sitting in his hot tub. John: I mean, hot tub sitting is pretty fun, so I get that. Nate: Oh, he, he, he very much uses it. And there’s a lot of bureaucratic wrangling and sort of interesting how much you would almost call bureaucratic slash corporate warfare going on. And at the meantime, there’s the first extensional enemy, and then our current run, which. He’s being ripped. My Hannibal taboo, where I, I wrote the initial first 11 issues. I, new player comes into the game who wants to mess things up even more? That’s it. It was even more of a mischief maker than the other one. And so everything gets very crazy [00:14:00] and the piece is drawn by a needle. Yamamoto. Who, if any of your listeners are in Los Angeles, teaches cartooning and comic book production over at Santa Monica college for their extension courses. John: Oh, that’s awesome. That’s awesome. Nate: So he’s, he does a great job. Very pro. It’s great line. Really great. And that’s the one thing I should notice in see if you have any firing artists out there where the classic is that artists have a hard time with eyes and hands. That is so true. John: right, right. Nate: Getting the facial acting and the eyes right is really, really the difference between the pros and the water piece. John: it truly is. It truly is. Because getting in the face, I [00:15:00] actually expressed an emote what you’re, what the scene needs is, is there the difference between an amateur and a pro for, for, you know, big time there. Nate: Oh yes. I mean, and then also a bit where some of the amateurs aren’t too great a managing space and a lot of their stuff looks a little too flat even though it hurt and they’re not trying to be 10 10 John: Right, right, Nate: I’m trying to be here. J what that was deliberately rendered flat. John: right, right. Nate: So there’s been, so there’s that. But yeah, so Concourse, again, it’s also available at all the prior digital outlets I previously mentioned as well. John: nice. Nice. How many issues is that one now? Does it, does it, you said you were the Nate: Right now, time core, we have 14 issues in current release. John: Nice. That’s a good run. Nate: Pretty easy, but that’s nothing compared to the first comic book that I created and wrote that currently has 34 [00:16:00] issues in current release, John: Oh, dang. Nate: but first invasion, and this is a series where a criminal gang from outer space is here to commercially plunder the planet. And they happen to come from a civilization that are hyper advanced bio engineered insects that consider mammals to be an inferior species. And so mankind is in really bad shape for a while. But then I’m a defector from the aliens comes down and helps. The human and the first thing this defector does, and humans and higher order mammals, the ability to talk to each other with humans and talking animals versus the Spacebook. [00:17:00] John: That sounds fucking cool. Sorry. Nate: Yeah. It’s a little over the top. John: it. I like things to just go for it. You just just go for it. It’s more fun that way. I think. Nate: Yeah. And, and so it’s, it’s a large ensemble. It’s an ensemble cast piece where both the humans and the animals they work with are fully realized. Characters that talk and all that sort of thing, and they’re up against these very nasty bugs that do all kinds of really nasty things. And this was the first comic. That I came up with that I had thought about it and I thought I thought it up back in the nineties and I thought, Oh, we’ve done these alien invasion things. It’s HD world. All this sort of thing’s been done before. It’s like, [00:18:00] how? What would it be like to say maybe. Well, not just humans, but it’s humans. And they had some help with some other higher order mammals that are capable of language, but we just simply don’t understand them. And that was the idea. And it just sort of mushrooms from there. And that has been incurrent digital release since 2011 John: Oh, geez. That’s a long one. That nine years now. That’s awesome. Nate: yes. And. So, right. And right now we’re just putting the finishing touches up on Eastern number 35 and we’ve sort of spit balling plot hits for 36 John: That is really cool, man. Editor. Nate: and I wrote that up until issue 31, John: Oh, so the who’s right. Who’s writing it now? Nate: uh, this guy named Paul Benson. [00:19:00] John: Hmm. Cool. Nate: If I remember, he wrote in issue X-Men sometime way back. John: That’s cool. Nate: It is, you can get good people to work for you in comics, provided your tracks. Don’t bounce. John: that does help. I mean, if, if your, if your projects are good, you get good talent, that’s for sure. Nate: Yes. You know, just exactly. They would say what you feel straight and hopefully everything works out okay. John: Right. Right. That’s awesome. So is that all this, is that, is that all the different sources you have currently? Nate: That’s the stuff we have. We have, um, we have currently, I have another project and development that I really can’t go into too much, cause literally we are just at the phase of. We’ve outlined the whole thing [00:20:00] and we are putting together, we’ve done the character workups. W we like these characters’ questionnaires. And then after that you, you then go and move on to the character studies. And that’s where I think, because I am, I’m very much a believer of extensive character background. Cause that helps you right. The whole thing, especially with their voice and how they speak and that sort of thing. John: Right? Cause if you knew, if you knew who the character is, you can get their voice better. For Nate: Exactly. You capture their voice and sort of, when they’re confronted with something, you sort of say, Oh, this is how they’re going to react. John: Right. Cause you know who they Nate: it up too much as you’re going along, which some plot holes. John: Well, exactly. If you don’t know who the character is and how they talk, then you know you’re going to mess that up for sure. Nate: Oh. And it’s like, it’s not a matter of if, but this [00:21:00] way. John: Right? Yep, exactly. So I have a question for you. , what inspired you to start doing wonderment comics? Like, what’s right to, you know, spark dangerous to say how I’m gonna make my own my own comic line. Nate: I just. Really wanting to get into. I was a comic book fan. I was originally born in Brussels, Belgium. I immigrated here when I was a kid, and comics have a very large tradition over there just beyond asterix Tintin or lucky Luke. There’s a whole other world of really great comics and I liked the comics from all the world as well as the ones from Japan as well. And I just had wanted to go and make and do my own comics. I wasn’t saying that I wanted to make, and I was sort of influenced by the idea, the punk rock, DIY, [00:22:00] and I went ahead and did it. Yes, there was most certainly some fairly painful and. Expensive learning experiences, but that’s kind of sort of how it goes John: right, right. Nate: and it just went for it and it’s been, that is fine in the sense of, instead of saying going thing, what if I had done this? It’s more like this is what I’ve done and this is how it turned out, which is a much more satisfying way to me. John: Yeah. Because no matter what you’ve done it and it’s there, and then you can say, Hey, I would accomplish this. And I mean, yeah. How long have you been doing this for? Nate: I did the first print edition of earth invasion in 2007 by that point in time, the whole notion of an ND printed comic book was very much coming to [00:23:00] an end. So I moved it online and have been doing digital, so you could. You can say I’ve been alright. But then I started some of the, um, uh, character studies for AI back like 99 98, John: Right, right. Nate: but that was, but I didn’t incorporate the company until 2009. John: so I mean, a good 10 to 15 years we’ve been working on this and it’s, you know, it’s grown from one series to several and have now have several people who are working for you doing this or working with you doing this. And that’s fantastic, man. That’s awesome. That’s really awesome. Nate: Thank you. John: So do you have any big plans in the future for this? Nate: Um, well, I’m all, I am always open to, um. Licensing it to other media because let’s get real, given the economics of [00:24:00] comic books today, that’s where you make your money back. John: Yeah. Licensing it out. Yeah, exactly. And that’s what’s really cool. There was a lot of people are looking to comics for new properties to adapt, which is, which is really cool. Finally, you know, finally the media realizes, Oh, Hey, there’s great stories being told in comics. Let’s look there. Nate: Well, it’s exactly, it’s IP and then also nothing that’s going on. That you have this multiplication of media channels where before I’m old enough to remember when he had said the three networks and that was it. John: Yeah. Yeah. Growing up I had, we had, you know, I think seven network on TV’s we, and we didn’t have cables. We had like NBC, CBS, Fox, and universal, I think. And then like some local channels. That’s it. Nate: Right. Well, man, I’m old enough when it was still over the, over the hair, TV with rabbit ears in your house. But, but now it’s, especially now that Disney’s come in and are taking back all their [00:25:00] properties in which, which includes marbles, John: Yup, Nate: there’s going to be a pretty good opportunity for everybody else from all the other, uh, media channels coming out there that are in dire need of properties. John: It’s so true. It’s so true. Cause it’s funny cause there’s so many shows that come out these days that most people don’t even realize they’re based on comics. And then they look at him like, Oh then people find out they’re based on the comic book and then they read the comic book. But it’s so great because I mean look at Netflix or Hulu or any of the streaming platforms or even Amazon and stuff. There’s, you know. Probably, you know, at least what, 10 times a year, some new series comes out that’s based on a comic series and everyone says, Oh, this is great. And it was, yeah, there’s a comic for it. You should read that. Like, my wife just watched lock and key on a Netflix and she loved it. And I’m like, yeah, that’s based on a client book. She’s like, it’s based on a comic book. Really? I’m like, yeah, this is totally based on a comic book. Nate: Yes. [00:26:00] And yes. And what’s great about it is that comics are almost readymade in terms of here’s the visual style. Um, if the comics done a good job, there’s a, there’s almost a builtin, loyal audience that’s ready to take a look at it. It’s just one of the things that really hindered the progress is that comics in the United States were very much looked down upon upon the intellectual intelligent needs to have the writing intelligence needs to, let’s call it, of this country where, Oh, that kid stuff, that sort of thing, John: Yeah, Nate: which I was never a fan of. John: Neither. No. I grew up reading comics. I learned to read, but we didn’t kind of expect, like when I was a kid, my I, my dad got me to read by giving me Batman comics and Wolverine comics, you know? And, um, that’s how I learned. So I’ve always thought of comics as being a great meme. And then, and then you read things like Watchmen or the dark Knight, or you read, you know, some of these other [00:27:00] pieces out there like earth one years, no, this is not kid’s stuff. This is, a lot of this stuff is, you know, real world. It’s real stuff. It’s, it’s great. Nate: And I have to mention. Is that you go across the Atlantic to the whole year. OBD comics are considered serious art, serious literature. It’s called the ninth art for a reason. John: and it should be that way here in America, but Nate: Oh yeah. Oh no. Absolutely not. I mean, I actually once had the conversation with no less than David Simon, the creator of premiere and the wire and whatever, where he thought Batman would just kids literature. John: No, no. That man can be kids that are, sure, for sure. If it’s a kids, if it’s a kid’s version of Batman, like Batman strikes, but Batman has just main, Batman has a lot of deep thought into it. A lot of deep stuff built into it. It’s not kids stuff. Nate: Oh, Batman is one of the master works of American literature. John: Yeah, for sure. [00:28:00] I mean, you can’t read a year one and told me that’s a kid that’s kid, that that’s kid, you know, kid stories or, or dark night or killing joke. And to me that that’s a story for kids. Nate: No, absolutely. Yeah, it’s it is it, like I said, it is serious. It is serious stuff, and I, as I said, it’s an instant, a legitimate art, and it’s one of the new ones along with movies and in addition to the seven ancient ones. John: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s, it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s, I am happy to see it finally that comic books are being taken more seriously in America. Right. Cause in overseas, like you mentioned in Europe, it’s, it’s, it’s been different for a long time. Even in Japan, comics, comics are treated differently, but in America it’s always been for kids, for kids, for kids. But really comics are for everyone. And comics can be. You know, just like any other form of literature or media out there. It can be for kids. It can be for teens, it can be serious. It could be, it could tell a story. Like we just had somebody on [00:29:00] our show. Uh, actually the episode is released yesterday, um, as a recording this, which would have been March 13th. I was with the, uh, Sophia Ansell, who is a, she wrote a book called Burmese moons, all about the tragedies in Myanmar and Bert and Burma. And it’s, it’s, it’s a heartbreaking book, but it’s all based on true stuff. And it’s. Like it’s a book that tells that it pushes the story of what’s happening over in that part of the world. That this isn’t happening now and this is reality for some people. Nate: Well. How about mouse. John: that’s a great, a huge, I mean, yes, malice is a, is a fantastic example of how a comic book can tell you a serious story and portray it to you in a way that’s accessible, accessible, but it’s not. It’s not like this is kids like, you know, Mickey mouse, this is, this is. Nate: like I joke, Huber. John: Yeah, exactly. Oh, Kubrick stuff is, I love keyword stuff so, so great. But yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s interesting that it’s been taken that way so long. Anybody who actually read comic books knew the truth of, no, this is, this is a serious meeting and there’s a lot of, you can, you can tell a lot of three [00:30:00] Nate: you know, the old thing about a picture’s worth a thousand words. John: Yeah. Exactly. Cause like with comics, as you mentioned before, about the medium of being perfect for adapting a kind of book is basically a storyboard for a movie or a TV show. I mean you have the visuals, you have the, you have the written that you have the possible narration of the writer puts narration in there. To feed you through it. So you have, you basically have, you know, two different ways. You can read a comment, but you can read it by just looking at the visuals or you can read it with the words or however you want and get and pull out of that, whatever you pull out that your own feelings from it and, and different people can read a comic and get different outtakes from it, which is one of the things I love about it because. I could go read mouse and you could read mouse and we can talk about it. And we can come to different conclusions based upon how we feel about that. And overall, the story is just telling us one story, but we can pull out of that different things, which is amazing. Nate: Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, and I, and I have to say, I mean mouse was a great thing to integrate things for comics in America without a doubt. And I [00:31:00] especially want to say, want to fuel it, sir? John: Yeah, Nate: Was it appeal to them? John: the one. They want a bunch of stuff. I don’t know. I can’t, I can’t think of what at one, but I want a bunch of stuff for sure. It’s one of the, it’s one of the master works of comic books for sure. Nate: Most certainly, which I mean I can, I can re, which I find very relatable cause my father’s family were, they were all Holocaust survivors. John: Oh, really? Nate: Yeah. Oh yeah. John: That must’ve made that story a whole lot different for you than it would have been for someone like me who, I didn’t have that in my family. You know? Nate: Oh, no, I mean, not the exact same event and not in the same part of occupied Europe. Yeah. John: Yeah. Yeah. It’s so crazy. Yeah. My family came up, so my, my grandparents were fought in world war two from the American side, and, uh, um, but on the, on the, on the, uh, um, Pacific front, you know, and that was, that’s my history with that, with that, that, that’s my family history with that part of time. But, you know, I know people who have their grandparents were, or you [00:32:00] know. In the, in the camps or there were their great uncles were in the camps, whatever. They lost people in those camps and stuff. It was just like, it’s, it’s heartbreaking. Nate: Very much so. I mean, just just to say, I mean, both my father and my aunt were lucky enough to be taken in by a network. Run by a Jesuit priest in Brussels who wound up saving 350 apostles. Jewish children now has a place of honor over as a chef. John: Oh, that’s so cool. It’s, it’s crazy cause you think about, you think about it from like the perspective of, of a kid these days. Right? I have kids, I have five kids or my oldest is 17 and they think about it from like his perspective. I talked to him about it and in, in some ways what we’re too, that whole atrocity is so long ago. But in other way, it’s not because there are still people around that are worth, that were affected by that. You know, Nate: most certainly. John: and it’s, it’s crazy. Cause my, my son, like I said, he’s 17 [00:33:00] he’s so distant from right here. We talk about it and sometimes he’s just like, Oh, that was so long ago. It doesn’t matter. And I’m like, no, it’s still very much matters now. It’s Nate: Oh, completely matters. Especially if you look in terms of sociopolitical orders, all sorts of things, and most importantly. Is if the crimes that were committed are allowed to be gotten away with, they’re done again. John: exactly. And people are trying to do them again. I mean, look at certain parts of the world, look at me and look at parts of the, this is what’s happening in America in the last couple of years. Right. This is crazy resurgence of, of Neo Nazi shit. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s insane. Or like people getting upset because, um, there was a, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t remember specifically. I read about it the other day. In a paper, but there was a somebody who was getting upset because there was a movie coming out that put Nazis in a bad light. And we were like, why are you upset about this? This, this was, this was a horrible atrocities of our last, of our last a hundred [00:34:00] years. And yes, it th th that should be in a bad way. There shouldn’t be a movie about it. It shouldn’t be about to be in good cause they weren’t good, you know? Nate: Why is historical rewash in whatever you want to call it? No, John: yeah. No, Nate: but I will say that some of the better comics out there address that sort of thing and help keep that going to heal, I mean, help people. No, not exactly. John: Oh man. For sure. For sure. It’s, it’s been, it’s been a, it’s been a trouble in time doing with some of the stuff recently, Nate: you know that old Chinese curse, right? John: yeah. Nate: May you live in interesting times. John: Right, Ellen, right now we do, cause I’m in, I’m in Seattle, which is the epicenter of the whole coronavirus thing here in America and you know, in America and it’s, it’s nuts. Everything’s on lockdown. Like my kids are out of school for six weeks, you know, I Nate: Oh aye. Aye. Aye. Aye. I’m in LA LA USD that said, [00:35:00] Hey everybody, you’re on vacation. John: Yeah, exactly. My, my work, my daytime job is like, Nope, every, everybody’s working from home. So I’m working from home. My wife’s working from home, so we’re all just kind of holed up in her house, which is fine. I mean, but it’s like after a couple of weeks have been here with the five kids and the wife and the two cats, it’s going to get a little, uh, a little sore. Crazy for sure. Nate: With, uh, most, most certainly hand. And I will say one thing I’m glad is I actually have a garden where I grow fresh vegetables. John: Oh, that’s awesome. See, we were planning to start a garden here coming up. Um, when it gets a little warmer, we’re like, Oh, we’re going to put a garden in our backyard. We just hadn’t, haven’t done it yet. I’m like, ah, crap, but it’ll be Nate: telling you, you should, you should. You should give it, you should give it a ghost. There are some fresh grown vegetables that are just so much tastier when you grow them yourself, especially say like nappies and tomatoes and Tara, when you grow them yourself, there’s so much better. John: Fresh carrots are [00:36:00] the best. My grandpa growing up, he had a huge garden. I’d go over there and help them tend to it and I would always go there and get, get fresh carrots and they are sweeter. They are crispy or they, there’s no, no comparison to a fresh carrot to a one in Nevada. They’re just so different. Nate: Yeah. And if you have chickens, John: Yep. Nate: the carrot tops, the chickens go buzzard for it. John: Yup. Exactly. And fresh eggs are amazing. Nate: Yes, they are. Yes, they most certainly are. John: My, uh, my cohost Kenrick, he’s, he’s lives down the street from me. Um, they’re getting him and his family. They’re getting, uh, chickens. So we’ll have fresh eggs. And I’m so excited for fresh eggs cause it make the best. Nate: careful of the roosters neck. Roosters like to Crow at sunrise. John: Oh, I know they’re there. Well, they’re, they’re far enough away from me where I won’t hear it, so it’s not, I don’t care. Nate: Oh yeah. That, that big car early in, just as the sun cracking through is not right. John: No, it’s, it’s, it’s loud and it’ll definitely wake you up. So [00:37:00] no need for an alarm clock there. Nate: Okie dokie. So, um, okay, so, and. Alright. Sorry folks there. Major diversion. It’s okay. John: Hey. Hey, we have, we have a sub show on our show called the tangent of tangents where we just start a topic and just go on tangents for her because we ended up talking about one thing which leads into something else. It’s, I mean, if you think about it, that whole conversation we just had is, was actually relevant to, we talked about because we got there naturally through our conversation about your comics and about what and about the conversation of comics itself. It naturally went there, yet it’s off topic to. To, what am I karmic, which is fine, but the conversation when new naturally Rose, you know, from comics to art form to Nazis, to carrots, to chickens, which is a weird segue to go through that, but if you listen to it, it’ll be a natural progression too, which is cool. Which is one of the great things about conversation is that you don’t know where things are going to go sometimes. And that’s one of my favorite things about doing interviews and podcasts is seeing where conversations go. [00:38:00] Nate: Alright, cool. Cool. So then you, the questions for me. John: So Nate, is there anything else that you’re working on or that you have coming up or that we haven’t talked Nate: I w I will say that we, besides the senior product, I have that coming, which really don’t want to, um. I would say also wonderment comics. We do accept unsolicited stuff, but it has to be a professional quality, a completed full color project. John: As I was actually, I was going to ask you that. So if you do accept submissions, did you expect that you want them to be a finished product or do you want to do stuff like scripts and stuff? Nate: we don’t do strips. We released whole entire comics to the digital platforms. definitely we want full color and, and definitely professional, presentation in terms of the R the, the dialogue. No good too. It [00:39:00] is sex, violence, but that’s, I mean, yes, our comic tab that, but nothing where it’s just no porn. John: right, right. Nate: That that’s not, Nope. Nothing racist or no unnecessarily massages or any of that sort of thing. John: right. Nate: We just want stuff that is of a professional level. John: Yeah. Do you guys, um, what’d you guys do? Humor. Comics. Nate: Yes, we would. It’s just a matter of finding that right property. John: Now, do you ever have, do you have ever have any plans on offering? , I know you’re a digital publisher, which is awesome cause it makes things a lot easier. But do you have plans of offering print copies for people or, or an ability of people that do live on demand printing of comics. They could have if they wanted to have a copy of it, they could. Nate: You know what I’ve had? I’ve offered our comments from time to time [00:40:00] too. On demand printing, but oftentimes those places just get overwhelmed and fall through John: Right. Nate: and then the customer’s left holding the bag. So I’m really cautious about that. And so perhaps in the future, say something. There’s a special event where like last year we went and printed up a limited edition run of all the issues of scoundrel and did an in store signing or something like that. We’ll, we’ll do something like that. Or if they may be, the possibility comes where I’m doing a physical print is not a complete and utter loss, which at this point it is. I mean, come on. Can you tell me one current comic from the majors that actually averages six figures in one month, John: Averages. Now, the only thing that hits [00:41:00] that hits that is going to be where they do like a billion special coverage or some special event issue. Nate: but no, but no comic. It’s six to eight 10 the thing is the economics of printed where it’s especially these days. You have to get into decent five biggest before you even start to make back dime one John: Right, right. Oh for sure. Cause it’s, it’s been, it’s expensive to print stuff for sure. Nate: and not just the print stuff to the one. The one thing that is really the killer is the shipping John: Yo. Yeah. Shipping is a killer cause it like doubles the cost of the book. Nate: easily, John: Yeah. Nate: easily. Yeah. Especially since only the big boys seem to have access to media mail, but if you’re tiny, you’re not going to get access to medium Hill. John: well, you never understood it because it, by definition, media mail, our comics don’t fit to media mail, but yet if you go talk to, like I’ve talked to, I used to sell comics, right? I used to, I used to own a client bookstore online, and I [00:42:00] did that for like almost 10 years. And we would go talk to the postmaster at the post office and we’d ask them, Hey, do these qualify for media mail? One time they would say yes, one time. They would say no, and then they’d say yes for most of the time within some other postmaster would say no when they got up in the mail and it’s like, can you just make up your damn mind? Nate: It was, it was very much hit or miss cause there wasn’t time. I had some pretty common and it was that. And the thing is, the difference between first class and media mail was literally the margin John: yeah, exactly. Nate: on that entire book. John: Exactly. And like, I don’t understand why they, they say they don’t want me to email because they don’t want you to ship things with advertisements and then through media, mail, whatever. But if you’re shipping, like the big guys will always have ads to them, but the little guys usually don’t have ads in them. But then that’s where it gets into this mix of, of them trying to figure out what’s what, and it’s, I say, just allow them, I mean, why not? Nate: Well that and the post office could certainly use the business. John: Yeah, they could absolutely. And imagine how much more if they just said yes, comics, media, mail full [00:43:00] time and didn’t just try to gouge people on it. They’d have tons of people. Should be more things meaning email because it’s, it works and it’s fine Nate: Yeah, John: and it’s cost effective. Nate: precisely. Precisely. Yeah. And nothing about cop. Also, nothing about comics is you print a bunch and then boom, we’ve got 3000 year garage. John: Exactly. Exactly. I’ve mentioned the book, the book that I just did is getting printed right now, or it will be going to a printer here pretty soon. It’s going to be, it’s a thousand copies. What’s it going to be in my garage and I’ll ship out all the ones that sold, but then I’ll probably still have a couple of hundred left, but I’ll sit there until I can figure out, you know, go to go to a con or get them up online and get them sold, you know, which is, which is fine. It’s just, it’s going to be, you know, boxes and boxes in my garage. I have to put a final place for. Nate: I hope you don’t get a link in your garage. John: Oh God, don’t, don’t, no, I don’t want, I don’t want to deal with wet place would be terrible. Oh, man. Nate: So yeah. And that’s the thing, which is, I don’t think a [00:44:00] lot of fandom realized sort of what the financial risks are involved in, that sort of thing, John: yeah, it’s, there’s a lot of risk behind behind doing any of this stuff you’re doing. Nate: you know? Yeah. And the thing is money doesn’t grow on trees. And yeah, everybody, it’s like, I’m sorry, I am not Jeff Bezos. I do not. Or Michael Bloomberg, I do not have. Oodles and oodles of money because I have been approached by creators who sort of, especially the European ones who sorta want to do that traditional thing where they get an advance and then they’re paid and whatever, and then we know that’s, that’s another thing which I might add to those. We’ll want to send something in that old traditional model of where I can get like say, paid in advance, whatever. That’s not going to be. John: No, that’s not, that’s not reality. Cause people can’t, one you can’t do, it’s too much of a risk. It puts you as the publisher at, at the risk. [00:45:00] And you know. It’s, it’s not. I can imagine that that actually people are still doing that these days cause just as not with how thin spread comics are, which is good and bad. Right? It’s good to have a lot of options, but also that means there’s a lot of options to spend money on. , Nate: Oh, absolutely. Cause I mean today’s day and age, what’s great about comics, especially with the computer revolution, because I still remember comics when it was still that physical production. We shot blue line film and run it on offset printer. And computers revolutionized that process to where now it’s just, you put everything together in InDesign and you need it. If you can do a physical print, you do CYMK RGB and you just drop a file, and if you’ve been to a physical planet, drop a file in 15 minutes later, boom, I’ll come to comics. You got it. There you are. John: Yeah. Yeah. Which is amazing. Nate: Which is great, [00:46:00] but, but it’s sort of, it’s the blessing and the curse, which is anybody can do it John: exactly. Anybody can do it, which is great, but also anyone can do it, which means it’s just going to be a ton of options. Nate: well or just a ton of stuff out there. And the great challenge these days is getting seen, John: Yep. Getting seen and getting people to see what Nate: getting seen and heard above the digital noise. John: Which is precisely why I do podcasts with creators, to talk about what they do and, and, you know, share out everybody’s stuff. You know, it’s, it’s one of my favorite things to do is talk to people that have, have indie books out there or work or are passionate about what they do and, and, and, you know, spend their time making comics. I love comic books. Nate: Well, thank you very much. Thank you. And like I said, I love doing this and if somebody wants to go read it, great. John: Yeah. And speaking to that, that if you want to read it, I’ll have links in the show notes below for everyone to click Nate: Awesome. Yes. Awesome. We love [00:47:00] that. John: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Nate, I’ve had a great time talking to this morning. It’s been a Nate: Thank you very much too. John: I’ve learned a lot. It’s been great. I will have this out for you and we’ll put links to everybody listening, check out one-on-one comics. They got some cool stuff there. Um, I’m going to be checking out some of these on Comixology and hooplah here. Uh, this weekend. I suggest you all do Nate: And don’t forget who’s led digital. John: Hooplah it. Go check it out. Support comedies and support your libraries. Nate: Absolutely. John: All. Nate: Thank you very much. . Kenric: Hey, we’re back. John: back. And how Kenric: man comics man all online. That’s, that’s a crazy way John: It is, but it’s also, as he says, it cuts down on cost. Right. Cause he can, he can then pay his craters right. And not happen to have to rep pain for printer cost cause he can pay the craters and then put out a comic solid year and other, other digital Kenric: is that, is that a, the wave of the future? John: I think in Kenric: Digital first, John: think in some ways, but I think people still want physical books too, right? Kenric: Yeah. John: But I think for any publishers who want to, you [00:48:00] know, be able to pay their people, right and not have to be able to give more of the money back to the creators doing it digital first, or at least digital until it has a following and then maybe doing a Kickstarter, that’s a really good way for an indie publishing house to do it right. Cause then you can pay your craters the rates, and then you have, have more of those funds of your digital sales. Go back into recouping your costs as the publisher. And then push it to a Kickstarter or push it to a PO, a printed book for people who want to pick up the printed book and kind of work, kind of work in both directions, but not have the upfront cost of printing. I think it’s a good, I think it’s a, it’s a good idea and, or a good concept at least. Kenric: do you think that this and web comics, is there a difference John: um, so no, this, yes, actually, yes. So web comics are specifically comic books that publish on the web for free and they Kenric: they have to be free? John: what’s that. Kenric: Do they have to be free? Is that, is that a criteria? John: No, that is not a criteria, but the criteria for a web Kenric: primarily they’re free. John: primary. They’re free, but the criteria would be a web comic or something that doesn’t publish a whole story at once. It [00:49:00] publishes like a page, a page or two, like once a week. Once a day. Kenric: Similar to what the newspapers used to do in the comic strips. John: Exactly. That’s a web comic. This is a digital comic where you, that you purchase a full issue and you have a, you know, the 20 pages of 24 pages of a full issue. Well, they’re both digital. They’re different concept. A little bit. Kenric: Yeah. It’s all about the delivery is different. John: Exactly. Exactly. Kenric: Interesting. Well, the guys go, you learned a lot on today’s show. John: it did. And if you want to check them out, go to Wunderman comics.com it’s wonderment with the U. So w w. Really. All right. I, I’m Kenric: Why is that so funny to be right there? That’s hilarious. W John: clearly, I’ve been teaching my sixth year how to read too much and I’m trying to sound out the word for you. W you in D E R M a N comics.com Kenric: there you guys go. All right. If you enjoyed that, you want some more interviews. Uh, we got a lot of artists, [00:50:00] writers, TV producers, TV directors, movie producers, movie directors, actors of all genres. There you guys go, you go to spoiler verse.com. Check out the spoiler country podcast, check out our back catalog and there is a ton of all that and more, uh, not behind a paywall, over 300 episodes and soon to be 400. John: Soon to be 500 Kenric: He has seemed to be fine tuned to beat 1000 John: Well, we’re, we’re a bit off from 1000 but we’ll be there eventually. Kenric: yeah, we will be there eventually. Go check it out. There’s a lot there for you. John: Yeah. Not just from our show, but we have so many other shows like bridging the gate terms, their Taka lips, shooting the Sith narrative. Gunslingers funny, funny book, forensics nerds from the crypt. So many more. That artist, none of them behind a paywall. Mizzou point radio is another great one out there. Just go check him out, subscribe to all of them, listen to all of them. Leave them all [00:51:00] reviews on all your pod catchers. Download all the episodes, and I compel you to click on that store link. Go to T public and buy a tee shirt or something to sell your support for the greatest Kenric: the link, click the link. John: That’s right. Click the link Kenric: All right guys, the last thing that we’re going to tell you to do, cause I feel like at the end of these episodes, we’re always telling people what to do. Don’t do this. John: yeah. Well, I mean, Kenric: We’re asking, we’re not telling, we’re asking, John: yeah. Kenric: if you do like us. Yeah. If you do like what you’re hearing and you want to support us beyond the link on this for the store, or you just, you know, maybe you just can’t afford that and that’s totally okay. Solely fine. Go onto your podcast on your smartphone, search for spore. The country has subscribed and then maybe go to iTunes or Google play wherever you tend to to read, because as your pod catcher probably aggregates those from either Google player or iTunes. That’s just the [00:52:00] way it goes. Most of them anyways. There’s a few that don’t. Spotify, Stitcher, you know those, those bigger ones. I heart radio, go to the iTunes or Google play, like I was saying, and leave us a review. It helps tremendously and I hope that you, you know, you do John: Yeah. Because it helps us in two ways. One, it tells us what you think of us. So one, we know if you like this show or there’s something you want us to, you don’t care for it. We can improve and make it our show better. And two, it helps other people find the show and find us and listen to us and helps us get our voices out there. More people to hear. Because if nothing else, we like to hear ourselves talk. So you should hear us talk to. Kenric: We like to hear each other’s talk. All right guys, that’s a show. I think we’re out of here. Don’t forget. Then an ocean’s a podcast John: we are definitely Lou Kenric: and it’s good. Still a little compels you to do. Open the mind. John: and read more. Kenric: I feel like we’re just trying to do our best [00:53:00] Hulk imitation. John: Right. Or macho man. Oh yeah. It was macho, man. I know. I fucked it up right. “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry

Today John is joined by Robert Slavinsky of Shootin’ the Sith to talk with Kevin Kiner, composer of Star Wars Rebels, Star Wars The Clone Wars, Jane the Virgin, Titans, Doom Patrol, Superboy and so much more! Check out Kevin online: https://www.kevinkiner.com/ Transcript by a drunk robot. Transcript Kevin Kiner Interview   John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: All right. Welcome back everybody. We are sitting here today with Kevin Kiner composer. Extraordinary. He’s done stuff you might’ve watched or seen out there. You know, he worked on super bowl back in the nineties which I watched that show as a kid with my dad. He worked on Jane the Virgin he worked Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: My gosh, I think that was the eighties but go ahead. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Late eighties I was, I was like seven and my dad watching that one. We’re done. Walker, Texas ranger. You worked on Stargate, you worked on [00:03:00] Titans and do patrol and star Wars cartoons. So much stuff. Kevin, thank you for coming on. How are you doing tonight? Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: I’m doing great. It’s nice to be here. Hello everyone. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah, I’m so glad you could come on. We, we just, we just broke into the world of talking with, musicians and composers. typically on our show in the last three years, you’ve talked to comic book creators and actors and directors. And then recently we talked to Steve de Blonsky and we have a lot of fun with him. So we’ve expanded out and said, why don’t we talk to more people who make music for the things we love? And that’s why we reached out to you. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah, guys like Steven, myself are lonely people that sit in a room writing music all day, and so we love to talk. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: That’s awesome. Yeah. I, I’m a huge fan of music. I was in, I started playing drums when I was six and guitar when I was 13 and bass at 14 and played in rock bands and recorded and toured around for awhile and had a ton of fun doing music. So for me, every time I listened to watch a show or watch a movie, I always pay attention to the music in the background cause. You know, it’s, it’s, it adds the, all the atmosphere of, [00:04:00] of what you’re, you know, taking in. So it’s, it’s exciting for me to talk to people who do that. Cause whereas I wrote like punk songs and rock song, this is a total different world of music. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Right? Yeah, it is. Yeah. I often tell people, I’m not in the music business. I’m in the film and television business. Really. I mean, I write music, I’m a composer, but, I, you know, I don’t write songs and I don’t work with Beyonce, so it’s different, you know. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: yet. You might someday. Maybe you’re right. Our next set for her. I don’t know. so for those out there who, haven’t looked you up or know what you’ve done, do you mind, tell me a little bit about how you got started into composing or what got you, what brought you , into this world. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: yeah, sure. So I started myself. I mean, we’re all different, you know. You know, he started with a classical education. He went to Julliard, I believe, and then, became a kind of a great jazz pianist [00:05:00] and was a session piano player in Hollywood. And then one of his big breaks was jaws. So, you know, I mean, he’s probably the greatest film composer ever. He is actually, not probably, it’s just. What? He’s a film composer in history. I myself am different. I, don’t come from a classical background, although I, changed my course maybe 25 years ago, but I started off as.  in garage band, I mean, I started off as a rock and roller. I was doing led Zepplin and then experimental music, like yes, or queen or whatever. Just,   really, that kind of more complex. Rock led Zeppelin is probably my favorite band of all time. and then I started playing in jazz bands, cause I could read music. and then I went to UCLA. my mom told me I couldn’t be a, a musician because it was a dead end career, and she was correct about that. , [00:06:00] so I was pretty mad. I didn’t take any music classes. And then I just, probably my sophomore year, I started in the summer working, In music, doing some recording sessions, doing some gigs in Vegas just to supplement my income while I was at university. And, I got a gig as a music director with a group that traveled overseas and a music director is kind of like a conductor, and they also will do the arrangements. And we were, it was a Vegas style show, so we would have a, you know, from a 13 to 25 piece orchestras, Vegas style orchestra.  and it was my responsibility to conduct that band wherever we traveled to. I traveled in Asia a lot, like Tokyo, Philippines, Manila, Jakarta, Indonesia, Thailand, everywhere. and so my job was to write all of the arrangements for them, and that sort of became. An entryway into composing, [00:07:00] because say if you’re doing an arrangement for, I don’t know, some pop song or a, song, and there isn’t really a string part, but yet, like in Tokyo, we’d have a string section so I’d have to make up a string part for all of  the tunes that we were doing that night. And, and that’s kind of, you’re kind of either an arranger, but you were kind of making up something. So you’re a composer. And that’s what started me in composing, cut to, I got married in the Philippines.  I’ve been married 37 years. so that was awesome. so I decided once I got married that I didn’t want to be a road musician any longer. I came back to, to LA and, and I struggled for about, I was really lucky less than a year. road musicians and in town musicians don’t ever. Cross, , and so I had no connections in, LA. and I had to get started again. I got really lucky and I did a theme for a blooper show [00:08:00] with Don Rickles and, Steve Lawrence. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Oh cool. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: so I got that and, bunch of producers from that show got their own shows and they took me with them. And within two years I was doing four. You know, network television shows, and that led to super boy and stuff like that. So that’s kind of the course of my career, John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: That’s Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: the early career. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: That’s really cool. So super white was your first, like your first TV show you did for a while, right? Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Well now the blooper show was my first TV show. That was like an 83. and super boy was my first dramatic series. There’s a big difference between, say if you’re doing game shows or blooper shows or reality shows or whatever to doing, dramatic shows   where you’re doing underscore for drama and, and that’s kind of a delineation that’s hard to break. I mean, I. I know guys who do reality shows these days and they can’t get arrested in doing any dramas. They just, they can’t [00:09:00] get those gigs. So super boy, and it was with the salt kinds too, and they’d just done the Christopher Reeves, Superman movies. and so I was like the next composer, they had use it as a great honor to be hired by them. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: That’s cool. So what, can you, do you mind like doing a show like super boy? And I said that because it was a childhood show of mine with my dad and I watched him and I was a huge Superman fan, which made me a big Superman fan. Not to go back to your early career too Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: mine as mine? It was a dream for me. Yeah. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Nice. Nice. So my question for that would be, is working on that show like. What kind of inspiration did you have in making the, the, you know, the undertones for what was going on, on, you know, those episodes that were, in my opinion, amazing. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Well.  for two of the display for me, that was John Williams had kind of scent set a benchmark with the Christopher Reeve films, and that was the style that they [00:10:00] wanted the score to be. so I, I really, you know, way back then, even earlier I, I started studying John Williams and, and I studied the guys. He. Like Stravinsky and Korngold and Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff and all that, you know? So that’s when, I started educating myself kind of in a, it’s funny, I don’t have a traditional, music education yet. I’ve kind of been overcompensating my whole career for that by, I mean, I continually study scores to this day I’ll go to rehearsals of the LA Philharmonic with a score in hand. Like I’m like, I’m some little student or whatever and I’m still trying to figure out what the hell ServInt ski was doing. Cause he’s amazing, you know? And so, yeah, that’s, John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: that’s cool Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: I think I’ve compensated for my lack of education by now. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Well, I mean, it’s, it’s a, there’s a thing to be said about,  always be learning, right? Like anything you do and you want to do well, even though you may [00:11:00] become an expert or whatever, and, and you’re always still learning, even the experts still learn things as you go through. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah. , I’ve heard so many successful people talk about. if you watch these, so many of the really, really great musicians from Paul McCartney too, you know, who, whoever, you know, Paul Simon, they can’t read music and they don’t have a musical education. And yet they have, they have changed the course of musical history.   so I’ve always looked at my lack of education as an example, tried to make it a strength. So I don’t know what rules that I’m breaking that I’m not supposed to break, if it sounds good to me, I do it. So screw the rules. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: exactly. There’s, there’s something to be said about  just not knowing what you’re breaking, because then you have the freedom to do things that somebody fall following rules might not do, you know, which is great. So let’s talk a little bit about after bowl, cause I don’t want to spend too much time on 30 years ago. [00:12:00] Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Earliest weirdest shows I’ve ever done, but yeah, let’s move on. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: So let’s, let’s, let’s jump way ahead and let’s talk about star Wars. star Wars is, I mean, some people might’ve heard of, it’s a little show. It’s a little movie series, you know, it’s out there. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: go. Go ahead. If you haven’t, it’s amazing. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: So going into the star Wars shows that you did, what was like, what was your thought process on getting to that and getting in and making those scenes in the end? The undertones for that Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: So I’ll tell you how I got the gig. it was an audition process. So George Lucas was getting Nancy and he wanted to make an animated series.   and he hadn’t sold it to anyone. In fact, at one point, he even said to all of us, maybe this will just be something that my kids watched when he was, when he was doing clone Wars, because I think he just got turned down by, by Fox or something like that. And, and so [00:13:00] he just liked that, he financed. The first film. I knew, hope, and he financed that himself too. So anyhow, he started doing the animated project and, the word came out there was going to be an audition. I think he liked what I was doing on CSI Miami. I’m not positive, but I, I know he wanted to push that envelope of the music and star Wars a little bit. And CSI Miami, it was a real electronic kind of modern score.  and so I think that’s how I got to be part of the audition. I think five or six of us audition for it and the audition works. they flew us up to Skywalker ranch in, in the Bay area, and each one of us looked at 10 minutes of the first episode of clone Wars and we took that clip home and then we all scored it the way we thought it should go. there were a couple of really high profile, great composers that were in that audition. And, I can’t say who they were, but I’m [00:14:00] very proud that I got that gig. and they chose mine . It’s the dream come true. To win an audition with George Lucas and star Wars. I mean, that’s okay. Right? John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Right.  Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: so once I, I had the gig, then I started working with Dave Filoni, who’s the executive director and supervising director and really ran clone Wars, and George Lucas and I would fly up to Skywalker ranch every two weeks and get face time with George and just bounce things off the wall. And, man, it was, it was really, really fun. Those first. Two years were really, really fun with all that, obviously, you talked about your admiration for John Williams.  what was it like to kind of follow in his footsteps? what was your mindset with, scoring clone Wars and then eventually,  later on you do rebels. What was your mindset for [00:15:00] that? So I do clinics and Comicon panels all the time. And, one of the things I’ll bring with me is an old dog eared  score of the,  original star Wars suite  that John published in the, Late seventies, I think I put, picked it up in the eighties and if you can open it to Thomas to any page is hundreds of pages long. and it’s a full orchestra score. And I’ve marked it up like people Mark up their Bible or whatever your, your textbook or something like that with all just what I thought he was doing, and just to remind myself. This trick or that trick. so I’d studied him, you know, since the super bowl days. I, I just wanted to know how he made that sound, you know, and what he was doing. you have access to somebody, scores you really on the inside of their mind, Maybe my explanation of what he’s doing. Like to me it’s a C minor over a B [00:16:00] base or something like that. Maybe he’s not thinking of it that way, but that’s how I think of it. when I see it in the score. So I would write those things down and you kind of learn his, what we call the licks, you know, we would learn his, I would learn  his little tricks that he did. And so I’ll give you an example as a guitar player. So you want to play the blues. The great thing to do is just find, get a BB King record from muddy waters, BB Kings master, and just note for note You know, like 30 seconds of one of his solos. So you can just play it on your own without him plan. Just you can play exactly every single note that BB King play. Now the point is not to do that live that. The point is to get that under your fingers so that when you go do a blue solo, there’s a little bit of BB King in you because you’ve kind of learned your fingers can move that way and you kind of learn what his mindset is. And that’s why what I was doing [00:17:00] by studying. John Williams has scores. It was like, I don’t want to imitate him. I just want to have some of him in me. His influence, just the best case scenarios. It becomes part of my vocabulary and I just speak that way musically, but it’s really my ideas that are coming out. It’s just in his style. I think that’s, that’s perfect. I’ve watched all the clone Wars. I’ve watched the rebels and, and, It’s seamless. It really is what you do and what you’ve done is seamless. I’m a huge star Wars fan and just like John, I’m huge when it comes to music and. All sorts of media. That’s a big part of it to me. So when I sat down and watch clone Wars and rebels and that music, it’s seamless. And I do hear a different style, but it’s, it fits perfectly because you can tell that it’s not John Williams, but it is inspired by what John Williams had created prior. So I really do enjoy what you’ve done with all that. [00:18:00] And. Oh, you’re very welcome. getting with that though, what’s the process like or what was the process like? I know right now the final season’s closed Wars is coming, are currently showing, what was the process like for you? did they give you an episode and you have a week or two to score it, or did you score prior? Like how does that all work. for this one, yeah. We, they give me an episode. I get about two weeks to score each episode. sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. we use live players. so. I have to orchestrate everything. We’re on a budget.  we don’t have the, London Philharmonic every week but we go to Prague, we go to Budapest, Hungary, so we have live players all the time. and, I score to the pretty close to finish picture. th that it’s my change or. There might be an animation that’s not finished, but, all the voice actors are in pretty much, and I’m, I’m [00:19:00] watching the pretty close to a finished picture while I’m composing.  what’s it like? you talked a little bit about it with, George Lucas and Dave millennium. I’m a Pittsburgh boy, myself, born and raised in Pittsburgh. So they flew these right from my backyard. And it was a dream of mine as a kid to one day try and work for Lucas and Lucas film and stuff like that. And he did it from Pittsburgh. What was it like working with him? I know that he’s pretty much taken over the reigns of a lot of that stuff, so. Was there a lot of influence from Lucas in the beginning and then more Filoni later on, or was it, how did that work? Yeah, I would say that’s fairly accurate. you know, there’s a great coffee table book. it’s got a very young George Lucas and Mark Hamill on the set of the first, of, of a new hope out in the desert. and there’s a lot of, it’s not just a picture book, it’s got a lot of. of the story of the making of star Wars and talks about George, how he, [00:20:00] I mean, the, at one time the script was, I think one third in Japanese with subtitles, you know, and that’s how he, he, because he got all into cortosol or something.  so George was a guy who really. Really wants to push the limit and really always wants to do something differently. He doesn’t want to do the same thing. Oh, you know, that’s been done. He’s always, and when you do that, you’re going to make mistakes. Like I think it would have been a mistake to have a third of star Wars in Japanese. And so he, he figured that out eventually, and he didn’t make it like that, but he did retain a lot of the samurai influence. You know it in the film. So that’s where his genius is just. Unbelievable. And knowing when to throw things up. Yeah. So knowing what’s should stick and what should be, what’s gone too far. And he would do that with me, I mean, he would bring in the hip hop tracks [00:21:00] and things that his son was listening to and say, Hey, you know, let’s do this during when it in his Y wing or X wing or whatever he was in, in this battle scene. And I’m like. Yeah. I don’t think hip hop is going to work in this. right. But, but George told me to do it, so I got to do it. And, I mean I understood what he was going for because I knew that experimental kind of mindset he had. So I would, I would do something that would be really, really super hip hop, but I would also come in with, with something that was a hybrid that’s still had the orchestra in it. And as well as maybe some beats and hip hops and sounds or whatever, that would kind of allude to that. And I played first the straight hip hop one for him, and he would go, well, what do you think? And like one time, and I hadn’t planned to say this, but it just, it came to a man like, man, I think that kind of makes us like [00:22:00] power Rangers, you know, I just don’t think it’s star Wars. You know, there was like a gasp in the room. You know, there’s like 20 executives in this room and they’re all like before George came in the room, they’re all like begging me like, don’t do it. We can’t have hip hop in. You know, don’t let them do that. And then, but then when he walked in the room, no, everybody’s shut up cause I’m the one that’s my next on the chopping block. You know, nobody will say anything. So anyhow, when I said the power Rangers thing, everybody there was like a gasp in the room. And he’s like, Oh yeah, you need nodded. And so then I played him the, the one that had the orchestra, but some, some of those elements still in it. And he listened and he was. He was hip enough to understand that that was a better choice. And so it’s just so cool working with a guy that’ll give you first, that’ll push you. But then we’ll also take your opinion as valid [00:23:00] and really ask you what you think and let an expert do what an expert is supposed to do. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: That’s really cool. So while you’re working on rebels, and this is a, I’d be remiss if I didn’t ask you about this show because my wife loves this show, but while you’re working on rebels, you were also working on Jane the Virgin, and you’re also working on making your murderer. Those are three very different types of shows, not only in Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah. I had the picture, the right file went to the right people. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Oh, I’m sure. I guess I imagined sitting in the star Wars file over to Jane the Virgin and having that. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: this film, they’re like, what are all these Congo drums and Bango. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: I mean it would’ve made for a fun episode. All right, so when you’re working on Jane the Virgin, what’s the process for, you know, you said you had like the full episode flights. I start with ones with any, had like two weeks to, you know, get through. That was Jane. The Virgin similarity was, I wasn’t a tighter schedule cause it was a network show and more, super popular to more of the adult [00:24:00] rants. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: would vary. Sometimes. Those were one week turned around also with Jane, the Virgin. That’s a very special circumstance. I mean, I’ve done Oh thousands and thousands of hours of television in my 35 year career. And, I, I’ve never worked on a show where the process was the way it was in Jane the Virgin. it, it worked out great for Jane. It was just very unusual. So a lot of Jane. Was stuff that I would do during the summer and they would send me scripts and tell me what was going to happen and all these things. And I would prescribe for a lot of that show and give them tracks. And especially when I found out like things were working, like they, they wanted something that would start a certain way and then build and build and build. And, you know, I. I kind of figured out how the jokes were working and how the scenes were progressing. So a lot of the score for Jane was cut in by either a music editor or the picture [00:25:00] editors. although, you know, they would still have me score specific scenes. It was really kind of a mishmash of those two different techniques using previous tracks that I, I done, really, really unusual. and then making a murderer that was all scores picture. I, I’m very proud of the fact that I, I do really, really different styles. it’s something I consider my greatest strength is my range and my ability to be a kind of a chameleon. And I work really hard at that too. You know, you have to study different idioms really a lot. Yeah. I, I realize you have quite the array of different types of medium that you’ve. Composed with, video games, and television and animation. what would you say is probably your favorite,   well, there’s two different things, easiest and favorite favorites. So it takes those two questions then. doing an animated show for one thing. [00:26:00] Animation is the hardest thing any composer will ever work in. I’ve been nominated for a number of Annie’s, and, and he says it’s like the Amie sort of Oscars for animation. And. I have never one, but I have a speech prepared. And part of that speech would be just to congratulate my fellow nominees because if you’re nominated for a nanny, it just means you’re a really good composer, period. Because writing music for animation is really fricking hard. And then taking now star Wars and it’s animation. I mean, the level of difficulty is, is higher than anything I’ve ever, ever worked on in my life. I, I love, I mean. You know, I don’t think it, anything tops working on star Wars. I, I just don’t think anything can top that. I also, I love working on doom patrol that is just so fun. [00:27:00] Completely different style of music. Really, really electronic, really hip and cutting edge and makes me, you know, keeps me really current.   I really, yeah, it’s a really fun show. Titans is fantastic. similar style musically. Narcos is really, really a great show to work on. the acting and the writing and the stories are unbelievable in, in that show. so those are kind of highlights for me. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: That’s cool. So you were doing a lot of recently, I mean, throughout your whole career, really doing a lot of, you know, comic book related or scifi fantasy related, you know, scores. I assume, and tell me if I’m wrong, but I assume that means you, liked comic books and nerdy stuff. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: yeah, I do. I, I. I went to every midnight showing a star Wars, except for a new hope, because I don’t think there was a midnight showing for a new hope. so I was a geek, way before [00:28:00] I got the gig. like I said, way back in the day, doing super boy. I mean, Superman. I was such a fan of Superman. I mean, I was, I, when I was a kid, I’d fly over the couch with the towel around my neck and stuff and yeah, it’s just, I wasn’t, I wasn’t quarterback of the football team. I’ll put it that John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: me, me, me either. so outside of star Wars, obviously star Wars is a huge thing for you. What, and Superman to Superman might be your answer. And that’s fine. when it comes to comic books and caring characters, what would you say is you love the most. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: So it’s probably changed now that I’m an adult, but when I was kid, Spiderman was my thing. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Oh, nice. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah, and I mean, I was watching the old spider man bite, or man, yeah, that was the one I was watching. you know, I really, I was pretty young. I really loved the Batman TV show. I didn’t really, I don’t think I knew they [00:29:00] were a joke. but they were, I got to work with Adam West. So 20 years ago, and it was so cool. I did a thing, and then just to hang out with him. it’s just so cool for me. I don’t know. I found it ripped that way. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: I think we all would. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah. I, I really love the characters in doom patrol right now as an adult. I didn’t know about doing patrol and in my earlier years, It’s just, it’s so cool the way it doesn’t take itself seriously, and yet it kind of does in another way. I mean, there’s, the stories are really intricate and there’s some really, really deep backstories to the characters and their emotions, and it’s really, really a neat property. I’m so, so happy to be part of that. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: have you read any of the comics is based off of for doom patrol Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: No, I [00:30:00] haven’t. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: now, a lot of people haven’t. If you ever get a chance to and feel like reading some comics, the newest doom patrol series from young animal is, it’s phenomenal. It’s, it’s, it’s just the same vein as the same vein with similar vein as a TV show and it’s done really, really well. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah. so when I was growing up, my, my brother does computer animation and he has for like 30 years, he was a huge, much more of a comic book fan than I was. I was more comic TV shows, whatever there were, which it’s probably Spiderman and Batman. There’s all that. It was, I, I remember there was some gigantor, but I don’t know if that ever came, if that came from a comic or not. It was Japanese. anyhow. My mom thought that comics were like the most evil, you know, just, they would turn your mind to mush kind of things in the world. And so he literally had to hide his [00:31:00] comics under the mattress, like you would a Playboy or something, you know, when we were growing up. And I, I just, I, I was never a huge comic book reader. I was, I was more just, I would watch, I, I’m, I, I’m much more work with visual medium, I guess. That’s kinda a thing. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah. So going back to composing, cause that’s, you know, what you do. is there, a project or a, something out there that you haven’t done or haven’t been able to work on that you would want to work on? That’s like, if I could do this, obviously star Wars, you already said it’s like the dream for you, but outside of star Wars, that if you could get it and work on it, that would be awesome for you. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: man, that’s funny. I am so happy doing what I’m doing right now. I, I mean, so, you know, right now I, and also it should be, I should tell you guys that I work with my sons these days. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Oh, that’s cool. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: they’re both really good composers. and [00:32:00] for instance, like the bad batch theme, which is. kicks off the first, of season seven of clone Wars that was composed mostly by my oldest son, Sean. And, and my, my other son, Dean, works a lot on Narcos with me and, and Jane the Virgin and making a murderer. He worked a lot in that. he went to the Berkeley college of music in Boston. my son Sean was like a piano prodigy kind of when he was young. But, Any, anyhow, so they’re really great musicians and it’s kind of taken, it’s allowed me to not really have ghostwriters and still do five shows, because it’s kind of team Kiner now over here, and we have three studios here at my house. It’s separate rooms, separate buildings, and they all work here. So I’m currently doing Titans, doing patrol. when I just just say clone Wars, and Narcos is [00:33:00] coming up. they had to stop filming in Mexico, but they’ll start up a little bit again and, city on a Hill, which is a Kevin bacon show on Showtime, which is really cool. Show John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: I haven’t watched that one yet, but I’ve heard about it. I’ve heard it’s good. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Oh, it’s really good. Yeah. And Kevin Bacon’s fabulous in it. that was an audition as well. I mean, those are all really good shows and I mean if I can keep doing this quality of stuff, I’m kind of exactly where I’d always hoped to be really. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: I mean, you’re kind of living the crater dream of like. Whatever medium you work in and then having your kids be interested in it as well. And get into it with you. I mean for me, I have five kids and if my oldest one is 17 my youngest one is six. If any of my kids pick up any of the creative stuff that I, that I am into, I write and I draw and I print music and I do podcasts. And if any of them pick up my interest, no, that’d be like a dream come true for me. Cause they’re like, yeah, come, come to my nerd world, come to my [00:34:00] creative world. You know? And it just, I love hearing that people have their kids coming in, want to do the same thing cause it’s. Obviously it’s been my dream for years for my kids to take it on. What I like, what I like. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah, you know, my wife and I, we never pushed our kids into it. We, I made sure, like at about six years old, they all had music lessons. and they all kind of went different paths. and my daughter is a visual artist. She actually quit music fairly and she quit music. I always give her trouble cause I just purchased a fairly expensive Alto flute. She was a flute player and Alto flutes, a larger flute than a normal seafood. And so she really, you know, she needed to, she had a solo and she needed an Alto flute. So I buy this thing and then two months later she quits my man. And I always give her. I mean, she can draw you. She went to the Academy of art in San Francisco. Really, really good place. Got her master’s degree. She can draw you like a photograph when just from a [00:35:00] setting. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Oh, it’s awesome.  Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: so my kids are all artists and we never pushed them in that direction. we just said, unlike my mother who told me I couldn’t be a musician, I never wanted to do that to my kids. and I’m not faulting my mom. I mean, that was a generation where I mean, they came up through world war two and if you were making a living, you were lucky, so that was the focus. And not so much following your dream for those, for that generation. But anyhow, I haven’t, I’m just really, I, yeah, I’m really blessed. I know very few people. I knew Joel Goldsmith, who was Jerry Goldsmith son. and Jerry wrote some of the great soundtracks from the Allman too. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Right, Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: mean, various, one of the great soundtrack writers ever, Joel Goldsmith was one of my best friends and he’s passed away, but he’s one of the few guys who’s really, you know, was. Was very successful on his own [00:36:00] and being the son, I think some of the Newmans like Thomas Newman is, there’s a whole Newman lineage of the Lionel Newman and, and, Alfred Newman who worked at one of them was the head of Fox music. Wait, where he wrote that today on He wrote that. And now Tom Newman’s, you know, one of the great film composers who’s alive, and, his cousin, David Newman, is great conductor and composer. yeah. Yeah. So there’s that. But there’s very few, you know, in our business, I’m proud of my kids, really proud of them. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: That’s awesome. Yeah. I kind of did the same thing with my kids. You know, I don’t push them to do anything. Let them find their own track. I mean, you know, I offered them all had some sort of music lessons, whether it was the ones that actually went to class or the ones that just sat with me and cause they didn’t want to go to class and I taught them what I knew. And then art classes too. Cause my kids love art. And my eldest son, he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about creativity. He wants to steal fishing all the time. All he cares about fishing, [00:37:00] which is so weird because I can’t stand, I’ve never liked fishing. My dad didn’t like fishing. Nobody in my family on my side likes fishing. But he’s like all he wants to be is out, outdoors and fishing, which I mean I bought him a boat and got him Elvis fishing equipment. He goes fishing on it cause we live close to a Lake which is great for him. But it’s just funny cause he had. I bought him a guitar similar to your daughter with the food. I bought him this nice guitar and then he played it for like a month and then it’s, it’s been under his bed for three years. So you never tell. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: We all have our own things, you know? John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah. Yeah. So you’ve kind of talked about your career, kind of starting at the beginning a little bit, then jumping way ahead there. And we’ve talked about what you’re currently doing here, and we, I asked the question about what you’d like to do, and you’ve, you’ve talked about the shows you’re currently working on. do you see yourself continuing doing just a Murray, a very wide range of TV shows like consistently, or do you, do. I mean, you said you’re happy doing that, but, or do you want to do film as well? More film as well or [00:38:00] just or as TV show, like your, your happy point Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: you know, it’s, these days is so much the golden age of, of content in television. It’s kind of weird to even call it television. It’s sort of a different thing. I mean, really some of the greatest things I’ve had shows that I’ve ever seen in my life, or like game of Thrones and Westworld and you know, whatever. I mean, nevermind movie or TV show, you can’t really call it that or can you, you know, it’s, it’s just great, great content. So, I mean, if it happens to be a feature, you know, if it was a star Wars feature, that would be a dream. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: That’d be cool. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: for sure. it’s always nice to have a really big budget and be able to use a big orchestra. I just want to keep doing really great content. Yeah. Keep getting paid for it. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: that’s very accurate. Very accurate. [00:39:00] Keep getting paid to do what you love to do. Right. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, gosh, I can’t believe I’ve been doing it for this long. I mean, you know, I got, my first show was in 1983 so that’s pretty nuts. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: You’ve got quite the career and, and, and it’s, it’s, it’s impressive to look back through your, your history of what you’ve done. It’s like, wow, all this stuff that I’ve seen in, you know, through my whole life, cause I’m 38 you know, I grew up in the eighties and nineties and a lot of stuff that you’ve done is stuff that I’ve watched and it’s just, it’s, it’s cool. It’s cool. You know I like it. I’d be remiss as well if I didn’t ask about that. It’s just because I want to, you did the score for the Nick fury movie with, David Hasselhoff. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: yeah, I did. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: What was that like. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Well, you know, at the time it was so cool because I knew about, you know, agents and Sheeler and you know, I knew about Nick fury and, and, so, you know, it was before, that was the first time that came out. So [00:40:00] it was really fun, you know, and. It was, it was what it was. I mean, you know, David Hasselhoff took it fairly seriously, and, and I think he did a good job. You know, it was a, it was a television film back in the day when, when those budgets weren’t maybe as good as they are now. But, yeah, it was, John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: it’s actually not bad. I actually enjoyed it when I wash it and back in the day I was, I was in high school when it came out. I thought I had fun with it. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah. I mean, there’s, there’s a lot of projects I did earlier in my career that, Well, I mean, super bowl is a great example. you know, that I really wish that the production was better than it was in the acting or whatever, but, but there were also, there were episodes of super boy that are really good. I mean, Joaquin Phoenix, like that was one of his first acting gigs. And, the director was a guy named David Nutter who’s like super a list, a director these days. And, You know, David called me and I remember that scene with walking Phoenix as a little boy. You know, he, [00:41:00] I mean, the only reason we knew him is because he was river Phoenix, his brother. So there was a scene where a Clark cat’s talking with them, I think it was in a library or something like that. And, and they, the director, David Nutter, he did this circular, he circled the table and a really tricky way where you couldn’t. You never saw the lights and stuff like that. And he was really proud of that. And he called me about that scene and we discussed that how I should score it and the way he wanted it to sound and stuff. So man, even that show, which, some people might consider a little campy or whatever, it has some really good moments where. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Oh yeah. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: it was awesome to score that and work with a really visionary director and, you know, and try to, you know, to, to make his project better. It was invaluable experience and a fun time. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah. I mean, can’t be or not. I said, I love that show. I watched it all the time and [00:42:00] I just thought it was really funny because one of the accuracy of played Clark Kent on that show, John Newton, I have no relation to him, but like my, my legal name is just the letter J and my legal middle name is just the letter in. I only have, I go by John cause it’s easier for people to understand, you know, John then explaining my name was just a letter all over and over again. but if you go back in Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: are your parents take these or what happened John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: So this, this, well, I’m actually, I’m the third in my, my youngest son’s the fourth, so there’s four people with this, letters for names, my, it comes from my parents. My, my lineage comes from the South and back in the early 19 hundreds late 18 hundreds my grandfather’s great uncle, his name was John Newton, and he was a. He was the first person in the family in the U S to make a name for himself. Right. So they named their son after him, which is what you got, but they just use the initials because he does, when he didn’t, he didn’t go by John Newton. He doesn’t buy the initials. So that all trickled down to now here I just have initials and so does my son. But I always like when I found out one of one of the, one of the actors was [00:43:00] named. It is a cool story. And then it’s interesting because. It’s, I spent my whole life, I’ve, in my life, I’ve gone by various names. Cause in high school I was J N cause my initial, I was in college, I was just J cause I was in college. And then I got married to my wife. It’s like, you know, you’re going by John because Jay’s not a real name. for the, for the show, the guy’s name was John Newton. Now I thought that was cool cause my name’s not John Newton, but if you go back far enough, that’s what it meant. So like I had this weird mental connection to the show of just, just because of that, you know. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: his name was John Hames Newton, I think too. And. You know, it was, it was kind of a shame that he quit. Although Chris, the guy who took over was really good as well. I think that was a really big misunderstanding. I think John May have had bad representation or something, but they kind of came to an impasse negotiating the second season, and I don’t know, it was a shame that, that he didn’t continue on in a way, although, you know, again, Jerry was really good [00:44:00] too. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah, it was unfortunate, but I mean, both the actors did a great job on the show, so it were, I mean, it ultimately, it worked out for the fans, but you know, Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: I thought Stacy Hajduk was great in that show John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Oh, as, as Lana Lang. Yeah, she was great. I mean, she was the only one who was in all the episodes. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah. Is that so? Yeah, there. Wow. There’s a piece of trim. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah. She’s the only one who made it through all a hundred episodes. Everybody else could because they changed cast and the main supervise change over the first season. And she was the only constant, which was kind of cool. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: So I’m going to ask the questions you probably can’t answer Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Oh, I see. I was a constant, John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: yeah. Oh, well, yeah. Sorry. But you were on the show, you were in the background of the show. so. I am. DB has listed a UN, an untitled star Wars project for you. Can you talk about that at all or is that a no, no. Right now. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: I’m not aware of that listing. Is it a video game? I did John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: It’s a, it’s a video. It’s a video game. [00:45:00] Yeah. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: yeah, that that got shelved and I mean, I worked about two years on that. We recorded about 60 minutes of music with a great orchestra, and that. We’ll never see the light of day as a really sad situation. had nothing to do with the music. The though the entire project got shelved. And, I don’t know why. I have no idea why, but it was going to be cool. It was the show runner. she did a, what was it? uncharted maybe? John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah. Amy hailing. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Amy had a, she was really fun to work with. I really enjoyed working. She’s very similar to George Lucas. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Oh yeah. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: yeah. Just kind of a visionary and even her mannerisms and the way she, I dunno, just the way she was to work for us. Very similar to working with George. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Oh, that’s unfortunate. There’s not gonna [00:46:00] not going to come out. I hate, I mean. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: It sucks. I mean, can you, I mean, I got paid, but that’s not what it’s about. You know? I mean, I have themes in that thing that are some of the best themes I’ve written. My son has. Both of my sons have really good themes that we can’t use ever. It’s very John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: worst. You have great stuff you love but can’t share it and use it and it’s just, that sucks. Do you think you’ve ever, ever be able to like let fans here that ever at all, or it’s just its shelf the night not able to be used. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Cause it was, you know, it was the two largest video game companies on earth. It was Sony in conjunction with electronic arts, EA and Sony. So I have a feeling like 3000 lawyers would come and like machine gun out since like that or something. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yeah, probably so let’s not do that. Oh, man. Well, Kevin, we’ve been talking for about an hour now. It’s kind of crazy how time flies when you’re having fun. I want to thank you again for coming [00:47:00] on and sharing your insight with all this stuff that you’ve done and, and listening to our silly stories and, and having some fun with us tonight. I really appreciate that. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Well, it’s great to meet you and I hope everybody gets to see the new season of clone Wars cause it’s the best. And I always tell people it’s, it’s what. We all hoped clone Wars would be when we started 1213 years ago with George. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: That’s awesome. Yeah, we’ll be, I watched clone Wars with my, my, my 14 year old is a huge star Wars fan. Like one of the things he wanted for his birthday, which was last month, was aide. You know, just lightsabers he just wanted lightsabers he, and he’s been asking me for a year now to go to Disneyland and get one of the Galaxy’s edge. Lightsabers that’s all he wants. But yeah, we’ll be, we’ll be watching that. Cause he, I think he already is watching the ones that are out. I haven’t, I haven’t sat with him yet though, but he’s watched all the star Wars stuff on the Disney plus app multiple times. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: And the soundtracks are available there, on the Disney side. and the, the, the third [00:48:00] installment or fourth, I forget, of the soundtracks, is all the new soundtracks going to come out in a few days, I John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Oh cool. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: And that’s all with a full orchestra. The city of Prague, a Philharmonic as well as a couple of, we did it. Couple of hours recording in Budapest, Hungary with their, their orchestra as well. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Oh, that’s awesome. That is awesome. Well, Kevin, again, thank you so much for coming on, and if you ever have anything you want us to push out on our site, on the podcast, you know, by all means, let us know. We’re happy to help promote whatever you have, because that’s what we do, is Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Well, if anybody wants to hear my music, you can hear it on Kevin kiner.com I don’t really have anything for sale, but if you want to just see what I’m doing, that’s where I’m at. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: for every, we’ll include a link to that on the, the show notes. So every, everything has to click on and go right there. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Awesome. Thank you. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yep. Alright. Can you do one more thing? Do you mind doing one more thing for us before you go? Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Sure, sure. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Would you mind doing us a bumper and just say, hi, I’m Kevin Kiner and composer of, you know, whatever you want to say, and then, [00:49:00] and then say, you’re listening to spoil their country. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Spoiler country. Is it thus boiler country or just spoiler country? John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: just spoiler country. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Hi, I’m Kevin Kiner. I’m the composer of star Wars clone Wars. And you’re listening to spoiler country. John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Perfect. Thank you so much. I really appreciate your time tonight. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Yo, it’s great to meet you and may the force be with you, John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: likewise, stay safe. Kevin and Robert – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: Okay, bye. Bye. [00:50:00] John – Kevin Kiner Interview.output: I’m off the phone. I can talk out loud. Yeah. We just finished. Oh, I had nothing else until one lady who does that, who’s the PR person for a bunch of people. We’re talking to her. [00:51:00] Yeah. We need the w 40 that door. Okay. He was cool. He was, he’s a composer. He posts, he can, he can post Jane the Virgin. I asked him about it cause he was composed. He was writing the scores for star Wars rebels, Jane the Virgin and making a murderer all at the same time. How do you do that? You talk to me. He’s like, he’s exactly, it was really fun having three very distinctly different shows and right, right in the music for every episode at the same time is the day the Virgin was weird. As you watch a show, it’s, it’s different. Claus shows, you’ll watch, they’ll send you a copy of, you know, the rough copy of the show to watch and come and score as you watch it, you know, so between the Virgin he, with the script, you’d have to read the script and he would pre compose your pre and post a lot of the scripts. And then. Sparking post certain stuff. They asked for it when they were done. That was pretty funny. [00:52:00]   “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry Interview scheduled by Jeffery Haas https://twitter.com/jhaasinterviews

You heard John talk with Mark back on our ECCC 2020 episode, and now we have brought him back to talk about all thinks Mark! We had a great time sitting down and chatting about all his work, both in comics and with working on super secret squirrel work. “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry Interview scheduled by Jeffery Haas https://twitter.com/jhaasinterviews Edited by Robert Slavinsky

We are back again with more fun talking with Renne! This time we talk about her time at Topps comics and a whole lot about Jackie Chan. We could seriously talk Jackie Chan all day. Jackie, if your reading this, come on the show! Renee is awesome, please click the links below to check her out! This interview comes from the great folks at Pros and Cons Celebrity Booking! For booking please contact evaink@aol.com! Pros and Cons Celebrity Booking: https://www.facebook.com/prosandconscelebritybooking/?fref=nf Eva Ink Artist Group: http://www.evainkpublishing.com/artistsgroup.asp “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry Interview scheduled by Jeffery Haas https://twitter.com/jhaasinterviews

Today we are joined with editor, writer, and head of Eva Ink Artist Group sa well as Pros and Cons Celebrity Booking, Renee Witterstaetter! We had a great time talking with Renee, so much so that we broke it out into two episodes since it’s over 2 hours of content! On this episode we talk all about her early career and her time at Marvel! This interview comes from the great folks at Pros and Cons Celebrity Booking! For booking please contact evaink@aol.com! Pros and Cons Celebrity Booking: https://www.facebook.com/prosandconscelebritybooking/?fref=nf Eva Ink Artist Group: http://www.evainkpublishing.com/artistsgroup.asp Transcription by a drunk robot. Transcript Rene Witerstaetter Interview [00:00:00] Kenric R.: Join the army of the spoilers and welcome back to the country. I’m kinda Gregan. That’s mr Horsley. And today on the show, well, she is the owner proprietor, creator of the Eva inc artist group, pros and con celebrity booking. And she’s been an editor within the comic book industry for a very, for quite a few years. And this is, it’s. Time for Renee. What is data, isn’t it? John H.: Yeah, it is. It is. She’s the editor or writer. She’s a lot of fun to talk with. We had a great time. We talked about what’s it’s, it’s kind of cool because this is one of the few terms where I actually bought a book on the show and I have it right there and it is beautiful, by the way. Kenric R.: Yeah, it’s she, she’s, yeah. She’s done some amazing things when we started talking with her, when I. When we booked her to come on. Renee is a very cool girl to talk with. She’s just, she’s a hoot. She really is. She has [00:01:00] stories for days. Uh, we use, we actually use her services to bring guests on, which is amazing. And, uh, you’ve heard quite a few of them. Actually. Mark Rolston came through Renee, uh, which was awesome. And she’s had a. Flourishing career and a very colorful career herself. So to get her on and to go over everything. And once you start, like when you book somebody, you start like researching so that you can talk with them. And the amount of information that came flowing through about Renee was like, Holy crap, this girl has done everything, you know? Yeah. It’s just awesome. And then she was just so open and just so affable. I think you guys are gonna really enjoy this. This interview. John H.: yeah. We had a lot of fun talking with her and it was a, there’s a certain, certain people who stand out as being, you know, a good time and a good time and good fun to talk with. And this is one of them for sure. Kenric R.: Yeah. There you guys go. All right, well let’s sit back and relax and, uh, listen to Renee in her own words. [00:02:00] All right guys. Thanks for coming back and today on the show, it’s a w well, this is, this is really cool actually, because. Uh, she is somebody that I was not aware of growing up and I feel like I should have. Um, she has, she’s a writer and editor, a publisher, an artist agent. Uh, she’s worked with the likes of John Byrne, Jackie Chan, and the list just keeps going on and on. She actually worked with one of the greatest artists cover artists that you probably don’t even know existed, [00:03:00] but did DC stuff for 30 years in Nick Cardi. Um. Renee Witter. Statter thank you so much for coming on. Rene W.: Hi guys. Thanks for having me. Happy to be here. Kenric R.: Yeah, this is, um, you’ve had a long in spanning career. It’s kind of amazing, actually. Rene W.: It’s been multifaceted for sure. Kenric R.: Yeah. You know, I go through and I start reading about people and looking them up, and. You graduated at a college with a a, a degree in, in, uh, journalism and English, but then you started reporting on boxing. What was that Rene W.: guess I did. Yeah, but you did your research. Kenric R.: Always. Always, Rene W.: Well, you know, I’m having a degree in journalism and English. I was always working on some sort of article, but the types of articles that I enjoyed the most were feature articles because. I always thought [00:04:00] everybody has a story no matter who they are, and you just have to find out what it is about that person that is interesting and conveyed in a way that people can relate to them. And the world of boxing. I got into sort of sideways. I had a professor in college who was my Shakespeare professor. His name was Dr. Lawrence McNamee. Very well known teacher at that university. Very, very gifted Shakespeare professor. But he had a great interest in boxing and, uh, because his father had been a boxer and he grew up in Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh pirates fan, and was really enamored with the whole world of boxing and actually knew a lot of the people. George Foreman, um, you know, uh, Sonny Liston. A lot of the, a lot of the old time boxers too. So he had been covering boxing for a long time and he and I [00:05:00] actually started working on articles together. Not for boxing at first, but the concept was editor of the newspaper at my college doc had this thing. Where he would get together, uh, groups of people, actors, uh, other people that wanted to get involved in the community. And he, one of the things he did was he would take his traveling Shakespeare group to places like prisons. Are, um, you know, retirement homes, prisons were probably the most out there thing we did. Then he would actually take our group to places like that. And I would come along as the reporter reporting on whatever we were doing, where we were going, and then I would do articles about it for the, for the newspapers. Uh, yeah, that was wild. We went into a maximum security prison in Texas, and I was the only girl. Uh, I think we were doing a SLO, uh, if I [00:06:00] remember correctly. And even the female parts in the pride were being played by men because there was a strict rule in the prison that women could not come in and it was a maximum security male only prison. But they somehow got me in and the warden said, he’s like, okay, you can come, but you have to be dressed from neck to toe. You cannot show it any skin at all. And you know, because otherwise there could be like some trouble. So I, okay. So I wore like the most. And attractive flour sack I could find, but even then, you’re in this auditorium full of a thousand people and you’re the only female. It was, it was a bit disconcerting, but very memorable. So that’s the kind of thing doc did, and he was always doing something like that. He would. Go to Vegas before the big [00:07:00] fights and interview all the fighters and you know, he knew Don King and, and Tyson and all these people. So I started working with him on the boxing articles too, and started tagging along to Vegas and ended up being at parties and Don King’s suite and interviewing Tyson and Holyfield and all these crazy guys. Oh yeah. George Foreman was a hoot too. I love George. He was probably one of the nicest guys I met in that world. Not all of them were nice, believe it or not, I’m John H.: It was shocking. Rene W.: But, uh, but George was, George was a hoot. I really liked him. We went to his house down in Texas one time, you know, and he’s the Reverend George Foreman at that point. And, uh. We went to his house. And, uh, when you went to George’s house, you had to take your shoes off. And so he’d take your shoes off and go into his house, [00:08:00] and then he starts introducing you to his sons. And I, and I swear to you, it is true that you’re all named George, so Kenric R.: Yeah. I was just going to ask you that. I was like, I heard that like all his kids are named George. It’s just the sense, Rene W.: yeah, it is true. He didn’t want any of them to still slide. It. Kenric R.: Oh, that’s so funny. Rene W.: He wanted all of them to know that he loved them equally. So, Kenric R.: Oh, that’s kind of Rene W.: And I love doc. Every time they see doc with his Pittsburgh pirate hat on, they go, Oh, here comes the professor. You know, he was a, he was a character. So I learned a lot from him and, uh, had some great adventures. We had a lot of really fun adventures, uh, doing articles together. And he was, he was one of my mentors and a really. Fascinating man. I really want to write a book about him someday and I will. That’s one of my things that I have to do while I’m still on this earth. Kenric R.: Yeah. I mean, that would be amazing read, because that’s quite the life. Rene W.: Well, he was a violinist. He was a [00:09:00] Shakespeare professor, boxing expert, and I forgot to mention this. He was actually a translator at the newer Enberg trials. John H.: What. Kenric R.: Oh my God. Rene W.: a most amazing wife Kenric R.: He’s got stories for days Rene W.: Oh, yeah. He, uh, he grew up in Pittsburgh and his family, his father, his brothers, a lot of them worked in the coal mine, and he really thought that was going to be his future, was working in the coal mine. And, uh. Then it was, um, discerned that he was going to, um, he was a Catholic. It was decided that he was going to go into the, uh, the ministry and become a Catholic priest. But while he was in school, uh, his voice changed and they kicked him out of the choir. At that point, he was like, well, I don’t think I want to be a [00:10:00] priest after all. And he became, uh, you know, through the course of other events, he became a Shakespeare professor. He actually had a very long, uh, correspondence with people like Lawrence, Olivia. I mean, just, just a fascinating man estimating life. And, uh, you know, there’s a book in there. Definitely. Kenric R.: that’s awesome. I mean, I couldn’t even imagine being at the Nuremberg trials Rene W.: I know, right. Kenric R.: I mean, it’s like, what are you doing? He was transcribing or translating, Rene W.: He was a, he was translating, like someone would be on the witness stand and then he would, he would translate what they were saying. Kenric R.: so he spoke another language. Obviously. Rene W.: you spoke German. I forgot to mention that. Yes. He was fluent in German. Kenric R.: Wow. That’s incredible though. I mean, it’s like, Oh, Rene W.: fascinating man. And I have to say, he is one of the people, one of the top five [00:11:00] people that if not for him, I would not be on the path that I am now. You know, you meet these people in life and they’re like a Boulder in the middle of the river. You know, when you hit that Boulder, you’re going to go one way or the other, Kenric R.: Yeah, that’s a great analogy. Yeah, John H.: That Rene W.: of the people that put me on this path for Kenric R.: isn’t it funny, like I talked to people that, that they, you know, I don’t want to go to college, and I’m like, it’s the experience of college and the people that you meet, and like the professors that you get to meet can change your life. You Rene W.: Oh yeah. Well, absolutely. I think the first teacher I had that really changed my life, not to talk too much about the, the ancient past, but Kenric R.: okay. Rene W.: You know, my, uh, I have two that really come to mind. Well, actually three, but one of them was a bad experience, so I shouldn’t mention him by name, but, but I mean, I had, I had two teachers that really had a very positive influence on me. And [00:12:00] you know, my third grade teacher who took me in and like gave me the love of breathing. I remember her so vividly. And just having someone that. Takes the time to teach a child and to, to give them that attention. But one of the most, uh, influential teachers I ever had, her name was Connie penny, and she was my journalism teacher in high school. I was a very shy kid when I was growing up. I was overweight for a lot of my life and I, um, spent a lot of time reading and I spent a lot of time watching old movies. And a lot of time riding, and I was an artist when I was younger too, so I was one of those kids that, that spent a lot of time in my head and I didn’t know what course I wanted for my life. And my brother Robert. Was in journalism in high school. He [00:13:00] was, is three years older than me and there was a journalism party and I was still in junior high. And he said, well, come to this party with me. So I went with him and, uh, it was putting me on another one of those folders in the stream. It’s like, put me. It changed my life because I met Tommy penny, the journalism teacher, this precarious outgoing woman who had once gone on a date with Elvis. I mean, she was that kind of woman, you know, Kenric R.: That’s awesome. Rene W.: was just full of life. And I said, wow, you know, and she’s someone that you wanted to be around. Kenric R.: Yeah. Rene W.: And because of her, I said, well, I’m going to sign up for journalism. Even, even though I was the shy kid, I, I was, I should digress a little bit and say that I was the editor of my junior high school paper too, which is one of the reasons Robert him in me to this thing because he knew that I had an interest in any history and Kenric R.: could see that bug. You can see that, see [00:14:00] that itch scratching at you. Rene W.: Yeah, he knew that I had an interest in that and I was a big history buff back then too. And, um, you know, would make slideshow documentaries on world war II and things like that for fun. Uh, so he, uh, he introduced me to Connie penny. I got into journalism and became the editor of my paper in high school also. And, uh, she was Kenric R.: There’s a theme going on. Rene W.: Yeah. She recently passed away and, uh, but I always remember her, you know, she, she just, her fizzy humor, she even named, here’s, here’s what she named her daughter. She named her daughter, precious. Her daughter’s name was precious penny, so she’s, she’s just a, I’ll never forget her. She’s just another one of those bigger than life people that you, that influence your life sometimes. So yeah. So long story short, yes, [00:15:00] I was in journalism. That’s what, what was really became the focus. For me. Uh, and I think mostly because it was you being a shy person when I was growing up, it was a way to relate to people because when you’re a reporter, you’ve got to ask people questions. You know, you got to, you know, you’ve got to interact with people. And, um, and then like I said, in, in, in, yeah. In, in, in the same vein as that. I always found it fascinating to find out people’s stories Kenric R.: Yeah. Rene W.: so. Kenric R.: Yeah. It’s nice. I love hearing people’s journey more than the, more than just the successes, you know what I mean? The actual, like when we talk to people, I always try to get them to start talking about things, uh, how they got to where they’re at. Because inevitably it’s always so more interesting than just the fact that they have this one, you know, [00:16:00] one or two or this giant success story, you know? But they had to do all these things to get there. And it’s, I find it remarkably fascinating. Rene W.: It’s all about choices, isn’t it? Really? Kenric R.: Yeah. So Rene W.: Because you can choose to stay at home. Or you can choose to go out to this party. You know, if you stay at home, probably nothing’s going to happen. But if you go out to dinner and meet somebody new, if you go to some of it and meet somebody new, something has happened. Kenric R.: Yeah. Yeah. You get you gotta. You gotta be open to two experiences Rene W.: Absolutely. And if a door opens, you have to decide if you’re going to walk through that door or not. It may be scary there. It may be dark in that next room. You don’t know what’s going to happen, but one thing’s for sure, if you don’t walk through that door, nothing’s going to happen. Kenric R.: right? That’s exactly right. Rene W.: myself that sometimes. You know, it’s like, well, yeah, it can be scary. [00:17:00] It could be scary, but it could also be exciting. It could also be fun. It could also be okay. Something that is supposed to be you Kenric R.: Well, and sometimes when you go through that bad stuff because you made a wrong choice at the end, when you come out of it, all of a sudden, all these other things open up because you went through that. Rene W.: yes, absolutely. I have. I have examples of that. Two years ago, I’m talking maybe 20 years ago, I got a fortune cookie and I think I still have this fortune somewhere because it was, to me at the time, it was the most profound fortune cookie that I ever got ever, ever cracked open. And the fortune was, it’s better to have remorse than to have regrets. It’s better to have done something. And say, Oh dang, that didn’t go the way I thought it would. Kenric R.: Yep. Rene W.: to sit around your whole life and think, what if I had done that? Kenric R.: Yup. [00:18:00] Yeah, that’s, I’d keep that fortune too. Rene W.: Every once in a while. Thank you. Okay. That’d be really go the way I thought it would, but Hey, at least I tried it. Kenric R.: Yup. Yup. At least the tried. Rene W.: As long as it’s not skydiving, that goes wrong. You can always try again. Kenric R.: Right. John H.: Very true. Kenric R.: So after journalism and, well, I shouldn’t say after journalism, your next path in life led you to D C and you started editing with, um, Oh, what is his name? Rene W.: Mike Carlin. Kenric R.: Yeah, Mike Carlin. That’s right. That’s right. And you did, you did like what? Uh. Rene W.: There were a few steps along the way between journalism and that, let me just point out that journalism is still a part of my life because I still write, I still write historical books. I still write biographies. So I never really left that behind. Even when I was [00:19:00] an editor at Marvel, I was still write, um, articles about my life and try to. Give people a little insight into who I was and how I thought. But after college, my first degree, I mean my first degree, my first job was with a company called bulldog productions down in Dallas. And they put on, um, a lot of, uh, comic book conventions. But the most famous one they did was the Dallas fantasy fair. This was to me, really the fore runner of the modern day convention because it was run by a gentlemen named Larry Langford, who is now deceased. I’m too young, but, uh, Larry was one of the first people that really put together. Comic book shows other than San Diego that brought together writers and artists and actors. You know, he was one of the first people to really bring Stan Lee to a lot of shows and people like Adam West Kenric R.: Sounds like a Rene W.: and [00:20:00] TV people. Yeah. People like Butch Patrick from TV shows and it was a hoot. You know, he would bring all these people together and it was a very intimate. A scene because he was just hanging out with these people and really get to know them. Writers like Larry Nivon, you don’t have the people that I never dreamed of meeting when I was growing up. And I eventually became the co chair of that with, uh, with Larry. And I did that for about two or three years, less than three years. But through that experience, I met a lot of great people and a lot of fantastic people from the comic book world. People like Jim Salah corrupt, who is still a very different of mine to this day. And one of the people I met was the artist, Mike sec. I’m sure you know who Mike is. Um, and, uh, you know, he was one of the guests at the show and. He was friends with my Carlin and Mike had [00:21:00] mentioned to him that he was looking for a new assistant editor. And Mike called me up and said, Hey, you know, uh, cause I was looking for an assistant editor. Why don’t you apply for the job? I’ll put in a good word for you. And he did. He gave me a glowing recommendation and pretty much very, you know, within a day I had a job in, in New York. And I had to load up the, uh, the truck and moved to Beverly at that point, but I’m not, but it was New York instead. But it was like such an adventure for me at that time because I just had to load everything into this. You haul trailer. And my friend Keith Wilson, who is a used to work for DC comics, he’s also an artist, helped me drive the thing up to New York and we broke down about three times headed up there. The whole thing was just, it was just, I’m going, man, am I supposed to do this? Despite trying to [00:22:00] tell me that like, I am not supposed to go to New York. Finally, the radiator on the car blew out. We were in the middle of nowhere, and I don’t even remember what state it was, but I swear to you, we like broke down in the middle of nowhere and this truck comes along this, um, uh, haul to haul the car away and they stop. And this guy gets out in the middle of the night with the full moon. And he’s like, Oh, so your car is broken down. Well, I can, I can tell you to my shop and then we can fix it and get you back on the road by the morning. Probably. So they, they, they, we were like, okay, we’re, you know, so he, he like takes us to where his shop is. It is this dilapidated Victorian house on the top of the Hill with like junk cars all around it, silhouetted by a full moon. Kenric R.: Oh Rene W.: Yeah. [00:23:00] I’m thinking, you know, has there Kenric R.: King novel. Rene W.: to a horror movie more apropos than this? But anyway, we survived and he fix the car and I made it to New York and I worked for Carlin for, I worked with Carlin for about two years. Kenric R.: Yeah, Rene W.: So, you know, a lot of good things came from that. But just imagine this. Naive kid because I really was a kid at the time. And, uh, all my clothes had big floral print from them and big puffy sleeves because that’s what we wore in Texas at that time. And, and here I am in New York working at this publishing company and everyone’s wearing black Kenric R.: and you got Rene W.: in New York. Kenric R.: on your sleeves and they probably just thought you were adorable. Rene W.: Oh, I don’t know. I don’t know. I’m like wearing dresses to work every day and high heels and big floral prints, and I don’t [00:24:00] think I still had a mullet at that time. I think I’d grown my mode out, but thank God, but I kind of stick it. It kind of stood out a little bit. I didn’t, Kenric R.: that probably worked to your advantage too though, because, Oh, here’s this crazy girl coming up the street, but then you, you kick butt, you did exactly what you needed to do. Rene W.: I was, I tried, I tried, I think Carlyn taught me a lot. He, uh, he was, um, he was a hard ball, but he, he knew his job and he knew how to put together comic books and he taught me everything he taught me from. Yeah. He taught me everything about storytelling to, you know, balloon placements to, to working with writers and artists. I really learned so much from him, Kenric R.: Yeah, yeah, Rene W.: young and green, it really was a trial by fire and I’m sure I was frustrating to him because I [00:25:00] really didn’t know anything about putting together books, but when I first got there, but he made damn sure I learned. Kenric R.: Oh, I bet. Rene W.: So he was, you know, I cannot fault Mike because he, he really taught me everything and it served me well for a long time. Kenric R.: that’s good because sometimes you meet people, especially when you’re green on something and they don’t want to teach, you know, they want somebody that knows what they’re doing right off the bat. So it’s nice that he took the time to actually engrain into you the proper techniques. Rene W.: Yeah. I mean, keep in mind, I had come from a journalism background. And from there I was, I was doing PR for convention, so I had never put together a comic book in my life. I. Knew about storytelling for movies. And to me that was an interesting thing because I really always looked at comic books as a movie on paper. And I tried to think of it that way. Kenric R.: Yeah. That’s Rene W.: And, and I tried to think of the storytelling that [00:26:00] way. And I also found over time that my, my journalism came into play because every good story, no matter what it is, you have to answer the questions. You have to answer who, what, when, where, why, and how. Every story has to have that and it doesn’t matter what kind of story it is for it to be a complete story. And to be a satisfying story, you have to answer all those questions. So that doesn’t matter if it’s a movie, a comic book, uh, you know, a novel, you’ve got to answer a feature story in a newspaper. Every story has to answer those questions or you haven’t done your job. So in that regard, I think, uh, I think my journalism training came into play. Kenric R.: Where were you influenced by the hero’s journey with Joseph Campbell? Rene W.: I didn’t really know about the Joseph Campbell, the worst of Joseph Campbell when I was growing up. I only learned about that later when I met Michael [00:27:00] Golden, another fantastic artist, and Michael is a big fan of Joseph Campbell, Kenric R.: Yeah. Him and George Lucas both. Rene W.: Yeah. Well, I was going to say, inadvertently, I was a fan of Joseph Campbell because I was always a big star Wars fan, and I learned that I learned later, of course, that, uh, that sorts, Lucas was also very influenced by, by Campbell. Kenric R.: Yeah, that’s really cool actually. When you think about the influence of people and how it resonates throughout literature, and then it just keeps trickling down like you would be influenced by Joseph Campbell, not even knowing that you’re being influenced by Joseph Campbell. When you got over to Marvel, you started working with John Byrne. And you worked on sensational Shiho. You guys did the whole fourth wall breaking before that was even a thing to do. And what was working with with burn Lake? Was it, cause I mean, he’s a legend in the field. Rene W.: Oh yeah, it might. Well, let me just backtrack a little [00:28:00] bit and talk about Marvel for a minute. Kenric R.: Yeah, please do. Rene W.: that time, Marvel was like a big family, which is one of the reasons I went over there. I, I, I learned, you know, trial by fire at DC, but. DC was much more corporate back then than Marvel was. And I knew people that worked at Marvel, of course, because I had known, uh, Jim Salicrup from my Dallas days. And Jim called me up one day and said, Hey, Craig Anderson is looking for an assistant editor. And I, I really didn’t see any, um, promotional opportunities coming up anytime, stun at DC. So I made the jump. I jumped from one company to adapt from DC to Marvel. And at the time it was the perfect thing for me to do because. Marvel being by myself in New York, not having my family around me. Marvel was much more of a family atmosphere. You [00:29:00] worked with people, people hung out together. You were like a big family. It was, like I said before, it’s, you know, your joke around the office. We had Mark Grunewald there at the time who just made sure that there was a sense of comradery. He was always planning how between parties and really he was planning a party for anything. It was like, okay, Oh, it’s, uh, it’s, uh, June 5th, what’s all the party? And he, and he just, he made everybody feel like we were part of Marvel. And he also took time to train the assistant editors. Every week he would have assistant editor school. It and actually try to teach us the craft of putting together a comic book. So I had a lot of friends there and a great boss in Craig Anderson. We worked on silver surfer and guardians of the galaxy, and a lot of things that have since gone on to really explode. I tell you, when we were [00:30:00] doing guardians of the galaxy back then, I would have never predicted it would have become this big movie franchise. You know, I always loved it. It was always a lot of fun to work on. And it’s, it’s gratifying to see, even though the movies are a lot different than the comic books in so many ways, but it was, and we worked on Bennis quest. It was Jim stone. We worked on a lot of great things in that office. So when I, Oh, it is right. Very, very, so much fun to work on too. I love Jim. Uh, he’s a great guy. But one of the first things I got to work on when I became a full editor, when I got promoted to be a full editor, one of my first jobs that I got to work on was she Hawk and burn actually asked for me specific, um. Directly he wanted, because he had gone to, uh, Tom DeFalco and, uh, he was our editor in chief and, and he was looking for an editor to take over she Hawk. And he specifically asked for me [00:31:00] and I said, yeah, sure. Cause I had known John from socializing with him and some other people out in Connecticut. We would get together and have volleyball games. At his house, and so I knew him. We were friends, and so I said, yeah, that’d be a lot of fun. And working with John was a hoot. I mean, I actually looked forward to what we were going to do every day. We had a, we had a really good collaborative relationship. We would bounce story ideas off of each other, and John was very professional. Would always get the work in on time. He may and always good, always on time, always funny and always communicative. He never gave me a, uh, a moment slurry as far as him being, you’ve been there and doing this job and making it great. And he would always, uh, people [00:32:00] ask me sometimes, cause you know, he put me in as a character in the book. Kenric R.: Yay. Right. Which is awesome. Rene W.: people have asked me so often like, Oh, did you know John was going to do that? Did you, did you know you were going to be in the book? And, and, and the answer is no, I really didn’t. Because we would, we would do the stories, we would discuss what the story was gonna be, and then John would submit a script and I wouldn’t be in the script. And then he would draw the book. And then all of a sudden I would get the pages and sometimes they would already know my pages were already be inked and he would have put me, he put me in as a character, you know, and it’d be too late to change anything. Not that I would have anyway, cause I thought it was hilarious. Um, but he would always sneak it in and just, just, I think just to entertain me, cause he knew, he knew I got a kick out of it. And, uh, and it was just, it was just fun. You know, it was just some, one of those fun things that we did. [00:33:00] And I loved the little world he created for me in the comics, but too, because I, he would have me in this big palatial corner office with, uh, with, uh, you know, penthouse view and I, you know, guys bringing me a coffee on a tray in the morning and, and I guarantee you my existence at Marvel was not like that. For a long time. I didn’t even have an office that had a window. Kenric R.: Oh man, I’ve been there. I’ve done that. No window office. Rene W.: And I certainly didn’t have anyone bringing me coffee, but I had all those things so. Kenric R.: that’s so nice. Are you still coloring, Rene W.: I really don’t tell her much these days, only because when I was coloring, I, uh, I was using dr Martins dyes and mixing the colors myself. And, and when you were coloring each page, you were creating little paintings and, and, uh, [00:34:00] now it’s, it’s all digital and it’s a completely different skillset, completely different thing. And I will say though. That I really miss some of the coloring we were doing back then because to me, coloring is a storytelling tool. Kenric R.: Yeah. Rene W.: coloring is supposed to do is it is supposed to move the story along. It’s supposed to make your eye flow from panel to panel and page to page, and it’s supposed to be very clear what is going on. It’s a storytelling tool and I think a lot of the digital coloring is kind of losing that because it becomes very muddy. And if you have to, if you’re reading a book and you have to stop to try to figure it out, what’s going on in the art because the coloring isn’t doing its job. Then that’s the case. Coloring is not doing its job. Kenric R.: not setting that mood. Rene W.: Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s setting a mood. It’s setting the [00:35:00] stories. It’s, it’s one of the tools of our trade. And I always look for that when I’m hiring a colorist. I always look for someone that understands that, but basically I just don’t have time. Um, I, I’m so busy doing everything else these days and, and publishing the art books and in booking my clients and writing when I have the time. And. And the other things that I’m doing, I just don’t really have the time for the coloring anymore. If I were to do anything like that, I might get back to painting or doing my own art more than I would do it for comics these days, I think. Kenric R.: D I actually, this is actually a good question for you because I think you’ve seen the. You’ve seen the people that you’ve seen the old school guard and now you’re in, and now you’ve seen the new school, the new guard and the digital versus like you were just saying that you felt like you were more presenting a painting, you’re doing all this stuff. Do you think new artists would benefit [00:36:00] by doing more of their original by hand and having that secondary market of being able to go to cons and being a sell more that original stuff? Because. They have the ability to actually sell a physical. Rene W.: Well. Sure. Yeah. I think that as an agent, of course, I’m wanting my clients to, to make money for themselves and for me, I always prefer to have. You know, the, uh, the physical art. Um, and I think that fans love to see the physical art. And I, I just think it makes sense for an artist to have that cash flow revenue. You know, that, that revenue for themselves, but even if they don’t. I think that they, they need to be able to have that skill to, to produce an original. It’s by what to, uh, because you learn something different. It’s just a different [00:37:00] tactile thing. You learn something different, creating something with a pencil and an ink brush. Then you learn from doing it digitally. You can create art both ways, but I think just connecting to something. Um, you connect to things in different ways. If you connect something, if you connect to a piece of art by doing it, um, traditionally with pencil pencils or brush, you can get that sensibility in your head and you can still take that feeling into creating it digitally. Yeah. It’s just, it’s just, it’s a, it’s all the census coming together. And I, I think there’s a place for digital art. I think that, of course, that’s the way our industry’s going, um, that I’m trying to think of, you know, a good analogy. Um, you know, it’s like creating something from [00:38:00] scratch when you’re cooking, you know, and. Once you have that in your head of all these, what it takes to create that art, you’re creating that meal that you’re making. Taking all the ingredients out of the cupboard and putting them together and knowing how the different things smell and taste and work together in tandem. Once you have that sensibility in your head and that since memory, then you can use it anyway. Yeah, and it’s the same way with, with art. You know? It’s like, it’s. It has to be true no matter what you’re doing, whether it’s digital, R, R, you know, pen and ink. I don’t want to call it old school because I don’t think it’s old school. You know, I hate that term. I hate the term old school. I don’t think there is such a thing. Um, it’s, there’s no such thing as old school or new school. It’s just good school. Kenric R.: Yeah. Yeah, that’s a good Rene W.: create. Yeah. It does create good art. I don’t care how you create it, and if you, and that’s [00:39:00] whether it’s writing, painting, yeah. You know, sequential art. Just make it good, Kenric R.: you had a great quote. Rene W.: into it. Kenric R.: Yeah. You had a great quilt. And that I, cause when I was going through and going back through some of your old interviews and things and you said skillset should matter, not gen, gender not being compartmentalized cause you had a lot of positive support. And I kinda, it feels like that kind of leads into that. Rene W.: Oh yeah. I get asked that a lot too. Um, cause Kenric R.: to avoid asking you that because I kept thinking, here’s a, here’s someone who’s been in this arena for a long time. She knows what she’s doing. She’s obviously been successful at her career at all the different levels that she can be. How many times have you been asked the same question Rene W.: Ask that question so many times more than the last 10 years probably than ever. And I don’t want to minimalize the question because it is an [00:40:00] important question to a lot of women out there. Um, yeah, it’s just, it’s, it’s been my experience, me personally, that I’ve been given a lot of chances and I never felt like it was because of my gender. I always felt it was because I worked really hard. Kenric R.: Yeah. It’s refreshing. Rene W.: they’re there have never really felt, except for one instance that I ever felt like I was being put upon because of my gender are not being given something because of my gender. And the one time that did happen, I got myself out of it. You know, the one time I felt like that was happening, I said, well, you know, this situation isn’t working for me. But you know what? I will find a situation that does, and instead of [00:41:00] trying to stay there and, and, and fight it, uh, because I realized that it wasn’t going to change. I just got out. I found something else. And that was, that was like a, a tense situation. And I’m not going to go into it because I don’t like to dish dirt or name names. Um, and it was. John H.: I had a problem. Rene W.: Not so bad that I was ever physically in danger. It was more just like, I’m okay. You know, someone, you know, looking at you and making sort of snide comments every now and Kenric R.: Making you feel very uncomfortable. Rene W.: yeah, not even very uncomfortable. It was more like, I’m not the kind of person that I live. Things like that make me feel uncomfortable. I’m more the kind of person that when that happens, I’m like, well, F you. And you’re not going to make me feel uncomfortable because you don’t have control over me. Kenric R.: Right. I love that. Hey, [00:42:00] speaking of strong female roles, you worked on she Hawk, you guys broke the fourth wall. Well, before Deadpool ever did that, and whose idea was that? How did that come about? Rene W.: Although it was always John’s ideas. Yeah, that was, that was always Bern’s idea to do that. He, uh, he had some, some awesome ideas for that book. My input with that book would come when I was suggest maybe a direction for a story or a direction with a character, or he would run a plot by me and I would make some suggestions for some jokes and sometimes he would take them. Sometimes he wouldn’t. But believe me, John had John had plenty of, uh. Plenty of jokes on his own, and plenty of ideas for that book. Uh, but I always appreciated that we had that great collaborative relationship, but yeah, you’re right. We did it long before Deadpool. Kenric R.: Yeah. Yeah. Like quite a while. Quite a while. Quite a bit of John H.: a good 15 [00:43:00] years. Yeah. Did deployed it and break the fourth wall till they tell the, well, 10 years, the late nineties. Kenric R.: That’s incredible. There you go. And then. After Marvel, you did, you went and you did some stuff with tops comics. You did Jurassic park, and, uh, what else did you did? Um, Xena and Hercules and X-Files. Those were all pretty successful for tops comics. Rene W.: Okay, well, let me, let me back up a little bit. We’ll get to that, but I wanted to finish the, um, the female in comics Kenric R.: Oh, please do. Please Rene W.: Yeah. Back when I started in comics, there really wasn’t that many women in the industry. Um. You. I, I had worked, I had worked with a lot of, um, you know, bosses who mostly all were men. And, uh, so I had grew up with two older brothers who used to chase me around the house when I stole their comic books when I was a kid. [00:44:00] But I was, I was very used to, um, you know, working with men and being around men. And, uh, and dealing with that energy. But I understood at the time also that there really weren’t a lot of women in comics. There was, you know, just a few. I could probably name them on one hand, really, you know, Karen Berger and, uh, and, uh, Bobby Chase and Marie J. Evans, and, uh, you know, he’ll be, um, you know, he’ll be came later, he’ll be missing. But, Kenric R.: can, Bergen went over to dark horse comics, right? Rene W.: Yeah, she did. Kenric R.: Yup. Yup. Rene W.: Um, but she was at DC when I started at DC, so there really wasn’t, not a lot of women, and I apologize to any, I’m leaving out, but as time went on, you know, more and more women started getting into comics and you could see that by the demographics of the conventions too. More and more women started coming to shows and having an interest in, um. You know, in the conventions and [00:45:00] the characters. And as time went by, I also was able to work on projects where I was able to bring in more female creators. You know, I started hiring people like Trina Robbins and who hadn’t been working in comics at that time, and Amanda Conner, and bringing in more women to work in to the industry. And, but you know, I wasn’t hiring them because they were women. I was hiring them because they were good Kenric R.: I think that’s Rene W.: and that that was my point that I was making in the interview that you’re talking about. I never got a submission in the mail and looked at the name first to see whether it was a man or a woman. I looked at the art first to see if it was good to see if they knew what they were doing or if they were at a point where I could teach them to do it better. And the same with the script. If I read the synopsis [00:46:00] and it grabbed me off, I read the first three pages and I said, Hey, there’s something here. You didn’t add her to me, someone’s gender or their age or what country they lived in or anything else. It mattered to me that there was something good here and we could do something with it. Kenric R.: Yeah. That’s awesome. That’s the only thing should matter. Rene W.: yeah, I mean, to me that’s what matters is like, um. Yeah. We all have to be our best self, whatever that is. Kenric R.: Yeah, yeah. Just do your best and you know, if it’s meant to be, it’s going to happen. Rene W.: Right. So, and, and I, you know, I want more women in comics. I want more diversity. I want everything. I want us all to just be in comics and create good stuff and keep this industry going and keep it alive. And I’m very grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given. And, uh. You know, I’m happy when I can give opportunities to other people too, is I don’t know. I’ve had [00:47:00] a lot of people and in recent years come up to me and remind me that I gave them their first job or that I, you know, Kenric R.: that’s Rene W.: even to the point of like answering someone’s mail, like in the letter column was important to people. It’s like, Hey, you noticed me? You read my letter, you publish my letter. That was very important to me at the time. And it gave me confidence or it made me feel like I was part of the Marvel family, or you know, it’s like you never know what you do, how what you do is going to affect people, and that’s something we really have to keep in mind in this industry. When you create a story, when you write something that’s going out there and you don’t know the people yet that are reading it. Or what, what you’re saying is going to influence them in a positive way and in a negative way. You gotta be, you know, you gotta keep that in mind and you could put somebody on a whole path. You could be the Boulder in the stream for them and you don’t even [00:48:00] know it. Kenric R.: Yeah. This is, this is totally true. I mean, we try to be as positive as we can on this show and, and, you know, try to learn from everything. We’re not, you know, we’ll have people on and they might have a difference of opinion, but. You can learn something from somebody Rene W.: Oh, you liked something. Yeah. Yeah. You learn something from every experience, whether it’s good or bad, and Hey, I’m not saying I’m perfect. I mean, I’m sure that. I had pissed some people off in my career. I’m sure I’ve got some enemies here and there. If I do, I don’t really know cause I probably don’t talk to them anymore. But I’m sure, I’m sure I’ve got some people out there that don’t like me. Although, you know, I could probably name the people I don’t like on a few fingers that we won’t go there. Kenric R.: Right. Oh man, I was not John H.: expecting that to be two hours. That was cool. Kenric R.: she was cool though. She was great. I mean, I mean, you get to a point where you’re like, okay man, I gotta move [00:49:00] on to the next day. But dude, for all the stories and all the thumps, fucking amen. John H.: Fucking A’s Kenric R.: I was like, Holy shit. I was not expecting that much of. Like, dude, you got a Wikipedia page, dude, I had a freaking really dig down to find shit, you know? John H.: I know. I looked at other tools like there’s nothing there, but then she talks to like, how was this not on some blog pages, something. This is interesting stuff. Kenric R.: my God, she’s been, she’s done so much. She’s done so much to worked with so many people, and I love the fact that she was like, Oh my God, you asked the right questions. I was like, yeah, John H.: Makes me feel good. Yeah. I’m excited to get that book on Friday cause that book looks awesome and I’m all about, I’m all about world war two stuff Kenric R.: Oh dude, I would, I saw that. I was like, Oh my God, you know, I was like, that was amazing. And I knew that she had strong feelings for that guy. Um, just, you know what I mean? Cause she gotta be there at the near the end, but then do this with him, you know? And Nick Cardi is fucking a legend man. John H.: yeah. I bought the, I bought the tightened version cause I wanted the [00:50:00] big, the big copy of it, but Kenric R.: See no, I want the one that he did, you know, hers is John H.: I was going to buy it. I was going to their websites down to can’t pay anything off their site. Kenric R.: Uh. “Drinks and Comics with Spoiler Country!” https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC25ZJLg6vL4jjRgC1ebshCA Did you know we have a YouTube channel? https://youtube.com/channel/UCstl1UHQVUC85DrCagF-wuQ Follow us on Social Media: http://facebook.com/spoilercountry/ http://twitter.com/spoiler_country http://instagram.com/spoilercountry/ Kenric: http://twitter.com/XKenricX John: http://twitter.com/y2cl http://instagram.com/y2cl/ http://y2cl.net http://eynesanthology.com Casey: https://twitter.com/robotseatguitar https://thecomicjam.com/ Buy John’s Comics! http://y2cl.net/the-store/ Support us on Patreon: http://patreon.com/spoilercountry Interview scheduled by Jeffery Haas https://twitter.com/jhaasinterviews