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] John Barber: Hello, and welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm John Barber. I'm one of the hosts, as always, and also, as always, is.

[00:39] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock.

[00:41] John: Oh, sorry. Hey, David.

[00:43] David: I'm actually here this time, John.

[00:44] John: Oh, man. Yeah, I don't know if that running joke works at all, at this point.

[00:48] David: I don’t think it does, but do any of our jokes work? I don't think any of our jokes land.

[00:56] John: I never thought about it, but we're not here alone, which is what really matters. We’ve got two special guests today. It's our first-ever two special guests, Max Davenport, artist and comic creator, and Andrew Maxwell, writer and comic creator.

[01:15] Andrew Maxwell: Thanks for having us, guys. Thank you.

[01:17] John: Alright. Well, it was good having you. We will get back to our days. No, sorry. I've known Max a little bit. I know David and Max know each other better. I literally just met Andrew. You guys have a new project that you are working on or putting out. I'm actually not sure if it's finished or if it's still under works, but it is First Place Losers.

[01:37] Max Davenport: First Place Losers. Yeah, it's done. We're just getting ready to launch it.

[01:43] David: The whole book?

[01:44] Andrew: The book’s all done. We're going to launch the Kickstarter come July 16th. So, ready to go.

[01:51] David: Max, did you show me your portfolio at a convention? Is that where I met you?

[01:55] Max: No. 

[01:56] David: Was it online?

[01:58] Max: Yeah, it was online. Our relationship, David, is the age-old tale of the cold call. I think I got your e-mail from another podcast you did at the time.

[02:11] David: I put my e-mail out in a podcast?

[02:13] Max: I think so. Yeah, you were looking for artists at the time.

[02:17] David: I can't imagine that I was ever that desperate.

[02:20] Max: Laser focused, and the rest is history, so to speak.

[02:24] David: So, Max sent me his portfolio, and I really dug it. I was like, “OK, well, this guy's got some chops, but his portfolio is pretty thin. So, let's try him out on a couple things.” So, I think that I had you do some character designs first, Max. Was that right, or did I have to do a cover first?

[02:42] Max: I think it had to have been the character design.

[02:44] David: I think I had you do the character designs first. John, this particular D&D book was very unusual for me. Not only did we have the writer for Dungeons and Dragons, in particular, was always Jim Zub, friend of the show, Jim Zub. Great, fantastic writer, but for this particular project I was looking for, trying to get outside the box a little bit, and so I brought in a different writing team to handle it, and the writing team were fantastic.

[03:13] Max: AJ Mendez and Aimee Garcia.

[03:16] John: Oh, that was cool. Yeah.

[03:17] David: So, AJ Mendez and Amy Garcia, brought them in, and they were fresh to comic books. They'd done some screenwriting and the writing examples that they had sent us were fantastic, and I think maybe they had done something else for us.

[03:30] Andrew: Were they doing GLOW?

[03:31] David: That's a good question. I don't know if it was before or after. They were just in the mix at around that time, and I really liked that. So, I went and reached out to them, and they gave me a pitch, and I had several pitches, but the pitch that they gave me, I really loved, but the problem was that they had never really done comics before, and they didn't really, D&D, if you're not doing Jim Zub’s D&D, which we weren't, we were going to do something that's a little different, was going to require a whole new set of characters, and Aimee and AJ just didn't fully grasp what they were supposed to do with that, and so rather than coaching them through it, I said, “look. Let me just do it for you. I'll set everything up for you and then you guys can flesh everything out.” So, I basically created a bunch of Dungeons and Dragons characters for the book, which ended up being the characters in the book, but for that reason, Spine of the World, in particular, is precious to me because I created the characters along with AJ and Aimee’s help, but a lot of it was me. I picked a lot of the focus on it. So, then I had Max come in and do the character designs, and he just crushed it. So, it really did become probably my favorite Dungeons and Dragons book that I worked on in a series of really great books that I got to work on. John, you did, too.

We got to work with Jim Zub and Netho Diaz, and so many fantastic people, but working with AJ and Aimee is just a real treat, and the character designs that Max did were just so fantastic, and I just love that book. Even the step further, which again I don't normally do this, I bought all the character designs that you did, Max, for that series. Did I get a cover from you, too? I know I bought a bunch of stuff.

[05:08] Max: I don't recall. I know I still have the cover for the second one I did.

[05:12] David: I feel like I bought the cover of the first issue on that one, too, from you. So, anyway, that's how Max came into the IDW stable and then, unfortunately, not a lot longer after that, I got shown the door. So, I wasn't able to continue to work with Max to developing the way I had it in the back of my mind, but yeah, here we are. Max is still doing comic books and doing some fantastic stuff.

[05:38] Max: Another classic step in the old cold-call stories. You finally make connection and then, they're out.

[05:50] David: So, what you're saying Max is that you're the reason that I got shown the door. It was definitely John's fault.

[05:59] Max: Watch out, Andrew.

[06:00] David: Max and I have been chatting off and on ever since, and every once in a while, he drops a big fat folder of cool-looking art in my e-mail box, and I'm always super impressed, and the latest one was First Place Losers, Max. So, I'm super excited about this. Andrew, it's nice to meet you. I’d love to hear how you came on the project, as well, and let's hear what’s going on with this thing.

[06:24] Andrew: Thanks for having us on. Developed this project with my co-writer, Flobo Boyce, and we came up with the concept, and I had actually seen another buddy who was working with Max on a sci-fi short for an anthology, and he did a bunch of robots, and little did he know that he was going to be drawing a lot more robots, very soon.

[06:43] David: So many robots.

[06:44] Andrew: Yeah. Is the double-page spread in there, Max, the preview you sent them? I might have given him arthritis with that spread.

[06:53] Max: I already had it. You just made it worse.

[06:58] Andrew: There you go. I saw that, and instantly, I was like, “I’ve got to reach out to Max,” and pitched him the concept, and the rest is history.

[07:05] David: In the foreword or the high concept pitch, at least, the one that's in the package here, is “Mech Sport One is an intergalactic race league between the sanctioned Coalition of Planets. 20 teams and 20 pilots compete in high-performance racing mechs, known as Exo-Rigs, on dangerous all-terrain-style obstacle tracks,” and when I read that, I went, “Oh, my God, 20 mechs and 20 pilots. How is Max going to survive?”

[07:33] Max: Andrew didn't tell me that there was going to be 20 at the beginning.

[07:39] Andrew: Moving slow.

[07:45] Max: I actually had a lot of fun figuring out exactly, to my surprise, really. I mean, I think any artist sees the project of 20 robots and thinks, “Good grief. What have I done to myself?” Like I said, to my surprise, I actually had a lot of fun designing all these things from the ground up, and a lot of the work, before we even got started on the interiors, was just figuring out the designs. What do these things look like? So, one of the early decisions was, well, it's a league. So, we're going to have rules and regulations. These things are going to be built to some specification, just like a proper racing league, and so we have three basic types of mechs that are involved in the league. There's gliders, bruisers, and pollies, which I believe, Andrew, correct me if I'm wrong, polymath is what that’s short for. So, the gliders are more agility-based and they have a lot of acrobatics involved in the way they move, and the bruisers are more momentum-driven. They're a little bit slower, but if they get moving, you’ve got to stay out of their way. So, they're a little bit bigger, a little bit heavier, and the pollies are a little bit of both. They're a more advanced mech. Only the most financially well-endowed teams have access to the pollies because they can finance the R&D for these more advanced mechs, and they take a little bit from both.

[09:11] David: Ferraris.

[09:12] Andrew: Ah, OK. Are you an F1 guy?

[09:15] David: I used to be a massive F1 guy. I have not really followed, and the reason was because I had a roommate back in college who was a massive fan. He knew everything about it, and so it was a treat to watch Formula One racing with him because he knew everything. So, you got the history of the drivers. As they're driving the track, he would just tell these stories about “this guy, three years ago, did this, and this the history of this car,” and blah, blah, blah. So, I loved it. Totally into it, but without him as my guide, I've fallen off, but I still will sit down and watch a race from time-to-time. Still think it's an incredible sport.

[09:50] Andrew: F1 is a huge inspiration, as you could probably see, since you're familiar with it. Co-writer, Flobo, has been actually to a couple of races live. It was a huge inspiration. Pandemic came, got really sucked into Drive To Survive. So, that was a huge inspiration. How do we do a sci-fi twist on this? Then it developed from there. Throw in some Speed Racer, some Rollerball, some Gundam, and then that's how our baby was born.

[10:15] John: That's cool. Yeah.

[10:17] David: I love those influences. Rollerball is great. That's a great one.

[10:20] John: I bet also, not only was Max pleasantly surprised by 20 mechs, but I'm sure the colorist enjoys the sponsor logos that you were talking about.

[10:31] Andrew: Did you give him the backstory on that, Max?

[10:33] Max: No, we haven't talked about that yet, no.

[10:37] Andrew: That was the whole thing in itself. So, Formula One, and any racing, the sponsors are such a huge part of that because they’re funding the teams and the drivers, and all that. So, we're like, “that has to be in the comic.” So, we reached out to […] the designer, amazing designer, and we came up with 16 logos that we could put all over the mechs. Each one has its backstory, and some of them are in alien alphabets and texts, and each one has its backstory. He created full-on alphabets. I added the driver’s names. If you look at the starting grid, you see some of them are in aliens text. He's like, “I want their actual names in English so I can translate it correctly for all the grids.” 

[11:21] David: That's fantastic. Are you going to supply some translation for it?

[11:29] Andrew: That's a great idea. We should, definitely.

[11:32] David: And when you’ve got that level of work in the background, sometimes you’ve just got to show your hand. You got to show that stuff. It'll be fun to have.

[11:39] Andrew: Oh, yeah. 100%.

[11:44] David: The amount of development on this thing sounds like it’s insane. How long have you guys been working on developing this project before you even started the interiors?

[11:53] Andrew: About a year, I think. Last May?

[11:55] Max: The art started around that time. That was when the interior started. So, I was doing the designs for the mechs before that. Flobo and Andrew had already done so much to establish the world, and we still had more to do by the time I came on, but when I did come on, I was chipping away at some of the design work, as I was finishing Tyrant Fall, too.

[12:13] David: Let’s talk about that. What were your inspirations for the designs? Or, Andrew, did you give him detailed design descriptions? How did that come about?

[12:23] Andrew: From my part, I definitely gave him a big reference of mechs that I had in mind, “let's take this piece,” and that kind of thing, but my co-writer, Flobo, put together a whole document of possible theme colors, names, inspirations for each team. There was a big amount of viable materials, and we just unloaded a chest full, and gave it to Max, and he got to work.

[12:51] David: Max, you can pretend Andrew’s not here right now. Was that helpful to you, or did that get in the way?

[12:58] Max: No, it was super helpful. As you might imagine, when you're trying to design all this stuff, you have to make your choices based on something, rather than having to go back and forth, and be like, “hey. What do you think about this? Hey. Where do we think this came from?” It was all just there. So, they basically said, “here's what we've got.” It was incredibly thorough. I don't think I had too many questions, as far as what was and was not OK. I basically looked at a bunch of the mecha stuff from my youth that really got my brain going, and that was a lot of Gundam, and actually this old Cartoon Network show called Zoids. I don't know if you guys are familiar with Zoids. So, I was thinking about those two things.

The functional part of it, actually, and you guys would appreciate this because just the visual aesthetic came from those two things more than anything else, but the functional part of it, because I can't design robots without thinking, “how does this actually work?” The functional part of it came from Transformers. I don't know if the functional elements are a huge part of how Transformers work, but when I fell in love with Transformers as a kid, that fascination included seeing how all the different pieces fit together. My favorite toys as a kid were the Transformer toys because you could play with the mechanical pieces and understand how everything fit together like a puzzle. So, yeah, the Transformers. Although, I don't know if they have a super strong Transformer aesthetic in the end product. There's definitely a lot of Transformers informing what ended up on the page at the end.

[14:37] David: To be clear, we've got a preview of the book. We haven't seen the whole issue, but to be clear, the robots in this story don't transform, or is that getting something later?

[14:48] Andrew: They have modes, you could say. They don’t fully transform like a Transformer.

[14:52] David: Oh, okay.

[14:53] John: […] become more dominant and stuff like that as they go into different modes, as they're racing.

[14:59] David: I see that now, John. You're much a more careful reader than I am.

[15:03] Andrew: Yeah, and then we go to a different planet, and they have different gear, and different things. If there's snow versus volcanic, or something like that, that can change the mechs themselves, as well.

[15:13] David: Oh, that's cool. So, you'll have them battling on different styles of terrain and that'll be part of the story, essentially.

[15:22] Andrew: Yeah. Exactly.

[15:23] David: I love that.

[15:24] Max: A big part of the design Bible was figuring out, what is the type of gear that these things are going to have on them? What do they need for a general purpose? They've got grappling hooks because there's going to be tons of situations in every racetrack where they can use the grappling hooks. They might use it to swing over a thing of lava, or the more creative pilots might use a grappling hook to grab another mech and pull it around, or something like that, and so we had to create a standardized set of equipment that all the mechs used, but then also, at the same time, leave room for some more specialized parts in a few different cases.

[16:02] Andrew: The mechs all have a certain amount of gear that are used for the race. Their mech has been sabotaged before the race. So, everyone thinks they're going to forfeit, but they go in anyway. They're already known as the loser team. They’re sabotaged. They're the Bad News Bears of this race league. So, yeah. They're already shorthanded going in.

[16:24] David: I like that. The driver is a bit of a rebel, it seems like, right out of the gate. So, you guys are obviously making comics. I'm assuming you're into comics. Max, what was that comic that grabbed you and held your attention in a way that made you go from a casual reader to a fan? Do you remember what that was?

[16:49] Max: I actually have what could be a disappointing answer to this. I don't remember what it was called. It wasn't a comic, in terms of a narrative thing. It was just 22 pages of Jim Lee X-Men pinups.

[17:06] David: The swimsuit special?

[17:07] Max: No, not that kind of pinup. It was just character shots, like “here's Beast looking cool. Here's Cyclops blasting something.”

[17:16] David: Did it have bios of the different characters with it or something, or was it just like “here's a bunch of Jim Lee, or you kids like Jim Lee?”

[17:23] Max: It might have just been art and it was really cool. I had always seen proper comic books on the shelves, but it was always impenetrable to me because I never found an issue #1 anywhere, and it was actually the original 93/94 The X-Men Animated Show that got me turned on to superheroes, and then it was that book that made me fall in love with the medium of comics. It wasn't until years later that I actually, because where I grew up, there wasn't a ton of comic shops around. So, it wasn't until years later that I actually was able to start actually buying and reading comics. So, it was always a peripheral fascination, but that moment was the moment. When I opened that up, I was like, “oh, this is an amazing thing that you can't find anywhere else. I want to know more about these characters.” I loved the designs, and it also importantly was a big foundational moment in my own artmaking, because you better believe I took that thing home and I just copied every single one as much as I could. If I had to pinpoint a formative “fell in love with comics” moment, it would probably be that.

[18:34] David: So, later, when you started buying comics, is there a particular book that you were buying regularly, or was it just dipping your toe in and out, or where did you go from there?

[18:43] Max: From there, I would pick up issues here and there, and read through, and be like, “that was cool. One day I'll find something I love,” and then I eventually found that you can get trades at Barnes & Noble, or what was the other one, Borders? It was either Conan or Watchmen. I can't remember which came first. It was some Buscema run of Conan. It was either that or Watchman. The Jim Lee book was, what was I, 9/10/11/12, somewhere in there, and then Conan and Watchman would have been a bit later, at 18, maybe.

[19:16] David: That John Buscema Conan and stuff is so good.

[19:19] Max: It's so good. You guys have been talking a lot about Moebius, who is my artistic North Star, but Buscema is right there, right next to him.

[19:32] David: I definitely see a lot of that Moebius/Geof Darrow-esque feel in your work. You certainly have a higher level of detail in the art. You definitely see where your influence is.

[19:46] Max: I will never get tired of hearing that.

[19:49] David: Yeah, man. This stuff looks really, really good. I've been a fan for a long time but this in particular, I feel like you've probably leveled up again. I can't even imagine drawing all that mech.

[19:57] John: Way long time ago, it was for Issue #50s of some of the Transformers, the two Transformers comics were both hitting Issue #50, Jonathan Hickman came on to do covers for them. One was going to have Optimus Prime. One was going to have Megatron. He did the Optimus Prime one. He was like, “hey. It turns out I hate drawing robots. Can I not do the other cover?”

[20:18] David: That's hilarious.

[20:21] John: Like you said, it takes a certain mindset to be able to do it.

[20:24] David: Jonathan Hickman stopped drawing comics after that.

[20:26] John: I don't know the next thing he drew. I don't know if there is a next thing.

[20:32] Max: I was lucky to have had the experience with that other science fiction project before this. It did prime the pumps a little bit for me to really get going with the robots, and I must have still been working at this studio when I reached out to you, David, first. I was working on a little magazine. There was a 50-page magazine came out every month for the US Military, and it was basically a technical manual. Every single day, 5 days a week, 8-9 hours a day, I was just drawing tanks and Humvees and M-16s, and it really broke me of any hesitance around technical drawing and perspective, and stuff, because in technical manuals and stuff, there's no wiggle room. You’ve got to get it right. So, I was uniquely suited for something like this. I still don't have an infinite amount of patience for robots.

[21:29] David: Yeah, Andrew, don't add another 20 robots. I saw him licking his chops over there. Be careful what you say, Max.

[21:37] Max: I had a lot of fun. Any artist will tell you that new things are always a fun time, but that 20-pager, by the end, I was like, “OK.” It was all downhill from there, though, in a good way. I'm like “OK. Only two mechs on this page.”

[21:57] Andrew: Is it the page where the mech’s doing the flip, is that one in the preview? I felt bad from drawing that page, too. We're doing the mimicking the spider moving around the page type thing but with a mech, and he nailed that.

[22:10] Max: I think that's on a different page. So, there's more racing that’s not even in the preview.

[22:15] John: Just out of curiosity, did the racing inspiration, visually, for both you guys, the way it plays out on the page, was it literally looking at Formula One Racing and figuring it out with the mechs? It reminded me, because I'm not a race guy, I think, too, but it really reminded me of Speed Racer, a movie I love, in the sense that the action is very clear, and the pages we have there, it's conveying a lot because you're cutting between human beings watching it and their reactions to robots doing actions, two people inside robots controlling those actions, all that stuff, which can go out of control, but the action is very clear, but I feel, like in Speed Racer, there are these certain moments where an announcer has to literally say whether or not things are good or bad because you don't know the universe yet. The opening sequence of that movie was a race. You feel like you're right in on this, and I'm learning the backstory and learning who everybody is, and I'm going to be seeing what they're doing from the actions they take. Just curious where the inspirations came from.

[23:13] Andrew: Yeah, Speed Racer was a huge influence and, even in pitching this thing, we were like, “is that reference just too Stone Age now? I'm hoping it's not.” Speed Racer was a huge influence. There's even some Animated Star Wars stuff, where they would do racing sequences in random episodes, how they have the advertisements in the background of certain things. Some of that stuff, I could pull and use as a reference, but yeah, it wasn't a lot to pull from because Formula One is a good base, but in terms of sci-fi-esque element Max had to do, I did […] reference, but yeah, a lot that Max had to take on, on his own.

[23:53] John: I wish I could say that I was sitting there studying Formula One and stuff. I'd seen a couple of episodes of Drive To Survive, but what my big takeaway after seeing some of that stuff, is that, at the end of the day, if you're just watching cars, you can't really do a lot with that, from a narrative art perspective. There's not a lot of 1-to-1, “they use this shot here. So, let me use that shot in the comics,” and the movements were so different, too, because we're talking about mechanized athletes. So, I was actually thinking more about Spartan Racing and Ninja Warrior, and some of the things I've seen in those visual properties. So, that's more what I was thinking of, as far as how to choreograph everything, and where to place the camera, and stuff, but also just a huge shoutout to two the artists, in particular.

Not that these guys have reached out to me and spoke with me directly or anything, but James Harren and Daniel Warren Johnson are some of the most immaculate composers of movement on the page that I can think of, and every single time that I had to create some sequence, I was thinking of those guys’ work because they show kinetic action just so well. Even though I was doing a bunch of robots, which, as we have thoroughly established, can be difficult, the opportunity to play with some of the depictions of those movements, was really exciting, because Tyrant Fall had a lot of movement in it. It's a lot of fighting, but I guess Tyrant Fall was a good warm-up, if you will, and not that I wasn't doing everything I could to make Tyrant Fall as good as possible, but because Tyrant Fall had gotten me thinking in that space, for all the fighting and the action sequences.

I was able to really take full advantage of that mindset when it came to First Place Losers. It was all the things that I had started to develop, in terms of my own style for depicting movement in Tyrant Fall. I was able to really push it and embellish it and take full advantage in First Place Losers. That's where the depiction of the movement comes from, and as far as it being clear and readable, that's just credit to my good old teachers at Kubert because they emphasized readability over almost everything else. We actually had a moment when the letters came back. If you remember, Andrew, we were going through and reading it, and we realized that, in the script, so much of the description is taking up space on the page because we have to understand where these robots are moving and what's happening.

[26:34] Andrew: Yeah. The choreography, and there was a lot of the description in the script.

[26:38] Max: We get the letters back and there's just no dialogue, which makes sense, again, from a choreographic point of view, where we’re just trying to show the action, but then you have pages and pages of dialogue leading up to this Race sequence, and then it almost feels silent. So, we actually went and did a second pass to have the announcer chime in and add a few sound effects here and there. That really gave a new life to the pages.

[27:13] David: Andrew, how about you? What was your thing that turned you from a casual reader to a comic book fan?

[27:18] Andrew: If you guys remember, they would do these random things, but in the early 90s, they had a WWF Marvel comic, but not wrestling WWF. World Wildlife Federation. It was Wolverine, Sub-Mariner, Ka-Zar, and Zabu, all pollution in the rainforest, and just out of nowhere, threw them together. Didn't make a lot of sense, but I just thought it was awesome. I read it 1000 times and I used that as a drawing, just characters, and do everything, but yeah, I thought that was the best.

[27:54] David: Wolverine Global Jeopardy.

[27:55] Andrew: Exactly. Yeah, and so if you guys find that somewhere, give it a read, but Max, it was impossible to find a #1. I didn't even know what that was. Couldn't find them anywhere. It was hard to get comics when I was growing. So, I didn't start reading them again until college, basically. So, I had a buddy who worked at a comic shop, gave me a bunch of comics to borrow, and got me hooked, like a dealer.

[28:22] David: First one’s free.

[28:23] Andrew: Yeah. He gave me a bunch of Brubaker Captain America. He gave me a bunch of Bendis Avengers, some Black Panther, and I was like, “all these are fantastic. Can I get some.” Like, “no. You’ve got to come into the shop,” and so 19/20 years old, or whatever, I've been reading ever since.

[28:40] David: Nice. Do you have a favorite run or favorite character?

[28:43] Andrew: At that time, after I was reading a lot of Marvel and DC, I got really obsessed with Preacher and a lot of Garth Ennis stuff. So, that really got me started. Going back to Max talking about Borders, I actually worked at a Seattle's Best, which was the coffee shop inside of Borders. So, in my lunch break, I would go over to the graphic novel section and just tear through those Mark Millar's Ultimates, and I had a whole library, picked a perfect time, unknowingly, to be into comics because everything was collected. You used to have to go through the bins, and “I want to read this run,” and it would be impossible, or spend a fortune on eBay.

[29:23] David: I still do that. I can't shake that. That is so ingrained in my head that when I think about “I want to read that run,” I never think about the trade paperback. There's almost certainly a trade paperback for it. I always go, “I’ve got to get all 25 issues of it.” My mind doesn't even consider the trade paperback. It’s how hard I have been trained in my youth about back issue bin diving, basically.

[29:46] Andrew: Totally. That's what I came up with. So, I just could deep-dive into anything. Someone would recommend something, like Alan Moore’s Swamp Thing, Watchmen, all that stuff. Just boom, boom, boom, and just devoured all of it, and then eventually, started making my own stuff.

[30:02] David: Andrew, were you always on the reading side, or were you drawing, or how did that come about?

[30:08] Andrew: Drawing a little bit when I was younger. I really, really wanted to do comics, but I got really frustrated with drawing backgrounds. In high school, Jackass was huge, at the time. I was a professional Jackass and did lots of stupid things in high school like that. So, I was too busy to draw, and I just started writing in college. They don’t have them so much now, but I remember different publishers would have message boards, and then artists would submit work on the message boards. So, it was a free resource for me to go in there and just go “these awesome artists are looking for work.” Found a guy for my first book, Rum Row. That's how I found the artist, and he's actually done stuff for Marvel, at this point, Michele Bandini.

[30:52] David: Oh, you wrote Rum Row?

[30:53] Andrew: Yeah.

[30:54] David: I picked that up.

[30:55] Andrew: Oh, you did? Okay.

[30:56] David: Yeah, I got your box set.

[30:57] Andrew: Oh, awesome. Yeah, I found Michele Bandini through that, and then just making stuff when in-between day job and dad-hood. That's pretty much it.

[31:13] David: So, what's the plan, guys, for the project? When is it going to launch, and all that stuff, or you're going to do a Kickstarter for it?

[31:20] Andrew: Yeah. July 16th. So, right now, we just got the pre-launch link up a couple of days ago. So, we're trying to get some traction on that and then launch in July. We'll do the 30-day and go from there.

[31:32] David: 30 days. That sounds like torture. Ours was at 3 weeks, and man, I was exhausted by the end of. It was actually fun, though. I did enjoy it.

[31:41] Andrew: There's that middle portion of the Kickstarter that's just not my favorite part.

[31:46] John: No. We talked about it here, but the part where it goes down, nobody tells you about before you do it and you're obsessively checking your phone, like you were saying earlier, and then you're just like, “it was $25 more an hour ago.” Depending on how fast you do it.

[32:02] Andrew: I realize, too, especially if you have higher priced items, it's faster, but then it can also go down a lot faster. Max has got some original art that's going to be up on the campaign. Someone can buy one of those, and we're like, “well, we're in good standing,” and then all of a sudden, but it's fun.

[32:23] Max: Very reasonably priced original art, I might add.

[32:27] David: That's great stuff, too. As an owner of some of your original art, I really enjoy it. So, you have a collaborator on the project, too. So, Andrew, it was you and Flobo, originally. How did you guys get together?

[32:40] Andrew: So, I met him at WonderCon a handful of years ago, when I had my first issue of Rum Row out, which in hindsight, having one $5 issue to support a table, probably not the best idea, but I learned a lot and met a ton of people that I'm still buddies with today, Flobo included, but I met Flobo there. He does a million things. He has a couple of podcasts, and he's a standup comedian. He does DJ-ing. He does a lot of things. So, he's a man of many talents, but we hadn't actually written anything together, but we got talking over the pandemic about our love of Formula One, and it evolved into what became First Place Losers. The pieces all fit together.

[33:26] David: I feel like we've talked to a lot of people recently, John, about creative endeavors coming out of the pandemic. I wonder if that's where we're at in space and time right now, but we were just talking to Tim Seeley the other day, and he and his buddy, Tony Fleecs, that's how their new book, Local Man, arrived. They were sitting around during the pandemic and both of them, just lonely and wanting to do something, just start talking, and next thing you know, they've got an Eisner Award-nominated book on their hands. It's pretty fun how that stuff keeps happening. I didn't do anything during the pandemic. I drank a bunch of wine and sat on the couch, and I was not productive. Everybody else was much better than me.

[34:12] Andrew: You sound like you guys are in the same boat. It took me forever to get the gears going, starting a lot of things, or you just weren't in the headspace, looking at the news. A lot of stuff was not coming out great, but this finally got some traction, but yeah, you’ve got to find a little thing to inch your way out, get that snowball for the project, but that's how we ended up getting it.

[34:32] David: So, you got your writing partner, and then how did Max come on board?

[34:35] Andrew: I had a mutual buddy that did a short with Max and previewed the pages to me. That was the robot short, and I was just like “these are insanely gorgeous pages,” reached out to Max, and we were able to get it going.

[34:48] Max: I think, as far as, just because you guys are talking about the pandemic, I realized, I think my entire indie career, First Place Losers, Tyrant Fall, this other book that's in the background for now that I'm constantly working on, called Neon Graveyard. I think, I could be wrong. I think they are all pandemic-born. I'm just all fired-up on pandemic juice.

[35:12] John: I feel like I missed out on the good parts of the pandemic. I mean, which I feel bad complaining to you about because you were gone at IDW before I was.

[35:20] David: That was best thing ever to happen to me.

[35:22] John: Yeah, I feel like I didn't get to relax, nor did I do anything worthwhile.

[35:29] David: You did the pandemic completely wrong, John. Anything else that you guys want to chat about on the book or any other projects you want you want to talk up? Any favorite books that you guys are reading right now? What's going on?

[35:45] Max: Andrew, we should probably talk about some of the tiers that are going to be available?

[35:49] Andrew: Oh, yeah. We already mentioned, this gorgeous original art’s going to be available, but talking to both you guys about Kickstarters and campaigns, and stuff earlier, coming up with rewards can be one challenge, but also, as someone that's backed a million of them and done a few myself, I love where they take rewards that are cool by themselves, but also build on the world or property of the product itself. One of the things we wanted to do was make it feel like you were in one of these races. So, one of the tiers we have is a VIP paddock badge that's personalized with the person's name, but it's got an Mech Sport One badge, and then it's got an interactive feature, where you scan it, and it's got the whole sci-fi three-day, race day itinerary. So, it's going to have all this cool intergalactic stuff, and it's a cool thing. It'll come with a Mech Sport One T-shirt, and it's got Andrew’s logos, and some alien text on there, and stuff. So, it should be a lot of fun.

[36:45] David: That sounds really cool. I love all that extra stuff. That's one of the reasons why I love Kickstarter so much, and dear God, do we talk about Kickstarter a lot, but I love that you can do that kind of stuff. It's not just the book. It's, for those that just want a book, totally great. Hey, do you want the digital PDF and that's all you want? That's the level of involvement you want to be at? Totally appreciate it. Thank you, but for those people who just feel like taking a deep dive, for whatever reason, they like it that much more, it's so cool to be able to offer cool badges you can scan and then see the race schedule or T-shirts with the logos of one of the companies on it. That's so much fun. It allows for so much more engagement and involvement in a project. Kickstarter’s so great for that. You just can't do that with the existing direct market, comic book market, or book market. That direct 1-to-1 consumer conversation just can't really be had anywhere. That's one of the things, I adore Kickstarter for that. That ability to do that, the ability to speak directly to the folks who are going to be reading your book. It’s so cool. I love that. I love that you're doing that.

[37:51] Andrew: The dream, but it’s a little financially out of our reach now, would be to do a figure or something of one of Max’s mechs. I mean, that would be cool. A miniature.

[38:00] David: You’ve got to save some for the second campaign.

[38:04] Andrew: Yeah. Either one of you guys been able to do that, just from any of your comic projects, been able to do a figure of anything?

[38:10] John: We talked about it for Signa, for when we Kickstarted it. I think we even sourced a place that could do it, but it wasn't going to make any sense, financially. We actually decided, that was what we did, what David just said, was like, “let's hold off, and if we do a Kickstarter for a collection of it at the end, instead of just the first issue, then maybe that's where we have one, and also there might be more people interested in our mech by then,” but there's no question that would be cool to launch with.

[38:38] David: I'm totally giving something away, but the three listeners that we have don’t pledge for my campaigns anyway.

[38:45] Andrew: Hey. Two of those three are right here. Yeah. Come on.

[38:49] David: Actually, we've got four listeners now.

[38:54] John: Well, three listen to it, though.

[38:57] David: John doesn't listen. We're doing a plush. So, we're going to do a version of that, but I thought the plush would be more appropriate to what the story is. We're going to start there.

[39:11] John: That's with the sex doll comic you're doing.

[39:14] David: I’m not doing a sex doll comic, John.

[39:18] Andrew: Hey, I'll back it.

[39:24] David: Thanks, man. A true fan right there. See? Some people support their friends, John. Just a little plush, John. Friendly Kaiju plush.

[39:36] Andrew: I feel like you could have a business just helping creators make final logistics for the rewards. I think that could be a business in itself, because it's just, how many plushes companies did you look at? A million, and comparing and all that stuff, figures, or pint glasses, and stuff, because it was a prohibition comic, which people seemed to really like, but it's the stupidest thing ever to send out a bunch of glasses with your comic, but I was like, “well, I'm doing it.” I've done all the dumb things.

[40:04] David: But, see, I don't know if that's the dumb thing. That's the fun thing. For me, I want the plush. It's within the story. It makes sense. Just like your pint glass makes sense in your story. Let's throw it out there. Let's see what happens. Let's see if people want that. You can’t always make those decisions as business decisions but at a certain point, it is because if you get fans that engaged, and you get them that excited about stuff, and you're offering cool things like that, and they catch on, then you've got that fan, hopefully, for a long time.

[40:40] Max: I think, every Kickstarter that I pledge to, if I was really into it, I always look for the extra swag tier, and if I'm going to get a pack of stickers and a poster, and some other random thing, and all I have to do is spend $30 instead of $10, sign me up. I think, almost every time, I've done that.

[41:01] David: I do similar.

[41:02] Max: Did you guys see Karl Kerschl's Death Transit Tanager?

[41:07] David: Yeah.

[41:08] Andrew: Oh, it looks gorgeous, yeah.

[41:09] Max: It's so much good swag, too. I mean, the book is fantastic, but the swag is great.

[41:14] David: That guy's art is so good, man. Man, he's good.

[41:16] Max: Yeah, definitely. Super glad that I got on that.

[41:19] David: Anything else, Andrew, Max, you guys want to touch on?

[41:22] Andrew: Covered everything. Really, thanks, guys, for having us on. Appreciate it.

[41:26] David: We'll have to have you back on, sometime after the Kickstarter is over, so you can talk about all the things that went right and wrong and get some insight on that. As we were talking, I signed up to the notifications. So, I will get my launch notification. Hopefully, everybody else does it. We will put a link in the show notes, and we'll try to remember to make sure to feed that out on the site. If you go to Kickstarter right now and type in First Place Losers, it’ll come up in the comic book space. That's all I did. So, our listeners, if you want to jump in on this one, definitely recommend it. Some fantastic art by Max Davenport, and the story seems really fun and engaging. I'm a sucker for the story conceit of the ticking time bomb, and a race is always perfect for that, and so I already feel that tension, that energy, in just the few pages that you sent us. So, I'm excited for this one. Thanks so much for sharing it with us, guys.

[42:21] Max: Yeah, if I may, before we get out of here, just because Andrew is too humble to do it. Every time we talk about this book, I feel like there's a lot of emphasis on the racing and the action, and it's definitely an important part of it, but I'm not a fan of racing. It wasn't in my wheelhouse. When Andrew reached out to me, he reached out because he saw I had drawing chops for robots, not because I was necessarily a fan of racing, but what got me into it, what really sold me on the book, was the interpersonal drama, the character pieces, the story that happens around the racing. So, even if you're not into the racing or the robots, there's still a really solid drama happening underneath everything else and it’s brilliantly written by Andrew and Flobo. So, I’ve just got to say that. Additionally, before we get out of here, I would love to plug my stuff, otherwise. So, you can find me at MaxDavenportYo on all the socials. All 3000 of them. Twitter, Instagram, Cara, whatever it is, Bluesky, and then anything else, you can find at my website, MaxDavenportyo.com.

[43:32] David: Nice. Andrew, anything else you want to plug?

[43:34] Andrew: Alright. No, I just get a little tear from Max, there. So, thank you for that. Yeah, I'm on Instagram, @Grenade_Fight or @Dammit_Maxwell on Twitter. I'm not super on there. Check out the book, guys. So, you guys are going to love it. Thanks so much, guys, for having us on.

[43:52] David: Awesome.

[43:53] Max: Thank you.

[43:54] David: First Place Losers on Kickstarter, starting July 17th. Hopefully, it’ll be live by the time this podcast comes out. Definitely recommend the art and loved Rum Row. So, I'm expecting similar quality on this new project, Andrew. We'll definitely be there, day one.

[44:09] Andrew: Appreciate it.

[44:10] David: Well, John?

[44:11] John: Thank you for joining us here on The Corner Box this week. We'll be back next week, as always, and thanks again to our guests, and thanks to our listeners, and thanks to you, David.

[44:18] David: Thanks to you, John. That was a good practice session. Should we start recording?

[44:23] John: […] hit record.

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