The Corner Box S1Ep29 - Art of Creation: The Mary Tyler Moorehawk Review

[00:00] Intro: Welcome to The Corner Box, where we talk about comics as an industry and an art form. You never know where the discussion will go or who will show up to join host David Hedgecock and John Barber. Between them, they've spent decades writing, drawing, lettering, coloring, editing, editor-in-chiefing, and publishing comics. If you want to know the behind-the-scenes secrets, the highs and lows, the ins and outs of the best artistic medium in the world, then listen in and join us on The Corner Box.

[00:31] David Hedgecock: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the comic- dang it. I do it every time. Everybody, welcome to The Corner Box. I'm one of your hosts, David Hedgecock, and with me, as always, is my good friend,

[00:51] John Barber: John Barber.

[00:52] David: and also with us is regular show guest, friend of the show. Why are you laughing? Ed’s going to fix it. Don’t worry.

[01:04] John: I'm just going to talk over you for the rest of the podcast.

[01:08] David: I think I do that a lot.

[01:09] John: I think I'll do that, too. I will.

[01:14] David: With us, friend of the show, special guest, Eisner-Nominated, Dave Baker.

[01:18] Dave Baker: Thank you for having me. Every time I've been on the show, you've said Eisner-Nominated with 3% less sarcasm. It’s going to get to the point where you're actually like “wow, you really did get nominated. That’s crazy.”

[01:37] David: I don't know. Anything that I've been nominated for, I figure, can't be that special.

[01:43] Dave: What's it like to be to just have a piece of coal just sunk into your chest? Where's your heart?

[01:50] David: I don't know, because I don't have any feelings. So, I couldn't tell you how it feels. Anything that Scott Dunbier’s won multiple of can't be all that precious.

[01:59] Dave: Yeah, only the living treasure that is Scott Dunbier, who's keeping the history of comics alive and making sure that the history of the comic medium is treated with respect and really just pushing the idea of original comics that should be treated as fine art, and that is a really bad thing to do.

[02:18] David: Yeah, can't be that worthy.

[02:21] Dave: You guys should have him on the show and talk to him about what a piece of shit he is.

[02:29] David: We had an opportunity, but I totally wasted it. John, as usual, is just shaking his head and wondering why he's doing this.

[02:38] John: No, I'm thinking that would be a good angle for the rest of the podcast. From now on, we just invite people over and just tell them they’re not very good.

[02:44] David: Let's start with Dave.

[02:45] Dave: Yeah, let's do it.

[02:46] David: So, Dave, we're here to talk about your shitty book.

[02:53] Dave: Honestly, I know you're fucking around, but frankly, the fact that the response isn't that, is mind-blowing. Literally, the book is getting very positive reviews. It was reviewed in Publishers Weekly, and the last line was “this whirlwind of a book will be sure to please fans of David Foster Wallace and Philip K. Dick.” That's not me and one of my friends. That's crazy to me, and the fact that the response isn't just “I don't know, man. This is a little weird or self-indulgent” is so utterly insane to me.

[03:33] David: So, we're talking about Dave's new book, Mary Tyler Moorehawk, which is what he's mentioning there, and that's actually why we're here today, John. I know you didn't remember but we’re here to talking about Dave's new book, Mary Tyler Moorehawk. Out now?

[03:45] Dave: Yes.

[03:46] David: Find it in comic book shops everywhere, I'm assuming. Probably find it on Amazon if you have to.

[03:51] Dave: It was a number one seller on Amazon last week. It was number one in the dystopian graphic novels section. I don't know who I'm competing against, but I'll take any number one.

[04:05] David: Congratulations, number one. So, does that mean you can say you're a number one bestselling author? Amazon number one.

[04:16] Dave: It doesn't mean anything on Amazon. If that had happened on New York Times, you best believe it'd be changing my Zoom handle from Eisner Nominated to New York Times Bestseller immediately.

[04:25] David: Why change it? Just keep adding on.

[04:29] Dave: Oh, yeah. It'd be 400-word long Zoom handle.

[04:35] David: I'm joking, but I actually know people who do that.

[04:38] Dave: Me. It's going to be me. I just need any more accolades. I haven't received any yet.

[04:46] John: I’m sure they’re coming. I mean, this is my most anticipated release of the year, between you talking about it, I remember you telling me about it, I mean, it must have been a year or two ago, but then also, I may have mentioned how much I enjoyed Halloween Boy, but I'm also super excited about, like you said, as much as we like to think that the cream rises to the top, there's a bit of luck involved in what gets picked at exactly that moment that needs to get followed up with, in terms of, this is actually good or this is actually hitting what's wanted from that, which I feel like you have that part nailed down. It was just that first part, as we discussed last time. I didn't understand why Bootleg Preservation Society, I've actually seen it on some lists since the last time we talked. So, maybe there's actually going to be a reverse catch up for what you and Nicole did on that one.

[05:36] Dave: I’ll Take it.

[05:37] David: If Mary Tyler Moorehawk just puts all the heat on Bootleg Society for some reason.

[05:41] Dave: Yeah, that crossover audience. I don't think it's going to be a lot, but maybe.

[05:49] John: Fair enough, but rising tides. What is the new book?

[05:54] Dave: Mary Tyler Moorehawk is a hybrid novel graphic novel project where half the book is a comic, that's in a Jonny Quest retro futurist world where we follow the eponymous or titular protagonist, Mary Tyler Moorehawk and her extended family of super scientists, as they attempt to stop the world from ending in a quintessential Jonny Quest/Nancy Drew style globetrotting adventure, which is paired with excerpts from a magazine 100 years in the future, called the Physicalist Today, which are about this journey that a journalist, who is also named Dave Baker, is going on, to attempt to find the reason why his favorite TV show was canceled, which was called Mary Tyler Moorehawk, but only lasted for nine episodes, and over the course of the book, as you're reading it, this journalist becomes more and more ingratiated into this Physicalist subculture, because in the future, physical objects have been outlawed. You can't own anything anymore, and so our cultural memory has gone underground. So, people who are into comics, or even the just the idea of a story, has been eroded and stripped from the cultural bedrock, almost. So, this journalist is convinced that there's a real reason why the show was canceled, and it's his favorite thing ever, and he's going to find out who this guy is who created it, and shock of all shocks, the creator of the TV show is also named Dave Baker, and then in a strange, weird direction. Yeah, John, that's about the reaction I usually got from people.

[07:33] John: and people like this?

[07:39] David: So, we are pooping on people's stuff, starting with this episode?

[07:45] Dave: So, Dave, this is a good idea?

[07:51] David: So, Dave, someone published this, or is this self-published then?

[07:59] Dave: Somebody asked me in another interview, do you feel vindicated? Are you happy? Are you on cloud nine, because the book’s being received well, and also because it got published and yada, yada? And frankly, it feels like a mix between a near-death experience and a birthday cake, because, yeah, man, it was so hard to get this book through, because it is so unconventional, that it looked like I had spent five years doing a thing I was going to self-publish for an audience of seven people, which would have been fine, but that's not what I was trying to do. I'm trying to do a thing on a bigger stage. I think it all just points back directly to Chris Staros. Chris Staros is the fucking man back, and the fact that he saw my weird idea, and didn't react John just did, I think it just speaks the world. It speaks to his level of vision and foresight, and interested in expanding the medium past what might be financially prudent. I'm very fortunate that the book has been getting positive reviews, but it very easily couldn't have, which is why I was initially riffing off of your joking negativity. I genuinely expected nobody to like this, and that was, not the point, but I just wanted to make this thing this way, as an experiment, and if somebody else liked it, fuck yeah, and if they didn't, I’ll get them next time.

[09:33] David: It feels very much like your voice coming through it. I hear you in all of it. You're not trying to just disguise that very much. This is very much Dave Baker. “Here I am. This is me,” and I think that's a hard thing to make commercial, I guess. So, I understand where you might have some apprehension or might think that it might go down a less commercial path, but the good news is, Dave, that Dave Baker in this book is pretty commercial and pretty fun, and every single page of this thing, the level of invention in this book, is through the roof. There's 170,000 ideas on every single page of this thing, and I don't even know, I have three of those ideas in a whole graphic novel half the size of what you've done, and you're doing it the level is pretty mind-blowing and very entertaining to watch, and I think it's done in a way that the level of craft is very high, so it feels fun. It doesn't feel forced. It doesn't feel overwhelming, and hats off to you for that, and I think Staros probably saw that early on. Staros is no dummy. That guy knows what he's doing. He's also a weirdo. So, he probably gets it more than most. Can we talk about Staros for a second, John? Is it safe to talk about? First of all, I love Staros. Dude’s great, and he really is a boon to comic book publishing in many ways. The stuff that he curates and brings to the market is all really cool, and some of it wouldn't exist without him. So, he's definitely one of a kind, and he's doing Kirby's work out there, but he's also a weirdo. He goes to Elvis conventions every year. His big vacation every year is to go to worship Elvis.

[11:33] Dave: It's to the point where I'm a big fan of Staros as a figure in comics history. I’ve tracked down old weirdStaros reports, and this is the type of stuff I like, and also the type of people that are in Mary Tyler Moorehawk in the Futurist Today's stuff. There's all kinds of these weird, quirky characters that are not necessarily based on anyone specifically, but are just I love the scene politics of the medium, and because it's not really a business, it's more of a culture, the types of people that are involved in various ancillary, tangential ways, and the man, Chris Staros, I really only know one thing about him interpersonally, which is he likes Elvis. So, we just talk about Elvis or rather, I just asked him questions like, “what do you think about the Baz Luhrmann movie? Sofia Coppola thing, what did you think about that?” and it's so interesting, because it immediately puts me in the position of whenever I’m at a dinner party, and somebody has to ask me questions, they find out I'm a cartoonist, and then they're like, “so, like Archie?” Archie. I love that, I'm so indebted and I'm so thankful that he saw, being pretentious for a minute, the vision of the book, and was like, “This is insane. Let's do it.”

[13:02] David: Yeah, I'm just looking at it though, and I'm just like, how much work was this?

[13:06] Dave: It took forever, dude.

[13:09] David: Last time, I think when we were doing our top five thing, which you were on, Dave, I was talking about Ax Wielder Jon and how he was, constructed everything with a three-panel grid, was pretty rigid with it. You've constructed a nine-panel grid and you're pretty rigid with it, man, and that's a lot of work.

[13:28] Dave: Yeah, it's a ton of work.

[13:29] David: It is a shocking amount of drawing.

[13:33] Dave: Not only is it a nine-panel grid, which means that the book itself is at least half as much work as it normally would be, or 50% more, but it's a novel, and then not only is it a novel that I had to write, but also it's a weird hardcore zine mixed with Japanese Tokusatsu fanzine from the 90s, all molded into one. So, I made this book four times, basically. It was a nightmare, but that being said, I just want to say that the graphic designer, Mike Lopez, and the photographer, David Catalano, were both instrumental in that process, and the book would not be what it is without both of them and their willingness to follow me into the void of insane bullshit.

[14:22] David: The photography and this thing is just really great. So, what's the photographer's name?

[14:29] Dave: David Catalano, and Mike also did some ancillary photography as well.

[14:33] David: Did you just give him a setlist? “Go get this for me”?

[14:38] Dave: It was actually the other way around. I met David a number of years ago at New York Comic Con, and he just came to the table and we hit it off because he also loves weird bootleg movies and strange cultural ephemera stuff, and he is a garbage man, who in his free time has a noise band, and is a photographer, and he's amazing at both of them. He's so incredibly talented, and it's the strangest day job ever, because there's usually a connotation with that work, that you would think this person might not have skills or something, which is a false and prejudiced view, because he's super smart and really fucking talented. The photographs in the Physicalist Today's stuff, it's presented, if the listener hasn't seen it, the zines that you're reading are excerpts from this underground magazine about collecting and comics history and movie history and stuff, and the journalists essays are paired with lovingly graphic designed montages of images that look like they could be either a high fashion magazine or a record cover, or something like that, and all the photographs were done by the person we're talking about, David Catalano.

He is a self-taught photographer, and all of the photos in the book, he had already taken, and so we had this project, where basically I pitched it to him as “hey, let's do a project together. We'll take some of your photos,” because he does these really strange, ethereal, haunting photos of buildings, of there's a house and there's only one light on the window, and there's a little shaft of light coming out of it, and it's really late at night, or whatever, and I was like, “let's take some of your house photos, and I'll write the biographies of the people who live there, and then we could publish it as a book,” and he was like, “Yeah, that sounds cool,” and then, I went away and was working on Mary Tyler Moorehawk stuff with that as “Oh, that'll be my next little side project thing that we'll do with David,” and then ultimately, I was like, “actually, no. I think we should just use your photographs as the locations that we're pretending all of this Mary Tyler Moorehawk stuff is happening.” So, he would go to junk sales and garage sales on the East Coast and just take photos of the people there, and I was like, “Oh, these could be the Physicalists. These are the weird underground, quirky people who are the ones who remember a world where story existed.” I don't know. I may be a little biased, but I think it came together pretty well. I'm pretty happy with it.

[17:13] John: Yeah, it looks amazing.

[17:15] David: I wouldn't have guessed that. I would have guessed that there was a setlist and that the photographer was going out to capture these specific images, because some of them were very specific. Well, for me, it felt very specific to the page it was next to.

[17:30] Dave: I would write stuff, so some of it was me writing and then us pairing it with an image, and then some of it was me writing into what I knew we had photos for, if that makes any sense.

[17:42] David: So, it wasn't hard enough. You also wrote the photos that were, okay, yeah.

[17:49] Dave: I think the original ending of the book was going to be the journalist, Dave Baker, meeting the old man, Dave Baker, in a definitely-not Steve Ditko reclusive apartment in New York that somehow is affordable to live in, because this guy has been there for 100 years, and definitely not inspired by me writing letters to Steve Ditko, but instead, I ended up changing the end because, I think, David went on a trip to Vermont or something, and there were all these weird ranch houses out in the middle of nowhere, Vermont or something. That might not be right. I forget exactly where they were, but then I was like, “oh, no. The old man, Dave Baker, will just be living on this weird reclusive farm, and we'll use all these strange, dilapidated farmhouse photos.” I think it came together. Also, emotionally, when you're reading it, gives it a much different feel, because the rest of it is all like, “I went to this basement show, and I'm in the city, and I'm doing this, that, and the other,” and the end of it is weird and desolate, and out in the middle of nowhere, which is a fun tone shift.

[18:52] John: I'm just looking at the pages.

[18:58] Dave: Man, this is so much work, and the thing is, this is a silly thing to say, but I think some of that, it was also a strategic decision on my part, where I knew it was going to be hard to convince somebody to publish a novel that was going to be this strange. So, I knew that I have connections in the comic book world. So, I knew I could make a comic and probably get it published. So, if I paired them together, hopefully I could mitigate it a little bit and be like, “it's strange. It's different, I know, but you know me. You know I'm willing to go out there and beat the pavement and hand sell these things,” where going to Simon and Schuster, they're just not going to do that. “We don't care if you can hand sell seven. We don't give a fuck,” and so even in my madness of trying to do this thing that doesn't really have that many antecedents in the comic book space, I was trying to mitigate those a little bit. It's not just text. It's a well-designed package that hopefully gives you the visuals that transport you to somewhere else.

[20:03] John: I mean, there's a weird way, I'm always interested, I know you also did a book called Shitty Watchmen some time ago, but there's the part where Watchmen was a nine-panel grid comic with a bunch of things that look like they were taken from magazines and things. It's weird, with comics, that there is a weird antecedent to this, where this is from the moon. This is actually not the same thing, but some degrees different from the most popular one ever.

[20:29] Dave: And I tried to pitch things, speaking frankly, I arrived at the same destination from a completely different route.

[20:39] John: It doesn't resemble that at all. I'm just saying that, conceptually, as you're describing it.

[20:45] Dave: But that's the same logic where when you're pitching a book, and it's a black and white book, and the publisher says, “well, back to black and white comics don't sell,” and then you go, “Akira?” and they're like, “well, that doesn't count,” and then you're like, “Naruto?” and they're like, “well, that doesn't count.” So, comics has a self-selecting regulation body, which is very fascinating to me, again, because it's not really an industry. It's more of a community.

[21:07] David: You're talking about this a while back, where an Eisner counts to some people, and then it doesn't mean anything to others, within the same community. I think, John, you said, you got to Target and as a parent, you see somebody's Eisner Nominated or Eisner Award Winning book, you're like, “oh, okay, that's probably good for my kid,” but you go into a comic bookshop, that doesn't really mean the same, doesn't necessarily hold the same water, unless it's Batman, then everybody wins.

[21:33] John: Yeah, but I don't feel like an Eisner Nomination increases the sales of Batman to a significant percentage the way it maybe does when I’m buying something for my kid, and I don’t know anything about it, and here I am, because everybody that goes into a comic bookstore, rightly or wrongly, not everybody, but a lot, most people that go there think of themselves as experts in the field, or at least within the stuff they're interested in. I don't mean that derisively. I just mean it's a hobby market. So, you know that hobby that you're dealing in.

[22:06] David: Dave, tell us a little bit about the comic book side of it, the comic book piece of it. I know that you talked about in the past, Jonny Quest being a major influence on you when you were younger. I see some of that in this work but tell us a little bit about Mary Tyler Moorehawk, the comic book part.

[22:21] Dave: Yeah, sure. So, it is how I described before, it's a retro futurist throwback world where the bound family or clique of characters that are cut from the same Questian archetypical cloth are at the center of the book, are Mary Tyler Moorehawk, who is an intrepid girl adventurer, the daughter of the world's greatest super scientist, who has now passed away. Her stepmother, Rosemary Moorehawk Cho, who is now this unenthusiastic matriarch of this family, where she's flawed and trying to figure out how to relate to these people that she was just becoming accustomed to before the equilibrium and their relationships were scrubbed out.

[23:07] David: You were triggering a lot of my parental issues when I was reading that. She was getting under my skin, man. I need her to be a better parent.

[23:16] Dave: Cutie Boy, who is a robotic sidekick/adopted brother to Mary Tyler Moorehawk, who's cut from the same mold as maybe an Astro Boy or a Haji or George from Nancy Drew, where they're the most interesting member of the cast, but they're also relegated to second fiddle because we need to have the protagonist be the one that does everything, and then, of course, you can't have something that's a Jonny Quest riff without your Race Bannon, ex-military type, who's come in as the bodyguard and initially is very gruff, and then eventually becomes the core beating heart of social ecosystem of the family unit, who's a character named Roxy Racer, and she's an ex-Science Division 7 mercenary who got assigned to protect the Moorehawks and is now, for better or for worse, a permanent staple of the family, and they all work for an organization that Mary Tyler Moorehawks’s mother founded, called the Moorehawk Institute for Increasing Tomorrows, and the book itself is a Fetch Quest G.I. Joe The Movie. Characters are globetrotting, running around the Earth, trying to assemble pieces of a weapon in order to either stop the weapon from being made or make the weapon to theoretically end all of existence, and their arch nemesis in this quest is a character named Doctor Zebra. Definitely not a riff on Doctor Zin. Dr Zebra is an evil scientist from an alternate dimension who has nefarious motivations that aren't initially quite clear, but ultimately proved to be slightly surprising.

[24:59] David: I think my favorite quiet moment was with Cutie Boy. They're prepping a mission, they're putting some stuff on a ship, and he's like, “Oh man, this is heavy,” because he's lifting this heavy thing to put into the ship, and Mary Tyler Moorehawk complements him, just offhand. You get the impression Cutie Boy doesn't even recognize that he's being complimented, but that's how he gains power. Every time somebody compliments him, he grows a little stronger, so she gives him this little compliment just to help him do his job more efficiently, more effectively, but there's no mention of that's what's actually happening. It's just this offhand comment, and if you don't know what's going on with Cutie Boy, if you don't understand how Cutie Boy works, you would just totally dismiss it, but it's all right there, and I loved it, because it really spoke a lot to the character of Mary Tyler Moorehawk in some ways, and also explains Cutie Boy a little bit, too. I really love that quiet little moment.

[25:56] Dave: That page that you're talking about is, I think, the second to last page I drew in the book, and then there's a page, maybe the beginning of issue 4 of the comic stuff, where Cutie Boy is strapped. He's the Grima Wormtongue betrayer character with the lobster claws coming out of his head. I can't think of that guy's name now. There's so many characters in the thing, but that guy has imprisoned them, and he's riding around in the eyeball spider machine thing, and they're in a field of mushrooms, and they're all trying to get him to confirm something to them, and then he says, “oh, yeah. This was the thing in the defense system of the Moorehawk institute that I short-circuited to allow Zebra in,” and then one of them gives Cutie Boy a compliment, he busts his chains, and that's the end of the scene. Those were the two last pages of the book I drew, primarily because, one, I forgot to explain how they got in there. So, I finished. Oh, wait, when she breaks in, I set up a whole thing that she's got an inside man in the first issue, and then I never paid that off. I should go back in, and then I wanted that idea, specifically, I wanted a subtler version of the idea that they have a positive social ecosystem as siblings, where she's always bigging him up and giving him compliments, because she knows that that's how he functions as a robot. How does he function because he gets stronger when he gets compliments? I don't know. I don't know the technology with that, but it's a funny narrative mechanic.

[27:33] David: I liked it a lot. I thought it was very inventive. Again, there's so much. The other thing I love about this is some of the names that you have all these characters. For the reader who hasn't seen it yet, there's an occasional double-page splash, where Dave's just drawn, I don't know, 30 different characters. There's so many characters, that he’s actually numbered them all, and then on the follow up, subsequent double-page spreads is the numbers and the names of the characters. So, some of these characters, I don't think we see all these characters in the story, but there's some guys in there. I definitely want to see more of Dr. Emorto, Harry the Homunculus, Elder, the last of the vine walkers. Vinny the Fence, Collect-a-Tron, Destroco, Annihiliax. How did you even come up with this stuff, man? That's just some of the ones on one of the double-pages, that's just random.

[28:29] Dave: So, that idea comes from Buckaroo Banzai. We just have to do a drinking game at this point, where any time I'm talking about Buckaroo Banzai, you’ve got to take a shot, because in Buckaroo Banzai, there's all these strange ancillary characters who don't have anything to do, because they literally are characters that are holdovers from previous drafts or sequels that Earl Mac Rauch had written but they never filmed, and the way that they logic out the universe is that all of the previous drafts were canon to the eventual movie that got made, which is why it starts seven times as a movie, but I love that experience or even just the comics idea that the world is populated with, “oh, man, look, you can see Thor flying through the background of a Spider Man comic,” or whatever, and initially, I wasn't planning on doing that. Initially, I was just going to be like, “I'll just draw a double-page spread of characters, and it'll be a fun world-building, look at all these characters,” and then I was like, “I should probably tell people who they are,” and so I did that mechanic of the footnote thing, because that felt very spiritually in line with both the footnotes in the comic sections itself, and then the footnotes in the prose sections, as well. There's a big double-page spread at the end where some of those characters show back up. Some of them don’t. There's a character called Foxtrot Gator Foxtrot, who's just a giant mechanized alligator dude. He was really fun to draw, but I drew him in one page, and it was like, “I have to really, really figure out how to draw this alligator face. I don't want to do that.” So, I just swapped him out for a different character, because there's 500 characters. No one's going to pay attention, but now, I wish I would have put Foxtrot Gator Foxtrot in there.

[30:14] David: I can't remember her last name, but there's a bunny character in there, too, that I was like, “oh, man, she looks cool. I want to see more of her.”

[30:22] Dave: My favorite one is Dreeb Lazenby. He's an alien with heads for hands, and I liked him so much that I ended up putting him in Halloween Boy. He's a recurring character in Halloween Boy.

[30:36] David: Nice.

[30:37] Dave: There's also a character that's a blonde woman, who has a techno organic wolf head for a hand. Frankly, I don't remember her name, but I liked her a lot, and I put her in multiple scenes as well, like “you’re cool looking. Who are you?”

[30:52] David: I also want to a whole comic book of Ape Manslow. Guy looks awesome. He looks like, I don't know, he's ready for some adventures, for sure.

[31:03] Dave: The thing is, this book is so dense. Frankly, I don't remember. This is a good name. Sin-Dealer Gucci-Hellvox. The answer is, I don't know. The thing is, the book is so dense. There's so many jokes and weird character bios and stuff like that. I don't remember them all now, because I've been working on this thing for so long that it's almost, I get to read it for the first time. It's not true. I will never read this book again. I've read it nine times. I will never read this book again.

[31:44] David: But you're going to hate me when I send you my marked-up notes with all the errors I found.

[31:47] Dave: So, here's the thing, the PDF that you found, that you read, thank God, is not the one that went to print. That was the one that sold it to Top Shelf.

[31:57] David: The Elvis impersonator?

[32:03] Dave: Yeah, thankfully,

[32:05] David: I say there was a lot. There's only two minor stuff. You're fine. I'm the only one that's going to reuse it, because I'm weird like that.

[32:12] Dave: Honestly, I don't have an ego about that anymore. At one point in time, I was like, “I will find all my own typos,” and now I'm like, “please, dear God. Someone look at this because I can't see them anymore. Please.” But yeah, the file that you read is not the one that went to print. Thankfully. Oh, yeah. These were the pages that I was talking about where he busts out of the chains. This was the last page. This is the second to last page.

[32:38] David: How long were you working on this project?

[32:40] Dave: Five-ish years, I think. Wow.

[32:43] David: I mean, the art is really consistent, through the whole thing. Didn't you think, John?

[32:49] John: You didn't get any better. That’s super weird. Oh, we're not doing that?

[32:57] David: We’re not pooping on the guest. We decided we're not doing that.

[33:02] Dave: The answer to that, David, is because I re-drew stuff. I went back, and I read through that first issue, I think maybe 20 pages out of the first issue, I re-drew completely. Saying I re-drew them is not actually accurate. I traced them and fixed a bunch of stuff while tracing them. That makes sense?

[33:24] David: Do you work digitally or do you work traditionally?

[33:26] Dave: I do all of my construction lines in red architectural pencil, and finished lines in tech pencil, and then pull it digitally, re-draw stuff, fix stuff, and then color it in Procreate.

[33:39] David: Yeah, and the lettering is digital as well?

[33:43] Dave: The lettering is Nicole Gioux’s handwriting. Thank you, Nicole.

[33:48] David: It's a nice look for the book.

[33:52] Dave: Yeah, I think it comes together pretty well. I lettered it. 

[33:58] David: On the double-page splashes, where you've got some title treatment, and then on the splashes where you give the character names and a little descriptions of them, was that all digital as well? Did you hand-letter any of that?

[34:11] Dave: No, that's all digital as well.

[34:14] David: It looks great. It really does conform to the piece nicely.

[34:19] Dave: Yeah, digital paper texture that's over the top of my illustration, I think also looks good, just as the digital illustration with the text and everything, but that overlay really, I think, sells it to a great degree, and we made that choice pretty late in the design process, where the whole book was just the digital white, and then one of my friends was like, “I don't know, man. I feel like if you're selling this as an old thing from the future, shouldn't it look old?” And I was like, “What do you mean?” He's like, “I don't know. An old paper texture,” and I was like, “oh, yeah. That's a really good idea,” and I genuinely think that that one decision, is the thing that when Chris Staros looked at it, he could immediately register what it was and was like, “Oh, I see what you're doing. It's like an anachronistic thing from the future. Okay, great.” I really don't know that it would have sold if we have done that, which is so scary to think about.

[35:17] David: It's one of my favorite things, and only in one spot, do I go, is it frustrating for me, but overall, I thought it was a really good choice as well. I really liked it. There's one of the spreads, where I think you've got a single splash page on one side, and then nine-panel grid on the other, and the artwork’s so nice that I want to see it, just super clean and clear, and it was just that. I just wanted to enjoy the art, and the aesthetic got in the way, but that's the only place where I felt like it was in the way. I mean, it was necessary, even then, and I do think it was the smart decision. I was just trying to enjoy your art, and I just want to see this. It's probably one of those things where I would try to buy the original art page from you or something, because I just want to see it like that.

[36:13] Dave: I think also that, in the PDF, it feels more kitschy than in the actual printed book. In the printed book, it's really not as noticeable, but it just gives it a feeling of being older, as opposed to “this is a digital thing laid over the top,” especially in those double-page spreads, on the PDF, you can really feel it because there's that artificial gutter on top of an image that is not with a gutter, but when there is an actual gutter hiding the digital gutter, it really feels much more seamless, if that makes sense.

[36:51] David: I think it was on your Instagram, Dave. You did a little unboxing, I think, and I don't think I've ever seen anybody as rapturous as you were in the moment of that unboxing. What was that like for you?

[37:05] Dave: It was unreal, man. It was like meeting somebody that you have had a long-distance relationship with, for the first time. It was big.

[37:16] David: Yeah, you’re shocked. You’ve got some emotions coming up just talking about it.

[37:21] Dave: I mean, it's that near-death thing, and we were just talking about, where the fact that this close to not having that trajectory of a life for the book, it wouldn't matter how literary, it wouldn't matter the quality, it wouldn't matter the reach exceeding the grasp, or the reactions, positive or negative. None of that would have happened, because the book would not really exist. I mean, it would exist in that I would be able to hand sell it, but there's just a difference when you're dealing with the prose aspect of it, of “oh, it's not a real book,” where in the comic space, that just isn't something I experienced. Halloween Boy, I've been self-publishing, it's gotten great, and sold a bunch, and everybody reacts to it very positively, but it is inherently just an easier thing to digest. It's not asking as much of the reader, and when you are asking a lot of the reader but there's not the legitimacy of a logo and a traditional publishing apparatus, and the anointedness of the powers that be, it's like, “you're asking too much, but it didn't work. You didn't do the thing,” and so I feel like I just stepped off the train tracks, just barely, and succeeded to get this thing through.

[38:43] David: Well, it's a work deserving of notice and definitely worthy of publication by a major publisher. I'm super grateful to have gotten to read it. Definitely want to pick up a physical copy, and thanks so much for sharing it with us today, Dave. It's really cool, and congratulations.

[39:01] Dave: Thank you. Yeah, the fact that it's got gold on the front. Look at that. Yeah, baby.

[39:11] David: You got to foil cover.

[39:12] Dave: Yeah, a foil cover that I didn't have to do weird variant cover scheme speculator bullshit for.

[39:19] David: If you get Tyler Kirkland to sign that, it's going to be worth 60/70 bucks. Oh, man.

[39:24] John: Maybe a stupid question that's really a basic, wondering about since you first mentioned the name to me. So, Mary Tyler Moorehawk, I obviously get Mary Tyler Moore. I get that reference. Is the other part a complicated, I mean, possibly complicated Michael Moorcock reference?

[39:41] Dave: This is so weird. You're the first person to ask me that. Yeah, literally. The original joke that I was going to do, it was going to be Mary Tyler Moorcock. I don't think I can do a comic with a small child were her last name is Moorcock. 

[39:55] John: Like naming your kid Hedgecock, but is Hawk a Hawkwind reference?

[40:00] Dave: No, it wasn't actually, but that's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. It just sounded like cock, but it was cooler.You're the first person to ask me that. Normally, the question is, “so Mary Tyler Moore?”

[40:18] John: You look just like Buddy Holly.

[40:21] Dave: It's true. Somebody commented on Instagram yesterday, “you I look just like Halloween Boy. Ain't no Mary Tyler Moorehawk,” and I was like, “you know what? I can't hate. That's pretty good.”

[40:33] David: Thanks again, Dave. Thanks for coming on, showing us your book. That was super cool. If you haven't gotten a chance to check it out, please do. I'm sure, Amazon will have some preview pages. It's got some really meaningful review. What was that?

[40:48] Dave: Are you talking about the Publishers Weekly one? Yeah, you got a starred review on Publishers Weekly.

[40:56] David: That's what I was looking for. Congratulations on that. So, it's definitely worth your time. Please go check it out. I guess, Amazon, topshelfcomix.com, or HeyDaveBaker.com. We'll throw that in the show notes for people so they can pick up their copy, and I think that's it. I think we've done a good business. John, what do you think?

[41:14] John: Absolutely. Yeah, wish we could talk about it some more. When’s the sequel?

[41:19] Dave: Yeah, exactly. It’ll only take me seven years this time.

[41:23] David: Thanks, everybody, for coming, and we'll see you next time on The Corner Box.

[41:28] Dave: We did it, fellas. We did it.

[41:30] David: We did it.

Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, tell your friends about us, leave a review and comments. Check out www.cornerbox.club for updates and come back and join us next week for another episode of The Corner Box with John and David.