Episode 619 - Robert Kirkman / Bob Fingerman
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fucking ears what the fucksters what the fuckadelics what the fuckleberry thins i am mark maron this is wtf thank you thank you for uh hanging out thanks for listening and
Marc:Hello to you wherever you are running.
Marc:Keep running.
Marc:Keep running.
Marc:You'll get there.
Marc:You'll become exactly the person you want to be soon.
Marc:It's going to happen.
Marc:You'll be perfect.
Marc:Everything will be in working order.
Marc:You will be a machine, a machine, an efficient machine that will never die.
Marc:All right.
Marc:Well, wait, that last part, that's a little crazy, but you'll feel better and it's good for you.
Marc:It's good for your heart.
Marc:Why am I not doing it?
Marc:I'm in a hotel in Portland, Oregon.
Marc:Had some great shows.
Marc:Me and the authentic character Dean Del Rey ripped it up here at the Aladdin Theater and at Revolution Hall, which is another venue.
Marc:Two different venues, two sold-out shows.
Marc:Killer, as Dean would say.
Marc:Today is a comic book-themed show.
Marc:Can we say that?
Marc:I believe it is.
Marc:I believe it is.
Marc:I'm going to spend a few minutes with Bob Fingerman because he's got the new edition of Minimum Wage, his comic.
Marc:It's available from Image Comics, and I'm in it.
Marc:I got a little story arc in there from the old days, from back in the day.
Marc:Yeah, and then I'm going to talk to Robert Kirkman, who you know probably as the writer and creator of The Walking Dead, along with artist Tony Moore.
Marc:And these are comic guys, and I'm sort of a fake comic guy.
Marc:I'll explain that in a minute, but let's get back to the Residence Inn and what it means to me as a human being, since I'm talking about the depth of things affecting me.
Marc:So I could have stayed at the place with the new mod look.
Marc:Some interesting bath products from a relatively expensive provider that perhaps uses local ingredients or whatnot.
Marc:But nope, I'm at the residence.
Marc:And quite honestly, I was excited that they had Paul Mitchell products because quite honestly, I've not used a Paul Mitchell product since I was in high school.
Marc:So it was like washing my hair and going back in time.
Marc:Perhaps I'm just getting too nostalgic.
Marc:But that a Wapahe shampoo, if you haven't used it since you thought it was a big deal 20 years ago, it's sort of like I remember this smell.
Marc:The amazing thing about the courtyard is that, you know, you go down, you got the free breakfast and that's the big pitch.
Marc:You know what I mean?
Marc:That's the thing that makes you want it.
Marc:Hey, you get up, you get free breakfast buffet from 6 to 9 on weekdays, 6 to 10 on weekends, and you get all that shitty food.
Marc:And the waffle maker, I know I've gotten hung up on the waffle maker, but this one is packed.
Marc:So you get a nice, weird sort of slice of America down there, just packed with people of all kinds.
Marc:It's right across the street from, I think, a fairly major hospital.
Marc:So you get sick people.
Marc:You get dying people.
Marc:You get people at all different phases of life eating crappy food.
Marc:And if that isn't America, I don't know what it is.
Marc:And, hey, I'm not above it.
Marc:I'm not judging.
Marc:As you know, I do the waffle thing occasionally, and I'll admit, I'll admit, I've done biscuits and gravy.
Marc:I've done biscuits and gravy at a residence inn, and there's no way that shit can be good.
Marc:No way.
Marc:But I've done it.
Marc:I don't feel good about it, but I've done it.
Marc:So that's what's going on here in Portland.
Marc:I didn't have the full Portland experience because I wanted to stay grounded in what...
Marc:You know, not in the antithesis of hipster, which is the breakfast buffet at the residence inn at Marriott.
Marc:So comic books.
Marc:What's my experience?
Marc:You know, what is my experience?
Marc:I came late.
Marc:I'm always, I don't know if you've started to realize this about me.
Marc:I'm always pretty late to the party by sometimes decades.
Marc:But I don't believe there is a late to the party anymore.
Marc:I believe in the world we live in.
Marc:Even when people say, you know, I just started listening to your show.
Marc:I'm late to the party.
Marc:I'm like, not really.
Marc:They're all there.
Marc:You can get them all.
Marc:So how late are you?
Marc:You're probably better off late to the party because then you can really appreciate it as opposed to being caught up in the momentum
Marc:of being at the party.
Marc:Sometimes after the party's over or where it's nearly over, you can really sort of see how it played out, whether the party was bullshit or not.
Marc:So being late to the party sometimes means that if you're late and the party's still going on, maybe that was a pretty good party.
Marc:But there was a period, I guess it was probably...
Marc:88, 89, when I was living in an attic in Somerville, a blue attic, someone had painted blue, I left it blue, couldn't stand up fully in that room.
Marc:And somehow or another, my time there sort of coincided with the release of Hellblazer and Sandman.
Marc:which were you know just comics and i was not a comic book guy really i never was in my youth i never was a marvel universe or dc guy i'd read some underground comic books why and what which i enjoyed but really my portal in was hellblazer and the reason that hellblazer resonated with me so deeply was because at that time i was still sort of coming off of drugs i was still slightly uh psychotic and paranoid
Marc:from uh from cocaine even though i was sober for at that time for about a year and a half but my brain was jarred so when i read hellblazer with john constantine i actually related to him i was like him and i are in similar situations
Marc:We're picking up a lot of mystical vibes.
Marc:We're reading the signs.
Marc:We're putting shit together.
Marc:We have a purpose here that we've been designated by a lot of forces that we might not quite understand.
Marc:But with some basic magic, we can harness this shit and help people out and maybe do some good in the world or at least know the fucking truth of what is happening.
Marc:So I was a kindred spirit with John Constantine in my fucked up brain.
Marc:So that's how that played out.
Marc:And then I got into Sandman through that, and then Swamp Thing backloaded in, I think, through Hellblazer.
Marc:And then I started reading some of the Underground stuff, some of the Charles Burns stuff, some of the Clow stuff, some of the Peter Baggs stuff.
Marc:And I always was really into Crumb, but it was always very specific to that stuff.
Marc:But I never went full on.
Marc:I did get into a pretty big Swamp Thing period where I was reading a lot of the Alan Moore, the old stuff.
Marc:And then
Marc:I'd read the comic novels.
Marc:I'd read some of the Batman stuff, some of the new stuff.
Marc:Either you've got a brain that fucking locks into the graphic novel or you don't.
Marc:I read The Watchmen, and I was late to the party when I read it, and then I read it again, and I was even later to the party, but I got it more the second time I read it.
Marc:And then I did go on a little bender, but it's one of those things, man.
Marc:Either you're going to commit your life to it or you're just going to dally for a while and then know that you did.
Marc:I'll read graphic novels on and off occasionally.
Marc:I find that when I have the time to sit down and read anything, if I lock into a graphic novel, I can do it.
Marc:Like, you know, Fingerman's minimum wage is a very personal, real story about him and New York and his wife.
Marc:And it was flattering for me to be a part of that.
Marc:But I don't I didn't stick with it because it's just it's a rabbit hole that never ends.
Marc:You know, you can be one of those people that goes down to the comic book store and picks up the 50 things that they pulled for you every week.
Marc:I couldn't keep up with that.
Marc:It was not something I wanted to do.
Marc:I think I was more social.
Marc:I enjoyed talking to people.
Marc:I enjoyed going outside.
Marc:It was not really my bag necessarily.
Marc:But The Walking Dead, I got into those volumes.
Marc:I haven't read them all, but Kirkman was interesting to talk to because I can talk to him about the business and a little bit with Fingerman as well because it is a business.
Marc:And I'm surprised how relatively...
Marc:easy it is to put your comic out into the world you know whether you know the distributor will pick it up it seems uh hit or miss but it seems like they're from what i understand from these guys like if you get it out there you can get into stores whether people like it who the fuck knows but that's the same with anything in this culture right now you got a podcast all right uh put it up see what happens
Marc:I'm in Portland now, but I was in New York a couple weeks ago, and Bob Fingerman lives in New York, and he had sent me a big stack of the comic books that I'm in, and we talked to each other.
Marc:We've gone in and out.
Marc:He's annoyed me.
Marc:I've annoyed him.
Marc:We generally find a level at which we engage, but I invited him up to talk a little bit about the new edition of the comic Minimum Wage, which is Bob's comic.
Marc:It's from Image Comics, and I'm in it.
Marc:So that was my drive.
Marc:How am I not going to talk to Bob about a comic book that he so diligently did his homework to put me in?
Marc:He researched how I was talking, what I was looking like at that time.
Marc:You can check it out.
Marc:You can check out the book.
Marc:But this is my conversation with Bob Fingerman in New York City.
Marc:Pick up that mic, Bingerman.
Marc:Oh, pick up this mic.
Marc:There you go.
Marc:See, how's that feel?
Marc:Pretty good?
Marc:Oh.
Marc:Right?
Marc:So this is it.
Marc:Minimum wage is back.
Marc:After how many years, hiatus?
Marc:Fifteen.
Marc:That's crazy.
Guest:That is crazy.
Guest:One more year on hiatus and it could have gotten a driver's license.
Marc:Yeah, well, it's like your kid.
Marc:It's kind of like your kid.
Marc:You don't have a kid.
Guest:Oh, this is so much better than having a kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:If there's one thing I think you and I can high five on, it's the decision to not have a kid.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I never know.
Marc:There's always the outside chance that it'll happen.
Guest:Well, that's true.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I surgically took care of that.
Guest:Really?
Guest:That's funny.
Guest:Well, yeah.
Guest:I mean, think of it this way.
Guest:You can either always have that slight fretfulness every time you're being intimate saying, is this the time?
Guest:Is this the time?
Guest:Or you just say, you know, teeny tiny.
Guest:At this point, it's non-surgical.
Guest:You're listening to vasectomy talk.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But yeah, I mean, you know, I have some friends.
Guest:I think a lot of guys get very squeamish about it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:and i mean i have a friend who did it in the 70s he's an older friend and that's like the old days where it was like they're just gonna yank all your stuff out and it was horrific yeah horrific now it's this they call it non-incision the incision's so tiny there's no blood there's nothing it's like really it's like an elf you just sterilize yourself like that well not yourself you you go to a highly skilled professional but right uh that's what i mean but that but it's not yeah painful
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I don't know if I'm ready to do that.
Marc:I'm still rolling the dice, man.
Guest:This is the only area where I get evangelical.
Guest:I'm going to testify and say, free yourself, liberate yourself, brother.
Marc:The idea of the responsibility at this age is a little much.
Marc:But you're baby, minimum wage comic.
Marc:So now the characters are old.
Guest:No, they're still young.
Guest:The last series was taking place when I was doing it, which was when I did the original run was in the mid-90s.
Guest:I didn't want to, when I came back to it 15 years later, make it 15 years later because I didn't want to do middle-aged Rob.
Guest:I wanted to do still young Rob.
Marc:So this is your midlife crisis.
Marc:That's what this is.
Guest:Well, it's his pre-midlife crisis.
Marc:No, but instead of what you don't think is necessarily a great comic fodder... Oh, it wouldn't be.
Guest:My life now would not be good comic fodder because I'm actually happy.
Guest:So, you know, writing about... I mean, in the comic...
Guest:Rob is freshly divorced at 25, which is something I was.
Guest:I was freshly divorced at 25.
Guest:So my feeling is if the character ever actually achieves a state of satisfaction, who wants to read about that?
Marc:Right.
Marc:I guess so.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:I was just reviewing the Times and the guy for the Brooklyn Opera House show.
Marc:And the guy thought that I'd do okay happy.
Marc:He was surprised, but I was funny happy.
Guest:Oh, you can be funny, happy, but but nobody wants to read about a character who's happy.
Marc:No, there has to be some some hammer has to come down.
Guest:And besides, now I get to do it's like the many.
Guest:What was it called?
Guest:The many loves of Dobie Gillis.
Guest:I get to do the many failed, fucked up, you know, dating rituals of my character.
Marc:Well, that's what I mean.
Marc:This is your your midlife sort of adventure is writing about your past.
Guest:I suppose so.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And how do I factor in?
Guest:Well, you factor in as someone my character much admires.
Guest:I can say he and I share, you know, we both share an affinity for comedy and he responds to the earthy honesty of your comedy.
Marc:But isn't the story, doesn't a friend take you to a comedy place or...
Guest:Well, one of the failed girlfriends.
Guest:Yeah, he's dating this Ayn Rand quoting tarot obsessed libertarian goth girl.
Guest:And he he takes her to see again when you're playing with mixing fact and fiction.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You and I met when you were breaking in Jerusalem syndrome.
Guest:yeah but i remember but at a certain point in that show where i was laughing louder than i think pretty much anyone else michelle kept i could at a certain point you can feel when someone's looking at you more than at the performer and i could feel michelle kept looking at me throughout that show and she had a certain point when the show was over she said you can't be friends with mark i said why and she said you have too much in common really that's always a problem
Guest:She's like, you're too similar.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So there you go.
Marc:Right.
Marc:But I like that you researched and you asked me for transcripts of things.
Marc:And so your version of me is pretty spot on.
Guest:I was desperately hoping you were going to have issues with it just so that I could say the script was punched up by Mark.
Marc:Oh, damn it.
Marc:There's me and we're driving in your car.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Did I drive you around?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:There's a tell in Todd Berry.
Marc:Yep.
Guest:It's star-studded for comedy nerds everywhere.
Marc:I remember you were kind of chubbier and a little more intense.
Marc:I was.
Marc:I don't remember that haircut, so that's a little different.
Guest:I never had that.
Marc:Yeah, that's the character's haircut.
Guest:Who could spout a fountain of hair like that?
Marc:You got me pretty good.
Marc:So you sort of kind of walked through a bit of the beginning of alternative comedy there.
Marc:yeah of uh you know whatever that was but you didn't that luna's not in there because that was before no yeah no no luna no twinkle none of those yeah i missed that i missed twinkle and i i wasn't here for that yeah i kind of left so what what do you've been so what does a comic book artist do in hiatus what have you been doing for 15 years
Guest:Well, I did a bunch more comics.
Marc:But I mean, you did the books.
Marc:The books came out.
Marc:I did books.
Marc:Yeah, I wrote novels.
Marc:Those are nice.
Marc:I wrote a bunch of novels.
Marc:But Minimum Wage came out in a hardback bound, hardback version.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, I talked to Robert Kirkman, you know, the comic book guy.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, we go way back.
Marc:Do you?
Guest:He used to send me fan mail.
Guest:That's how much the tables have turned.
Guest:You should be writing about zombies, not me.
Guest:Well, yeah, maybe so.
Guest:Yeah, you're too human.
Guest:I wrote a zombie novel, for goodness sake, which he very kindly blurbed.
Guest:That's nice.
Guest:You're too human.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:He used to send me fan mail back, I think, when he worked in a light bulb warehouse.
Marc:Yeah, he worked at a lighting place.
Marc:He told me about that.
Marc:Well, that's sweet.
Marc:So the hope is that maybe you're going to get a TV thing happening with this cast of characters?
Guest:I hope so.
Guest:I mean, you know, we gave it a run back when I was doing the first run in the 90s, but there was nothing like it on TV.
Guest:There was just, you know, now I think there's things that actually tonally have a lot in common with it.
Marc:So I think that it's I think it would be interesting if you could set it in that time.
Guest:Yeah, that might be a sticking point.
Guest:I think any time, even if you're making a period piece that's only in the year 2000, cost goes up.
Marc:But we'll see.
Marc:Just by virtue of costuming?
Guest:Costuming, yeah.
Guest:Is that guy using the right cell phone?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I like that, though.
Guest:You don't think you could do it?
Guest:Well, you know, I'll put it to you this way.
Guest:I'm going to leave that to network execs.
Guest:Really?
Guest:But it's not going to be a deal breaker if they say, can you set it now?
Guest:I'll say, yes, I absolutely can.
Marc:But wouldn't the struggles be a little different?
Guest:The struggles would be different, but the thing is, there would always be struggles.
Marc:So the idea would be just to have young adults scrambling to put themselves together and figure out their way in the world.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I think the only thing I'd really have trouble with if I made a contemporary would be, do they have to be millennials?
Guest:Because they would be just by virtue of their youth.
Marc:Maybe you should fight for your vision.
Guest:bob let's get you're correct you are correct sir all right i can already start to be difficult even before the meetings tell him you want it to be in 1999 party like it's 1999 yes i think that'd be the whole catch to it now i'm fucking you up now i'm like now i'm uh you're gonna be mad at me how fucked is it that 2000 is nostalgic it's weird right it keeps getting closer i mean pretty soon last week will be nostalgic which it sort of is at
Marc:yeah i mean i don't know if vh1's already done a week of remember that remember 2000 remember last week um all right buddy so this is the third season this is the second season second season featuring mark maron cameos by todd berry and david tell absolutely what's the guy's name again rob hoffman rob hoffman bob fingerman all right buddy well where can people get him
Guest:At their local comic book shop, or they can get the trade paperback off Amazon or any respectable or semi-respectable.
Marc:I wrote the foreword to the trade paperback.
Guest:You wrote the foreword for From the Ashes.
Marc:From the Ashes.
Marc:Damn it, man.
Marc:You're too prolific.
Guest:I'm doing my best.
Marc:Thanks, man.
Guest:Thank you.
Marc:So I'm in a comic.
Marc:And that was Bob Fingerman.
Marc:That's exciting.
Marc:It's exciting.
Marc:Robert Kirkman, The Walking Dead.
Marc:I don't know that I would have watched The Walking Dead or read The Walking Dead if it weren't for my ex-girlfriend.
Marc:And look, zombies are great.
Marc:How many zombies and how much zombie can we take as a culture?
Marc:Time will tell.
Marc:But it doesn't seem like the zombies are slowing down anytime soon.
Marc:Okay, so we're going to go to the garage now for my interview with Robert Kirkman, but you should know that this is before he was scheduled to have throat surgery, and he's had throat surgery.
Marc:It was nothing too serious, but it did cause him to miss Comic-Con.
Marc:So, well, that's kind of serious that he missed Comic-Con, but what I'm saying is that the problem wasn't too serious, and he's on the mend.
Marc:So you're going to hear now the pre-surgery voice
Marc:of Robert Kirkman.
Marc:And he's a humble guy, and he's a good dude, and I enjoy talking to him.
Marc:Let's go now to the garage at the Cat Ranch in the Hills of Highland Park to my conversation with Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead, along with artist Tony Moore.
Marc:Don't want to leave Tony out.
Music
Marc:You've protected your house.
Guest:I think I have, but now I feel like talking about it on a podcast, it's a challenge.
Guest:But when I was younger, I was doing comics out of my house in Kentucky, and a guy just showed up at my door one day and wanted to show me his comic book art in the hopes that I would hire him.
Guest:And, you know, I was very nice to him.
Guest:I mean, it's a pretty bold thing.
Guest:I respect that.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But at the same time, I think I had ketchup on my shirt and I was eating hot dogs for lunch.
Guest:And I was like, this is the weirdest thing in the world.
Guest:So I'm always worried about people coming to my house and stealing my children.
Marc:Yeah, that's a concern.
Marc:It's weird.
Marc:You have to judge how someone's approaching you.
Marc:I mean, I always have that moment where you're like, is this going to be the last encounter that I have?
Guest:Is this going to be my... I do Comic-Con every year.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And Comic-Con is amazing.
Guest:People always ask about Comic-Con and what's the weird thing that happened to you or what's the weirdest person you've seen.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It kind of offends me a little bit because, you know, I kind of think Comic-Con is a little magical just because it's like...
Guest:it's 200 people in the convention center but it's 500 000 people in that area of san diego it's crazy and it's like very mellow very peaceful it's crowded yeah but like there's like a little bit of camaraderie and everybody's nice but me and all my comic book professional buddies sit around and talk about like when are we going to get stabbed you know like when is that going to happen yeah and there was this guy that uh came in my line like after he had one of those conversations and he said uh
Guest:Hey, man, I brought you something.
Guest:And he reached down into his bag, and he never broke eye contact.
Guest:So he was leaning down looking at me with his hand in his backpack.
Guest:And I was grabbing the table.
Guest:And I was like, I'm going to throw this table at him if he pulls out a gun.
Guest:And then am I going to run?
Guest:He's going to shoot people.
Guest:I don't want to George Costanza myself out of here and have people get shot.
Guest:But all these thoughts are just running through my head.
Guest:And then he had like a button or something he was giving me.
Marc:And I was like, oh, thanks.
Marc:for a minute i was terrified just absolutely terrified but that's a weird moment because i've gone through that too where you're like i can't i'm gonna have to take the hit somehow like i you know what i mean because you don't want to look bad you know i really don't want to get shot but but yeah if people think i'm a hero that'd be kind of cool right i don't look like a puss you know just sort of like preemptively go no and the guy's just sort of like here's a comic i want you to sign yeah
Marc:I have had that happen.
Marc:I had a guy attack me on stage.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Well, he didn't seem to know that it was happening to him.
Marc:Like he was possessed by something.
Marc:I pushed a button and he reacted.
Marc:And then when I'm looking at him and he's in my space and we're in front of people, I'm like, I'm going to have to take the hit because I'd look terrible if I just started running.
Marc:Oh, interesting.
Marc:Like it never crosses my mind that I could win or kick their ass.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Like, you didn't think in that moment, like, I could take him out.
Marc:No.
Marc:You had the table plan.
Guest:I was like, where's the, what level of death am I going to experience here?
Guest:Like, is there, can I make this survivable?
Guest:But no, the stand-up thing must be difficult because, you know, you get so personal and you're saying things.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I, you know, working on Walking Dead and all of my writing, the thing that I like to think about the most is the fact that we never really see the same things that everybody else is seeing.
Guest:And we never really hear the same things that everybody else is hearing.
Guest:You know, I could say something to you and you could completely, you know, misconstrue it and misunderstand it.
Guest:Not because you're like not following me or whatever, just because that's who you are and that's what you're thinking.
Marc:You bring something to it.
Guest:And the stand-up thing, you're just cracking jokes, and the next thing you know, somebody takes it completely personally.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:That's terrifying.
Marc:But I imagine that people project.
Marc:I think part of people's reaction to anything you create is projection.
Marc:They're having their own relationship with the thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So it's all open to misinterpretation, but you do have a couple steps in between you, the person, and the guy who's going like, that's about me.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I'm in my cave safe working on the next one while they're wanting to murder me.
Marc:So you grew up in Kentucky?
Marc:I did, yeah.
Marc:And in what part?
Marc:I don't know nothing about Kentucky.
Guest:Yeah, there's a lot to know.
Guest:It's a cool place, but it is still Kentucky.
Guest:It's a little quaint.
Marc:I've learned not to condescend the American South.
Marc:I enjoy it more and more every time I go there.
Guest:It's a wonderful place that produces wonderful people, but great people come from everywhere.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Me, moving from Kentucky to LA, I'm always a little annoyed when people are like, how did you do it?
Guest:Right.
Guest:Are you okay?
Guest:Do you need help?
Guest:Yeah, right.
Guest:Did something happen to your mind?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, I don't know.
Guest:The roads are wider.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And there's more people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I don't see a lot of horses.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:But the roads are wider, but you're not moving much on them.
Yeah.
Guest:That's so true.
Guest:How do you drive on those streets?
Guest:And it's like, well, you're mostly parking.
Marc:Yeah, very slowly.
Marc:Very slowly.
Guest:But I'm from Lexington, which is like the second biggest city.
Marc:Lexington?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I kind of know Lexington.
Marc:I was there once.
Marc:My buddy got married on a horse farm years ago.
Marc:He married a woman who comes from horses or something.
Marc:A lot of horses there, right?
Marc:A lot of horses.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:A lot of horses.
Marc:Like Thoroughbred.
Marc:There's horse breeding.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, there's like sections where there's all the expensive farms that do the Kentucky Derby horses.
Guest:But then you're just driving and it's like, hey, there's a guy over there that's got 12 horses.
Marc:Everyone's got horses.
Guest:Not everyone, but a lot.
Marc:Did you have horses?
Marc:No.
Marc:Did you ride horses?
Marc:No.
Marc:Never.
Marc:Did you resent horses?
Guest:I've never fired a gun.
Guest:I've never seen a horse race.
Guest:I don't like University of Kentucky basketball.
Guest:I'm almost not from Kentucky.
Marc:What kind of work were your folks in?
Guest:uh my mother was a homemaker my father uh was a uh a sheet metal fabricator so he would uh he's like a welder yeah and uh he made duct work and cool stuff like that and he uh the tubes the giant uh tubes the the duct yeah yeah for like air conditioning yeah yeah our helmets but he made all kinds of stuff when you're a kid just put that that joint you know that i had you ever put one of those on the elbow of a duct on your head and
Marc:That sounds dangerous.
Marc:Well, it's a little dangerous, but I rarely have sci-fi fantasies of any kind.
Marc:I'm not a sci-fi guy.
Guest:So the duck bends around your head and you're looking out of it?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:It was a big duck.
Marc:It was a big duck, and I was on mushrooms, and it was in college, and we were in a basement.
Marc:It's a long story.
Marc:As you do.
Marc:Yeah, that's right.
Marc:Look, they're working on something, but this could be anything.
Marc:And I put it on my head, and I was a spaceman.
Marc:So that's my experience with science fiction right there.
Marc:What, uh, so when did you start doing the comics?
Guest:I mean, I was probably, uh, I think it was in seventh grade.
Guest:I started, uh, started reading them.
Marc:What'd you, what'd you read?
Marc:What were the ones?
Guest:Mostly Marvel stuff.
Guest:Uh, I was, uh, you know.
Marc:You talked to a guy and there was very little.
Marc:I'm telling you, I want to, I want to.
Guest:So, so, you know, mostly Marvel stuff, uh, Spider-Man, X-Men, things like that.
Marc:Sure, I know those.
Guest:Um, yeah.
Guest:The only way I was capable of buying comics when I started reading comics was at Walmart.
Guest:Because I was in a small town and there weren't comic shops around or anything like that.
Guest:And Walmart only sold Marvel Comics.
Guest:That was the deal.
Guest:Yeah, so there's Marvel, which is your X-Men, Spider-Man, stuff like that.
Guest:And then there's DC, which is Superman, Batman, all that.
Marc:So you were not involved in DC Universe at all?
Guest:Yeah, I was like, as a kid, I was like, man, I don't really care for those guys because I don't have access to those comics.
Guest:It wasn't anything personal.
Marc:You were alienated from an entire universe because of Walmart's commitment to Marvel.
Guest:All of the ills that Walmart does to this world.
Marc:Yeah, denies you the DC universe.
Guest:That's the highest one on my list.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Not carrying a breadth of comics.
Guest:The minimum wage, you know, the people on welfare working for them, you know, that's bad and all, but...
Guest:I would have liked to have read Batman as a kid.
Marc:Where was Superman for me?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Superman didn't come to my house.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:But yeah, I mean, mostly that stuff, mostly the superhero stuff.
Guest:And then as I got older, you know, I got a driver's license.
Guest:I was able to go, you know, actually find a comic shop.
Guest:And that's when I got into, you know, more of the independent stuff and, you know, things like Image Comics, which is where I do my books now.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Stuff that was, you know, independently owned and a little bit less commercial and cooler.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, well, I came into comics very late.
Marc:I didn't grow up reading them.
Marc:But when I was in my, geez, man, in my late 20s, early 30s, somehow or another, I got into Alan Moore's Swamp Thing.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And then I got turned on to that guy.
Marc:And then I started reading Hellblazer and Sandman from the first issues.
Marc:And then I entered there.
Marc:And then I started to sort of do some comics around that stuff and then a lot of independent comics.
Marc:But those are really the only two mainstream comics I got into.
Marc:And the Swamp Thing, for some reason, Swamp Thing was, I don't know why it resonated so much with me.
Guest:It's creepy.
Guest:It's good stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But it's like that character out of all of them.
Marc:I could have, at that age, gone into superheroes.
Marc:But I like the way Swampy looked.
Marc:I like the whole angle of this.
Guest:Well, I think the cool thing there is that you're in your mid-20s or so, and you read... A lot of people, I feel, think of comics, and they go...
Guest:It's superheroes.
Guest:It's guys in underwear busting holes in walls and fighting planets.
Guest:But it's an entertainment medium.
Guest:And you probably didn't go into the superhero stuff because you weren't 15 or 14 or whatever.
Marc:Watchmen.
Marc:I read that too.
Marc:Someone gave me that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I got a couple boxes.
Guest:But I think the cool thing about comics is that there's stuff out there for everybody.
Guest:I think anyone out there who's like, I'd never read a comic book.
Guest:There's totally a comic out there for you that you would find.
Guest:It'd be the coolest thing you've ever read.
Marc:I wonder if some people can't sort of process... Because when you read comics and you see the panels, if you have a brain that just does it, somehow resonates, it just connects like that, the words and pictures.
Marc:I wonder if there's people out there that are like, nah, they're just boxes with...
Guest:Well, I have a buddy that is smarter than me.
Guest:And so he said, like, you process words with one part of your brain.
Guest:You process pictures with another part of your brain and sound.
Guest:And so when you're watching a movie,
Guest:You're using a part of your brain.
Guest:If you're reading a book, you're reading a part of your brain.
Guest:And comics is really the only medium where those two parts of your brain have to work in tandem because you're processing pictures and words.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And so some people like that sensation and some people don't.
Marc:When I do it, I don't know how much I notice things.
Marc:I'll read quickly sometimes because I want to get to the next thing, but I don't study the panels that much.
Guest:Well, that's one of my favorite things about the medium is because it's the only storytelling medium really where your experience is really, really dictated by how you read it.
Guest:Yeah, you're as a reader really in control of, you know, pacing and the way the dialogue is read and just, you know, the all kinds of different things that factor in, you know, when you're reading a novel, you know, you read the words and you only get the picture of what's happening as you read the words and, you know, everything is controlled.
Guest:Yeah, television movies, but.
Guest:I can read a comic, and you can read a comic, and we can talk about it afterwards and get a completely different experience from it, which is kind of awesome.
Marc:It is awesome.
Marc:And also, if you want to focus in on faces or little nuances of movement and expression, because a lot of times that shit just blows by me until I go back and look at it.
Guest:Yeah, I know a lot of people do that.
Guest:They'll read it once real quick in three minutes, and they'll go back and be like, oh, that was pretty cool.
Marc:I didn't notice that.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Yeah, because you want to get to the story.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right, so you're sitting around now.
Marc:You've got brothers and sisters?
Guest:I have a brother and sister, yeah.
Marc:Older?
Guest:Younger.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:My wife and I both have siblings that are much younger than us.
Marc:Much younger.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So my brother is five years younger than me.
Guest:My sister is 11 years younger than me.
Marc:Oh, my God.
Guest:I'm good with numbers.
Guest:And then my wife has a brother that is 11 years younger and a sister that's like 14 years younger.
Marc:So you only had like a – did you have a relationship with them growing up kind of or –
Guest:I mean, I feel like I have a pretty good relationship with my siblings, but there is definitely a distance there because I was so much older than them.
Guest:I mean, my brother's only five years younger than me, but one of the big things was when I graduated high school, I didn't go to college.
Guest:And my parents came to me the year I was graduating from high school, and they were like, hey, so we're moving to Florida, and you can come with us if you want.
Guest:Or you've got a year to get a job and move out.
Guest:And you can stay in Kentucky if you want.
Guest:So just wanted to give you a heads up.
Marc:We're taking off.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I had a girlfriend at the time and had lived in Kentucky my whole life.
Guest:And I had gone to Florida because that's where our family was from.
Marc:What part?
Guest:Grandparents and stuff.
Guest:I call it Alabama, Florida.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like the central.
Guest:Oh, central.
Guest:Like north of Tampa.
Guest:I call it Alabama, Florida affectionately.
Guest:There's a lot of Bigfoot trucks and rubble flags.
Marc:Fart is very rich.
Guest:A lot of people picture Miami and beaches.
Marc:It's culturally eccentric is, I think, a diplomatic way to say it.
Guest:But I got a job and moved out.
Marc:What was your job?
Guest:I worked at a lighting place.
Guest:So they sold light bulbs and light fixtures and wiring for houses.
Marc:You weren't invested in it.
Guest:No, I wasn't.
Guest:I mean, I started publishing comics at the same time.
Marc:This is right after high school?
Guest:Yeah, I was like 20.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so I had worked my way up at the lighting place until I was a purchasing agent, which meant you looked at a list of items, and you looked at a list of how fast those items sold, and you did the math on how quickly they were going to sell out, and then you ordered new stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And so it was a pretty simple job.
Guest:And so I basically would just like...
Guest:run up long distance bills, talking to the printer in Canada, doing my comic stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I really should pay that company back the money I technically stole from them.
Marc:On the phone?
Guest:But yeah, I'm just, you know, I mean, I did a lot of work on the publishing company in my office at Kentucky Lighting and Supply.
Guest:If you are in Kentucky and you need light fixtures or anything, please go to Kentucky Lighting and Supply.
Guest:They have the best customer service, excellent products, and I owe them
Marc:Oh, there you go.
Marc:Well, I think you just made your amends.
Marc:You paid your debt.
Guest:Great.
Marc:Well, it sounds like it wasn't that challenging a job.
Marc:Gave you some time.
Guest:Yeah, it was all right.
Marc:It was all right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you were moving, you live in an apartment where your girlfriend had rented a house or what?
Guest:I actually bought a house.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Because houses are very cheap in Kentucky.
Guest:So I bought a- From lighting money?
Guest:No, well, yeah, I worked there for a year and saved up a down payment of like five grand.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:And then I bought a $55,000 house.
Marc:And then how big of a house is that?
Guest:It was 1,000 square feet.
Marc:Yeah?
Marc:So like a one bedroom?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:Oh, and you said- Well, it was two little bedrooms.
Marc:Oh, do you still have that house?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:No, but I created Walking Dead in that house.
Marc:You did?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:When you were younger, were comics, did they function as a salvation for you?
Marc:Were you socially kind of awkward and disengaged from the rest of reality?
Guest:I mean, sure, of course.
Guest:But-
Marc:Who were you in high school?
Marc:What were you doing?
Guest:Well, I mean, I had long hair and I listened to Nirvana and stuff like that.
Guest:So you weren't socially... I wasn't completely socially inept.
Guest:I had friends and stuff, but I lived really far out in the country.
Guest:And so when I wasn't at school, I didn't really have access to other people.
Marc:And you didn't shoot a gun.
Marc:And I never shot a gun, no.
Marc:Really?
Marc:And not one of your friends was like, let's go shoot my dad's gun.
Guest:No, I mean, as a child, I think my great strength was that my parents would say, don't do this.
Guest:It's dangerous.
Guest:And in my head, I would say, I'm not going to do that because it's dangerous.
Guest:And then I would never do it.
Guest:So yeah, if a friend of mine was like, hey, I got a gun.
Guest:You want to go shoot it?
Guest:I'd be like, I'm going to go home now.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Scary.
Marc:Scary gun.
Marc:Pretty much.
Marc:But yeah, it's the country.
Marc:I mean, I grew up in New Mexico, which is not exactly rural, but what were you out doing?
Marc:Knocking mailboxes off with a bat?
Marc:I was reading comics.
Marc:But no destruction, no going out into the world and taking that nerd anger out on inanimate objects?
Guest:No, no, no.
Guest:I was a completely boring kid.
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, I would play basketball terribly.
Guest:There was like a church down the street out in the country that had a basketball hoop.
Guest:And so you could go there and get picked on by older kids.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So I was like, I want to go play basketball and have fun.
Guest:But there's a kid there that's going to show up at some point.
Guest:If I'm there for 45 minutes, at some point during that time period, he's going to come there and he's going to be mean to me.
Guest:So I don't know.
Guest:I got to weigh my options here.
Guest:I think I'll just read X-Men again.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Maybe I'll just read X-Men at the basketball court and then you really take some shit.
Marc:But so, okay.
Marc:So you start drawing comics, reading them in seventh grade.
Marc:When do you start noodling or doodling?
Guest:Well, I mean, any comic book reader that likes to draw is going to be copying stuff exactly and being like, hey, I'm a good artist.
Guest:I looked at this guy's thing and I tried to recreate every line exactly.
Guest:That's art, right?
Guest:I actually...
Guest:i strive to be a comic book artist uh you know very early on and then i realized that i wasn't you don't have the chops so yeah yeah but like well so you know just reading comics i ended up working at a comic shop you know after i'd worked there for a while uh you know the guy this guy i met in seventh grade who uh tony moore yeah uh worked on walking dead and you know did a bunch of stuff with me no i early on yeah he sent me some stuff
Guest:Yeah, I think he did some drawings for you.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, he did for the IFC show.
Marc:They were great.
Marc:So you met him in seventh grade?
Marc:Yeah, I met him in seventh grade and I met my wife in seventh grade.
Marc:The wife you're with.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's loyalty.
Marc:It's pretty weird.
Marc:So you and Tony would read comics together and go to the comic book store together and that kind of stuff?
Guest:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Guest:And we always wanted to do that kind of stuff.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then after high school, we kept in touch, but we didn't really see each other
Guest:All that often.
Guest:So I wanted to do comics.
Guest:You wanted to draw.
Guest:And I knew he was really good.
Guest:But he was still in college and doing stuff.
Marc:You didn't go to college.
Guest:Didn't go to college.
Marc:But was he drawing?
Guest:I'm an idiot.
Guest:Yeah, he was going to art college and doing all that kind of stuff.
Guest:And so, I mean, we would see each other frequently, but it's not like we were hanging out doing comics all the time.
Guest:And so basically the first comic I did, I tried to draw myself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it didn't work.
Marc:Which comic was that?
Guest:Well, it was a wrestling comic book called Between the Ropes.
Guest:And it was horribly drawn.
Marc:What was the angle?
Guest:The angle was no one ever does a comic about wrestlers' lives outside of the ring.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And so it was about them reading scripts and discussing who's going to win and all the politics that was going behind the scenes.
Marc:Were you a big wrestling fan?
Guest:I wasn't, but wrestling was very popular at the time.
Guest:And so I liked wrestling as a kid, but I'd kind of fallen out of it.
Guest:And coming out and doing comics, I wanted to do something that would have an audience or get my foot in the door.
Guest:And so I was just striving to...
Guest:like make sure that you know it was interesting to me like going through and doing the behind the scenes stuff but it was basically a blatant like hey wrestling's really popular and uh and i can do this and i'll latch on maybe wrestling fans will buy this yeah because there were a lot of wrestling comics at the time but they would basically take the undertaker and turn him into a superhero right and it was like there's no wrestling in that comic i don't know why there's no humanness yeah it's like i don't know why people that enjoy wrestling would necessarily read that comic
Guest:And so that was my angle.
Guest:But I drew it, and it was horrible.
Guest:And I submitted it to our distributor, and they sent this nice letter back.
Guest:And I was like, our committee has deemed that this book is not of professional quality.
Guest:And I got that letter, and it's probably the most devastated I've been in my career.
Marc:I was pretty upset.
Marc:So you're working at the comic book store, and you sent it to the distributor that you were dealing with?
Guest:Yeah, that's how I learned the ins and outs of where comics come from, how babies are made.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You just sent it to the distributor.
Guest:Well, that's how you do it.
Guest:You make a product, and you send it to the distributor, and they'll decide whether or not they'll distribute it.
Marc:So your plan was to self-publish a certain number of copies.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So you would take care of the printing and everything else.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So that's what you learned.
Guest:at the store was that like you don't need to be marvel you don't need to be you could why not if you yeah i mean it was the nuts and bolts of it were kind of insane i mean i don't want to get too inside baseball well do it you could basically take like 1200 bucks and like the company that i worked at kentucky lighting and supply really loved having their employees uh have a reason to keep working for them yeah so they would give you small loans okay and so i could go to them and be like can you loan me 1200 bucks i gotta print this comic
Marc:Did you do that?
Guest:Yeah, and they would be like, sure, here you go.
Guest:You can pay us back in a year.
Guest:That's when I started.
Guest:As soon as Between the Ropes was turned down, that's when I went to Tony Moore and we did Battle Pope.
Marc:Yeah, Battle Pope.
Marc:That's the fallen Pope superhero.
Guest:Yeah, that's my first published comic.
Guest:Again, I was like, hey, you know what?
Guest:No one cares about me.
Guest:No one cares about Tony.
Guest:No one has to read a book by us.
Guest:I need to do something that's going to get noticed.
Guest:I need to do something.
Guest:And I felt like, you know,
Guest:If I heard about a book called Battle Pope, I would want to know more about it.
Guest:Yeah, so so that was my angle.
Marc:So you guys you storyline.
Marc:Do you storyboarded it?
Marc:Is that what you do?
Marc:How do you work?
Marc:How does the process work?
Guest:That was weird because I didn't even know how to write, you know, yeah, because I didn't write scripts.
Guest:I basically drew the pages storyboards.
Guest:Yeah, I drew layouts in like a really terrible form and I gave those to Tony and he would like turn them into comic book pages.
Marc:Okay, but you wrote the dialogue.
Guest:Yeah, I would basically draw the comic, write the word balloons, and then give that to him, and he would draw a better version of the comic, and then I'd make better versions of the word balloons, and then publish it.
Marc:Were you guys having fun?
Marc:Yeah, it was a lot of fun.
Marc:So how many did you make with the 1,200, just the first one?
Guest:Yeah, you just do one.
Guest:And the way that would work is I would borrow the... I mean, it was kind of easy because the distributor would tell you how many books were pre-sold before you made them.
Guest:So I could go, okay, they ordered 800 copies.
Guest:800 copies is going to make me $1,300.
Guest:It's going to cost me $1,200 to print 2,000 copies.
Guest:And you can't really print lower than that.
Guest:So I'd borrow $1,200 and...
Guest:Give it to the printer.
Guest:They'd print it.
Guest:The distributor would send me $1,300.
Guest:I'd pay the loan off.
Guest:I have $100.
Marc:And you and Tony had $50 apiece.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I had a job, and Tony was working at college, so in the early days, most of the time, I would just give him, because drawing the book was a lot more difficult than what I was doing, so I would just give him the money.
Marc:That was nice of you.
Marc:It was $100.
Marc:So now, how many of those did you do?
Guest:We ended up doing, I think, I don't even remember now, I feel terrible, 12 or 13?
Marc:And they sold?
Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it was actually pretty good.
Guest:I mean, the average book in the back of that catalog would sell, I want to say 600 copies or 800 copies.
Marc:In the back of what catalog?
Guest:The big distributor's catalog.
Guest:There's only one distributor in comics.
Guest:So in comics, everybody knows the distributor in the catalog.
Guest:It's one place.
Marc:What's it called?
Guest:Diamond Comic Distributors.
Marc:They're it.
Guest:Fantastic company.
Guest:I have to say that because they're the only show in town, but they actually are pretty good.
Marc:And they'll take anything that they deem that they can sell.
Guest:Right.
Marc:So any independent.
Guest:So they distribute Marvel's books, Images books, all the big companies, all the little companies, people that are making comics out of their basement.
Marc:Now, how old are you?
Marc:You're younger than me.
Marc:I'm 36.
Marc:Because it seems to me that there was a time...
Marc:where comics sort of took a turn, and it's in our lifetime, where they were kind of not a dead medium, but not a huge medium, and then all of a sudden now they dictate contemporary culture exclusively.
Guest:It's pretty nice.
Marc:It's good for someone in my position.
Marc:Do you have any sense of when that happened?
Marc:I mean, do you think about that?
Marc:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:I think it's a lot of things, but I think that historically...
Guest:Comic book adaptations had always been a movie studio or television studio or somebody like the 70s Incredible Hulk or, you know, the Superman, Batman movies, stuff like that, where they would say, yeah, yeah, yeah, here's this stupid comic.
Guest:Now I'm going to get a real screenwriter in here and a real director and great actors and we're going to make a great movie that, you know, kind of does something with that comic, but we're going to make it better because that comic is a piece of shit.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we don't respect it.
Guest:And I think somewhere in the late 90s or so when like Bryan Singer made the X-Men and Sam Raimi made Spider-Man.
Guest:There were actually people that had an affinity for these characters, an affinity for the origins, and actually liked comics and respected it as a medium, and actually started adapting the comics in not 100% accurate ways, and there are definitely shortcomings here and there.
Marc:Yeah, like what?
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Yeah, what's your beef?
Guest:You don't need to give an X-Men, whatever.
Marc:No, I won't hear it.
Marc:Just tell me.
Guest:You don't need to put the X-Men in leather suits.
Guest:I don't know, there's certain things about those movies.
Marc:What kind of suits would they...
Guest:Whatever.
Guest:I'm not on this podcast to reveal how much of a nerd I am.
Marc:What are you doing?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:Look, you obviously can't do spandex.
Guest:It's going to look ridiculous.
Guest:Something in between.
Guest:A little bit of color in there.
Guest:You don't need everybody looking like a ninja.
Guest:But that's just me.
Guest:Hey, we're the X-Men.
Guest:We all look the same.
Guest:Everybody loves those Richard Donner Superman movies, but he takes the emblem off his chest and he uses it like a throwing star.
Guest:What are you doing?
Guest:Yeah, it's like, why did that just happen?
Guest:And I think that everybody that loves those movies, they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that part was terrible, but everything else around it was great.
Guest:And it's like, no, not really.
Guest:There's like a part where he's flying with Lois and there's this horrible poem going on in her head and they're not talking.
Guest:And it's like, are they speaking telepathically?
Guest:Like,
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It's just real terrible.
Guest:And the end of the first movie, which there's so many people that are like, oh, best superhero movie of all time.
Guest:First Superman movie.
Guest:It's not.
Guest:It's garbage.
Guest:It's absolute garbage.
Guest:This Superman flies backwards around the earth and changes its rotation and time reverses.
Guest:It doesn't even make sense.
Guest:It's the dumbest thing ever.
Guest:And the thing is, they're like...
Guest:it's comic book yeah you know yeah but it's not possible and that's what you don't have to do that so you have a problem with the logic because it doesn't even follow the logic of the story the comic book right and look superman comics from like the 30s and 40s like he would eat a pill and have a lion head for an issue yeah you know and it's like i gotta get rid of this lion head you know like they were pretty ridiculous but i would rather see that
Marc:Like you couldn't argue with that.
Marc:I really would.
Marc:If they took a story from the old ones, he takes a pill and he's got a lion's head.
Marc:That's the whole story.
Marc:How do I get rid of this lion's head?
Marc:You couldn't argue with it.
Guest:I want to see Zack Snyder do that with the Superman movie that happens after Superman versus Batman.
Guest:I want that to be Henry Cavill takes a pill and he's got a lion head for the movie.
Guest:And it's just him hanging out with Lois, trying not to bite her.
Marc:Going, eh, he'll get rid of this lion head.
Marc:And no nerd could argue with him.
Marc:He's like, that's the story.
Marc:It's the original story.
Marc:It'd be so good.
Marc:Well, I wish that I was... I don't know if it's time or what.
Marc:I think if I sat down and watched those movies, I mean, they're compelling.
Marc:And I loved...
Marc:I loved the Hellblazer stuff.
Marc:You know, I guess superheroes weren't really my bag, but John Constantine was kind of a superhero in his weird way.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, that kind of goes back to my point of, like, there's so much in comics that people aren't really recognizing.
Guest:Like, Road to Perdition, Ghost World, Constantine, these are comic book movies.
Guest:They're not superhero movies.
Marc:Well, you know, Robert Williams, the artist, the painter, do you know his stuff?
Marc:He, you know, he sort of makes an argument that, you know, comics are the most popular art form and have been since ancient Egypt.
Marc:Like he'll go, go back to, you know, the hieroglyphics.
Marc:It's like comics, you know, that pictorial representation in a very basic way is more, is more art wise has been around communicating to people since the beginning of communication to sort of justify the language of pictures as in the history of art.
Marc:I mean, comics have been around forever.
Guest:in a way i mean you know they're definitely you know cave paintings that show sequences of things and that's that's technically comics yeah i think that's right the cave paintings were comics right we we said it here so uh and if you adapt those cave paintings don't have somebody fly around the planet and river's time no not at all by the way i'm gonna get so much shit for bagging on that superman movie you are oh i can't wait really i'm sure
Marc:Like from what?
Marc:You traitor.
Marc:How dare you.
Marc:There's different camps.
Marc:I'm sure.
Marc:But wait, you're talking about ones you saw when you were a child.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Those are old ones.
Guest:They're old.
Marc:And there's still the people that are hanging on.
Guest:Hey, Richard Donner went on to do those Lethal Weapon movies.
Guest:I don't mean to criticize.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:He's definitely a fantastic director.
Marc:Oh, no, yeah.
Marc:16 blocks.
Marc:I'm too old for this shit.
Marc:Remember, that's him.
Marc:So what's the name of your first comic book label?
Marc:Funkotron.
Marc:Funkotron.
Marc:Where'd you come up with that?
Marc:Just out of nowhere?
Guest:A buddy of ours in high school had done this sculpture of a robot head that he called the Funkotronic Jive Head.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And we were just sitting around spitballing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, oh, what are we doing?
Guest:What are we going to call this stupid comic book company?
Guest:And I was like, oh, I always liked the name of that sculpture that Jason did.
Guest:What if you call the company Funkotron?
Marc:And that was it.
Marc:And that was primarily for Battle Pope.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, I ended up publishing some other books, but, you know.
Marc:Which other ones?
Guest:I did an anthology called Ink Punks, another anthology called Double Take, and, you know, a couple things here and there.
Marc:Are these big collector's things now?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:I don't think people even know they exist.
Marc:Oh, really?
Guest:So if you're listening, please buy them on eBay so that the value will go up because I still have boxes and boxes of these books.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:All of them?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Battle Pope?
Guest:Well, I'm a pack rat, and so early on in my career, I was like, I've got to make sure that I have enough of these comics so that my grandkids and my grandkids' grandkids always have access to these wonderful works of art that I... whatever.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I think I got like 2,000 copies.
Guest:And I would sell them at trade shows and stuff, but maybe 1,000.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I'm a little exaggerating.
Guest:I'd print 3,000, sell like 1,800, 2,500 or so, and then...
Guest:keep the rest and and they're just collecting dust but the funny thing is i have kids now and they could not be less interested in what i'm doing so like how old are they nine and six but but they're like oh yeah you do that yeah it's just normal to them so like me growing up with a father that like you know did sheet metal and yeah welding and stuff i'm like
Guest:i make comics my kids are gonna be so excited about the fact that i make comics and i work on tv and it's so neat yeah and and like like i'm on like a talk show or something like i was on conan o'brien once and like kids come in here look your dad's on tv and they're so young that they're like i guess everyone's father is on tv right they i don't care why is it special i'm i'm playing yeah it's about me yeah yeah but they they don't like comic stuff
Guest:My son reads, my daughter's a little young to get into it.
Guest:She's six.
Guest:But my son reads comics that I didn't do.
Marc:That's probably going to go on for a while.
Guest:There's a great comic from Scholastic called Amulet, and it's very appropriate for his age and kind of geared to him.
Guest:And he's got all six volumes of that book and keeps asking me, when's volume seven coming out?
Marc:When's volume seven?
Marc:He's in.
Guest:It's genetic.
Guest:And meanwhile, when he was like four, my daughter was a baby, I was like,
Guest:I do Walking Dead and Outkast and all this stupid stuff that my kids aren't going to be able to even watch until they're like 16.
Guest:So I'm going to do something.
Guest:And so I got with this artist buddy, Jason Howard, and we created this thing called Super Dinosaur.
Guest:Because he had kids too.
Guest:And we were also doing a horror book at the time.
Guest:And so Super Dinosaur is a genetically altered nine foot Tyrannosaurus Rex that's got like giant robotic people arms that he operates with little joysticks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And he's got this little buddy named Derek.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's like six or eight or I don't remember.
Guest:And they fight bad guys together.
Guest:And I did it specifically for my kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I have four volumes of that book and I can't get them to crack the
Marc:Won't even look at.
Guest:They know I'm involved, so that's not cool.
Marc:Did his kids like it?
Marc:Yeah, his kids actually enjoy it.
Guest:He probably raised his kids better than I do.
Marc:Were they available to the public?
Marc:Did you publish them?
Marc:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:Did they do all right?
Guest:They did okay.
Guest:They did okay.
Guest:Yeah, I ended up just putting it on hiatus for a while to focus on other stuff because there's only so much time in the day, but I plan to get back to it eventually.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:All right, so now let's get... So you got Funkotron... Is that what it is?
Marc:Funkotron?
Marc:That's it.
Marc:Comics.
Marc:That's up and going.
Marc:You've made $200.
Marc:Every now and then I'd make three.
Marc:$300 in your one-bedroom house in Kentucky.
Marc:You and Tony are brainstorming.
Marc:Drugs involved?
Marc:Weed?
Guest:No.
Guest:Again, my parents were like, yeah, you probably shouldn't do that.
Guest:And I was like, okay.
Marc:A few beers?
Marc:Nope.
Marc:Nothing?
Guest:No, I'm almost a Puritan, but not really.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Religious person?
Guest:No.
Marc:No?
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you're just there sitting.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Thinking about...
Marc:I'm sorry that there's absolutely nothing interesting about me.
Marc:I apologize.
Marc:No, no.
Marc:Your imagination is profoundly interesting.
Marc:I mean, obviously, that's what gets you off, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So how does Walking Dead happen?
Marc:Because I have the first batch of books because I was dating a woman who was crazy for him.
Marc:Smart woman.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:She loved him.
Marc:And we watched The Walking Dead together for a few seasons.
Marc:I have not checked in, but I'm sure- I saw that episode of your show.
Marc:That's right.
Marc:We did that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's exactly sort of what happened.
Marc:But did that offend you?
Marc:No, not at all.
Guest:No, I think that stuff's great.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Please.
Guest:So- They told me, I don't know if this is still true, but they were like-
Guest:They were like, yeah, you don't want to be on that podcast.
Guest:And I was like, I don't, he doesn't like Walking Dead.
Guest:And they were like, yeah, yeah, I don't think he's watched it or he doesn't want, he thinks it's stupid or whatever.
Guest:And I was like, that's awesome.
Guest:I'll do the podcast.
Guest:But I don't know if they even did this, but I was like, I'll do the podcast, but you have to tell him
Guest:Or tell them to tell him or whoever.
Marc:I don't know who's in the chain of command.
Guest:We can't talk about Walking Dead at all.
Guest:No, I said, just don't let him do any research.
Marc:Right.
Guest:I think that's great.
Marc:I don't rarely.
Marc:I rarely do.
Marc:So you were right on target for me to make a pull out of myself.
Guest:So you still have not watched The Walking Dead?
Guest:No, no, no, no.
Marc:I did watch it.
Marc:That was more the character.
Marc:Because that really depicted right when it started.
Guest:But eventually- No, but you said things on that show.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And I thought they were real.
Right.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Let me teach you a lesson about how entertainment works.
Guest:It looks like people.
Guest:You're telling me the things that those people were doing?
Guest:I saw it happening.
Marc:How could it not be real?
Marc:I think those conversations happened initially, but I did begin to watch it with her, and I got into it, and I followed it for a while.
Marc:In the comics, I read the first few.
Marc:I don't remember how many I read, but I did enjoy what I watched.
Guest:Well, that's nice.
Marc:And I'm not being diplomatic.
Marc:I liked it, and I enjoyed it.
Marc:I was compelled by the story, but I couldn't keep up.
Marc:It's like maybe someday I'll watch them all, but you're never going to stop making them, right?
Marc:It's going to go on forever.
Marc:Did you have to give us permission?
Marc:Was that you?
Marc:Did you have to give us permission to do The Walking Dead?
Guest:It definitely was not me.
Guest:It was AMC.
Guest:AMC owns IFC.
Guest:I'm sure it was a very easy deal.
Marc:It wasn't as easy as you thought.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:um all right so how does it come about what what you know i was watching uh a lot of i i was not allowed to watch horror films when you were a kid when i was a kid uh why very protected child i don't know like they said it would scare me oh uh so uh every halloween i was allowed to watch one horror film yeah halloween celebration ended up watching hellraiser every year
Marc:Hellraiser.
Marc:Yeah, the one with the guy with the pins in his face?
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:So anyway, I never got to watch the Romero zombie films.
Guest:So I didn't watch them until I was like 18, 19, when I was living in that house.
Yeah.
Guest:parents had left me alone in Kentucky and moved down to Florida and so I really got into them and I really you know I started watching more and more zombie films I get into like the Lucio Fulci stuff and he's an Italian director that's done a bunch of zombie movies and you know and I loved him but I was like
Guest:At the end of the day, what are these people doing?
Guest:Zombies attack.
Guest:They run away from the zombies.
Guest:At the end of the movie, they either all die or they ride off into the sunset.
Guest:I don't know what happens next.
Guest:There was never any kind of zombie series, book series, movie series.
Marc:How do we live with the zombies?
Guest:It's an ongoing problem.
Marc:They never solve it.
Guest:At the end of every movie, they're like,
Guest:Well, the world's covered in zombies and we're out of time, so see you later, folks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I was like, how do you continue to find food and shelter and protect your loved ones and live for years and years and years after the fall of civilization?
Guest:And I was like, and how does that affect you?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:The weak people becoming strong and strong people becoming weak and sane people becoming insane.
Guest:And just the kind of transformation that you'd be able to play with and work with character-wise and that kind of a story.
Marc:You're not going to solve the problem, though, are you?
Marc:The zombie problem.
Guest:maybe you never know i mean the goal look exclusive to the what the fuck podcast i i do hope that the walking dead goes on long enough that you know when it ends they're like good thing we took care of those zombies you know you hope that the humanity perseveres yeah i mean that's people talk about how walking dead is very bleak uh and and if you take a certain cross-section of the story you know
Guest:Yeah, it's horrible.
Guest:People are getting their loved ones eaten, and they're having a horrible time.
Marc:And they turn into zombies.
Guest:Yeah, but I see the story from beginning to end over many, many years, and so I think it's a very hopeful story about humanity overcoming this insurmountable apocalyptic situation.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:It's just going to take them a long time to do it.
Marc:As long as they want another season.
Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, well, look, AMC, it's a very popular show, and they seem to want it to go for 50 seasons, and it may go for 50 seasons, but there is definitely an end point at some point.
Guest:I think that the popularity of the show, to me,
Guest:It's like, wait a minute, we're actually going to get to do this?
Guest:Because the idea is, yeah, this story that's longer than it has any business of being, but it's that length and watching those characters evolve over that time that's going to be able to make it be this piece that when it's all done, you look back on it and you're like...
Guest:What the hell?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I thought they were just killing zombies.
Marc:Right.
Guest:There's totally like an arc here and there's like a thing going on and I didn't think the story was about this.
Marc:Right.
Marc:I knew like pretty early on that there was some sort of, you know, episodic, you know, that it was more about these people than it was about killing zombies.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's definitely.
Marc:And they could go on as long as the world turns, really.
Marc:It could go on for 25, 30 years.
Yeah.
Guest:Let's hope.
Guest:Let's hope.
Guest:But let's all be honest.
Guest:Season 16.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know, I'm not even going to be watching the show.
Marc:That's when you jump the shark.
Marc:That's where you see it happening.
Marc:Season 16.
Marc:No, I'll be on a boat.
Marc:It's over.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:I'll be like, oh, is 17 out yet?
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:How's it going?
Marc:I don't care.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't even get TV on my boat.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I've transcended television.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:This boat can fly.
Marc:Has it become international yet?
Marc:I haven't checked in with The Walking Dead.
Marc:Have we gone to other countries yet?
Guest:uh the story wise no but i mean it's very popular overseas as a show no why how do you why someone's when are you gonna get them on a plane flying to what's what's going on in europe i mean those are all great questions and we may eventually explore that but to me i don't know it's all it's it's about just keep it about finding water yeah it's about building a fence you know when you make it bigger and right you know that's when you run into problems it gets less interesting to me
Marc:Sure.
Marc:I'd like to see what China looks like full of zombies.
Guest:I'm sure if we're doing this Walking Dead spinoff, and I'm sure if it does well, we'll do Walking Dead China eventually.
Guest:What's the spinoff again?
Guest:It's called Fear the Walking Dead, and it's another group of characters existing in Los Angeles.
Marc:Which is kind of cool for me because- It's just a franchise.
Marc:It's like the new law and order.
Marc:So you're going to have like- Let's hope.
Marc:Texas Walking Dead.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And LA Walking Dead.
Marc:Portland Walking Dead.
Marc:It's great.
Marc:It's going to be great.
Guest:Walking Dead, SVN.
Marc:You're just watching this malignant empire take over the world with glee.
Marc:Oh, sure.
Marc:Do another one.
Marc:Let's hire some guys to write that.
Guest:Well- Canadian Walking Dead.
Guest:To try and avoid sounding like a complete sellout.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:but let's all acknowledge this is spin um you know walking dead you know i i'm from kentucky i've spent a lot of time in georgia i'm from the south uh you know you write what you know and so the walking dead really was like a cool like exploration of my region and the kind of people i know and experience and love and all this right and and you know between walking dead season one and two i moved out to los angeles and
Guest:living on the West Coast.
Guest:And it is, you know, very different.
Guest:And, you know, I have a different life experience and different things going on here.
Guest:And so when AMC was like, The Walking Dead is very popular and we're going to do a spinoff with or without you, would you like to do a spinoff?
Marc:Is that what it came down to?
Guest:No, I'm just kidding.
Guest:But I was like, you know, there's an opportunity there because I created The Walking Dead when I was 23, and so I'm a different person now.
Guest:I like to say I'm older, fatter, and slower, and so let's see what old, fat, slow me can do as opposed to this 23-year-old piece of shit that, you know...
Marc:did that other thing so but when okay so let's go back to that moment where you you you know the the seed was born so you were inundating yourself with horror movies yeah zombie movies where how do they how they keep going yeah and so i wanted to do the zombie movie that never ends and and you you just scripted out the first how many books
Guest:Well, I mean, the funny thing about... I mean, the great thing about Walking Dead was that I did it at a time when I had never had a success.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I created the zombie movie that never ends at a time when I'd never had a book last more than six issues.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Except for Battle Pope.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it never really did well.
Guest:I just published it out of stubbornness.
Guest:But so, you know, I didn't know that it would...
Guest:If you read the first six issues that we cover like a breakneck like amount of story and the whole like love triangle from the show with Rick Shane and Laurie is concluded in the sixth issue and that's all wrapped up and that's because
Guest:I was planning for many, many, many years and I had like seeds in place that I would, you know, keep going if, if the book did well, but I didn't know that it was actually going to last past issue six.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so, you know, I kind of wrote it in a way that if there was never anything after issue six, you know, you kind of get a complete story.
Guest:It's about this, you know, cop and his wife and this, you know, infidelity and, you know, that's kind of, it's kind of sad.
Guest:There's a resolution there and, you know,
Marc:At least it's got closure.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:If it didn't happen.
Guest:And then it did well.
Guest:What?
Marc:It did.
Marc:It took off immediately?
Guest:The comic, actually, the thing that people talk about on the show is like, every season does better than the last, and it's crazy, and it's breaking all the trends, and more people are watching it.
Guest:And it's cool because...
Guest:you know that all happened with the comic just at a much smaller scale so you know people when i started doing the show would be like wow he's pretty good in interviews he doesn't sound like an idiot and that's because you know i've been doing interviews on the comic and had been kind of cutting my teeth in the comic space and you know like dealing with all that kind of so i've kind of dealt with everything that i have to deal with on the walkie dead show in like a much more manageable way so it's kind of prepared me for it in a pretty cool way
Marc:What is the relationship between a writer and an artist when you're making comic books?
Marc:How does that work?
Guest:Well, it's a very close relationship.
Guest:I think there's all kinds of arguments.
Guest:Oh, one's more important than the other, blah, blah, blah.
Guest:Art is more important.
Guest:But...
Guest:You know the you know it's it's the scripts aren't that much different than TV scripts They're probably a little bit like if you handed a comic book script to a director They'd probably yell at you because you know there's a lot of like you're seeing it from this angle and this is happening here We're looking over this person's shoulder to see this and right so when I started writing television They were like yeah, you're you're telling the director how to direct you need to stop doing that right so so there's a little bit of formatting difference, but I
Guest:You know, it's, it's, it's two people coming together to create a work of art together, which is, which is pretty cool.
Guest:I mean, there's a lot of conversations that go on, uh, you know, outside of the scripting process, but, uh, but I mean, it's, it's, you know, it's, does the writer look at sketches?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:i mean i i try not to do that because it's it's a tough job and you know you can be precious with things when art comes in i know there's a lot of comic book writers that will say you know that will get things redrawn here and there because certain panels didn't come out how they wanted to but i try to avoid that as much as possible and you know there's a lot of back and forth there's a lot of like you know early drawings that are shown and you can oh you know maybe that uh
Marc:face should be there i kind of wanted the guy to have this expression because how's he gonna fly with those shoes yeah exactly and how many did tony write the first or tony drew the first six you wrote the oh just the first six yeah and you guys are no longer friends is that that the deal i feel like you've been on the internet a little bit
Guest:Yeah, I mean, it's definitely an unfortunate thing, but I think, I don't know, I mean, I still love the guy.
Guest:If he called a dance and he needed a kidney, like, there's a history there that's, like, real.
Guest:Right, right.
Guest:But, yeah, we definitely drifted apart.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So, you know.
Marc:Over the show.
Guest:I mean, over the comic.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:You know, that six-issue break was a pretty defining moment, I think, in both of our lives.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:So there was, but it settled.
Yeah.
Guest:I mean, yeah, I think we're cool now.
Marc:Right, but not friends.
Guest:Yeah, I guess not.
Guest:Yeah, it's just one of those things.
Marc:The woman I dated who loved the show, she loved the show, but she also read the comics, and she's like, dude, it's not the comic.
Marc:After a certain point, she's like, this is not what happened in the comic.
Marc:Now, are there purists or have you won over all the people that were the comics?
Guest:You're never going to win everybody over.
Guest:And the truth of the matter is it's not the comic.
Guest:You know, there's some people prefer the comic.
Guest:There are other people that read the show or they watch the show.
Guest:I tell you, show, comic, read, watch.
Marc:I get it all mixed up.
Marc:Just take it in.
Marc:Take it in.
Marc:However you have to.
Guest:Just buy it.
Guest:I have to pay for college.
Guest:But... Yeah.
Guest:But, you know, there are people that, like, they'll watch the show first and then they'll read the comic and they're like, where's Daryl Dixon?
Guest:This comic sucks.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Right.
Guest:So it goes both ways.
Guest:But when it comes to working on the show, I'm in the writer's room.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So when they...
Guest:We always start every season with picking a chunk of the comic to adapt or, you know, we're moving pretty, you know, linearly with the comic nowadays.
Marc:Is the comic ahead or are they both running?
Marc:The comic's way ahead.
Guest:Way ahead.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Fun anecdote.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Issue 75 of the comic was coming out when the show started.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:And the stuff that's in issue 75 was adapted in the season finale of season five.
Guest:So starting with season six, we're adapting the comics that were coming out post the existence of the show, which is kind of cool.
Guest:But we've got 140.
Marc:But you're still a few behind.
Marc:We have 144 issues out.
Marc:And that's the Bible for the show in a way.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So we sit down at the beginning of every season and we go, we're going to adapt from here to here of the comic.
Marc:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And then we go, OK, how does Daryl Dixon fit into this?
Guest:Because he's not in the comic.
Guest:How does Carol fit into this?
Guest:Because she died way earlier in the comic.
Guest:You know, what do we do with all the important storylines with Andrea?
Guest:Because she died in the show and is still alive in the comic.
Guest:And all of those things kind of bring about an organic process of turning the comic into something or turning the show into something that is interesting to me because writing the same thing again would be boring, horrible.
Marc:You can honor some of the storylines that you think are worth it and you are attached to by creating new characters for the TV show.
Guest:Right.
Guest:right and and there's a lot of new stuff you know that gets put into the show yeah we can do more things i would imagine i mean it would seem you could do almost anything with a comic which you can but the whole medium is different the comic definitely gets a lot darker than it didn't i mean it's not even i don't know it's not even that we're like restricted at amc or anything like that but i know that there's a there's a assumption that you know if you get too unrelentingly dark you can kind of turn away some of the audience
Marc:Well, people get attached to the struggle and relationships of the people that they like.
Marc:I guess.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So let's talk about, see, because we got hung up with The Walking Dead, but before the TV show, you had a life as a comic book writer.
Guest:I still have a life as a comic book writer.
Marc:Whatever.
Marc:You're a TV guy.
Marc:I am not.
Marc:How dare you?
Guest:I write three comic books a month.
Marc:Okay, I'm kidding.
Marc:Just saying.
Marc:How do you get the gig writing for Marvel?
Guest:They read Walking Dead and Invincible and some of my other image books, and they hired me to work there.
Marc:And Image is a... Who runs that label?
Marc:So Image is... Is it called a press or a label?
Marc:Press.
Guest:It's a publisher.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So Image Comics is like this beautiful anomaly in the world of entertainment.
Guest:It was seven artists from Marvel in 1992...
Guest:left, and they basically founded this company that was the company that they would want to work for.
Guest:And so the publishing entity itself only takes a small percentage of the profits to keep the lights on and keep the employees that do all the administrative production work and things like that employed.
Guest:So...
Guest:You know, I think the actual percentage is like 80 percent of all the profits go to the creators.
Guest:And it's the only company in existence in any form of entertainment where it's actually like founded by creators.
Guest:And instead of, you know, because the television gig is great, but the majority of the money that the Walking Dead TV show is generating is going to AMC.
Guest:but you're saying it's an artist collective yeah yeah so i mean it's it's now the third largest publishing company uh in comics and it gets bigger and bigger uh every month and i feel like it'll overtake dc comics in the next five years or less uh so that's pretty exciting and you're and you're part of it now i'm a partner in it now yeah i was lucky enough to they pulled you in yeah yeah this guy represents what we like i think the way they put it to me is they were like uh we're all getting old
Guest:And we don't want the company to die with us, so we need to start bringing in some younger partners.
Guest:Oh, wow.
Guest:And I was like, yes, but my weight cancels out however younger I am than all of you.
Guest:So I think we're all still going to die around the same time.
Guest:So we're looking for new partners.
Marc:Who else have they brought in?
Guest:If you're 15, please start working on comics now.
Marc:And don't eat bad.
Marc:Try to take care of yourself.
Marc:I'm trying to do better.
Marc:I think United Artists actually started similarly in terms of movies.
Marc:Yeah, I think that was definitely the intent.
Marc:I don't know what their structure is.
Marc:Jane Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, they were like, these studios are taking our money.
Guest:Yeah, I don't mean to sound like I was disparaging AMC or anything.
Guest:It's an impossible model to replicate in movies and TV.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:Just because the economics in comics, Tony Moore and I could sit in a room
Guest:as 20-year-olds and make a comic book by ourselves and publish it.
Guest:And you can still do that on the biggest comics.
Guest:All you need is labor.
Guest:And if you're working for yourself and making your own thing, it's very easy to produce a thing without the publisher taking a bunch of money.
Marc:And this is still the love.
Marc:This is your love, the comics.
Guest:Yeah, I mean, I spend a small portion of my day every day working on comics.
Yeah.
Marc:And which are the ones that you have Walking Dead that is running now?
Guest:Yeah, I do Walking Dead.
Guest:I do a book called Outcast that just started last year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's an exorcism thing.
Guest:Oh, good.
Guest:And I'm bound to say that we start filming the first season in July.
Marc:Of Outcast.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:For what network?
Marc:Cinemax.
Marc:Oh, yeah?
Guest:So, yeah.
Marc:So, you got cable.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:So, that's going to get really filthy.
Yeah.
Guest:I can't wait.
Guest:The pilot, we had a screening recently for international buyers of the pilot, and I hadn't watched it in an audience.
Guest:I hadn't watched it with an audience ever.
Guest:And when it was over, I was like, yeah, yeah, they should have stopped me.
Guest:They should have...
Guest:I was uncomfortable.
Guest:I was like, yeah, I've definitely crossed a line.
Marc:What line?
Guest:I can't say.
Guest:But there's a lot of violence.
Marc:What is the angle of the book?
Guest:It's...
Marc:Sorry, I shouldn't have.
Marc:But you wanted me not to do research.
Marc:I honored your wish.
Guest:Giving me the opportunity to pitch this on this platform is, I guess, technically why I'm here.
Marc:Why don't we frame it a different way?
Marc:Why don't you say, give me the opportunity to tell you the story that I created for this wonderful thing I'm proud of called Outkast, a comic book.
Marc:Sure.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Give me the pitch.
Marc:I'll take the pitch.
Guest:Living in this town does change your vocabulary.
Guest:It does, apparently.
Marc:In a really interesting way.
Marc:You used to be a good guy, man.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Just a Kentucky guy.
Marc:Now you're a sellout.
Marc:Now look at listening to you.
Marc:You're going to pitch.
Marc:You're all cynical.
Marc:God damn it.
Guest:I hate myself so much.
Guest:But, no, it's, again, it's, I love exorcism, you know, movies.
Guest:I love The Exorcist.
Guest:You know, there's like four or five.
Marc:First Exorcist movie, so good.
Guest:It's great stuff.
Guest:And, again, like, the demon stuff is just terrifying to me.
Guest:I don't really find zombies that scary, per se.
Marc:Anymore?
Marc:I mean, you've been around them a long time.
Guest:I never really... When I watched the movies, I found them very interesting and compelling, but I was never really creeped out or scared by them.
Guest:But again, there's always... I never liked the way zombie movies ended.
Guest:I also never liked the resolution of exorcism movies, because it's always like, hey, this guy's got a demon in him.
Guest:Let's go get that demon out.
Guest:And then they do a bunch of mumbo-jumbo, and then the demon's out.
Guest:And so the end of the movie is like, sweet!
Guest:He's back.
Guest:That guy didn't have a demon in him.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Let's go home.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I'm like, well, why don't you find out how the demon got in him and figure out how to stop it?
Guest:And why don't you figure out how to keep?
Marc:Where's the antidote?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Why don't you like vaccine?
Marc:What's the vaccine?
Guest:Yeah, so Outcast is kind of an exorcism story about this guy, Kyle Barnes, who his whole life is plagued with people that have been possessed around him.
Guest:And there's certainly some interesting things about him that will come to light in the series, but it's treating demonic possession like a solvable problem.
Guest:And so it's actually... In general.
Guest:Yeah, like actually going to the source and figuring out how to prevent it and...
Guest:figuring out all the ins and outs of how it works, why they're here, what they're trying to accomplish.
Marc:Why this neighborhood?
Marc:Why this planet?
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:My property values.
Guest:What are you doing?
Marc:With the demon possession.
Guest:People are going to find out you got possessed.
Marc:Can't they move to another area?
Marc:All right, I'll check that out.
Marc:I'd like an excuse to get back in the comics.
Marc:This needs a fucking time.
Marc:It's not your problem.
Marc:You make the time.
Marc:I know I do, man.
Guest:If you care about the comics, you make the time.
Marc:Why do you think it's so fucking popular, this Walking Dead business, on a cultural level?
Marc:I'm sure you've been asked that question.
Marc:I've tried to figure it out myself.
Marc:I mean, I have theories, but you can't put your... What's your theory?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I mean, I think that with the 24-hour news cycle and everybody talking about...
Guest:you know, the drought in California, we're all going to run out of water, and we're all going to die, and the big earthquake's going to come and kill us, and, you know, global terrorism, and, you know, the global warming, and, like, all these, like, we're constantly being fed this diet of bad news and gloom for the future.
Marc:Hopelessness.
Guest:It's actually kind of what Tomorrowland was about, which is a great movie.
Guest:I just had told Damon Lindelof that I really love the message of that movie, so I feel like I'm now cribbing on it.
Guest:But anyway, um...
Guest:You know, I think that people, like, are constantly thinking about, like, can our civilization end?
Guest:Will our civilization end?
Guest:It's something, you know, there's a lot of preppers, people that, you know, have big basements full of munitions and supplies and stuff.
Guest:And, you know, I think that The Walking Dead is a very...
Guest:digestible way to explore those thoughts right you know it's it's i saw rick grimes do this i would have handled it this way right oh that's a smart way to do this i would have done this right and how would i fare in this world and how you know what would i do and and it's it's it's very personal you know you're watching a show but to a certain extent the show is making you think about your family and yourself and your life and your stability and your safety and
Marc:and also the morality of treating former humans yeah yeah that's a big one yeah i mean because it's very interesting that it's a manageable apocalypse that people survive uh however it happened it's it doesn't seem to be going away and these were once people i think that was like what drew me in the most was having to reckon with the fact that this loved one is now a monster
Guest:Yeah, I mean, that's the, like, heartbreaking emotional thing about it to me.
Guest:You know, I mean, I think that's the real, you know, spark of The Walking Dead.
Guest:It's not, oh, I've got to go kill this monster that's after me.
Guest:It's, oh, my God, my mother is dead and her corpse, like, she looks like she's alive and I see a spark of the woman I knew in her eyes and, like, she's going to eat me if I, like, what the, like...
Marc:Well, that whole bit of business with the governor and his daughter.
Guest:Oh, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But in the comic, it's different.
Guest:I mean, as a parent, I'm like, I don't think I would be able to kill a zombie version of my child.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I don't like to think that I'm the kind of person that would kill people and feed them to my zombie child so that they would be passive enough for me to allow them to brush their hair.
Right.
Guest:There's a certain logic to it at the end of the day.
Marc:Was that character different in the comic?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, he had the bucket of body parts that he would feed to the kid.
Guest:The hair brushing scene was definitely something that I think wasn't me.
Guest:It was some brilliant writer in the writer's room that was like, yeah, what if he's actually brushing her hair?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah, I guess that's true.
Marc:It's a survivable apocalypse that doesn't involve toxins or inability to breathe.
Marc:Like, all the human needs are around, and they're still met the same way.
Marc:There's just a lot of dead humans who are now walking that are obstacles to getting those needs met.
Guest:Definitely, yeah.
Marc:You sum it up very well.
Marc:And I guess production has stopped, though, so eventually you're going to tap out of what's available.
Yeah.
Guest:Well, I mean, you've got to have a little faith in the human spirit.
Marc:Are you telling me to have faith?
Guest:Sorry, I apologize.
Marc:I take it back.
Marc:No, I mean, I can have faith, but you're telling me to have faith.
Marc:You've left a lot of nice hints that things might be okay.
Guest:Maybe.
Guest:Maybe so.
Guest:Maybe so.
Guest:There's an entire issue of the comic book about how they've figured out how to mill grain and make bread.
Marc:Oh, they have.
Guest:Good.
Guest:I was so excited about that.
Guest:We've got to get back to that.
Guest:I did an issue of the comic about them making bread.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Is that going to be in the series?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's like if we get to season nine, there's going to be a whole episode about them cooking loaves of bread and being like, oh, we made bread.
Guest:This is amazing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:This is great.
Marc:Getting back to the earth finally.
Marc:Oh, there's another zombie.
Marc:Throw bread at it.
Marc:We finally realized what's important in life and stripped capitalism down to it no longer exists anymore.
Marc:We're living off the land.
Marc:Oh, fuck.
Marc:There's more of the dead people.
Marc:I don't know, man.
Marc:That's exactly it.
Marc:Okay.
Marc:Well, how are you settling into your sort of new, you know, what would you, your position in the world as a screenwriter?
Marc:I mean, you got a movie coming out?
Marc:Yeah, well, I mean, I produced a movie called Air.
Guest:It's coming out in August.
Guest:I didn't write it, but it's written and directed by this guy, Christian Condemesa, who's a really talented video game director, and this is his first movie.
Guest:It's a good movie.
Guest:It's really good.
Marc:Good.
Marc:And you're not writing movies?
Guest:I mean, they just announced this.
Guest:It's funny, it leaked that I'm part of the Transformers writer's room thing, and I don't even know if I'm allowed to confirm that, but sure, I'm doing that.
Marc:Okay, might be happening.
Guest:Might be happening.
Marc:Sure, it might be happening.
Guest:Yeah, I can either confirm or deny, but I will talk as though that is definitely a thing that's happening.
Yeah.
Guest:It's a fun thing about Hollywood, though.
Guest:We were totally negotiating the contract, and I didn't know if I was even going to have time to do it, so we were talking about what window I was going to have to work and everything.
Guest:And then it was like, hey, it's closed.
Guest:It's going to work.
Guest:Sweet.
Guest:And then two hours later, it was like, hey, you're on...
Guest:You're on Variety or Hollywood Reporter or whatever.
Guest:And I was like, how does that happen?
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:Someone does it.
Guest:No, I know.
Guest:But I'm just like, man, it's fast.
Marc:The bigger question is which one?
Marc:Who did it?
Marc:Who made the call?
Guest:Can I tell my wife first?
Marc:No.
Marc:Please.
Guest:Please let me tell my wife first when she reads this online.
Guest:She's going to be so mad at me.
Marc:Were you able to?
Guest:Yeah, she knew it was happening, but there have been times where things have been announced and it's like, oh, I meant to tell you about that, but it was yesterday.
Marc:Usually that's how you find out you lost your job in this town.
Marc:They don't tell you directly.
Marc:It's like some guy you just run into on the street.
Marc:I heard the news.
Marc:Like, what?
Marc:Oh, you didn't know.
Marc:It's awful.
Marc:So you're part of every, you still are in the writer's room doing the thing.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:Are you the head writer?
Guest:No, no, no, no, no.
Guest:I have to, no.
Guest:Scott Gimple is the showrunner on Walking Dead.
Guest:Dave Erickson is the showrunner on Fear the Walking Dead.
Guest:Chris Plack is the showrunner on Outkast.
Guest:And I just take all the credit.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you're a consultant?
Guest:No, I'm an executive producer, but you know, and I'm also in the room.
Marc:Hands on.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You know?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That guy would never do that.
Marc:Do you say things like that?
Marc:I don't think you should.
Guest:No.
Guest:Oddly enough, I'm usually the guy that's like, no, let's kill him.
Guest:It'll be crazy.
Guest:And they're like, but no, he's real popular in the comics.
Guest:And I'm like, yeah, people won't expect it.
Guest:Let's do it.
Marc:Let's do it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Now, do you find you're too busy to be a family man?
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I mean, I, uh, uh, that's, that's, you know, that's, that's number one priority, you know, um, my, yeah, yeah.
Guest:My, uh, uh, got a buddy that, that, you know, he, he explained to me one time that, uh, uh, your work will take up exactly the amount of time you allow it to.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so he was drawing like three comics at the time.
Guest:Eric Larson, great guy.
Guest:And I was like, how do you do it?
Guest:And he was like, I sit down at 8 AM and I leave my desk at five and
Guest:If I don't get it done before I leave my desk at 5, I don't get it done.
Guest:And I know that, and so I have to get it done.
Guest:And I was like, okay.
Marc:So he honored the hours that he made for himself.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:And he said, if you do that in the first month, your schedule's just going to be fucked.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But you'll eventually figure out how to not surf the internet.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I sit down and it's like, got to do this.
Guest:I get phone calls, you know, do this podcast, things like that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And I work till six, but six o'clock, I go home, hang out with the kids, put the kids in bed at eight.
Guest:Every now and then, you know, if I got some script that's not done or some kind of thing, I'll do a little bit of work from, you know, after the kids go to bed and a little bit before I go to bed.
Marc:But you don't get lost in the work.
Guest:No, no.
Guest:I mean, it's, you know, it's important.
Guest:It's important.
Guest:I love my work.
Guest:I'm so happy that I get to do it, but it's really not important.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Sure.
Marc:That's a good way to look at it.
Guest:I think my main goal is when my children are adults, two goals.
Guest:I want my children not to be shitty when they're adults.
Guest:And I want to not be blinded to the fact that my kids are shitty if they're shitty.
Guest:I don't want to be one of those parents that are like, my son's such a great guy.
Guest:Explain this dead animal.
Guest:He's like, oh no, it's actually a thing.
Guest:The animal was sick.
Guest:It wasn't his fault.
Guest:It was a mercy thing.
Guest:Oh, he ate it too.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:That's my son.
Marc:He's watching my movies.
Marc:How do your parents feel about it all?
Guest:uh they you know they like it i guess uh you know proud of you my my dad i love him he uh how's that movie going yeah i'm like you mean the tv show yeah whatever whatever oh really yeah no he's very interested but like you know the vernacular is not something that he gives a shit about right right right yeah they know i guess it's not a movie they whatever they don't have to mess with me
Marc:I think there's always something a certain type of parent will minimize a little bit.
Marc:Like, what's that little thing you got?
Marc:The thing that's not really a job.
Marc:The thing that you don't have to use your hands for.
Marc:Were they happy when you were doing comics?
Marc:Well.
Marc:I mean, like when you started, was it when you said, look, I'm doing comics?
Guest:So my father was a small business owner, very successful, and always instilled in me work ethic and all that kind of stuff.
Guest:And when I told him, yeah, I kind of want to do comics someday, he was like, yeah, just make sure you get a fallback plan.
Guest:And I knew that my parents would be really worried about me.
Mm-hmm.
Guest:And so I just didn't tell him.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:So I quit my day job and I started doing comics.
Guest:And I struggled for quite a bit, but they were in Florida.
Marc:You stayed in Kentucky.
Guest:Yeah, it was very easy for me to lie.
Guest:Yes, yes.
Guest:And so I told him I still worked at the day job.
Guest:And then at one point my mother called and called my work.
Guest:And then she called me up and she was like,
Guest:They just told me that you haven't worked there in over a year.
Guest:What happened?
Guest:Did you get fired?
Guest:You never told me.
Guest:What's going on?
Guest:And I was like, yeah, I didn't tell you.
Guest:I got a job at UPS.
Guest:Sorry.
Marc:You made it up?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I just didn't want them to... I was struggling.
Guest:I was struggling really bad.
Guest:And I didn't want them to...
Guest:You know, be worried about me.
Guest:And I didn't want them to be telling me not to do.
Guest:You know, I knew that I was going to give it a go and, you know, try and do.
Guest:I mean, the economics earlier, I was probably simplifying things a little bit.
Guest:There was always there was a shortfall a lot of times.
Guest:And when I stopped working as a day job, I couldn't get loans from them.
Guest:And so what I started doing was I would put the printing bill for the comic book on a credit card.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then I would live off of the money that the distributor would pay me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That should have gone to pay off the credit card.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Just because I didn't have a day job.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And, you know, I had to be able to make my mortgage and all that stuff.
Guest:And so there was a time when I was, it was like $36,000 in debt and I was making like $50 a year.
Marc:Oh, boy.
Marc:But you kept going.
Guest:And I don't talk about this a lot, but I would lay on the floor and shake because I had like 17 credit cards.
Guest:I had one that had $500 on it, one that had $5,000 on it, one that had $1,200 on it.
Guest:And I had to pay the minimum payments on 17 credit cards.
Guest:And so I was like...
Guest:I'm not paying these balances down.
Guest:Right.
Guest:I have to make five, it was like five or six, I was like five or $600 a month just to, maybe it wasn't that much.
Guest:I don't remember the actual numbers, but whatever it was, it was like, like everything I was doing like went to that just so they wouldn't come after me.
Guest:And I was like, I'm going to be doing this for the rest of my life and I'm never going to pay this off.
Guest:My $400 a month or whatever.
Marc:So you used to shake literally out of terror?
Guest:Yeah, I would just be like, I can't do it anymore.
Guest:I just got to relax.
Guest:And I would just lay on the floor and I'd be like, what am I going to do?
Guest:What am I going to do?
Guest:You fucked up your life, Kirkman.
Guest:What are you doing?
Guest:What are you doing?
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:And it was just horrible.
Marc:It's horrible.
Guest:So I've told people like,
Guest:I'm glad it worked out.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:If I had it to all over again, I wouldn't do it.
Guest:I'd work the bank.
Marc:Well, that's what people ask when you're successful.
Marc:They're like, how'd you do it?
Marc:It's like, I don't know.
Marc:It was crazy.
Marc:No clue.
Marc:It was stupid.
Marc:No.
Marc:There's no system.
Marc:You can't tell, like, do what I do.
Marc:Because you're like, that might not work.
Marc:I'm not...
Guest:oh wow so it did it finally worked and you paid those cards i mean marvel right you know but it was right god bless that evil corporation after it was after walking dead that you still had those debts well so no actually a buddy of mine got the he-man license master of the universe those action figures from the 80s and so he started paying me and so then i had an income and so i at least wasn't
Guest:adding to the debt.
Guest:And then, uh, Rob Liefeld hired me to do a couple of young blood books and he paid me.
Guest:So that kept me from being homeless for a little bit.
Guest:And then, uh, so, I mean, Marvel actually hired me to do this, uh, sleepwalker book and they had this program called Epic comics.
Guest:Um,
Guest:and they basically realized that they could go to indie creators that were producing books on a budget, and they could give them a microscopic budget.
Guest:For them, that would be a massive budget for us.
Guest:And so they came to me, and they were like, we'll give you $5,000 an issue to get a book written, colored, inked, lettered, all that stuff.
Guest:And normally...
Guest:bottom of the barrel marvel book eight nine grand maybe 10 15 right you know and so uh and so i was like great i can totally do that i can pay myself 600 bucks and this guy you know there's different scales for different things that people will do uh in indie comics and uh and so i got that book going uh produced a couple issues and they said they said you guaranteed six issues
Guest:And I was like, great.
Guest:I'll get my foot in the door.
Guest:I'll write six good comics.
Guest:It was awesome.
Guest:After we turned in the first issue and I turned in scripts for the second and third issue, they contacted me and they were like, we're shutting down the project.
Guest:Really sorry.
Guest:It was like Christmas.
Guest:It was like two or three weeks before Christmas.
Guest:Oh my God.
Guest:Like in December.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I didn't have kids or anything though, so it wasn't that sad.
Guest:It's not like I had to go to them and be like, no toys this year.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Uh, but, uh,
Guest:But I was wrecked.
Guest:And then they were like, those scripts for two and three that we had you do, we'll give you a kill fee for those at $200.
Guest:But we can't pay you for scripts we're not going to publish.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Sure.
Guest:Sorry, kid.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:What the fuck?
Guest:What are you going to do?
Marc:Welcome.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I was just on the brink of collapse.
Guest:And then I had an in at Marvel.
Guest:And so then they hired me and gave me an exclusive contract to give me a...
Guest:set paycheck and that allowed me to pay down the debt a little bit, but that was happening at a time when walking dead success was ramping up.
Guest:So, uh, so, you know, I had the steady check for Marvel and then checks from like walking dead and invincible as those books became more popular.
Marc:Those were your own label.
Guest:Yeah, and the income from those actually exceeded when I was making it Marvel.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And so I was able to pay off the debt very quickly.
Guest:What a relief that was.
Guest:Oh, I can't even.
Guest:It was a good day in Kirkman town that time.
Marc:What did you do?
Marc:Did you celebrate?
Guest:I just worked more, I guess.
Guest:I don't know.
Marc:Well, shit, man.
Marc:Congratulations on all of it.
Marc:Thank you.
Marc:For surviving it and transcending it and destroying our culture.
Marc:Well, great.
Marc:Thank you for bringing zombies.
Guest:I'm definitely having a lot of fun with it, so I appreciate the support from everybody that's watching, reading, whatever.
Marc:And now I got a bunch of reading, and it was great talking to you.
Guest:It was a lot of fun, man.
Marc:Right?
Marc:Robert Kirkman.
Marc:Good guy.
Marc:Learned about comics.
Marc:Learned about a lot of stuff.
Marc:Great story.
Marc:Just a dude.
Marc:Had a dream.
Marc:Manifested it.
Marc:WTFpod.com is the point.
Marc:You can get on the mailing list.
Marc:You can look at the new merch.
Marc:All the posters that I have left from the tour are up there.
Marc:You can get the Draplin poster that was just here in Portland.
Marc:I imagine they'll probably sell out.
Marc:But you can get them over at Draplin Design, which is draplin.com, D-R-A-P-L-I-N.com.
Marc:Yeah, I signed a bunch for Draplin.
Marc:He's got a few on the site if you want to get them.
Marc:They're pretty astoundingly beautiful posters.
Marc:But all the rest are on my site.
Marc:The book deal, the $10 hardback cover of Marin that's signed, that is on the site.
Marc:So there's a lot of stuff going on the site.
Marc:But just go check it out.
Marc:There's stuff there, and I love you.
Marc:Did I mention I love you?
Marc:I do.
Marc:Thank you for listening.
Marc:Boomer lives!
Marc:Boomer lives!