[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.

[00:30] John: Hello, and welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm one of your hosts, John Barber, and with me, is my co-host, David Hedgecock.

[00:39] David: David Hedgecock.

[00:40] John: Yeah, I was expecting somebody to say their name there.

[00:43] David: Sorry.

[00:44] John: That's okay. We're not alone, and that's what's throwing us off. We have our special guest, Alex Segura, here. Alex has been everywhere in comics. I mean, I guess, we'll let you tell this story, but he's got a couple of really exciting books from Mad Cave out, and/or coming out, some cool stuff from Marvel, one of them came out this week, as we're recording this. That's in the past, but another one just got announced. So, we'll talk about all of that later.

[01:06] David: Alex is a real writer, John.

[01:08] John: He is real, and of course, he wrote the fantastic book, Secret identity.

[01:11] David: Thanks for coming, Alex.

[01:12] Alex: Thanks. Yeah, it's good to be here. Look forward to chatting with you guys.

[01:15] John: What's your origin story? What got you into comics, originally, before you first decided this is something you want to work in?

[01:22] Alex: Yeah. I mean, my first comic, that I remember reading or getting, was Betty & Veronica Double Digest, at the checkout lane in Publix in Miami, where I grew up. My mom probably grabbed it. I was under the weather, or something, and she wanted me to just be quiet. So, I remember, Archie was my doorway into comics, and just the medium, and Riverdale was so idyllic and so unlike Miami. There were seasons. It just felt like this place that I wanted to spend time in, and obviously, the art, particularly, people like Dan DeCarlo, and Dan Parent, and Harry Lucey. It's beautiful. That classic Archie style was really hard to beat, and then I got into superheroes, shortly after. My dad brought a stack of comics his friend had lent to him, and it was such a weird hodgepodge of comics. It was Uncanny X-Men. It was the second part of the original Genosha story.

So, there is no comic that is less welcoming, in terms of everyone doing what they're supposed to be doing. The X-Men don't really show up until maybe 3/4 into the comic. Wolverine is depowered, Carol Danvers has taken over Rogue's body, and I loved it. I was like, “who are these badass looking characters?” They are so cool, and then one of the other issues was a What The?? Which was the Mutant Beach Party issue, where it’s a rip on […], but […] beach party, and I was like, “I love these characters. I just want to hang out with them,” and then I was off to the races. I was a big Spiderman guy. Big Batman, Spiderman, a lot of the street-level heroes, but much more of an X-Men reader than Avengers. No offense. It always felt like The Avengers were the cool kids, the jocks in school, and the X-Men were the outcasts, and I could always relate to that.

Then, I veered into more indie stuff as I got older, but my break into the industry happened right out of high school. I was in college, doing college journalism, because I thought journalism was going to be the career for me, and I thought, “well, maybe there's a way to pair what I'm doing, working in journalism, and my love of comics.” So, I messaged Mike Doran, who used to run Newsarama, and I just told him, “if you need somebody to do stuff for free, even if you just want a body to interview creators, I'm happy to do that.” So, with Mike Doran and Matt Brady, I worked at Newsarama for a while, and then my first full-time industry job was an associate editor gig at Wizard. So, I moved up to New York for that. That was really the initial crash course into the industry, going to conventions, meeting talent.

[03:48] David: What year was that?

[03:49] Alex: Early 2000s, 2002. Yeah, I was there. It's so fun to see the trajectory of a lot of the people that I worked with, like Rickey Purdin, Ryan Penagos, Brian Cunningham, Lil’ Kylo, Mike Cotton, just people that are still in comics, doing stuff today in different places, and that was what got my foot in the door.

[04:08] David: Rickey Purdin is delightful. I love that guy.

[04:14] John: Were you there with Alejandro Arbona?

[04:17] Alex: No, Alejandro replaced me. So, when Alejandro left and another took over, except I usually just go by Alex. He's great. Yeah, he's a good friend of mine.

[04:25] John: I used to share office with him.

[04:26] Alex: Yeah. So, that was good, and that was the beginning, and then eventually, I moved back to Miami for a little bit to work at the Miami Herald. Not to go through my whole CV, but then I moved to DC, to do publicity at DC, and that started the whole PR marketing career. So, I was at DC, then Archie, back at DC, then Archie again, and then Oni for a little cameo, and here we are, writing full-time.

[04:47] John: Did the writing full-time come with the novel, or did it come before that?

[04:50] Alex: No. I'd written a bunch of novels. So, I was writing a lot of novels on the side, while working at DC, and at Archie, slowly getting bigger and bigger, and then Secret Identity came out, and I was still at Oni, but then Oni had a big restructuring and laid off some of their staff, and I was caught up in that. My thought was, “well, this is my opportunity to try and wing it as a full-time writer.” I had enough irons in the fire that I felt like I could at least try it. It's been okay, so far.

[05:17] John: You live in New York?

[05:19] Alex: Yeah, I'm in Queens.

[05:20] John: Yeah, that's a completely reasonably priced place to pick, to do it. I've done that myself. That's 100%.

[05:26] Alex: And I've got two kids. Definitely no dreams, on my income.

[05:31] John: Secret Identity was the first one of your novels I read. I didn’t realize that. No. Probably even says in the book, your other books, and I probably forgot.

[05:39] Alex: Yeah, I wrote the five-novel Private Eye series that Miami called the Pete Fernandez novels. If I'm feeling fancy, I'll call it the Pete Fernandez Quintet, but it's 5 PI novels. I ended that, and then I did a Star Wars novel with Lucasfilm.

[05:53] John: That's right, I forgot about Star Wars.

[05:55] Alex: There's a lot of stuff. I don't really fault anyone. There's a lot of stuff.

[05:58] John: I guess, it's true. Coming out from Mad Cave, speaking of Secret Identity is the comic, the fantastic Lynx. 

[06:09] Alex: The Legendary Lynx.

[06:10] John: Legendary Lynx. I was trying to be alliterative. I was trying to Stan Lee it, and that wasn't right. That also wasn’t the letter that Lynx starts with. That was my problem.

[06:17] Alex: Yeah, it's been fun. So, just to zoom out for a second. So, Secret Identity is a murder mystery, set in comics in the 70s, and it's about this queer Cuban American woman, Carmen Valdez, who moves from Miami to New York, to work in comics. That's her dream. She gets this job at this third-grade publisher, called Triumph. Any opportunity she has to write, which is what she wants, is blocked off by her boss, this blow-hard called Jeffrey Carlyle, and he basically says, “stop asking me. I have plans for you. Please stop asking me, but it's not writing,” but later that same night, she's approached by a colleague, who says, “I've been hired to write this new superhero. They want me to launch a new female superhero, and I know you want to write. So, do you want to write it together? The only catch is you have to do it anonymously. Eventually, we'll give you the credit, but for now, we'll do it anonymously.” So, that's the fork in the road, and that's the hook of the mystery. If your dream is dangled in front of you, would you do it, even if it has these caveats?

So, she does it, and the book comes out and starts to become this huge hit, but her colleague is murdered. So, nobody knows that Carmen has anything to do with this book. That's the impetus for Secret Identity, but in the novel, as you're reading the prose, you see snippets of the comic. In college, I read Kavalier & Clay, and I remember vividly being like, “this is a fantastic novel,” and I'm not alone in thinking that, but I remember my big takeaway was, “I really wish I could read those escapist novel comics.” This character that they're creating in the novel, I want to read those comics to really see what they're talking about, and I know Dark Horse did them later as a standalone thing, which was really cool, but I thought, they were great, and they were so in-world, which I thought was fantastic, but I thought, “wouldn't it be great if the comics were in the novel?” So, that's what we did with Secret Identity. So, you're reading the novel and then suddenly, you jump into the comic sequence, and the sequence is a little bit of a metatextual way of telling you what's going on.

You even see when alternate creators take over the character and screw it up. I hate to say, it's just a little add-on, because it's really a key part of the story. I find that you have to read the comic parts to get the bigger picture, but anyway, Sandy Jarrell, who is the artist, wink-wink, it's Doug Detmer in the story, but Sandy Jarrell is the real-world artist, and as we were doing this, I kept saying, “we’ve got to do this as a full comic book. We have to do it completely meta, put it out there, we found these files, and we’re reprinting them, and we got them for the first time, and tie it into the bigger story.” We wanted to do it, and eventually, this company, Zestworld, which was a Substack competitor, that launched a few years ago, they agreed to fund it, and they said, “okay, just put it up on our website first,” and that was great. So, we did that, but they went away, and we never got the chance to finish it on Zestworld. So, Mad Cave swept in, and were great. So, you're really getting the whole five issues, only three of which have been seen.

It'll be the first edition, in print, and I think the fun part is, we very much treat it like this is a lost comic. Carmen Valdez has just been revealed as the writer of these lost stories. Doug Detmer, I don't want to spoil the novel, but he's one of the most renowned artists in comics, and basically, I try to wink as much as I can, but it's obvious I wrote it, but I've gotten people emailing me after reading Secret Identity, saying, “I've been looking everywhere for copies of Legendary Lynx, and I don't see it. I can't find it,” or I've had people say, “this is great,” which is flattering, but also, “did this really happen? Are you weaving through real history here?” And I am, but obviously, the core story of Secret Identity is fiction. So, I love stuff like that.

I love metafictional stuff. I love adding to history, but the core of it is that we're really proud of the story. Sandy’s an amazing artist. I think one of the most underrated artists in comics. He's done a lot of stuff at Archie and DC, but his attention to detail really has elevated the book in a way that I'm grateful for. He gets the time period, and Jack Morelli is the letterer, who worked at Marvel forever, and can do that classic lettering style. We're really excited to get it out in the world, and I think it's a great companion, now that Alter Ego is about to come out, which is the sequel, and it's set in the modern day, and Alter Ego also has comic book sequences, but if you want the full Secret Identity experience, read those novels, and then also read the full collection. Hopefully, it will be a kick.

[10:26] John: When I got the PDF of the Lynx, I was reading the intro, and it’s an intro by J.M. DeMatteis. I was reading and I'm like, “these names ring a bell.” I'd say I had no idea what the book was. I didn’t know context of the book, I just didn't piece together things. I'm like, “Oh, yeah. These names sound familiar.” I didn't know much about […]. Then I started reading, and I'm like, “I wonder if this is the story that inspired him to write the novel. Wait a minute,” and then I realized.

[10:53] Alex: That hesitation. Mission is accomplished.

[10:57] David: I almost wish you had just gone full meta with it and not had your credits in it, at all, just had the credits of that […], but I think you made the right choice there. By the way, you didn't mention Grey Allison, whose colors on this are just, chefs kiss. Really top-notch stuff. They did a great job hitting that feel.

[11:18] Alex: Yeah, I know. The vibe is great, and it looks like a comic that came out in 1975, and that really was obviously the goal, but we also wanted to tell a good story while using these pages that people had seen. It was a project unlike anything I'd done before, in that, when you do a snippet, you're not thinking about the other 3/4 of the comic. That's the cool ending. This would be a great final splash, and then what I had to do was basically create a graph of the pages we had, and empty spaces for the other pages, and figure out the overarching story, and it went completely in another direction than what I thought it would be, and it became much more like a weird Moon Knight story. It felt very 70s at the end of it. So, it all worked out, which was good, but it wasn't this street-level vigilante, Daredevil-type story, though, there's a little bit of that in there. It felt very much more like a quirky 70s, lesser-known Marvel series, which at the end of the day, is what we wanted anyway.

[12:14] David: Secret Identity is out now. Who's the publisher for Secret Identity?

[12:18] Alex: Flatiron

[12:19] David: And then Legendary Lynx is coming out from Mad Cave soon, right?

[12:24] Alex: Yeah, in November.

[12:26] David: And then you said there's a follow-up to the first book that's coming out after that.

[12:30] Alex: Alter Ego. It comes out in December, and that's a spiritual sequel. It is part of the same universe. I think you could read the book separately and not miss anything, but it's set in the modern day, and it's about this former comic book artist who starts working in film and leaves the industry. She feels exiled from comics, has a bad experience, starts working in film, has some success there, then hits a lull in her film career, and at the same time, this very tiny company is announcing that they own the IP that used to be Triumph Comics, and they're going to relaunch the company as this multi-platform initiative, and they reach out to Annie, the protagonist, and say, “we want you to write and draw this book,” and at first, normally, she would say no, but this is her one character, this is her Holy Grail of comics, the one comic she still holds on to.

So, she takes the gig, but then, as she gets deeper and deeper into the work, she starts discovering that there's this sordid back story, bad things happen, and it's really about art versus commerce, this idea of, do businesses that own these characters have the best intentions for these characters? What happens when you're passionate about a character, but you have to really weave your story through what a corporation wants you to do with these characters? It's not an indictment. Some companies do it great. Some do it less so. It's just the other side of the coin. It's today's comic book industry, as opposed to this industry from the 70s that doesn't really exist anymore.

[13:56] John: You got me a second time in the outro. By then I knew this is fake. The outro of the comic, […] revealed. Did Brian actually write it?

[14:06] Alex: Yeah, he did. He was a big help with Secret Identity and Alter Ego, just in terms of historical, and I was like, “write a fake column to accompany this story.”

[14:18] John: What got me is that you get to each part of it, and you're just talking about these different famous runs like Frank Miller on Daredevil, Alan Moore, and Annie Bustamente, and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. I was like, “oh, I don't know about that one. That's interesting. Surely this real IP that he's attaching something to is a real thing. Man, this guy knows his stuff,” and then by the end of it, I’m like “What? That's great.” So, it actually involves T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents, which is a real comic book.

[14:44] Alex: Yeah. I mean, the rule of thumb with stuff like that is, as long as it could plausibly happen, it's good to go.

[14:51] John: Oh, you didn't license T.HU.N.D.E.R. Agents for it?

[14:53] Alex: No, we didn't license T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents. That's the thing that you could theoretically say could happen, but we don't disparage T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents and they have been published by basically everyone around the world.

[15:03] John: Well, we talk a lot about 70s comics, and I've gone on a bunch about how much I've been in a loop or a deep dive on 70s DC stuff, and weird stuff I can pull up, and this really does have that feel of even more like a second-rate Marvel book or something. It's got a really exceptional, strange comic from a publisher that you hadn't heard of, which is exactly what it is, and that part where, every once in a while, casually there'll be a 13-panel page. It's so period accurate.

[15:32] Alex: And we worked on it, Marvel-style, basically, which you don't really get to do as much anymore. I do it more on creator-owned stuff, especially with an artist I know, and we have a good dynamic, but really what I would do is give them a very detailed page breakdown and leave the panel breakdown to them. I would say, “page one, start with this,” little snippets, and then they'd ask questions, and then they'd draw the page, and then I'd come back and script over that, and it felt much more organic that way, and it felt much more of the time. You have to imagine guys like Doug Moench and Marv Wolfman were writing in that style. They were just producing so much stuff.

[16:04] John: It seemed like it didn't go where you thought it was going to, but in a great way, that, I think sometimes, we lose, in modern comics, because we're not so irresponsible, and we have this desire to want things to be good. I'm not talking about your comic, but I mean, there's no room for, in the middle of a different Thor comic, to be like, “well, what if you became a frog for a couple of issues?” Again, somebody would be like, “wait a minute. No. We can't have that.” Everything progresses logically in this, but from that logic of progressing from the last thing that happened, or the last comic that was written. It feels very real and accurate, in a way that the Kavalier & Clay comics, never did. They weren't supposed to be that. They felt more like Spirit The New Adventures or something, where somebody was homage-ing a comic.

[16:48] Alex: We wanted to put ourselves in a situation that was similar to what it might have been like to write how expect then, in terms of, you didn't think of arcs. Obviously, at this point, in the 70s, people did have ongoing subplots and ongoing themes, but I tried to write it without as much infrastructure or scaffolding, which isn't to say I didn't know where things were going, but it became a little bit more of Sandy and I jamming and riffing off each other. There's one character that shows up, early-on, that you find out is the Lynx’s mentor, and she trained the Lynx, early-on, and she was supposed to just show up for a second, and then I was like, “she's so cool. Why […] about them and their friendship, and go from there?” That really became the heart of the story.

[17:34] John: This comic works by exploring some of the same themes that you do in Secret Identity, in a different way. Not just by being support material to that other book. If you've never read Secret Identity, and you like 70s comics, well, you should read it, but this comic is just cool. Not even if you just like 70s comics. If you like good comics, this is a cool take, an interesting story.

[17:57] David: Yeah, for sure. I haven't read Secret Identity yet, but it's definitely on my list now, but getting dropped right into this. So, I'm dropped in, with no warning, whatsoever, and thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn't feel like I was missing anything or needed any other context, outside of what the book provided me. I really enjoyed it. A lot of these characters are really interesting. Some of your villains are really cool. I did not get enough of the Scarlet Snake. She's definitely got to be back. She's so cool. Love that design. I also just love the fact that Lynx has bell bottoms. I'm 100% there for that.

John and I were having a conversation with Paul Kupperberg the other day, former DC editor and writer. He and John were talking about this old comic from the early 70s, called Stalker, which I immediately went out and got, because they were saying, it’s Steve Ditko, Inked by Wally Wood, and I'm like, “well, that sounds amazing. That sounds like I have to have that in my life.” So, I immediately went and got it. Read it. It was pretty entertaining. Pretty weird, but the art style between those two, that match wasn't made in heaven. I don't know who wasn't interested in that project, but one of the artists definitely was not, I think, but it’s still quality work, it's still two guys that are legends, and I felt like the style of art in this one really was reminding me of that. I'm sure part of it is that I just read that, but in terms of the period, it fits. It's just got all the markings of that era. A lot of it is in there. You really see it.

[19:35] Alex: Oh, good. Yeah. I'm glad that you could read it without having any of the other stuff to explain it to you. That's the goal.

[19:42] David: Yeah, for sure.

[19:44] Alex: If you just read Secret Identity and you don't read the other stuff, that's fine. It stands alone, and Alter Ego, you could read it on your own and read those comic pages that are in there. If you read them all, you'll get a bigger experience.

[19:56] David: Yeah, that's cool.

[19:59] Hey, everybody. It's me, David. I realized that I haven't done enough talking about my new project, Miss Mina and the Midnight Guardians. So, we're launching Kickstarter on August 27th of 2024 and it's going to be running for three or four weeks. I hope you all go check it out. Get on Kickstarter and type Miss Nina, and it'll pop up in the search engine, or you can just go to www.funtimego.com and it'll point you in the right direction from there. All right. I hope you check it out. I'm really excited about it. It's 1801, and Miss Mina and her band of misfit monsters are battling the forces of the vampire King Dracula, trying to stop them from taking over the world. It's got some high action, high drama, and lots of cute chicks. Alright. Thanks, everybody, and I'm out.

[21:02] David: You've been doing some other stuff for Mad Cave, Alex.

[21:04] Alex: Yeah. The big thing for Mad Cave, aside from Lynx, is Dick Tracy, which, that's been just a long road. I mean, I'm so happy that Issue #4 just came out on Wednesday, and that's me and Mike Moreci co-writing, Geraldo Borges on arts, Mark Englert on colors, Jim Campbell on letters, and Chantelle Aimée Osman is our creative consultant, but the long road of it is that, when I was at Archie, years ago, I reached out to Tribune, and I was like, “do you guys want to do a Dick Tracy comic?” And they were into it, and we got to the point where we even announced the book, and then Tribune realized they didn't have a license to give out. I think IDW had the license, at the time. So, it was like, “sorry, Alex,” and then I thought, “this is it. This is this dream.” I loved Dick Tracy. I grew up on the movie and the old newspaper strips, and the cartoons. So, it was a bummer, but I just thought that that book had closed, but Mike and I kept at it with Chantelle, and eventually, after I left Archie, I just reached out to Tribune myself, and I was like, “are the rights’ available now, and can you please triple check and make sure they are?” and they were. So, once we got the rights, we went to Mad Cave and figured it out.

[22:12] David: So, you and Michael secured the rights for Dick Tracy, and then, it wasn’t Mad Cave that secured the rights and then came to you. It was the other way around, basically. Fascinating. That’s not a typical path for licensed properties. So, you guys are in complete control of Dick Tracy then?

[22:35] Alex: I mean, everything obviously has to get approved by Tribune, who've been a great partner, and Mad Cave is the publisher, and we go through their infrastructure, and it's been awesome. Chas! Pangburn is our editor. We deal with everybody there, in terms of leadership. So, it feels very much like a traditional book. The only wrinkle is that we brought it to them, and that's been cool. We have input on stuff that maybe normally, we wouldn't have, if we were just the freelancers brought in to write a licensed property. Stuff like giving input on the artists, when we were looking for an artist, and things like that, but it's been pretty great. Mad Cave has been very supportive. They've gotten behind it. The first issue’s sold out, and it's Dick Tracy, but it's our take.

It's very much LA Confidential meets Dick Tracy. It's noir. We were really trying to write and create an entertaining crime comic, first and foremost, and if you love Dick Tracy, you'll see all the things you like, and there's plenty of Easter eggs, but if you're just looking for a really fun, entertaining, compelling crime comic, hopefully this will deliver that for you, and then the Dick Tracy stuff, you can get into it. You don't need a doctorate in Dick Tracy, but if you're a fan, there's so much stuff in there. I get messages from people saying, “I can't believe you included this character,” or “Oh, my God. This happens to so and so.” We're not super precious about the characters, but we do honor the legacy. We're not just going at it.

[23:51] David: You’re definitely not super precious about the characters, without giving anyway.

[23:55] Alex: Yeah, […] was so psyched about #1, and Michael and I just kept saying, “well, just wait till you read #2,” because there's going to be something you just didn't expect to happen.

[24:04] David: Yeah, for sure. That was a bit of a surprise. Yeah. Good stuff, and Issue #1’s sold out. That's great. You guys had pretty big numbers on the first issue, too. You guys did really good sales.

[24:18] Alex: Yeah, I think it did well. They had to go back. So, it was good. We were happy with it. Geraldo is great to work with. It's just a fun collaboration.

[24:28] David: How did you guys find Geraldo? How did that go about?

[24:32] Alex: I've known him for a while. He was doing stuff for DC when I was there. I really reconnected with him, and I saw his pages on No/One, this book that Brian Buccellato and Kyle Higgins were doing for Image, that is a great street-level vigilante book that has a lot of cool meta stuff. They had a podcast that accompanied the series, and I think now they're doing a movie to accompany the second volume, but it was a cool, very noir murder mystery, and I thought, “this guy would be perfect for Dick Tracy,” and I just figured he was busy, but when Mad Cave reached out, they were able to make it work, and he's pretty fast and pretty prolific, but also, you don't lose any of the quality.

[25:08] John: It’s funny, the two Mad Cave comics you have, one of them is taking something new and making it look old, and the other one is taking something old and making it feel new, both in the realm of crime comics. I’m a big Dick Tracy fan, too, and we actually had talked about Dick Tracy, I think back in the beginning of this podcast, as a thing we liked, but we were like, “this is going to be a tough sell.” I was at IDW when we did those series that happened instead of you. I think there are two really good series, Mike Allred and Mike Aven Oeming, and I think they were both very different to what you were doing. I know it's a tough sell to get that out to people. It was awesome to see the actual book, and I’d said on here, “well, I guess, I was wrong. This is really good.” It sounds like you grew up with it, probably exactly the same time as I did. That run-up to when the movie was coming out, the year before that, there were so many Dick Tracy books out there, that by the time the movie came out, if you were a young comic book nerd, like myself, you could be feel like you were an expert in Dick Tracy.

[26:07] Alex: That Kyle Baker stuff that came out from Disney, around that time, is just magnificent, and I remember Max Allan Collins wrote the novelization, because he was doing the strip, at the time, and the first time I met Max was at San Diego, I think, 2007, or something, and my friend, one of the editors at Vertigo, was like, “hey, I know you love crime. I want to introduce you to Max Allan Collins,” and the first thing I blurted out was, “I loved your Dick Tracy movie novelization.” These are the touchstones we create for people, but I was really in the pocket with Dick Tracy. That was the thing, especially after the Burton Batman. Back then, you didn't have the proliferation of superhero stuff that we have now. It was just, if you saw something, you just consumed it, because it was the only one you were probably going to get for years, or whatever.

[26:53] John: What was your and Michael's approach, when you were coming in with Dick Tracy? Even though Dick Tracy has been published continually since its inception, I feel like it definitely has that period vibe to it. Batman doesn't. If a Batman movie came out and was set in the 1930s, people would be like “what?” I guess, the cartoon is, but that's an unusual thing about a Dick Tracy. Of course it is. Of course, it's in the 30s or 40s.

[27:18] Alex: Well, we loved Dick Tracy content. Our response was never meant to be like, “this is different and better.” It was just, what we were interested in was doing something a little bit more cinematic and noir, and less of an homage to the source material. We would still absorb it and reference it, and reimagine it, but it was less about, “let's do a story that fits in with the old stuff,” and more, “this is the comic book version, and it's different, and it's a little more Neo-noir and cinematic, and the pacing is a little different, and while we do honor the characters’ stories, we're not tied in with Dick Tracy continuity, because we want it to be welcoming to new readers.” The backstories are generally the same as the characters in the strip, but we're not hard and fast with stuff like that, though we love the strips, and we love the source material. I just think we're looking for a different audience that might know Dick Tracy from the film, or have read some of the comic strips, and they're coming into it with only maybe a basic knowledge, and we also are trying to be mindful that there are hardcore fans that get everything Dick Tracy. So, this has got to be up to snuff for them, too.

[28:23] David: Does that include the fan service piece of it? The reason I bring that up is because we're in the middle of Deadpool VS Wolverine, which has got to be the most fan service-y film of all time. I was 1000% there for it. Thoroughly enjoyed it, but what does that look like for you, with this series?

[28:42] Alex: I mean, I think we have a responsibility to play with the toys and show the toys. Our strategy is not the same as the Beatty film, which is everybody's on screen at the same time. We're going to throw everyone into the first movie. I think we're taking a slower burn, but we have some runway. It's an ongoing. So, I feel like we have some time to show other things, and we're plotting out the second arc now, and now we can get into showing some more of the characters, but we wanted, out of the gate, to show the big players, like Big Boy and Pruneface, and Mumbles, and Dick Tracy, and Tess Trueheart, but there's so many great characters. So, we wanted to keep using them, but not burn through them in ten issues and then wonder who's left.

[29:19] John: Save the Moon for issue 15. You'll get the real stuff. It's set post-World War 2, which was later than Dick Tracy was initially rolled out. I mean, especially, Pruneface was a Nazi, and all that stuff. What drew you to the post-war era?

[29:38] Alex: I think we wanted to experience a time before the 50s, before this idealized version of America was happening, in that period of uncertainty, between the end of the Second World War and the 50s, and really just show this country, a little bit off balance, a little unmoored, and what that is like, what happens when these people come back from war, and what's their headspace like, and how do they react to “normalcy,” and what is the new normal, and the chaos that that brings, and really just lean into that era of film noir.

[30:09] John: It gives Tracy an interiority that I don't think I've ever seen. This is another thing we brought up here before, for long-time listeners, not only is Dick Tracy a cop. He is a brutal cop. He's a no-nonsense. Pruneface’s death is the best, but 88 Keys is right behind it, for me. When 88 Keys is hiding out in an outhouse and Dick Tracy just shoots an X in the door, so that 88 Keys walk won’t shoot whoever opens the door. Seeing the World War Two flashbacks, stuff he went through, builds a character to him, besides just, “I'm a jerk in the 30s,” as much as I love Dick Tracy.

[30:41] Alex: We wanted to give him a little pathos and figure out what makes him tick. I think, what's interesting is, we end up writing him more a de-powered Superman in a yellow coat than Batman, which I think, your natural inclination is, he's more like Batman, and he's more visceral and violent, but he's actually a Boy Scout. He is willing to blur the lines when he has to, and that's where we've landed with him, and that feels most true, which has been fun, because, yeah, like you said, you don't get a lot of time in his head before. So, creating that or establishing that was really fun.

[31:11] John: I’ve read the first Ms. Tree story that Max Allen Collins did. I'm a huge Nathan Heller fan. It was fascinating thinking about, I mean, I don't know him personally, but I'm pretty sure his politics do not align with Mickey Spillane's or Chester Gould’s, but he loves those characters. He loves Mike Hammer and Dick Tracy, and you see that coming through in it, and there's a history of that, of Judge Dredd probably being the best example of these left-leaning writers doing something that is far right, and I don’t to speak to your politics, I don't mean to drag that into this. Wherever you lay, I don't know, but you're clearly coming at Dick Tracy from a different point of view of the reactionary politics that Chester Gould got. Became apparent as it went on. I don't know that it was apparent in the 30s, when you actually were in a world of mobsters and stuff, controlling things, but by the time you got to the 60s, it was pretty clear he was not following the mainstream path of American sentiment.

[32:11] Alex: Yeah. I think for us, I mean, Tracy's big ethos is, he tries to do the right thing, and it's less about his politics, and it's more his choices. I'm a progressive. I'm pretty left-leaning, and to me, this book is much more about showing his actions than him getting on a soapbox and saying what he thinks should happen, if that makes sense.

[32:32] John: It comes out as a crime noir comic. It comes off as LA Confidential, like you said, but Dick Trace is probably a little cleaner than any of the characters in LA Confidential.

[32:41] Alex: Yeah, he tries really hard to be a good cop and that is challenging, I think, in the world he lives in. So, the heart of the first arc is realizing that not everyone on his side, or even against everyone in the world is not as pure-hearted as he can be, or well-intentioned. He's not without flaw. He'll make mistakes and do bad things, but he also tries hard to do the right thing.

[33:05] John: Speaking of stuff we also probably grew up on, follows a similar track as that, I guess, is The Question. Did you grow up reading the O'Neil/Cowan?

[33:15] Alex: I loved the Denny stuff. I really loved what Greg Rucka was doing in Gotham Central with Renee, obviously, and in 52, and then later with Cully Hamner in the back-ups and Detective Comics. I've written a few Question shorts for DC. I did one that was part of Lazarus Planet, which was fun, and then I've got a three-parter running in Batman Brave and the Bold, this back-up feature, where she's being attacked by this mysterious villain that somehow knows all her secrets, and who that might be. It was fun to put together, but this is neat because it really takes her out of her element. She's on the Justice League Watchtower, and she's basically brought on to stop a problem that the Trinity only has an inkling about. There's a situation, and they need her specific skillset. So, they're giving her all the resources to figure out what's going on. What I find interesting is, bringing in Renee's character, which I love, and how flawed she is, and she's coming out of a very bad stretch, and then putting her in this place with these super beings, gods, basically, and I mean, she's got a mask that sticks to her face, and that's really it. She doesn’t have super speed. She's not a telepath, but she commands some respect. So, they bring her up there, and it's been really fun just juxtaposing her with this greater Justice League vibe.

I hope people dig it. It comes out November 20th, and Cian Tormey is the artist. He did the Alan Scott Green Lantern book, and he just did a run, or he's doing a run, on Action Comics, as well.

[34:42] John: Yeah, November's a big month.

[34:44] Alex: Yeah, it’s a busy month.

[34:47] David: Yeah, no kidding. Cian's really good. I really like his stuff, and I love the premise behind this All Along the Watchtower. What a great idea. I can't wait to see where you go with that.

[34:59] Alex: Yeah. Good fun. The Question’s probably my favorite DC character. Just both iterations. Renee, I’m particularly fond of, but also the Victor Sage stuff, as well.

[35:06] John: Yeah. Man, as a fan of puns and double entendres, or whatever, man, what a title.

[35:14] Alex: My editor, Paul Cominski, came up with that. Can’t really top that.

[35:18] David: I don't know. I said “boo” to it, but I get it. It definitely caught my attention, and I'm definitely here for it. So, yeah, it did its job.

[35:27] Alex: It worked. Mission accomplished.

[34:28] David: Yeah, exactly. Alex, we've just been peppering you with questions this whole time. Is there anything you'd like to chat about today, anything you wanted to bring up?

[35:37] Alex: Yeah. The only other thing is Spider-Society came out, August 14th. So, that's a miniseries from Marvel that basically is a team book with every Spider-verse hero. It's drawn by Scott Godlewski. Yeah, it's been fun. If you like the movies, Across the Spider-verse and Into the Spider-verse, it's very much in that vibe.

[35:54] David: You don't know this about me, but you put Spider-Boy in that book, which means I'm buying every copy of every issue.

[36:02] Alex: That would be great.

[36:03] David: This guy right here loves himself some Spider-Boy. I'm anxious to get my copies.

[36:08] Alex: Yeah, I hope you dig it. It's basically Spider-Society against a multiversal team of villains.

[36:14] David: How did that gig come about?

[36:15] Alex: I wrote a Spider-verse novel called Araña and Spiderman 2099. So, that came out from Disney Books, I want to say, 2021. I should know this. Then after that, Marvel Comics reached out and said, “we're thinking of putting Araña Corazon, who was Spider-Girl, at the time, back into her Araña costume. Do you want to write that?” That got my foot in the door in the Spider office. So, I've done a bunch of back-ups, a few Araña back-ups, and then the fun thing about this is that there was some runway to set it up with a few back-ups. There's a story, and I call them back-ups. They’re really the story’s and anthologies. So, I did something in Web of Spiderman #1, and a few had Spider-verse stories, and that set the stage for Spider-Society.

You don't have to have read them, but if you read them, you get a little bit more of an idea of what's going on, and that's where Gwen Goblin shows up, the Gwen Stacy that has become the Green Goblin, from a different universe, and it's been fun. Spiderman was always my guy. I was still buying it during the Clone Saga, and all that stuff. I was just into it. So, I've thrown in a bunch of fun Easter eggs, and it's been cool to play with these characters.

[37:21] David: That Araña character is, I really like her. I think she's a great character. I'm glad to see Marvel seeming to try to bring her back around a little bit more, in more meaningful ways, in the Into the Spider-verse stories with her in it, were really good. I didn't realize that was you writing those.

[37:37] Alex: I wrote […], yeah.

[37:39] David: Yeah, that's cool. I enjoyed them all. Sounds like you leapt into the freelance life, and you’ve just stayed busy, right out of the gate. That's very good, man.

[37:51] Alex: It's definitely stressful. There's definitely moments where you’re like, “what am I doing?” But it's a lot of spinning plates, and I think, John, you can probably attest to this, just being a project manager, doing editorial or publicity, you understand how to keep certain things spinning and do long-term planning, but it is a challenge. The market is, I think it's in a very, not weird, it's just in a different spot. You don't get the same runway you would have gotten, maybe 10 years ago, in terms of how long your books are or how many issues you have coming out, and social media is very challenging, in terms of what's really working. What is getting people's attention? What gets people's attention? It's not Twitter anymore. Is it Instagram? Is it having a Substack? What I found, for creators, is that, if you build your own little platform, you can always amplify it through other channels, but if you have your newsletter, your website, you have these things that are foundational to you, and your brand, and your stuff, you can always have that. So, when Twitter crashes or BlueSky blows up, you still have your foundational things. That's just a survival technique. I don't know if it really helps you sell books.

[38:51] David: Is that what you do when you say, “Oh, my God, what do I do now?” You dig into your foundational material and do work there?

[38:58] Alex: I've seen so many, not just comic folks, but authors, who either don't have a website, don't update their website, or pour everything into a platform, and these platforms, they just come and go. They could just fold tomorrow and/or change an algorithm, and then you're really out of luck. So, I think it's important, even if it's not your main thing, to have a baseline thing that's yours, like a newsletter or a website, that you own that URL, as much as you can own anything digital, but that's where people can find you, and if Ello, or whatever new social media dies, you don't lose everything, because you didn't put everything on there.

[39:33] David: Yeah, I've been thinking a lot about this lately, because I've started doing Kickstarters for this new side venture I've got publishing. You want to be in the places where people are at. You want to make people come to you. That's ridiculous. You want to be where they're already at, where they're living, and then on top of that, you also want whatever message you have, to be relevant to whatever platform they're on. The things you're doing on Twitter are different from what you're doing on Facebook, or different from what you're doing on Instagram. If the point is to capture your attention and hold it for a moment, the last thing I'm going to do is repeat myself over and over, and over, again. I do think there's something to repeating yourself, because not everybody's going to hear it the first time, but those different platforms, they’re different environments, they have different needs. So, trying to fill in these, while also doing what you're saying, which is build some form of foundational elements, where people, worst-case scenario, know where to go to find you, if that's what they so choose to do. It’s a tough balancing act, and I'm just diving into it right now, and it is quite challenging, and I don't envy creative talent in 2024.

[40:42] Alex: No, it's hard because you’re like, “am I screaming into the void?” I think I felt a lot of stress, not a lot of stress, I mean, it's a very low-stakes problem, but it's like leaving Twitter because I just felt like the algorithm wasn't working. I was getting so much spam and bots, and just the vibe was very toxic, and I'm sure it has not improved since then, but my worry was like, “I have so many followers here. Am I going to lose something by moving away?” But I think the most valuable thing creators have, in terms of marketing, is their list, people that they can e-mail, and say, “this is coming,” or update them on their website. I think that will outlast social media platforms. Who sees your Facebook posts? A lot of people probably have muted you if you post too much, or you just don't know who's seeing you. I guess, you could tell, based on who engages with you, but I feel like the algorithms change so much that there's no surefire thing, and there's nothing you can just rely on, which is stressful.

[41:32] David: I think maybe the thing that you can rely on is your creativity, because that's something that you have above and over everyone else. So, what I've been doing is, when I'm frustrated by exactly that, the algorithm, I'm screaming into the void. It's like, “yeah, I'm screaming in the void,” but the solution to that is to continue screaming, to just generate more stuff, be more creative, be more clever, have more fun, turn it into a game, but keep creating content, because that is the thing that separates me or you from people who want to do this and aren't doing it. The work, in and of itself, is the thing that separates you.

[42:12] Alex: I think a lot of times, all you can control is the work. You can't control what your publisher does, you can't control what the printer does, or how people respond, or how reviewers are going to respond. I mean, you put in your best effort. I always tell new authors, “don't go on Goodreads.” That's a place for reviewers. It's not a place for authors, not to separate or say one's better than the other, but if you're spending your whole day scrolling through your Goodreads reviews and having this existential crisis because someone gave you three stars instead of four, you could be writing, and that’s their opinion. They've engaged with it, and that's fin.

[42:46] David: Not only is it fine, that's why you're doing it. You don't own it anymore. I agree wholeheartedly with that. The job is to enjoy it as you create it. The journey is the thing, not the destination, but then move on to the next journey. John, I think we did a good business.

[43:06] John: Thanks for joining us, and yeah, it's great to talk to you, and super enjoying the work. It was great having you on here, because we have been talking about a lot of this stuff.

[43:13] Alex: Thanks for the kind words, and hopefully, we'll talk again soon.

[43:16] David: I think you can pre-order some of your November books right now, probably. That probably includes the Legendary Lynx, and maybe All Along the Watchtower, as well, I'm assuming.

[43:26] Alex: Pre-order Lynx, Dick Tracy #5 should be out by then, but you can pre-order #6, Question #1, and Alter Ego, which hits in December.

[43:36] David: Dick Tracy #4 just came out. So, there's plenty of Alex Segura goodness out there, available right now. We also got Spider-Society, that just came out. You're just burning it up, man. You're all over the place. So, thank you, again, Alex, for coming. Appreciate you taking some time to talk with us.

[43:51] Alex: Thanks for having me, guys.

[43:52] John: And we'll see you here next week, on The Corner Box. Thanks for joining us.

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.