Welcome to The Corner Box, where your hosts, David Hedgecock, and John Barber, lean into their decades of comic book industry experience, writing, drawing, editing, and publishing. They'll talk to fellow professionals, deep dive into influential, and overlooked works, and analyze the state of the art, and business of comics, and pop culture. Thanks for joining us on The Corner Box.

[00:28] John Barber: Hello, and welcome back to another solid gold episode of the Corner Box. I'm one of your hosts, John Barber, and with me, as always

[00:37] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock.

[00:39] John: The man with the cold finger.

[00:43] David: I don't know what that means.

[00:44] John: The song, Goldfinger. If you've never listened to the lyrics, they are terrible. The fact that's the best James Bond song is 100% Shirley Bassey singing the hell out of it, because the lyric is, “he's got a cold finger,” which rhymes with Goldfinger.

[01:04] David: I thought they just repeated Goldfinger, over and over. I didn't know there was different words. I never paid that much attention.

[01:11] John: They're all bad. “Diamonds Are Forever” is actually probably worse written, or maybe it’s a little better written, but Shirley Bassey doesn't nail the singing quite as well, but she still does a hell of a job. So, still a great job on that song. A great job turning a terrible song into a good song.

[01:24] David: Cold finger. That doesn't even make sense. It's slightly horny, in a weird way, which I don't even know why, but maybe that's just me. I'm looking at this new book, John, that I sent you. We’re working on this new book, speaking of slightly horny, called Sugar Bomb. We just got in everything we need to fulfill the orders for my Super Kaiju Rock’nRoller Derby Fun Time Go Book #2 campaign. So, we said we're going to deliver in April, and shockingly, we are going to deliver in April, which I'm very happy about. No, we keep a tight schedule around here. One of the things that's going to be in some of the extras of this Kickstarter campaign is, we've got this little making-of book that we do, and it's called The Locker Room. So, this second edition of The Locker Room, we're doing a surprise for all of our fans, and it's a 5-page preview of the new project that we're working on, called Sugar Bomb, and Sugar Bomb is the first superhero comic that I have ever conceived, and co-written, or written, in any way, and it is concerning that what I have come up with is Sugar Bomb, because it's just boobs and monsters, and toilet humor, but I'm really into it, not because of anything I'm doing, but because editor-in-chief of Fun Time Go!, Chase Marotz--he's doing the script, and he's super funny. He's a really funny guy, and he's making some fantastic jokes.

[02:59] John: Chase is writing a script for it?

[03:01] David: Yeah, Chase is writing the script. So, I just did the plot and breakdown for the story, and based on some conversations we had, he went in and did the panel-by-panel breakdown, and put the script in. It's really funny. We've got these amazing artists. We've got Bart Sears. He did all the design work for it, and Bart Sears--I don't know. I feel very fortunate and lucky, because my silly little stupid idea is being rendered by one of the greatest comic artists in the last 30 years, as far as I'm concerned, and then we’ve got the Juan José Ryp, who's this amazing super talent. He just finished a big two-year run on Wolverine, within the last year, and now he's drawing this book for us, and I shared with you, the PDF, and I can't share any of the visuals just yet, but I'm excited to, soon, but you're seeing it. It's amazing, right?

[03:59] John: Yeah, no, the art’s--

[04:01] David: It is incredible. The artwork is fantastic. So, what I was telling you before we got online, and what leads us into our first discussion was, I had the idea--Juan José Ryp, when he does his art, he will do line art, but then he will go in, and tone the work, as well, and his tones are--I mean, he's just telling the colorist exactly what he wants, and it's really beautiful work, just in the black and white, and grey tones that he provides. So, I was like, “man, I want people to see Juan José’s work, just as he's presenting it.” So, not only are we doing a really cool color version--the colors, by the way, are by the Xong Brothers, who handled the colors on Miss Mina and the Midnight Guardians. So, beautiful colors. So, we're going to have a color edition, and then we're going to do a grey […] tone addition. Basically, the Juanjo edition. So, people can just see exactly the way Juan presents his work, and then the last thing, because thanks to you, we're also doing a 3D edition, John. So, we're going to have three different editions of the book, and people will be able to just get whichever one they want, but the 3D edition--every time I think about it, it makes me laugh, and I was asking you--you're the one that hooked me up with the 3D company. I'm interested in how that process is for you, and how it came about. Is it better for me to give the 3D team just the straight line art, or the tones, or the full colors? What's the best way to present that material, that you've found?

[05:39] John: We worked with a company called Anomaly. That's Brian Haberlin's company. He's a well-known colorist, artist, painter. Francis is the guy that we directly worked with, and I've known Francis, going back to when I was at Marvel, just from coloring stuff. So, we got the license to do the Marvel 3D books at PUG-W, the company I work at. We'd done some 3D stuff at IDW, and we were trying to track down who could do the 3D stuff. Anyway, we eventually found that Avalon Studios could do it. Most of the 3D stuff they've done, the process that they developed there, was all based on doing color 3D comics, but it's the red-blue lenses. So, everything gets filtered through these images. They'll go in and adjust stuff to work a little better with those colors. We have thrown them the most ridiculous comics, for them to have to work with. Spider-Man, and Deadpool, and stuff. I actually don't know if--we didn't actually do the Spider-Man one, but Deadpool's got a red costume. Red Hulk. We have the first appearance of--funny thing about that, actually. The first issue of the Red Hulk series, do you know what character doesn't appear in the first issue of the Red Hulk series? Fun fact, Red Hulk doesn't actually appear. The whole story is, they don't know who he is, yet, and they're tracking him down. He does appear, but you don't see he’s Red, other than on the cover, which, man, I had forgotten that fact.

So, the stuff that they're most primed to do is modern-style coloring, where it's all continuous tone, gradients, and the coloring is more like a photo than it is the stuff we often give them, where it's Jack Kirby's Black Panther, where the coloring is all old-style 1970s Marvel, 25% increments of colors. There's--whatever--32 colors--That's not right. Whatever--However many there are—So, that's a little harder to make it look good for them, and then we threw them another wrinkle, and we did a flip book on that Black Panther one, where we did the black and white art, as well, because we wanted to try to see how that would look. I really old-school black and white 3D stuff, and I saw my son, who's 6—We were preparing these books I had out--I guess he was 5 then--but we had out Craig Yoe’s 3D book. It was just this collection of old 3D comics from the 40s and 50s. There was a craze, in the 50s, and you had the earliest ones. It was all stuff you've never really heard of, especially if you're 5, and my son was just in for all. He spent a week just wearing 3D glasses, and looking at it.

[08:15] David: That's awesome.

[08:16] John: Yeah, but I remember, when I was a kid, you put on the red-blue glasses, red-green glasses, and I don't know—it was just cool. It was fun to see a monster poster with something. Bats would fly out at you. So, we tried to do a black and white 3D one, or we did do a black and white 3D one, and Avalon did a really cool thing, where they boosted the black areas on it. So, it's actually even a little more readable than if you'd just done it as a two-color thing.

[08:42] David: Oh, interesting.

[08:43] John: It looks pretty cool. That was the first one of those that they've done, and they did a fantastic job. I think it came out really good. The 3D stuff’s fun. We got an irate letter from somebody who wanted it to look like the Mike Allred Madman 3D Comic, which is extraordinary, and not to take anything away from anybody, that's like if he went and saw The Avengers movie, and was like, “this should have been as good as Citizen Kane, or why didn't this reach the heights of North by Northwest?” That is a spectacular, amazing 3D thing, and if we only needed to put out one of these every three or four years, that would be a viable option, but the process of that was--it's a perfectly reasonable thing for somebody to come back, and be like, “why isn't this as good as the best thing ever?” but it wasn't feasible, but the stuff that Francis and Brian, and the team at Avalon do is very good, really.

[09:43] David: Yeah. I actually don't know--I'm not familiar with Madman. I've never been a big fan of Allred, for some reason.

[09:49] John: Yeah, it's 3D […]. No, just kidding.

[09:53] David: I didn't even know he had a 3D thing, but I am a fan of your 3D process. I think the stuff turned out great. The Black Panther, in particular, I really enjoyed. The only problem that I have, if you're taking notes, is that my eyesight is very poor. So, I have to put the 3D glasses over my regular reading glasses. Getting old stinks, man. I hate it so much. So, if you could make 3D glasses that fit over my reading glasses, that would be spectacular, but other than that, very fun, very enjoyable experience. I really enjoyed it. Somehow, I got on the PUG-W free comp list. I don't know how--

[10:34] John: I heard about that, and I was like, “what the hell?” It was a big fight here when I found out about that.

[10:41] David: I bet. “Get him off, immediately.” I haven't been on a comp list in quite some time. So, it was nice to unexpectedly get some 3D books in my mail. So, I read through them, but obviously I already owned--John, I'm not kidding, I think I owned 6 copies of the New Mutants #98 3D. I keep buying them, like some weirdo. Every time I see one, I'm like, “oh, yeah, I'll get that.” I've got way too many copies. Anyway, I think it was X-Men #1, which that triple-fold […]—Oh, man, it looked really good. It was really cool to just see it again. I haven't looked at that full cover opened up like that in a long-time.

[11:21] John: Yeah, that one turned out really nice, just because that was just packed full of stuff. It's funny. One of the reasons we did the Black Panther flip book thing, even though it became our largest issue when we did this, I think, but the story is 16 pages. It's a short story. So, we were like, “well, okay. We could just show it black and white. We try that out. We could put the cover in as a pull-out poster, and stuff,” trying to add some bells and whistles to it, but the Jim Lee thing was just--every page is going to get filled with the stuff that we had in that first issue, because they packed the first issue so well, but the printing’s nicer than the original deluxe version was, just in 3D.

[12:01] David: It's a great read. I really enjoyed it, and Jim Lee's work really is well-suited for that 3D process. Yeah.

[12:10] John: Yeah, Rob's […], like we were talking before, but Rob […]. I mean, we tried to pick the stuff that we wanted to. Actually, a funny thing--if we want to get into the nuts and bolts--I don't even know if I can really talk about this, but sure I can--We were going to do Spider-Man #1, the McFarlane one, and you can see this in the Marvel app. If you go to Marvel Unlimited, and then take a look at it, it’s very noticeable. That comic was printed on deluxe paper, so they could use black as a color in it. Comics, up through 1990, or so, the regular American comics, the only colors you had were cyan, magenta, and yellow, and black was only line art. There couldn't be any black in the color parts of it, but when they started using more deluxe paper in the 80s, and it became everywhere, circa ‘91/’92, they could use black tones. They called them K-tones. “K” stands for Key. So, they could use k-tones in the coloring. The problem with that is, what Marvel retained from that time period was the actual film that they used to make the printing plates. So, all of the k-tone coloring is built into the line art on the pages.

If you've ever seen a Todd McFarlane page, they're very detailed pages. So, there's lots of little lines in there that, when you look at the film, or the scans of the film, there's little tiny dots, representing the shades of grey that they had in there. So, ordinarily, when Marvel's reprinting one of the books, or when anybody's reprinting one of those books from film, they recolor everything based on what the colors were, when they use the original line art film, and that's what they've done, more or less--if you buy a reprint of Spider-Man #1, that's what they do, but it looks weird, digitally, because it's printed with these dots, instead of just the color gray, that the computer’s reading, and if you did that in 3D, you'd wind up with these situations where parts of some color would be 3D, and other parts wouldn't be.

[14:10] David: Okay. That makes sense. Wow. So, it turns into a Whole thing, then, but you said that there's versions that have been recolored without the k-tone in it. 

[14:21] John: No, […] has that. They use a process called copy-dot, where because the line screen on the printed comic was fine enough, at that era, you can blur the scan of the film, and then boost it a little bit, and it gives you fairly solid color, and that's what all the X-Force issues, and stuff like that, look like that. If you buy a reprint of anything from ’91/’92, that's what they were doing. The lines […] right around that time. So, that's what they have for the other colors. All the other colors work fine. It's just the black is going to look weird, digitally.

[14:58] David: That's crazy. That's fascinating.

[15:00] John: That's […] talk. I love to dive into this.

[15:05] David: Who knows who listens to our thing? I think just you and I listen to it. So, we're into it. This works for me.

[15:11] John: What’s really funny is imagining somebody picking up Sugar Bomb, and looking through it, and being like, “what about the K-tones on Spider-Man #1?”

[15:23] David: And yet, here we are.

[15:24] John: Yeah. “That's what I want to talk about. This reminds me, how did you print stuff, back in 1992?”

[15:38] David: That's why the people listen, John, because no one else is going down these kinds of paths. No one else is doing a podcast like this, that's for sure. All right, what are we talking about this week, John? We're not talking about Sugar Bomb or 3D […].

[15:56] John: I think we both had a couple amusing things.

[16:00] David: Yeah. You want to go first, or should do you want me to?

[16:01] John: Sure. I've complained/talked a lot about the price of the aftermarket on European graphic novels. So, what I decided to do was to get really into European graphic novels in the last couple of months. I don't know. That's just been the thing. I had my Moebius thing. I had my Hugo Pratt, but then I was realizing, “I don't know that much about a lot of this stuff.” So, reading some Tintin, and then trying to expand into other creators that are well known, but I don't really know them, and it’s been fascinating. I've been reading Valerian. They made that movie, a few years ago. That's what I knew it from, but it's a very big French comic.

[16:41] David: I like that movie. I thought that movie was just fine. It really did tank, though, man. That movie did not do well, at all, as far as I could tell.

[16:50] John: That's a weird one, where I think it's a household name, in France. They're big, and it's utterly unknown in the United States, and probably, presumably, China--the big movie markets. Presumably, it wasn't a thing that was on everybody's lips. I think this is part of the problem, too, is that I confuse it with the Wachowskis movie.

[17:10] David: That came out around the same time, the one where one of […]--

[17:16] John: Yeah. They're both European comic-influenced. The Wachowskis one is more Fifth Element, but Luc Besson, that made the Valerian movie, had made the Fifth Element. Fifth Element was famously built on a bunch of old Metal Hurlant stuff.

[17:30] David: Jupiter Ascending was the name. I liked that one, too. It was fine. It wasn't my favorite. I think I like Valerian a little bit better, but I liked them both. When The Fifth Element first came out, I was like, “this is the greatest movie I've ever seen in my life.” I love that movie so much, and I did not understand how everyone wasn't with me on that one.

[17:53] John: I didn't even allow that to be anyone's opinion. I would just, “this is a great movie.”

[17:57] David: Yeah, but I feel like, over time, that one has gained the level of notoriety, or acceptance, that it deserves. The Fifth Element is still a movie that, if I say that, people know what movie I'm talking about. It's not like, “what? What was that movie?” I had to look up Jupiter Ascending, and that movie’s less than half as old as Fifth Element.

[18:22] John: It's funny, because to go to Wachowskis, it's a little bit like Speed Racer, in that, that was a big bomb, but everybody that saw it really liked it, and people still talk about Speed Racer. I think Fifth Element, probably more so.

[18:35] David: No, you're right. It's that level of deferred notoriety.

[18:39] John: The costume became so iconic, too, though. That definitely has the people cosplaying as--

[18:47] David: The Fifth Element? Oh, yeah. Some great cosplay around that One. So, you're going down the European graphic novel rabbit hole?

[18:57] John: So, whenever you're digging--there's a lot of stuff that had come out in the 80s, in the afterglow of Heavy Metal being the huge cultural touchstone, with that stuff. I don't mean that as a slight on later Heavy Metal. I just mean that initial burst was really influential on a lot of stuff. So, you had a lot of these books, from NBM, and different publishers--a lot of that stuff that hasn't been reprinted. Some of it has, but a lot of that stuff, when you're going to go buy it on eBay, tends to be between 3 and 10 times the original price that it came out as. You can get some deals, but you're looking at spending, not serious money, but more than cover price, except for one comic, and this is utterly fascinating, to me. There's a writer named Jerome Charyn, who's an American novelist—he’s still alive, still writing stuff. According to Wikipedia, novelist Don de Lillo, from Underworld, and big literary novelist--Don de Lillo called Charyn's book on table tennis, Sizzling Chops and Devilish Spins, he called it, The Sun Also Rises of ping pong. Charyn had a novel about Emily Dickinson that apparently got some controversy, but I think Joyce Carol Oates wrote the review of it in the New York Times, praising it. So, a serious literary novelist. He wrote a bunch of graphic novels, almost all of which were for European publishers, that weren't originally published in English. Several of them got translated. Billy Bud, KGB, I think, was one of the more well-known ones that he did, but then he did this comic in 1991, a graphic novel called Margot in Badtown.

[20:37] David: Oh, okay.

[20:38] John: Have you seen this before?

[20:39] David: I think so, yeah.

[20:40] John: Yeah, this, in 1991 was as ubiquitous as going into the used section at a CD store, and finding The Breeders’ Last Splash. That was just one of those ones. That, and the first Bjork album. They were filled with those. Those, I get, because a lot of people, they heard the hit song, they bought it, and they were like, “this isn't really for me,” or whatever. Good albums. I really like them, but Margot in Badtown, I've never heard anybody talk about, but I remember this just being everywhere--this just being a thing you would see at stores, and they would just have them. Nowadays, it's difficult to buy it for more than half the original cover price. You have to work at that a little bit. It's from Tundra, and Tundra, famously, would overprint stuff. So, right now, you can go on the Heavy Metal website, and buy this for $15, its 1991 cover price. Presumably, Tundra had Kevin Eastman--our friend and neighbor, took all the inventory that they had, and just brought it over to Heavy Metal, when he bought Heavy Metal, and 35 years later, they still have it, and selling it.

[21:59] David: On sale. Man, how many of those did they print?

[22:03] John: Yeah, and the cover is super 1991, in that it is the shot from the movie, Black Rain, where the truck pulls up behind Michael Douglas, where he has his gun out, except it's a lady dressed like Tetsuo from Akira, with a big ‘M’ on her chest. It's probably Margot.

[22:24] David: Isn't not a bad cover, though.

[22:26] John: No, it's spectacular. The art is--

[22:28] David: It's a striking cover. That’s not a bad image, at all.

[22:30] John: No. This is the artist's first graphic novel. He was 24 years old when he wrote this thing. He's 10 years older than me. Charyn's almost 90, I think. He's been around. I haven't read it, yet. Visually, spectacular. Worth checking out, and here's one you can pick up, pretty cheaply.

[22:51] David: There you go. Finally, John recommends a European graphic novel that people can afford.

[22:56] John: I got mine for $9, shipping included.

[22:58] David: Oh, nice. Speaking of getting something for $9.99, including shipping, I decided I wanted to do a re-read of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, the whole thing, from beginning to end. So, I jumped online, because I don't have all of that material in print, and it's not the DC stuff. I don't think it's in the DC app, or anything. Anyway, I jumped online. I was like, “man, I hope these aren't going to be expensive,” but as it turns out, not expensive, at all. I got the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen Volume #1 for $4.50, shipping included, and I don't know how they make money with that. I don't understand, because it costs $4.50 just to ship something--cheap rate--but I don't know. I picked it up. I got it the other day. It’s in perfectly fine condition. It's definitely a better-than reader copy of the book. So, I'm very happy. I picked up the whole thing. So, I've got all four—is it four volumes? There's two volumes, and then there's the three volumes that we did, and then—no, there's two volumes, and then the Black Dossier, then the three volumes that we did, and then Volume #4, I guess it is, which we also did.

[24:19] John: Was there a volume #4? I thought there was--

[24:21] David: There was a final volume after the three Century volumes, I feel like. 

[24:27] John: The original two, Black Dossier, then at IDW, at Top Shelf, there was Century, then there was Nemo, which also came out as three volumes, but I think is one volume now.

[24:38] David: Oh, okay. Yeah.

[24:39] John: Then there was The Tempest.

[24:41] David: Oh. So, I didn't get Nemo. So, I got everything else, but the Nemo series, which I definitely need to pick up.

[24:46] John: That didn't come out as a series. It was 3 hardcovers.

[24:49] David: That's right, but the reason why I decided to jump back into League Of Extraordinary Gentleman, and give the whole thing to read, is because--this is long story longer--I've been on this journey of watching old bad movies, and then, writing little reviews about them. So, I've been doing this every week on our little Private Facebook Group, and posting them to the Private Facebook Group, every Friday. So, it's movies so bad, they're good. So, recently, I watched Death Race 2000, which is a Roger Corman flick, and absolutely fantastic. I mean, it's the most over-the-top thing. It's pretty famous. I don't think I need to describe it here, but essentially, it is exactly what it sounds like. It’s people, in cars, racing each other, and also killing each other during the race, or other things killing them, and then also, killing other people that might get in the way of the racetrack. It's a weird, apocalyptic, dystopian future, where things have fallen apart, and these death races are a “let them make eat cake” situation, where the populace watches these death races to forget the fact that their lives are miserable.

[26:03] John: Yeah.

[26:04] David: So, I've been watching these movies, but in Death Race 2000, in particular, while I was doing a little bit of research on it, I came on the fact that there was a comic book that was made, called Death Race 2020, John.

[26:19] John: Okay.

[26:20] David: And Death Race 2020 was an 8-issue miniseries, published by a company that I had never heard of, until this moment, when I was doing the research--Roger Corman's Cosmic Comics. Roger Corman had his own comic book publishing company, John.

[26:37] John: Okay.

[26:38] David: In 1995. I didn't know anything about this. I didn't know it existed, at all, but not only did it exist, but he put out eight issues of this thing, called Death Race 2020. So, I was very excited when I discovered this. So, I immediately bought the entire 8-issue series. I bought it, basically, sight unseen. I didn't really know what I was getting into, but when I got it, John, the first several issues are better than they had any right to be, in any way, shape, or form. First of all, Pat Mills and Tony Skinner are the writers for the entire 8-issue series, and Pat Mills--Judge Dredd, 2000AD--he's been writing and doing stuff for decades. The guy’s an accomplished writer, and Tony Skinner, I'm not too familiar with, but they put together a super fun storyline, and I’ll get into it, in a minute, but then, for the first several issues, they bring on Kevin O'Neill. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen artist, Kevin O'Neill, is the artist for this book. I've always understood why people appreciate Kevin O'Neill, or like his stuff, but that angular, angry style that he has, has never really appealed that much, to me, but in this Death Race 2020 stuff, it is so pitch perfect. It's so insane, and over-the-top, and perfect for the storyline that I don't think I've ever enjoyed his art more than I did in this dumb comic book.

It is so good. It's amazing, and the colors are just the colors, but everything about this is super fun--the Kevin O'Neill parts of it--and you can definitely see, when Kevin leaves the book, that it's just not as good, after the fact. He's definitely bringing a lot to the table. It's a great example of why the artist, and art, is king in books. The artist is the director of the comic, and when you lose a good director, things can quickly fall apart, and in this one, they do. So, Death Race 2020, it's just a bombastic, gore-soaked, satirical rocket ride. Much like the original movie, it's got the ugliest parts of media, politics, and just the US consumer culture. It's not preachy, in any way, but it’s also not super subtle. Much like the movie, it just leans super hard into the over-the-top excess. The visuals and the narrative were just totally over-the-top. It’s a futuristic Hellscape. It's 2020 now. Also, by the way, it's 2020, as imagined by people in 1995. The book was created in 1995. So, this is in our past, but for the people that were creating it in 1995, it was well in their future. So, much like the movie, the government still sponsors the deadly cross-country sport of car combat. In the original movie, the drivers are grotesque, but in the comic book, they really unleashed. They're over-the-top grotesque. The stakes are higher, and the blood spray is dialed up to 2000. So, in the movie, the original Death Racer, Frankenstein, he wins the race in Death Race 2000. 

[29:59] John: Spoiler alert.

[30:00] David: Oh, sorry, everybody. Spoilers. In 2020, he has become the president. He's the corporate-sponsored Godhead of the whole thing. He's older, he's more cynical, and he's starting to not only see through the grotesque media circus that he was in before, but also now, he's becoming more part of it, at the same time. So, it's a nice little setup for rebellion, betrayal, and also, vehicular homicide on a mass scale. It's a fun little ride. Frankenstein has to basically get back in a car, by the end of the first issue. They've got him out of being the president, and got him back into a car, for various reasons. All eight issues, basically, are just the race, and they don't even get through a third of the race, in the eight issues that they have available to them. So, it's just--do you remember that old cartoon, Wacky Races, the Hannah Barbara cartoon?

[30:55] John: Yeah, sure.

[30:56] David: It's like, “what if Heavy Metal did Wacky Races?” is where this thing ends up. The star of the show is definitely this Kevin O'Neill art. So, that's the book. I definitely recommend the Kevin O’Neill issues of the book. Definitely recommend it. As I said, after reading those first couple issues, where he's drawing, it got me excited about Kevin O'Neill, in a way that I hadn't really ever been excited before, and I’m actually anxiously eager to dive into the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, with this new eye towards his work, but some of the other things that fall in, as you're reading these singular issues, and it's great to have the individual issues--I don't know that they ever made trade paperbacks of this stuff--but not only are the books pretty fascinating, but the back-matter of these things is also wildly fascinating, to me, because I work in the comic book industry, occasionally, and I think about the business of it. So, I think it's the fourth or fifth issue, they’ve got this thing called Cosmic Signals in the back. It's basically a letters page, but by the fourth or fifth issue, you can tell, they're not really getting any letters. So, they’ve got to come up with something else. So, they start doing spotlights on the staff of Roger Corman's Cosmic Comics. So, the first spotlight is on the publisher, and the publisher is Siobhan McDevitt, and it is the best thing ever, John, because first of all, her profile in the back of this book starts out with “I'll be 23 on my birthday, and gifts of an expensive and non-explosive nature are kindly appreciated. Please send them along.”

[32:41] John: Wow.

[32:42] David: “To the address below.” So, then she starts talking about some of her likes and dislikes. I’m like, “is this a dating service ad? What is going on here?” but then she goes into her credentials, John, and that's where it's like, “okay, let's see. She’s only 23. She must be some sort of rockstar, right?” So, “I worked for a month in the art department of our film studio on Bloodfist VII: Manhunt, a Don ‘the Dragon’ Wilson kickboxing flick. My first day, I was a weapons handler. Then, I did props. Then, I did carpentry and scenic painting. A Jill of all trades, you might say. So, a month came and went, and our beloved leader, Roger Corman, asked me to be his assistant, which I did, for a year. Then, he asked me to come publish the comics. So, I did.” So, the sum total of her experience in publishing is, she was Roger Corman's assistant for a year. That is it, John. That's all she's got. She goes on to tell us how she's qualified, because she's watched a lot of movies, and read a lot of books, including zines and newspapers, and she listens to music, and her favorite is not Pearl Jam.

The publisher is a 23-year-old woman with zero experience in any publishing industry, whatsoever, and John, they're not just publishing Death Race 2020. They've got 6 or 7 different books. They’ve got a Rock & Roll High School. They've got a Little Shop of Horrors. There's several. They published 18 to 20 comics, in total, over the course of a year or two, before they went out of business, and shockingly, John, they did go out of business. So, I've read that, and I was like, “oh, I love this.” I love this so much, for me, because I’m entertained. So, then the next issue, they do somebody else, and I think it's an editor that they have, who's the editor for the books, and he's a 40-something dude who's been in the industry for a while, and I'm like, “that guy's doing a lot of work, right?” Because he's the only guy that I've seen that might have some experience, and then the next issue, the Cosmic Comic employee profile of the month is Ellen Sawyer.

Now, Ellen Sawyer is the new marketing director at Cosmic Comics. She's the head of marketing, and her qualifications are as follows. She moved to Los Angeles in 1992--It’s 1995, when this was published--to pursue her career in the field of sequential arts sales. She worked for the PT Barnum of the retail world, Bill Leibowitz, where she became the close associate, and personal advisor, to many of Hollywood's biggest stars. A list of Ellen celebrity friends, and insider gossip, is available upon request. I don't know what that means. In 1995, at a private affair for the creme de la creme of the art world, held yearly in San Diego, CA, Ellen was introduced to her future friend, and mentor, Siobhan McDevitt, the publisher of Roger Corman's Cosmic Comics. So, this is 1995. Siobhan immediately offered Ellen the position of Marketing Director at Cosmic Comics, where she works today. She got the job, because she became friends with Siobhan, and she's the head of marketing of this comic book company, and I was so wildly entertained, John, when I was reading this. They also did Caged Heat 3000. They were doing a lot of stuff, and there was real money behind this, for a minute, but these were the people that they just chose to put in charge, and it's very curious. It's very odd.

[36:26] John: What year was this?

[36:27] David: 1995.

[36:28] John: My understanding is, that's how Roger Corman really operated, was “are you alive? Can you do this? Can you direct a movie? Okay.”

[36:37] David: Yeah, I don't think there was anything odd or insidious about the way he was choosing people, by any stretch of the imagination. I just think it's funny--there's plenty of people who step into jobs that they're probably not qualified for, and become qualified for it, like Eric Stephenson becoming the editor-in-chief of Extreme Studios for Rob Liefeld, and then the Grand Poohbah head person in charge of all of Image Comics. That guy did not step into any those positions wholly qualified, but he rose to the occasion, but the way that these lay out, it's like, “oh, man.”

[37:16] John: Ron Howard got his start, directing movies there, because he was a warm body who was in one of the movies, and I mean, Gale Anne Hurd comes from that, and James Cameron, but that is hilarious. What a different era, for all that stuff.

[37:33] David: Yeah, it really was. I can't imagine that happening today--somebody basically just getting pulled off the street, because they're somebody's assistant, and being put in charge of an entire operation. I don't know. Maybe the stakes are higher, these days, when it comes to comic books. It's not cheap to try to do publishing. It's certainly not for the faint of heart.

[37:53] John: But […] even when I was in school, and I was doing my grad student stuff on comic books, there were 3 theses on comic books that were registered at universities, and there's got to be a billion now. The idea that you would go to school, and want to concentrate on comic books, even when I was doing it, which is an era when Bryan Hitch is drawing the Ultimates. This isn't a zillion years ago. He’s still drawing a DC Comic. There was absolutely no path for you to get an education, to learn how to be a comic book publisher in 1995, and there probably is now. There probably is a path. I miss that part of comics. It leads to a lot of shitty things. There were probably a whole lot of unqualified people, probably many more of them that looked like you and I than looked like her, that were just randomly getting jobs in those days, because they knew somebody.

[38:55] David: I was wildly entertained. I was charmed by it, and I felt like, having watched a lot of Roger Corman films, it did feel appropriate, but also, I was like, “well, that's why it didn't go very far,” because you had a lot of people that were learning a lot of really big lessons, and sometimes, that doesn't always pan out.

[39:22] John: Yeah, I can't even imagine how--

[39:24] David: But they did put together some fun books, man. Now that I became aware of Roger Corman's Cosmic Comics, I'm buying them all. So, I've read all of the Death Race 2020. I'm picking up the Caged Heat 3000. That one's not that good, but they got Coop to do the covers.

[39:44] John: Oh, Geez.

[39:45] David: Yeah, but it's amazing.

[39:47] John: Of course. It’s Roger Corman, yeah.

[39:51] David: So, they're fantastic. Just for the cover alone, it's worth the price of admission. So, there's just this weird, wild, fun stuff in there, and I'm shocked that I wasn't aware of it before, because this is absolutely my jam, and I'm having a great time with it. Anyway, that's what I’ve got, John. Death Race 2020, and Roger Corman’s Cosmic Comics.

[40:09] John: Have you ever read Nemesis the Warlock?

[40:12] David: No, I have not.

[40:13] John: Highly recommend. That was his first one, and I think--

[40:18] David: John is currently standing up and reaching on the highest shelf of his bookshelf to try to find something.

[40:23] John: Pat Mills, Kevin O'Neill from 2000AD comics--the comic book, 2000AD, not the year. It's all black and white. It's really cool. That was the thing that I think launched him into the fame, and then famously, there was a story that he wrote, or a story that he drew, that was unapproved by the comics code, just based on his style, not based on anything […].

[40:49] David: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, they were just like, “That's too ugly.”

[40:55] John: Marshal Law, when that first came out, had this really cool coloring on it. He was […] watercolor painted coloring. I mean, it's basically a Judge Dredd riff, but in a lot more fetish gear, and stuff, with […].

[41:10] David: I was not a big fan, but I understood why people might like him, but it just wasn't a thing that would really grab me, but I think I figured it out. So, I'm anxious to jump back into some League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. What else have we got? Is that it? Is that what we've done for the day?

[41:27] John: I feel like we got too goofy to go into something else, at this point, right? Man, comics were just weird in the 90s, and now, but I don't know.

[41:35] David: I'm shocked that I found something that I had never heard of.

[41:38] John: Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking, right now, is even Margot in Badtown, genuinely, I was like, “I'm not sure if I have this, I'm not sure if I used to have it,” and I got it, and I'm like, “no, I've never read this. The insides are not familiar.” It really is just “I saw that cover so many times,” sold in comic bookstores. So, that's weird, but yeah, a whole world of Roger Corman comics--just the cacophony of stuff going on in 1995. Remember that comic that Keith Giffen did, called PunX? Did you ever see that?

[42:13] David: Oh, yeah. With an ‘X.’

[42:15] John: Yeah, and Trencher. It's Keith Giffen. He was doing huge stuff, at the time, and then he's off on whatever weird publisher, that just popped up for six issues and disappeared.

[42:27] David: Yeah, there's so much of that. I mean, the Image Comics boom really did make everybody think, “this is something we can do, and there's real money behind it,” but I guess for a minute there, there was real money behind it.

[42:39] John: Right. Yeah.

[42:40] David: The piece of that I miss--for whatever reason, I don't feel we're getting a lot of the eccentric hyper-stylized artists that we got, in that time. That's the piece that I miss. There’s nobody Stephen Platt that's just showing up, on a random issue of Moon Knight, and you're like, “What is this?” I don't feel like we're really getting that right now, but hopefully, it's coming--I don't know--or maybe I'm not looking in the right places. It could be that, too.

[43:16] John: There was an incentive, if you were an artist, to be Jae Lee, and to be Stephen Platt--really stand out, and really do something weird and unique, and you had a bunch of people that were just trying to be weird and unique, in exactly the same way McFarlane or Jim Lee, or Liefeld were, but then you had the other ones that were like, “yeah, I can do this,” and Travis Charest comes out of that. He's very Jim Lee-ish, but then it really changes into something different, and at the same time, you had the thing that was going on--I think you had this going on in music, too--when Nirvana really blew up, there was a rush toward bands kind of like that, and eventually, it turned into corporate bands with really good-looking lead singers that would play guitars and sing pseudo-moody lyrics, but there was this time where it was The Meat Puppets were blowing up, and Dinosaur Jr. was a big band. There's no other world where J Mascis became a household name, other than this world where Nirvana blows up, in a certain way, and everybody's looking for the next Nirvana, and they think all these weird little punk bands are the next Nirvana, and it opens this door, really briefly. You had that same thing in comics. You had your Liefelds and your Jim Lees, and it was like, “Oh, well, Kevin O'Neill's also really over-the-top, the way Liefeld is. We should have him draw stuff.”

[44:35] David: Right. That's how they got there?

[44:38] John: Yeah. I mean, the world that puts Mike Mignola on Issue #8 of X-Force. That's crazy. Okay. All right. I see where you get there, I guess. He’s drawing weird stuff, too, and eventually, filtered down into, “okay, now we want people to draw like Jim Lee.” That became the style that came after that. Nowadays, when these weirdo publishers pop up, they're just looking to sell movies, or whatever, or they’re IP farms, and they don't want the weird stuff. They don't want the thing that you put in front a movie--Could you imagine putting Marshal Law in front of a movie producer, and being like, “here's what we're trying to sell you.” That wasn't what it was for.

[45:17] David: I guess that is a thing that puts the brakes on some of the more--I wonder if it's just that it's hard to develop an individual, distinct personality, within your art, because you're exposed to everything, all the time, now. There’s not a small community that you're working in, and just a few influences that you're pulling from. Now, it's everything, everywhere, all at once. So, it's harder to not become more homogeneous, as a result, and also, my own personal frustration is that I think that certain computer techniques have been adopted, and the computer version of drawing has become so ubiquitous that it is forcing a very specific look that people are just all going to, because it's the easy version of things, it's the quick shorthand, and people are having to fight, basically, their tools, in order to become something unique or distinct. You’re fighting against tools, because the tools are forcing you into a very specific bucket. I think that is part of it, as well.

[46:28] John: Obviously, I won't say what it is, but I've got a comic that I’m involved in, up on screen, and the artist, his figures are very unique, and very stylized, and the backgrounds look like everybody else's backgrounds.

[46:39] David: Exactly that.

[46:40] John: Yeah, you don't have that whole picture, and this is the thing I was talking, at the comic bookstore, when I was buying those Valerian graphic novels—I was talking to the guy at the comic bookstore. He's the colorist on Time Cheetah. He's the guy at SoCal.

[46:56] David: Oh, he works at SoCal?

[46:57] John: Yeah.

[46:58] David: Oh, I didn't know that. I don't talk to anybody in the comic bookstore, for some reason. I don't know how. I'm so awkward. I don't even know how to talk to […].

[47:03] John: No, I'm bad at it, too. It somehow came up that we both knew Carlos. So, we were talking about that. I'm really into these European graphic novels from the 70s, or earlier, up through, maybe, the 90s. It's not that there are not talented artists now, but it's like, “well, what are their influences? Oh, the same manga that everybody else grew up on.” There isn't that part of it, for me as an American, seeing Margot in Badtown, there's this host of influences that made this comic look that way, that were not what was driving the American comic industry in 1991. It wasn't Byrne, and Cockrum, and Frank Miller, and Walter Simonson. So, it comes out totally different, and that's really cool. It is cool that we all get to share the same stuff, and that I get to see more European stuff, and every manga gets to come out in the US, it seems like, now, but you do lose that sense of the idiosyncratic-ness--idiosyncrac-ity—syncrati-tude of all these different pockets. I don’t know. To some degree, I think we got too good at formalizing rules for things, where you know, beat-by-beat, how to write a movie now. You can open a word processing document, and it will already have formatted the structure of a movie, or a novel, or something. That's super reasonable. A lot of those rules work, because they work, but you don't get the weird stuff of people not knowing how things work, and trying to figure it out, and going slightly off the rails.

[48:44] David: In good and bad ways, both entertaining, in their own ways. Yeah. This is what's called getting old, John.

[48:51] John: I guess so. I'm not trying to say there's nothing new good, that's like that. There's a lot of good stuff like that. There's also the part that, we're not talking about the boring crap from 1991 that we don't care about, because nobody talked about that. We edited that part away. Here's a 23-year-old publisher getting the Nemesis the Warlock team to do a sequel to a Roger Corman car crash movie. Like, “okay. That's going to be awesome.” Whatever you wind up with, it's not going to be a movie producer hiring a digital artist to draw their movie proposal, even if it is based on a movie.

[49:34] David: Yeah. No, it’s about as far away from that as you can get, yeah. All right, John. I think we did a good business. I hope everybody enjoyed that one. I sure did.

[49:44] John: Yeah, I thought it got pretty good.

[49:45] David: We're so popular, John. We've had so many interviews that we rarely talk, just chat.

[49:50] John: I know. It's good to catch up. Thank you for joining us on The Corner Box. Whether we're here next week, we will be here next week for you.

[49:57] David: We're always here next--Yeah, that's right, John.

[50:00] John: We're always here next week.

[50:01] David: No, seriously. We have recorded over 80 episodes. We have put out, I think, over 80 episodes, or close to it, and we have not missed a single week, John.

[50:10] John: No.

[50:11] David: We're the anti-Image Comics of 1992. We put stuff out when we say we're going to put it out. You deserve some congratulations for that, as do I. I hope our four listeners appreciate how hard we're working to make sure that that happens.

[50:28] John: Yes.

[50:29] David: Like and subscribe.

[50:30] John: Yeah, and we'll be back next week. Thanks again, and we'll see you here on The Corner Box.

[50:36] David: Bye.

Thanks for joining us, and please subscribe, rate, and tell your friends about us. You can find updates, and links at www.thecornerbox.club, and we’ll be back next week with more from David, and John, here at The Corner Box.