
The Corner Box
Welcome to The Corner Box, where we talk about comic books as an industry and an art form. You never know where the discussion will go, or who’ll show up to join hosts 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, listen in and join the club at The Corner Box!
The Corner Box
The Corner Box S1Ep51 - The Tom Waltz Interview: Wolverine the Last Ronin
Episode Summary
On this episode of The Corner Box, Tom Waltz joins hosts John Barber and David Hedgecock in Part 2 of this conversation to talk about seeing the success of Turtles, the story behind Last Ronin, getting into projects outside of Turtles, and Tom’s ability to discover great talent, and David hints at a secret project.
Timestamp Segments
· [00:53] Seeing Turtles everywhere.
· [05:11] Coming up with Last Ronin.
· [11:03] The signs of success.
· [14:40] Reimagining narratives for Last Ronin.
· [20:56] Expanding beyond Turtles.
· [22:58] Tom discovering other writers.
· [27:16] Writing for video games and VR worlds.
· [30:40] Tom’s editorial skills.
· [35:45] Upcoming IDW projects.
Notable Quotes
· “I dare anyone to go into any store in this world and not find a Turtles thing.”
· “The editor should never be the story, ever. Never. The editor should be almost faceless, nameless, for the most part.”
· “I never cared about names.”
Relevant Links
Follow Tom Waltz on Twitter/X:
@TomWaltz
David's New Kickstarter is almost here. Reserve your copy!
Fun Time Go, Inc.
John is helping PugW take over the comic world!
https://www.pugworldwide.com/
For transcripts and show notes:
www.thecornerbox.club
[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] John Barber: Hi. Welcome back to The Corner Box. As you remember, we were talking to Tom Waltz, and we were having a good conversation. We took a break. We're going to go right back into it, right, David?
[00:40] David Hedgecock: Yeah, let's do it.
[00:41] John: All right. Here we go. Back with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Wolverine’s Tom Waltz.
[00:52] Tom Waltz: It's funny how those things work out. Like with Jennika, that's the same, we talked about the self-doubt. Not too long ago, actually, I walked into a Comics-N-Stuff, and they had some Turtle merchandise. This is a game I play now, and this has nothing to do with me. This just has to do with Turtles, in general. I dare anybody to go to any store in this world and not find a Turtles thing. I swear, you can go to Auto Parts and like, “oh, look. Here's a Turtle air freshener.” It's just everywhere. I happened to be in Comics-N-Stuff, and I said, “there's some drinking glasses, pint glasses, with the Turtles on them,” and one was Jennika, and it hit me hard because it was literally the first time I really was starting to see IDW merchandise. Now, they're making a lot of stuff, and I credit Jeff Whitman, who's now the person at Nickelodeon. I guess, it's Paramount now. Changes every day. Paramount.
[01:40] John: By the time this comes out, it might be Skydance.
[01:43] Tom: One of these big entities. That's what I heard. It'll all be Disney, eventually, or whatever, but he's done a really good job of it. He started as a fan when he was younger and now, he's got his dream job, helping maneuver Turtles through pop culture. He's done a really good job of bringing the IDW presence to the toy companies and stuff, and now they're starting to create action figures and Funko’s, and all that stuff, and that's really exciting for me, but the first time I saw that Jennika thing, that really hit me that it's real. It's weird. I’ve been in comics for a while, but I guess you’ve got to see it elsewhere to go, “this is real.” If somebody took the time to make a glass with her image, produce it, distribute it, resell it, it's like, “okay, that's cool.” Probably the most recent, though, where I had something really hit me, I started crying, was we got invited to Mexico City, the La Mole Convention.
[02:34] David: Yeah. How was that?
[02:36] Tom: Awesome. Great people, great convention, and it was very Turtle-themed. They do different shows throughout the year. They do an anime theme, and this time, it was really a lot of it was Turtles. They had the whole Ronin team there, but I got there early, to the Convention Center, and I walked in, and there was just this massive booth with Last Ronin, and I've seen that before, but I've seen it at IDW. You expect IDW to be really promoting Last Ronin, but to see it, it was just some retailer that had this massive Last Ronin thing, that was their centerpiece, hit me hard. Again, a story I helped tell made people feel so good that they spent money to build this thing, and you need those moments sometimes, because in this business, you do have downs where you're like, “I don't know what I'm going to do next. I'm not sure where I'm going. Do I want to keep doing this?” and then you see something like that, and just get fired up again, you're just ready to go, and that's one thing about conventions, in general. I think they really get you back out with people, because most of the time, we’re all in our little rooms like this, clicking away, by ourselves, maybe, like John, like you said, your snoring dog. I’ve got my dog behind me right now. That's my coworker these days. It's good to get out with the people and see how it's affecting them.
[03:53] David: It's good for you to get out with the little people and let them kiss your ring from time to time. It's good.
[03:59] Tom: They go to Kevin and then Kevin’s like, “by the way, I work with this guy, too.”
[04:02] David: Oh, hello, sir. Who are you? You wrapped up this 100-plus-issue run on Turtles in grand fashion, handed it off really effectively, really well. Turtles continues to do great in sales all the way up through Issue #150, and now the big relaunch, which seems to be blowing the doors off, with Jason Aaron and all the folks that he’s working with. Over 300k is what I saw last. They're saying it's going to be the best-selling issue of the year, across the industry. I'm thrilled. I thought Jason Aaron was a great choice. John, every once in a while, would come into my office and tell me about some Jason Aaron story that he was enjoying, and I would always be like, “I don't really like that guy. I don't get it. I'm not a big fan,” but I finally sat down and read his recent Avengers run, that was out over the last several years, and really enjoyed that. So, I've been trying to change my opinion of Jason and his work.
[05:00] Tom: You’ve got to go to Scalped.
[05:02] David: That's what other people said. At some point, I'm going to check that out. Well, at some point, I’m going to. I’ve got so many books to read. Anyway, you leave Turtles in fantastic shape and then you and Kevin, somehow, you guys take it to the next level with Ronin. How did that come about? What was your involvement in it? I know that you're working on one now. I don't want you spoiling anything, but maybe you could talk a little bit about how that ramped up. Did things turn out the way you expected, in terms of success and story, in that first miniseries, and how did it all come about?
[05:36] Tom: Yeah. Honestly, it was, we were coming up on 100, and I knew I was going to be stepping away. IDW said, “we want to bring in Sophie to write the ongoing. This is a good point for you to step,” but it wasn't, “you're out of here.” It was, “what do you guys want to do next? What's the next Turtle thing you want to do outside of the ongoing?” So, I was at Kevin's house one day and we were talking, and he goes, “what do you want to do?” And I said, “I really don't know. I haven't really thought about it,” because I was still worried about 100 hitting. So, that was on my mind. He goes, “I’ve got this. Let me show you something,” and Kevin is the master archivist. He keeps everything, and it's all organized, unlike mine. So, I am not organized, but Kevin is the ultimate, as far as organization.
So, he goes into this file cabinet, and he pulls out this old outline. He goes, “Peter and I did this outline in 1987. Peter Laird. This was going to be our last Turtle story.” We were just throwing some ideas around and Kevin said, “I want to call it Last Ronin. That's the title that came to me, for some reason, but check out the outline and see what you think.” This outline, in 1987, and I don't know, maybe I'm aging myself here, you could tell the printer had the old Siara Bold, the old font. You could pick 2 fonts on printers back in the day. It literally looked like from the 80s, like something I had in the Marines, and I'm looking at it, thinking, “is it some naval message? They're attacking.” So, then I'm reading it and it's just this story about this last Turtle that has to come back and get revenge for his family. What’s funny is that Peter is more the futurist guy. Kevin's the gritty guy, the ninja guy, this story, but Peter's the futurist guy. Fugitoid comes from Peter, but Casey Jones comes from Kevin. That's the best way to describe it.
So, I'm reading it, and I’m like, “well, this is awesome, but we're going to have to change the future because Peter must be Nostradamus.” He predicted the future to a tee. It was scary reading it, to the point where he had diagrams for a flip phone, which is probably Star Trek inspired, because the future in that story was going to be 2017. It was just like Blade Runner now. The future is 2019. We’ve caught up to the future. The future is now, and I said, “we’ve got to change all the tech because all that stuff exists,” because he even had to design a cell phone. “Eventually, people will be able to access and make calls from a device in their pocket, and access information automatically.” Okay, that's pretty on the nose, and there's the other thing. So, I said, “well, we're going to have to make it more futuristic,” and a lot of it was, I think, even with those guys, especially with me, one of my favorite things is Blade Runner. Blade Runner is one of my bucket list things. So, there's a lot of Blade Runner influence already, and I said, “I think we need to really lean into that, with flying cars and stuff, some future visuals that exist within a dystopian world, but that's not super dystopian.” It's not Mad Max. It's not Rogue Warrior. Nobody’s wearing football pads and smashing cars in the desert, but it is future and it's not happy.
So, Kevin said, “yeah.” He goes, “let's develop this.” He goes, “I always felt like this could be,” this was his words, “an evergreen story. We’ll tell the story, and the fans will like this, and maybe we can sell it over time and people will buy it,” and we were hoping, early orders for the first issue, maybe 50,000, which would have been pretty good for a Turtles book at the time, and then we sat down and started writing this thing, and we plotted it all out, and for the first series, Kevin actually did all the layout. So, it was a pretty onerous process for him.
We would sit down, we would talk, plot it out, based on our notes from the plotting, he would lay things out, we'd get it to the artists, which were the Escorza brothers. Well, they were the second artists. You guys know how that went. So, we would get it to the artists, and then when I would see, it was almost a weird Marvel-style, in the sense that then I would put words in their mouths based on the artwork, but it wasn't like I was going in blind. I knew the story I wanted to tell. It would just be, Kevin would have, in his layouts, “April says, ‘what the fuck,’ but not I'm going to have April say, ‘what the fuck.’” I don’t know if we can say that here, but I knew what he meant. “This is an exclamation right here. She's freaking out.” So, that's just basically how it worked, and first issue sales numbers come in, and you guys remember, everybody accused IDW of under-printing on purpose, so that we could have a second printing and announce that, which is not the truth at all.
Actually, that was one time where there was enough confidence. IDW actually overprinted more, but it was a sticky situation because of the size of the book. So, that was a different thing at the printer and there were different logistical elements that weren’t part of the normal comic book process, and I remember thinking, “man, hopefully we'll sell all that stuff we overprinted,” because we didn't normally overprint that much. IDW was always pretty conservative with that thing, and it was sold out, boom, and right away, we were getting accused of underselling on purpose to raise demand. That's not true. We thought we were going to meet the demand, and then some. We didn't expect this kind of demand, and I'll be honest, to this day, we wanted it to be evergreen. We wanted it to be something of a love letter to fans. What it's become, it blows my mind, and I'm happy, and I'm excited, and we told a good story and it's got beautiful artwork, and I think that a lot of heart went into it.
I know that, but I didn't see it coming. Not at all, and like I said, we're working on the second volume right now, which is called Re-Evolution, which picks up afterwards, but in between, we did one called The Lost Years. This is a sign of success. You talk about how things expand. At first, getting Ronin approved, we had to make sure that Paramount felt comfortable with “we're going to be telling this pretty mature story, and there’s going to be killing. It's not going to be Saturday Morning Adventures, by any means. This is going to be a real hardcore story,” and they’re going to protect their brand. I get it. We saw it with Issue #44, when parents freaked out about a death in a comic that they thought affected everything, but I think I'll give Marvel credit. All the Marvel movies and all the stuff they're doing, and DC, on TV and films, I say there's a general public and a geek public. The geek public understands multiverses and different timelines. The general public, maybe that wasn't necessarily an easy get for them, but over time, they've learned what it means
Yeah, you can have Robert Pattinson Batman and you could have Ben Affleck Batman, and they're two different things, and you can like both, or you can like one, or neither, because there's another Batman with Kevin Conroy. So, that, I think, helped us. The success surprised me but the success that we've had as relayed to us by retailers is probably the most surprising thing to me, because what the retailers are telling us, we aimed this at the old Turtle fans that have been around forever, and they said they suddenly had customers they had never had before, who didn't want any other comics. They didn't care about any other comics, but wanted the Last Ronin. The Last Ronin was the thing they were coming specific to the store, and would check in every once a week, like “is anything new for Last Ronin?” And they're teenagers. A lot of teenagers were coming in. For whatever reason, it clicked with them. We owe a lot to Dark Knight Returns because that was our inspiration.
Both Kevin and I are fanboys for Frank Miller. So, we both love that, and that obviously inspired a lot of the story and the look, and the feel, and I think, Dark Knight Returns did the same thing. Yeah, it was a darker […] story, but you had everything you needed to go into that. You could pretend it was Adam West. It could be any Bruce Wayne that you love. This is what he became, and that's what's happened with Ronin. They all picked their version, and they go, “oh. This is it how it ended up.”
[13:07] John: Yeah. When I was a kid, the second Batman comic I got was Dark Knight Returns. That was before I had read Year One, and I was just like, “well, they haven't made Batman comics since the 60s or since the 70s? Nobody has seen Batman for that long? I thought they weren’t making them.” To me, that was Adam West, and Burt Ward was, I probably didn't piece together that there were two Robins.
[13:30] Tom: You didn't even need to. You filled in the blanks. It's funny. We have people, to this day, who will say to me, “where's Jennika? How did she die?” Because they've decided this is the end of the IDW Universe, and initially the plan was, it was the end of The Mirage story. In the first day of plotting, Kevin and I started, we did this thing, you guys remember, we called it The Mind Mill. We just started throwing ideas at each other and then after a while, we were like, “this is its own thing, isn't it?” Because it worked better to have Karai be Shredder's daughter in this version, and in The Mirage version, she was just a Lieutenant that came into the picture later on. She wasn't even related to Shredder, and I think that 2012, she was Splinter’s daughter, I think, in that version, the Ciro Nieli version, and we had her be the great, great, great, great, great-granddaughter of Shredder, and in the IDW version, she's a descendant, and in this one, she was literally his daughter, and her son, Hiroto, is the main bad guy now, in the future. Again, you think you've got a plan, and then the bullets start flying, and that plan goes out the door as soon as the bullets are flying. That's what we said in the military, and that's how it felt. We sat down and we thought, “this is what we're going to do,” and within 10 minutes, “Nope. They want us to go this way. Karai wants to go over here. Shredder wants to go over here.”
[14:39] David: Was that freeing, to walk in on a property you know so much about, at this point and then get to reimagine bits and pieces, like a blank slate, but with all the history? Was that confining to have all that history?
[14:55] Tom: If anything, this is what I say, my favorite thing about Last Ronin, other than the fan response and that it struck such a chord with people, that makes me feel good, was I got to go to comic book school again, and you would think, I wrote 100 issues of Turtles and other things, I wrote video games, and I went to school, because I sat down with Kevin, and for the ongoing series, Kevin would help with the plot here and there, but mainly, his job was covers and be there with us and represent the book. Bobby and I did the lion’s share of that plotting for that series. So, I don't know if you guys know, I wrote a whole version of the first issue, and ended up rewriting it, because it went to Kevin, and Kevin looked at it, and he goes, “this is not what I want.” Not in a mean way. He was saying, “this is great, and it would be a great story in the IDW Universe.” He goes, “I don't want it to be that,” and that's my muscle memory. I was writing Mikey the way I hear Mikey in my head. I'll give you an example. I did this Wolverine series recently, called Blood Hunt, and you think Wolverine, I mean, I love Wolverine. He’s my favorite. I mean, this book is never far from my side, and this is one of my favorites.
[16:03] David: That's a good one. Wolverine: Enemy of the State. John, did you get edit that?
[16:07] John: I did not, but I have a funny story about Mark Millar and I playing a practical joke on Sean McKeever during that.
[16:15] Tom: To me, that was The Wolverine. I leaned toward this story, and Weapon X is my other one. So, the easy classics that you can call out, the Frank Miller stuff, but you think you know, and then you start writing the characters, but you have to learn them because the editors will say, “he wouldn't say that,” and you would think, “he wouldn’t?” but then you look at it, and you go, “he probably wouldn't say that. He would say it different.” You’ve just got to find the voice, and by the second and a half, middle of the third issue, I really felt comfortable. I started feeling “he's in my head now. I have him,” and like I said, he was like Raph with claws. My Raph was inspired a lot by Logan. So, it started to feel my Wolverine. That sounds weird, but I got him. So, the Turtles, after 100 issues, I mean, they live in my head now. That version, they're there. They want me to write a story, they just come out. I did that with the first draft of Ronin, and Kevin said, “it's got to be different. It's got to feel different.” So, he gave me a few pointers here and there, and a few pages. First, you’re like “I suck. This is terrible,” because that's one of those moments where you're like, “I shouldn't be doing this,” but I took a walk, came back, sat down, and I re-looked at his notes, and then it just clicked who this Mikey was, who this character was, how they were supposed to sound, and I rewrote it, and then Kevin goes, “that's it.”
So, that was the only time I felt like maybe I was getting it wrong, and it was too confined. That really freed it up for me, but it also showed me something, when the book came out, because there's a few decisions Kevin made, where I was like, “no. I don't know. I don’t quite get that,” and then you’d get out to the stores, you’d get to the fans, and the first thing they comment is, “this was so great,” and I was like, “this is the reason Kevin is a legend. This is the reason Kevin is who he is, because he's been doing this a long time, and the dude knows what he's talking about,” and not that I ever doubted that, but it really hit home for me, this is his Turtles. This is not IDW’s Turtles. This is the vision Kevin had, and I feel like I'm there with him, shepherding it along, in a way, but it really is, he is the driving force behind this, and for me, that was freeing, too, because I got to sit back and admire this thought process that he had, and Kevin comes to ideas like, that's how it happens. So, we did an annual in 2012, called the Big Trouble in Little Italy, I think we called it. I can’t remember what it’s called, but it was part of the ongoing, but that was one of the stories he plotted. Were you there, John? You might’ve been there, too, David. I don't know. Were there in 2012?
[18:42] David: I don't think so.
[18:43] Tom: He had this massive chart, broke down the plot, bullet points, and it was huge, and he brought it in. He goes, “this is the story we're going to tell for the annual.” I go, “Kevin, we're going to be able to tell this much of that, but lets find all the stuff we like the best,” and he goes, “alright. Let's do it.” We came together, and we found the story from this big chart, but he's got ideas and ideas, and ideas, and it's been a lot of fun for me to be the Robin this time, to his Batman, where I was the Batman on the ongoing, for a long time. I was running that show, running that story, and I've learned a lot. I think it’s good, in your life, especially when you get a little grayer, to know that you can still learn. It makes it exciting. For me, it is, to be learning and to find out, “I don't know everything.” I think that makes it more fun than going into it, because if you knew everything, it would be boring. So, it's been fun that way, and now, with the second volume, Kevin was the one who threw in the Four Little Turtles at the end. He goes, “I'm going to do this fun little Easter Egg at the end of Ronin, and it will show that they might be mutating Four New Turtles,” and we didn't know where that was going to go. That was just an Easter egg. If that was all we ever did, that would be all we ever did, the first Ronin volume.
But it was so successful that, we had it in the back of our heads that we knew we had sequels we wanted to tell, but all of a sudden, now, everybody's paying attention. You guys were there for that. Now, everybody wants to know what's going on. Everybody at Paramount, everybody. So, they were saying, “okay, we need another book now,” and that's where the Lost Years came from. That was never part of the plan. Lost Years and Lost Day, those literally came about overnight because they said, “we need something in-between because it’s so hot right now,” and especially, when they announced the video game and then, the movie.
[20:28] David: Yeah, that's crazy. The video game and the movie, and all the stuff that's now coming out from that story. It's crazy how big it got, how fast it got. Does it continue to be the number one best-selling hardcover graphic novel in all those comic books?
[20:42] Tom: I'm always happy because we beat those manga books that only cost $6.99/8.99. You don't have to reinvent the wheel, or whatever that saying is, but keep it accessible.
[20:56] David: It's interesting, Tom, how you went from learning all your chops on Turtles, in a way and then, now you're using Turtles, once again, to learn even more. Now, you're using Turtles to branch out. As you said, you're taking a slight step back, letting Kevin take a slight step forward, in terms of Ronin, and learning new and different techniques, and now we're seeing you transition over to The Wolverine stuff and the Marvel stuff. I'm very excited. Juan José Ryp is one of my favorite guys of the last like five years, too.
[21:26] Tom He's super nice.
[21:27] David: I'm so jealous that you get to work with that guy. Love his art, and I'm super excited for Wolverine: Blood Hunt. Four issues? Without giving anything away, do you have other plans for stuff outside of Turtles?
[21:38] Tom: Yeah. So, I’ve got another Marvel story I wrote for one of the anthologies. Actually, the first thing I wrote, another big character that hasn't been announced yet. So, I can't say who, but I can say it's one of the Black, White, & Blood books. So, it'll be coming out, they should be announcing it, and hopefully this fall, that that will happen. That was a 10-page story. That was my intro to Marvel. They asked me to write that story. Mark Basso was the editor, and I wrote that, and that was, again, another learning experience, because you work at a different publisher, they have different ways they go about doing things, and you’ve got to adjust, but at the same time, enough similarities where I felt comfortable, but you felt, “okay. I have to rise to this challenge now,” and I learned a lot from Mark on that first short story, because I came in, Kevin-style, I came up with this idea, and he goes, “we’ve got 10 pages, dude,” but here's the funny thing. The character in question, again, I love comics and I always have. I'm not the guy that you go to for the historical context of things. I just “I like this story. I like the other story.” So, the character that they invited me to write, I thought, “there can't be much with that character.” Then you find out “oh, yeah, there is. 50 years of history. Holy crap. I didn't know that character’s been around that long.” […] 10 pages.
[22:58] David: John, one day, Tom walks into my office, this is 2019, and he goes, “Oh, man. I'm reading this new series.” I'm all, “yeah?” He's like, “yeah. Man, this writer is really good. We should try to get him.” I’m like, “who is it?” “Jonathan Hickman. He's really good. Has he done other stuff?” I'm like, “dude.”
[23:14] Tom: He's my favorite now.
[23:18] David: I think you were holding up some old copy of one of his Image books, some self-published thing. Your comic book history from time to time.
[23:28] Tom: I'm usually late to the party.
[23:29] David: Tom, another story that I could tell, real quick. This is early on, when I started working at IDW, and Tom comes into my office with this book, and he lays it down on my desk. He's like, “this guy's really good. We should really do something with this guy.” Some no-name guy I’ve never even heard of, and I said, “well, okay. Let me give it a look.” So, I read a couple of chapters, and I came back to Tom a day or two later. I'm like, “you're right. There's something here but does he even have interest in comics?” He said, “oh, yeah. He's into comics.” I said, “okay. Well, let's see.” So, Tom goes, “okay. Well, I'm going to talk to him.” So, I don't know, a couple of weeks later, he comes back, and he puts this plot on my desk, and it's for GI Joe, and it's a Tom King plot, by Tom King, for GI Joe, and I was like, “this is amazing. I love this.” At the time I think I was the managing editor or something, and I go, “this is fantastic.” Tom leaves, I go rushing into Chris Ryall’s office. Chris was editor in chief, at the time. I'm like, “man, this is really good. Chris, you’ve got to check this out,” and 3 days later, the script is back on my desk, and it's like, “it's not for us.” It's just a note, scribbled across the top, like “not for us,” and I had to go to Tom and go, “this is not working, Tom.” I said, “this guy's got some chops, but he's probably got to get some experience somewhere else before we can put him on something as important as GI Joe.” Literally, six months later, Tom King's announced on Batman or something big.
[24:54] Tom: It's funny. If I give myself credit for anything, like I said, I don’t always know who's the it person now, in any pop culture. I don’t really pay attention to that, or brand names, or whatever, but when something's good, you just know it’s good, and when you know somebody's got that it, whatever that it is, that's how I felt with William Prince the first time he came in. He brought Judas to us, and I was like, “this is it. This guy's meant to do this, and he's good, and let's publish this.” The problem was, people don't know who he is. So, the books aren't going to sell hugely, but you feel, as an editor, and like I said, where I started falling love with editing, that was one example where I was really proud of that book. We didn't sell a bazillion of them. It didn't matter to me, or Electric Sublime. He did one later, for us, it became Art Brute over an Image. You just knew, “let's stick with this guy. I know, he's the person. We just need to get him on the right book,” but that doesn't discount how good this book was, but it's a business. I get it, and sometimes they're just not selling. Then he goes over and does Ice Cream Man at Image, and I was like, “I knew it,” and actually, another guy that came to us early, that I wanted to work with, and we ended up just not finding a spot for him, was a young man named Nick Spencer, and he had a great story that I really wanted to do. I wanted to do it. It was superheroes, by way of Jerry Maguire, and I thought, “this is cool. I've never seen this before,” and we just couldn't find a spot for it at the time, and Nick went on to do the Marvel stuff.
I'm talking to DC now and seeing if there's a spot for me at DC or at Marvel, and different companies, but it's because of Turtles, and they'll tell me right away. They go, “we're really paying attention to Turtles right now. We're really paying attention to what's going on with Turtles and Ronin, and maybe there's something you can do for us.” Does that mean there is? I don't know. I’ve still got to give them stories that they want to do, that would fit in whatever is happening at those companies, and there's a lot of people already working there. It's just finding that moment. I think Blood Hunt was just a lucky thing for me that just became available. They needed somebody. I had just worked with those editors, worked well together, and they said, “hey, do you want to try this?” Of course, I'm going to jump at the opportunity, but I know what opened those doors. That was the success from Turtles. So, I don't blame Marvel and DC for waiting to invite somebody after there's been a proven track record, because you’ve got to spend money to make money, and they're taking a chance on creators when they pay them to do these books, but it's staying busy. I like the video game side, I'm working, and one thing I'm excited about, I co-wrote a Turtles game with a really nice guy, named Kevin. I was working with two Kevins and two Toms, at the time. It was totally confusing, and another Tom was a Tom W.
There's a guy named Kevin Michael Johnson at the company called Super Evil Megacorp. Paramount had suggested me, and then they invited me to write a video game called Splintered Fate, which is for the Apple Arcade, and that game came out last year, and that leaned heavily into the IDW aesthetic, the design, the characters that they were using. It did really well. We were very happy with the game. They made a great game, as well. It’s roguelike. I don't know how people have time in their lives to play these games, because you’ve got to go all the way through, and then you think you’ve won, but nope. You go right back to the beginning. So, you have to write all these different endings until you get to the actual, final ending. So, there’s a lot of writing involved, but it was a lot of fun. Really like the team over there, and the game did well enough. I think July 7th, it's being ported to the Switch. So, eventually other consoles, and PC, I believe, and what we're doing now is adding DLC stories, extra stories, for these new launches. So, that’s taking on a life of its own, and then I had written some other video games.
There's a VR thing that I've been talking to some folks about, and then other projects. There's one called Eon Rift. It would be doing it a disfavor by calling it NFT-based. There's an NFT component to it, a crypto component, but the plan, ultimately, is to build this world, a transmedia world, that would include physical comic books and things like that, and there's a really great team. So, I tell people, if you're listening, go check out eonrift.com. I'm just a small part of that bigger team, but they’ve got a really cool team that they’ve put together, and I have a lot of confidence it's going to continue to grow and become something big, and a lot of it is futuristic, to me. I never really understood what NFT's were, and I didn’t understand crypto.
I learned a whole new language because there's a crypto component, but the technology is amazing, to me, how it's evolved and simplified, in some ways, and if you guys remember, way back, we talked about doing motion comics or animated comics, and it was expensive to do, and to have somebody do that, and now they take those pages, and some guy on his computer at home can, with some software, and come back and have these amazing pages that look animated. So, that's one of the components of this, where you can buy the comic, but if you buy a certain amount with your crypto, you can get this copy that's actually animated, and that only you own, and they limit the amount of them, and this is a whole new world, and it's fascinating to watch, but my main job is still to be here in my pajamas, writing stories, and hope somebody will either spend their dollar or their Bit-dollar to read it.
[29:59] David: Yeah, I would have thought you would have put something on for this interview. I was hoping you’d wear something.
[30:03] Tom: I’ve got Ronin. I’ve got the Kevin Eastman Ronin. This one is funny. I always laugh about this shirt. I told Kevin, he does little ink splatters, I don't know how many times people come up to me and go, “oh, you’ve got something,” No. No. I’ve got dandruff, but not that bad.
[30:20] David: That’s some bad dandruff. Well, John, I think we've done a good business. Was there anything you wanted to ask Tom here?
[30:30] John: I’d love to have him back to talk more comics.
[30:32] David: I know. I think this is part one of a long series.
[30:37] John: Have a round. We’d loved to.
[30:38] Tom: Yeah. No, this is great.
[30:40] John: You were cherry-picking a couple of examples of people that you found. The Tom King GI Joe would’ve worked great, but there are a million of those that you had. That is a real skill that you have, as an editor. That feeling of “I know this is good.” One runs into that problem trying to communicate that to people who don't have that. It’s the same thing of trying to explain, if you're working with a client, in a non-comics area, where you're making comics, “this is what it's going to look like if you put the leg that way,” or something, and they can't visualize it until they see it, and then they're like “that's not right.” Phil Kennedy Johnson was another guy. I mean, he did some stuff. That was another one you were really championing, but there's a ton of people that you pulled in there. Michael Walsh. Somebody didn't like him on one of the comics you had him on, and then the next thing he turned up on was Avengers.
[31:27] David: Tom's editorial superpower is exactly that. It's interesting, John, that we work with so many damn unicorns in this industry, and just so many people with highly developed, unique talents, and Tom's definitely was that, as an editor. Obviously, he's got other talents, as a writer, but as an editor, that was always the thing. I always knew that if Tom was coming to me with somebody, that that guy had something, and we'd probably see him somewhere, eventually, if it wasn't with us.
[31:53] Tom: Actually, my favorite early person, along those lines, was this really nice young lady, came to our booth when I first started, early in IDW editing, probably 2009-ish/10-ish/11 for our portfolio, and at ComicCon, you're getting stuff left and right, and it's hard to look at anything. She came with her boyfriend, and really nice, and showed me her stuff, and I was like, “holy crap. This has to go to the top of the pile.” A young lady named Jenny Frison. We brought her in. I said I wanted to bring her in to do covers for us, because I just saw something, and I was like, “this is good. People need to see this,” but I think it's partly because maybe I am a little ignorant, as far as the history is concerned. Nothing is precious, to me. Things specifically jump out at. There are a lot of Wolverine stories, but again, Enemy of the State just spoke to me, for whatever reason, and it's just, the story is more important to me.
So, I always felt like it should be the story that's important, and the editor should never be the story, ever. Never. An editor should be almost faceless, nameless, for the most part. It should be about the creators and the story, and I think what happens is, I don't know who, I would never give any names, I don't know this for a fact. My opinion is, sometimes, the editors want to tell the story, and then I always say they should be a writer, because then you're going to try to make somebody else do something they don't want to do, and it's not coming from them. It has to come from them, and it's like that story with William Prince. You just knew it was coming from this guy because it was just this weird idea that made total sense to me because it just felt so genuine. It didn't mean it was simple. It wasn't. It was actually a pretty complicated story, in a lot of ways, but it wasn't, at the same time, if that makes sense, and like with Tom King, I think he does that, too. I’m jealous of Tom, because he'll do Batman, of course, and the big players, but then he'll do something like Mister Miracle. He gets to play with these so-called B/C/D-List characters, and then he makes them A-List characters or makes at least an A-List story out of it, to the point where I think Gunn is going to probably do his Supergirl story, I think, which is a great story. You could tell this writer cares about this character, because who else would have thought of writing this big Supergirl story in this way? And not to say that there aren’t other people who can do it. There obviously are, but that's usually the thing that catches my eye, is when it feels genuine and it feels like this thing stands by itself, whether it's a style or a story, and like I said, I just know what I like. That's how I've always approached it. I’ve never thought beyond that. I’ve never cared about names. I just don't.
[34:21] John: Yeah. No, that's true. Well, that's a good way to go out here, I think. Thank you, Tom. It's been great talking to you. We haven't seen you for a while. So, it’s nice to see you again. I definitely missed me being able to unload all of my insecurities on to you during my run as the editor in chief, such as it was.
[34:37] Tom: In my career, those are my favorite days, all of us at Liberty Station. I do miss that a lot. There was point there where things were really going really well, and things changed, and I'm happy with some of the stuff I'm doing now, but there's people you miss, always, and I felt like we were a really tight crew, and we also stayed in each other's orbits. I think that's testament to the friendships, too. I think we all liked working together. Things happen. Sorry, the conspiratorial guy in me. A fake pandemic happens and makes the whole world shut down for fake reasons, but that's just me. So, it threw a curveball at all of us, but we’ve all come out of it on another side of it okay, and I love seeing what you guys are doing, and David and I have secret stuff we can talk about, publicly, eventually.
[35:18] David: Yeah. Secret Turtle stuff.
[35:19] Tom: I'm happy the relationships have remained, and again, like I said, I'm glad we're all still doing things. I'm excited to see, one of our old compatriots, Scott Dunbier, he just left IDW to go do his own thing, and I'm excited to see where he takes that.
[35:31] David: Yeah, I am, too.
[35:32] Tom: Chris Ryall is doing his thing over at Image, and Denton's got his company, and it's fun to watch. It’s fun to see things continue.
[35:39] David: Expanding out from that core. Yeah, it's been fun to watch, too. I agree.
[35:43] Tom: You hear a lot of stuff online. IDW, now, I work with them pretty much every day, still, obviously, because of the Turtle stuff I'm so involved with, because we have another book. Jason Aaron’s relaunching the number one, the main book, that's the one that has the sales, but we're going to have a sister series running alongside it, called Mutant Nation, and Mutant Nation is, the best way I can describe it is, anybody who’s been following IDW for a long time, we had a book called Turtles Universe for a while, and it's the same purpose. It's to tell the stories, because Jason is really going to focus on the four brothers. He's going to get back to the nuts-and-bolts storytelling, and it’s called Return to New York. So, he's focused on them. So, we'll be telling the stories, the Old Hob stories, and all the characters that people love, in that book, and I'm writing the first arc for that, and then the four issues, Erik Burnham and Mateus Santolouco have a backup story. So, all online rumors aside, things are going fine at IDW. There's still a lot of good things going on at the company. They're not going anywhere. That was the thing. Everybody's like “oh, my God. Is IDW going away?” because Jamie Rich just left being Editor in Chief. I said, “no. In Jamie's words, he got an offer he couldn't refuse,” and that happens sometimes, and you’ve got to take advantage of it, and he just said he loved IDW, but it was a once in a lifetime chance to go do something, and he needed to go do it. More power to you, brother.
[37:08] David: I'm glad you're staying busy, and I'm excited to see you do stuff outside of IDW, in particular. I’ve always thoroughly enjoyed your Turtle work, but I'm excited to see you branching out and doing stuff inside comics and other places. I know you've branched out in the past, doing your video game work, and stuff like that, but I'm really excited to see, like I said, what you do with a guy like Wolverine and what you can do with some of the Marvel and DC properties. So, I'm glad to see that you're starting to try to branch out a little bit there, and thanks, Tom, for coming. Like John said, appreciate it. We will have to do this again sometime, real soon.
[37:42] Tom: Alright, guys.
[37:43] David: Thanks, everybody, for listening today. That was good practice. We should hit record.
[37:47] John: Let me figure out, where's the record button?
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