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 to The Corner Box. I'm one of your hosts, John Barber, and with me, as always

[00:35] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock.

[00:36] John: And usually, it's just us, like lightning, because Thunderbolts came out today.

[00:41] David: I'm hearing good things. I'm cautiously optimistic, John.

[00:44] John: Because of the work we do with Marvel, they organized a special screening for us, where we could go to a theater, and pay money, and go see it.

[00:49] David: On opening day?

[00:53] John: Probably. So, I'm actually heading over, after this. I'm actually excited to see it.

[00:57] David: You're going to go see it right now?

[00:58] John: Yeah.

[00:59] David: Oh, man. No wonder you wanted to cut the podcast short today. Thanks, everybody, for coming. John’s got to go to the movies. Bye.

[01:04] John: If you didn't have other plans, you'd be there as well, I believe. I don't know […].

[01:09] David: Probably true. I am pumped for Thunderbolts. The marketing for Thunderbolts hit the sweet spot, for me. I am interested. I think I am going to go to the theater to watch this movie.

[01:21] John: Speaking of Winter Soldier.

[01:22] David: Nothing we're talking about. Winter Soldier?

[01:25] John: Yeah. I don't know. Somebody else is going to see Thunderbolts. We’re here with Mason Rabinowitz, who works with me. Two funny facts about you two. One of them is, both of you guys have been, or are, my editors on projects, and then I have edited many things, but I've actually never edited either of you on a project. Anyway. Mason used to work at Golden Apple, and had an interesting I think life, getting up to work here. So, hello, Mason.

[01:55] Mason Rabinowitz: Hi, guys. I guess I'm the Bucky of this podcast, I suppose. So, I'll try to figure out how to work that metaphor into things here. Also, turned my phone off, because it's buzzing. Excited to be on. I appreciate being invited here. I work with John, obviously, as the Director of Publishing Operations at Pan Universal Galactic Worldwide, or PUG, as we generally call it, and I have listened to David on the podcast many times, but this is the first time I've gotten to actually talk to him, in a way that he talks back. As I told these guys when I came on, I listened to this podcast, but because I'm on so many calls with John Barber, he will stop talking about a comic for a moment on the podcast, and I will just jump in with a question or comment, and then David starts talking, and I realize we're not on a call, this is a pre-recorded thing, and I seem insane. We'll see if I actually could say anything worthwhile this time, when John stops talking.

[02:43] John: First time that's occurred on this show--somebody saying something worthwhile, or we stop talking. I don't know. Aside from the ones where I just zone out.

[02:50] David: John, you're revealing the secrets of the podcast. We have to cut all this out. We can't let people know that you don't pay any attention. I’m over here—song and dance, like a monkey, and you're on your computer, doing work for other people. I'm that “one thing at a time” kind of guy. I can't be off doing multitasking. I can't even say that word, much less do it. So, Mason, you said you listen to the podcast. So, if you don't listen to the podcast, what does John--Does he beat you with a stick, or something? I know you're not doing it because you want to.

[03:22] Mason: He makes these references to the podcast, in conversation, and then you're like, “well, what do I do? Say, ‘John, I didn't listen’? Do I […]? No.”

[03:33] David: Awkward.

[03:34] Mason: I can go back, and listen, like, “Oh, yeah, that's right.

[03:36] John: I footnote my conversations by Slacking you URLs to Mason.

[03:42] David: Slacking URLs of various episodes of our podcast? I love it. I would believe that, if I thought you listened to the podcast, John, but I know you don't.

[03:52] Mason: I should emphasize, I am terrible at listening to podcasts, in my life. I don't have a commute. I work from home. I have never been able to implement podcast-listening into my routine. So, there's several that I really want to listen to, all the time, and I never--I'm always epically far behind.

[04:13] John: The second thing that you guys have in common is, I wanted to follow up on Margot in Badtown, for anybody planning along at home, when I was talking about what a bargain that was. It's terrible.

[04:27] Mason: This kind of podcast? Is this just “books we think are terrible?”

[04:31] John: I'm not even not recommending it. It's uniquely terrible. So, the funny thing is--Jerome Charyn, we talked about him--the artist, Frezzato, he's within 10 years of any of our ages--he passed away two or three years ago. Jerome Charyn’s still alive, still kicking, in his 80s.

[04:50] Mason: To clarify it, that is very sad, and now you're going to talk about how terrible the recently-passed-away man’s comic was. Please proceed.

[04:57] John: Yeah. Coming in, I'd read a bunch of other Jerome Charyn comics, and they're very literate and interesting, and Dover put out a couple of them, and there's introductions by Paul Pope, and him talking about how this came out the same year as Watchmen, and how important it was, in terms of serious subject matter being in comics. So, looking at this comic with this large-breasted woman, dressed like Tetsuo from Akira, carrying a hammer, how is this going to work out? Is this going to be a real smart take on some weird, strange thing? No, not at all. Not that anybody even wants to hear this. I just feel like I need to follow up on this, because I need to let this out. The story is full of inexplicable things that happen. The art is very nice. The drawing is incredible. The level of drawing quality, especially for a dude in his 20s, when this came out, and being his first graphic novel, is astounding. The storytelling is a little weak. It falls down, here and there. There's stuff that doesn’t work, but not in a way that would detract from something, in of itself.

What you get, though, is that thing that you sometimes see in comics, especially around then, where this takes place in New York in 1990, and it's still a little grimy--a little bit of the 80s grime in New York. Jerome Charyn is from New York. So, I'm sure he's writing the streets that he and Lou Reed grew up on, or whatever, but this is the sort of thing where you go into a room, and it’s all beat up, there's graffiti on the wall, and the graffiti is “filthy.” It's the word “filthy” spray-painted on the wall. It's that kind of thing. This is what it actually reminds me of, and it's fascinating, and this is why I sort-of-kind-of even recommend it, because it's so weird, if you come into it with this mindset. Imagine an 80s music video--one of the ones with the story to it, where the guy and the girl get together, and then they have to fight somebody in the video, and then they go off together.

[06:46] David: Duran Duran style?

[06:48] John: Imagine if you turned November Rain into a graphic novel.

[06:54] Mason: This is now my new dream project, John. All I want to do is adapt Guns ‘n Roses music videos into prestige graphic novels.

[07:05] John: But it's got that quality that--nobody looks like they really are doing the thing that they're doing. They didn't go and hire people that looked like construction workers, or a down-and-out would-be actress in there. They went to the local strip clubs, not the best one, and they're not in the city, like LA. Mid-range strip clubs, male and female, hired people from that, got them out onto the video, and they're good-looking people, just dressed-up in costumes, like their jobs, and their parts were, “the guy and the girl got together.” The song covers that part. You don't really need to show that. So, that's not here--that part of it. There's no song here, but there's that part where they still--“then they're together.” So, it's fascinating, if you look at it that way, to the point that I'm almost like, “is there some similar experiment that Jerome Charyn was doing, or what was this about? I don't know. That was it. Heavy Metal published a sequel to it. They did a graphic novel of that. I think there were several of them. I think only two of them came out in English. I don't know. I'm not not going to read the second one. We'll see. Stay tuned, Margot fans.

[08:14] David: I don't know what you just did. Did you just recommend that book, or not? I'm very confused. You're like, “this is awful, but the art is fantastic, and it also reminds me of cool 80s videos, but don't read it.” I'm very confused, John. I don't know what to do with this. Have you given me information?

[08:33] John: You know what? That is why, 30 years later, you can buy this off the Heavy Metal website, at cover price, is what do you do with this? I just don't know.

[08:42] David: You over-print, by a lot.

[08:46] John: Kevin Eastman didn't know what to do. […] didn't know what to do. Joe Illidge didn't know what to do. You can go down a list of people who didn't know what to do. They still have it.

[08:56] David: Fantastic. Well, I don't know. I think I'm more intrigued by this book now than I ever could have possibly been. Maybe I need to check this out. I'm a sucker for good art, too.

[09:05] John: Yeah, if you've got $8, you can make this happen.

[09:09] David: I don't know. That’s a little--Maybe not. No.

[09:11] Mason: Yeah, I don't know. I'm torn. There's an experience I have in my life. My wife will watch some TV shows, or read some bad thriller novels, and she really likes to tell me the plot, or what happened on these shows, and I don't really care, but there's something fun about my wife telling me the version of the story that's way better than any version that I would get by reading it. She's a little different, because she will sometimes not remember some details that would be super important to me. So, I'll be like, “well, who got kicked off? What about the twist with the thing?” She’s like, “I don't know. I skimmed past that part. I don't really remember.” It’ll always be a very unique experience. I feel like, as much as John has made me curious about this, it won't be better than my experience of reading it vicariously through John reading it and telling me about it.

[09:53] John: Here's the funny thing--the story is kind of like what you described. Here's an example of this. Margot goes to the city. She winds up joining up with these demolition dudes, and she's their muse for demolishing buildings, and in one of the scenes, she goes to bed with one of the guys, and all four of them live together, and she just takes off her clothes, gets into bed with one of the guys. So, clothes are off, and then she's just in bed. There's no actual sex scene, which is part of the weirdness of this thing.

Later on, the guy from her hometown, that ran the laundromat that she worked at, who was really into her, and to show, early-on, how into her he was, he pulled her out of the laundromat where she was working, and took her to his World War 2 airplane, and flew her around, but then no, she still had to go to Badtown. She still had to go to New York, […]. He shows up, and then you see him, her, and the other guy all in bed together, sleeping. Now, you'd think that would come up in the story, in any way. It does not. The only time it comes up is when the guy says, “she's my fiancé,” and the other guy says, “our fiancé.” That's it. That's the only reference to that that ever happens in the graphic novel. There's no response to it, either. Nobody responds to that. There's no “that’s weird,” or “that's not what I thought our arrangement was,” or “that is what I thought our arrangement is.” So, you might enjoy this, Mason.

[11:27] David: There you go.

[11:32] John: Mason, there's a story that you have that I am endlessly fascinated by, because I was a little bit on the other side of that, when it happened, and this is also a thing in comic book history that people aren’t aware of, that I think positions you in a really specific place of “that's who was there for this.” You know what I'm talking about.

[11:52] Mason: I do know what you're talking about. So, I think we'll keep the audience--we'll tease them a little bit, by giving them a little backstory, then we'll give them the goods.

[12:01] John: Yeah. So, how did you get into comics, and where did you start?

[12:02] Mason: You and I, I think we have a similar, very adjacent first comic book experience, in that the comic book that got me into comic books was Secret Wars #4.

[12:14] John: Secret Wars #3 was for me.

[12:16] David: I wish everybody listening could see your face, John. You're so proud of that.

[12:20] John: Andrew Griffith’s was the same thing, right?

[12:22] Mason: He liked #6 or #7, or something. It had already been uncool to like comics, at that point.

[12:29] John: We’ve got to gatekeep that guy.

[12:33] Mason: So, I'd always loved comics. I grew up in a house that was very encouraging of me reading comics, reading any of that stuff, but did have an attitude that creative arts were fine to consume, but not to pursue, as a career, probably wisely, I guess, and I did not think about doing that, went to school to do Political Science, and all that good stuff. Wound up working on some TV programs, decided to forget political science, move out to Hollywood, work in the entertainment industry, which I did for a bit, at UTA, a talent agency, and a little time at Disney, before they bought all the things I love, which is always the hardest part now. It was Mickey Mouse […] Disney stuff, and I was a proud Disney person, but what the 5th and 6th direct-to-video sequel projects should be for things was not the same as being the company that owns Marvel and Star Wars, and all the best stuff, and then in between all that, I decided I was going to try to take a bigger swing at creative stuff.

I was looking for something to do, while I was writing, and I happened to be in Golden Apple Comics in Los Angeles, CA, the world-famous comic bookstore, and they had a sign behind the counter that said, “we're hiring,” and I was just like, “this would be great. I hate what I'm doing now. I'll do this. I'll write. I'll be the Quentin Tarantino video store experience, and then I'm going to come in here, and I'm just going to read everything here in the store. I'm going to work here for a little bit of time, read everything in the store, and do a bunch of writing.” One of those things worked out very well, and I did read everything in the store. I stayed a little longer than I maybe meant to, and I did not get nearly as much writing done as I thought I was going to, though I did do some, but while I was there, that is--I think it's still on Melrose Ave., though it's moved since my day.

[14:32] David: It is, and the reason I know this is because Rob Liefeld just held a signing there, on April 16th, which was the 33rd anniversary of his signing at Golden Apple for Youngblood #1.

[14:44] Mason: Yes, I also saw that. Again, I'm going to say, when I was there, and I wasn't there for that long, it was the dream. Every comic creator you could possibly want to meet, either shopped there, came through there, stopped and said hello--the entire list, except Rob, who was always promising he was going to come do an event, and for a while, I helped run the event. Rob was always going to come do an event, and I feel like--You and I, David, share this--I'm a huge, unironic, absolutely love Rob Liefeld Experience--I feel like it fit that thing, that he did eventually do that signing, just 20-something years after it was going to happen, but I was there, and I was going to be […]. So, yes, it is. I did see that, and thought. “20 years later, it finally happened.” Quick shout out to Bill Liebowitz, who founded that store. Larger than life entertainment and comics figure, and his lovely wife, Sharon, who ran the store. I tried to find this, and I couldn't find it ahead of this interview. It bummed me out. There was a page in Wizard Comics in the 90s that was “celebrities who shopped at Golden Apple,” and I was looking for that image, because I used to have it, and I'm sure I have it, somewhere now, in my weird collection of old Wizard the Guide to Comics things, but it would list all the celebrities, because they were in West Hollywood on Melrose Ave.

So, every famous person came through there, quite often. Leonardo DiCaprio would shop there for a long time. I met more celebrities and had more good celebrity stories from my time at a comic bookstore, really, than I did for my time at the talent agency and Disney. There are some good stories, but way more celebrities at the Golden Apple than anywhere else, from Mark Hamill, who was always a delight, super fun, who I always described as the person who, if he wasn't in Star Wars, would have been buying all the Star Wars toys. He was that guy. He's was just so into all of it.

[16:44] David: That's awesome.

[16:45] John: I can’t remember if I've told this story, but I have a funny “I've never met Mark Hamill” story, but I have his copy of Batman '66, Volume 1 Hardcover.

[16:54] David: You steal everybody's stuff?

[16:56] John: No, this is hilarious. Someone who used to work with us, that isn't on this call, used to get DC comps and then sell them on eBay, I think, really more as a hobby than as necessarily having to make money. So, Batman ‘66, it was colored like it was colored from the ‘60s, it had off-register coloring, and stuff. So, he sells his Batman ‘66 hardcover to Mark Hamill, and pretty clearly an assistant, or somebody, opens it, sees that all the printing is off-register, and then sends it back, because it's defective. So, then that individual is like, “I'm not going to bother with this. John, do you want it?” So, it used to be Mark Hamill’s.

[17:36] Mason: I was going to say, prior to the rise of eBay, the other thing you discover when working at a comic bookstore, surrounded by a lot of entertainment and comic book professionals, is how many people are coming to trade in their comps. I think I shattered John the other day, when he was like, “Oh, yeah. This very esteemed sci-fi writer would just constantly, personally, often come in with his comps to trade them for stuff,” but John was like, “I was the person who made sure he got those.”

[18:04] John: John Nee?

[18:08] Mason: No. Harlan. You told me Harlan.

[18:13] David: No, you were telling me something about Harlan. I mentioned Harlan Ellison—Harlan Ellison was the writer who did it. The comic book people, I'm not going to name on this call.

[18:23] John: I think that must’ve been Chris Ryall.

[18:25] Mason: Maybe it was Ryall.

[18:27] John: I only had one fanboy interaction with Harlan Ellison, when he called the IDW offices, trying to reach Mary Elizabeth's ex-husband, who didn't work there anymore, but he just swapped the names of somebody. He was actually trying to reach somebody else. It was a comedy of errors. It was right after I started at IDW, and the phone rings, and it's Harlan Ellison. It's not that I hadn't dealt with famous writers, and stuff, but it was still “Harlan Ellison just called, and he needs me to do something for him. I'm going to find this guy that hasn't worked here for five years.”

[19:06] Mason: Anyway, it was shocking how many professionals, of a variety of things, came in with their comps.

[19:12] David: I did not know that was a thing. When I found out that a lot of people did exactly that, at a very specific store here in San Diego, I just was always thinking that the store just was really supporting local publishing. I was like, “man, I love you guys. You guys carry so much of our product. It's really cool of you,” because it never even occurred to me, to do anything with my comps, other than to read them, put them in a box, and put that box in my garage, and I never thought, “I could get rid of some of these, some way,” because I don't get rid of comic books. Are you crazy? If someone gives me a comic, the comic’s mine for the rest of my life. I was shocked when I found out that that's something that people do.

[19:59] John: Harlan Ellison, though--he would get all the Marvel books, wouldn't he?

[20:02] Mason: Yes.

[20:03] John: That's what you're talking about. Geez. That can't have been Ryall, but I didn't do that. That's weird. If I said something that, I don't know what I meant.

[20:12] Mason: Regardless, he did get a lot of comps, and sometimes his assistant came, but more often than not, it was a thing Harlan did, which was just come in with this big stack of stuff, just to trade it in for credit that he would occasionally use on obscure things, but so often, there were some folks--meeting Mark Hamill was mind-blowing, to me. It’s Luke Skywalker. Different than the other celebrities, but Harlan, it wore out--that, “oh, my God. This is Harlan Ellison” factor. It's just Harlan […].

[20:41] David: Must be Tuesday.

[20:43] Mason: I think before I worked there, we arbitrarily decided to go to a signing that they were having, and we're waiting in line outside, and Harlan Ellison came out, collecting for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund with this coin jar, for people to put money in, and my buddy touched his pockets, looks around--we just dragged him out of the house to go to the signing, and like, “the only cash I have on me is $0.50,” but he throws it in, and Harlan just looks at him, and goes, “you're a cheap f*ck,” and walked on, and my buddy’s been living on that forever, like “Harlan Ellison called me a cheap f*ck.” You get a lot of celebrities, […] up to this one, and certainly, I think people liked coming there, both in the entertainment industry, and the comic folks, because it's like going to a bar. Everybody just treats you as if you're there to read comics. We're going to talk to you about the books you're buying, or what you're reading, or the latest Spider-Man stuff, and not the celebrity treatment. Sam Jackson came in a lot--a lot for a celebrity. I mean, there were people who came in every week. He was not one of those guys, but he did come in pretty regularly. He’d always wear a big, floppy hat, and somehow--he's such a good actor that he could come in, looking, undeniably, like one of the most famous movie stars in the world, with a floppy hat, and a little shrug in his shoulders, and I don't think anyone outside of the store ever--we had people be like, “Oh, my God. Are you the third guy from this band no one's ever heard of?” No one ever bugged Sam for anything. No one ever was like “is that Sam Jackson?”

[22:21] David: Yeah, but part of that might be that you might be afraid he's going to kill you if you—[…] mess around with too much.

[22:28] Mason: But he seemed so chill. He could turn it on, because he’d lift the hat up, give you this thousand-Watt smile, or--and this isn't the one John wants to hear, but this is the one my grandmother always wanted me to tell, but--can you swear on the podcast? Is the first thing I have to ask. Are there rules about profanity on the podcast?

[22:43] David: We're fine.

[22:45] Mason: Is this a family show? Because, again, my grandmother, who was very proud of her English heritage, and very proper, but she loved Sam Jackson. So, she loved this story, which is—he was in there once, looking around. These kids--we were across the street from a high school. So, a couple of kids came in, and they were goofing around, and just Sam, and these two kids in the store, and myself, and somebody in the back, but I was like, “okay, guys. You’ve got to tone it down. Come on, guys. This is too much,” and they're horsing around, and they knock over something--empty VHS or CD cases, or something--and it's like, “guys, you’ve got to go. Come on,” and one of the guys is like, “oh, man. I'm sorry.” He takes off, and the other kid looks at me, and he's just like, “you're only throwing us out of here because we're black.” I'm like, “man, come on. You just knocked this stuff off the shelf. Dude, come on.” He's like, “no, you're racist,” screaming, “you're racist.” He leaves the store, and I see Sam come down this long aisle that we had, take the long way to the counter, walks up to the counter, super seriously, lifts his hat up, and just looks me dead in the eye with this stare, like, “you are a racist mother*cker,” and I thought I was going to die. He holds it for what must have been 5-10 seconds, but to me, it felt a 2 minutes. Oh, my God, and then he just goes from this “death is about to be carried out upon you,” to a giant 10,000-Watt smile, turns around, walks away, and goes back to shopping, and that was always--my grandmother, we’d be at a family occasion, “you need to tell the Sam Jackson story. He's so wonderful. Tell the Sam Jackson story.” I was like, “I can't tell this story to my nephew. What are you talking about? There’s no version of this story that’s appropriate,” which sets the stage for the fact that Sam came in a lot, was a good sport.

The guy comes in, and Ultimates #1 had come out--I don't know--maybe I think that week, or two. It was brand new—Whatever it was. It was brand new. He comes in. I’m like “Hey, man. Did you know that you're Nick Fury?” and he looks at me, and he goes, “I can't be Nick Fury,” and then he, again, lifts up the brim of the hat and does this “look at my face. I can't be Nick Fury. Like, “no, I get what you're saying.” This isn't the Hasselhoff Nick Fury. You should check it out, and the wall at Golden Apple was in alphabetical order, down the length of the store. So, Ultimates, it's literally in the back of the store. So, he goes. I think he thinks I'm crazy, because obviously, telling him he's Nick Fury makes no sense, whatsoever. He goes down to the very far back of the store. I hear him swear loudly. […] the back of the store. Next thing, he is on his phone, and he just yelling, “did you know about this?” To his agent, as he walks out of the store with the book.

[25:58] David: I'm going to try that.

[25:59] Mason: Certainly, I don't know that I would have stopped him under any circumstances. The Sam Jackson pretending to be scary moment that I just described to you before that was already one of the most terrifying things that had ever--No one was going to stand between him--and he could have taken the whole stack, and we would have let him, at that point, but also, he just walked out with the book. He was so mad on the phone, already with his agent, that he just walked out with the book. We're like, “there you go. You can have that book. I'm glad I'm not the person on the other end of that call.

[26:32] David: Yeah, that probably didn't go the way you thought it was going to go.

[26:36] Mason: Turns out, he did not know.

[26:40] David: Shocking.

[26:42] Mason: Which is funny, because it’s a story we used to tell a lot, as a funny anecdote about, “kid, hey, you know what? I'm the reason he's Nick Fury, otherwise that never happened,” and then a while back, I was reading, Marvel Studio, they did a big two-book volume of the History of Marvel Studios book that's really great, and there's an interview where Sam Jackson’s like, “I walked into the comics store one day, and the guy there is like, ‘you're Nick Fury,’ and I said, ‘I can't be Nick Fury,’ and it turns out, they put me in the book, and I didn't know about it.”

[27:13] David: You're like, “that was me.”

[27:14] Mason: We always told the story, but with a little bit of “who the hell knows? That's what happened from our perspective, but the hell knows?” But, it turns out--

[27:22] David: You should go into every single copy of the History of Marvel Studios that you can find, and cross out “guy behind the counter,” and write your name in, Mason.

[27:33] Mason: You know what? I should provide, at least, stickers to everybody who bought it, so they can fill my name in there to fix that. John, you were saying, you had the other side of that.

[27:42] John: I wasn't at Marvel, at that point, but I would soon be working on Ultimates. I came out on Ultimates 2, between the two books, but by then, there had been enough trouble. Remember the story that Ralph Macchio had to testify that some drawing of Professor X didn't look like Patrick Stewart, it’s that they hired Patrick Stewart, because he looked like Professor X? Things like that, and then later on, in Ultimates--again, this is before my time--but there's the Timeless Hulk Smash Freddie Prinze Jr. bit, where I think Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar were drawn, but they get covered up by word balloons in the printed comic. They started cracking down on being able to use exact likenesses of celebrities, but it's funny that it was a thing, for a little while. The guy from The Boys was--what's his name? From Shawn of the Dead. Wanted was Eminem.

[28:45] Mason: Bruce Willis never went on to play Hawkeye. So, it didn't really work out the way--

[28:50] John: The guy from Lost never played Iron Man.

[28:54] Mason: I don't remember that one.

[28:55] John: It's harder to tell, because he had a mustache, but if you look--I won't say who--there's a run of Iron Man, where it's Grifter guy from Lost.

[29:02] Mason: Sawyer.

[29:03] David: The rugged bad boy, Sawyer.

[29:05] John: Yeah. Sawyer. Anyway.

[29:06] Mason: Well, there you go. I told the story John wanted to hear. Everyone is ready to go home.

[29:11] David: Thanks, everybody.

[29:12] John: We’ll be back next week with our reviews of Thunderbolts. No, I’m kidding.

[29:14] Mason: John, for a while, was pitching, I should just come on and do one Golden Apple story, and then. This is just to lean into the comic book-ness of it, I would say. The celebrity that was the wildest to me was--Bridget Fonda came in, and this is early-2000s Bridget Fonda. So, it was mind-blowing, a lot of ways. I tell my wife now, it's lucky things worked out the way they did. I'm with my wife now, but she was just hanging out--I don't know why she was in there. She was looking at comics, just hanging out--only came in once, something, and then she just wanted to talk about why she preferred the Sienkiewicz Daredevil to the Miller Daredevil, and I was like, “should I just propose? It's worth a shot, right? Maybe this is it. We should go to the vacation house in France, when I was younger, and we just read comics,” and then just wanted to talk about how she preferred the Sienkiewicz Daredevil to the Miller Daredevil, which is not a conversation I thought I would have with any woman, ever, let alone early-2000s Bridget Fonda. I don't remember any of the specific reasons, but it stayed with me to this day.

[30:21] David: Calling out Sienkiewicz versus Miller, you have to have a certain level of understanding of comics, in general, in order to do something like that. That's pretty cool. Also, I, too, would never think that you would have that conversation with.

[30:37] Mason: Any woman, at all.

[30:38] David: Anyone. Yeah, exactly.

[30:41] Mason: The comics world has changed, though, because I do think it's funny, now, obviously, Thunderbolt is out, everyone knows who Bucky Barnes is, everybody knows who Rocket Raccoon is, even though that doesn't make any sense, but I remember when the first X-Men movie came out, and it was incredibly strange that my dad called me, and wanted to talk about Magneto. He was very into the character. Of all the things I never thought would happen in a million years, would my dad know who Magneto, or want to talk about--he liked Superman a lot, and that's probably one of the reasons that got me into comics, but more, the idea of Superman. He’d have a lot of Superman stuff, but didn't necessarily read comics, and now Magneto, everyone knows who Magneto is.

[31:28] John: Yeah. I remember when I was a kid, talking to my dad about reading comics, and it not connecting with me that the collection of comics that he had, that was 30 comics, was all the comics he had. That was what he needed. It wasn't the most important thing in his life.

[31:41] David: That's what I need in a week.

[31:46] John: If I only had 30 comics, how would I be putting my feet up underneath my desk right now?

[31:53] David: What would you sleep on at night?

[31:58] John: You were there for a while, and then you--

[31:59] Mason: So, I was there for a while, and then I was doing a little editorial stuff at Top Cow, that I talked my way into it, because I knew some folks there, and then I met my wife, who was on vacation in Los Angeles, when I met her, and shortly thereafter, decided to move to Connecticut, set all of the entertainment comic stuff that had been on track, less on track, and I will bring it back to the Bucky Barnes metaphor, I was then frozen in creative ice for an extended period of time, at which I worked at an insurance company, did sales, and marketing, and advertising, started my own agency, did that.

[32:38] David: What you're saying is, you made real money for a little bit?

[32:41] Mason: Something approximating real money, in Connecticut. Had a real job, did that for a while. We had a crowdfunding agency, was always geek friendly, called Ray Gun V, because we had Ray Gun 5, because our initials were R, G, and V. Did a bunch of that stuff, built the agency, finally gotten that up, and running, and doing really well when the pandemic hit. It was not a good time to be in advertising, especially small business advertising, because most of our clients closed, or at least were closed during the pandemic. So, eventually, by the time that was done, I decided I didn't want to build that back up again, and ran into a conversation with one of the founders of PUG, who was like, “oh, […] some help on this game writing project. You know comics.” “I have a little […].” I did this stuff, came on, started helping out, started working on some custom projects, where John and I work together now, and then suddenly went from that to Director of Publishing Operations, and made that my full-time gig. It feels a little bit like I ran away to join the circus, or was thawed out from ice and joined The Avengers. It's wild to have a job that brings—[…] “how did this happen?” I have a job in comics. Well, it does bring the advertising experience, some Hollywood stuff, and having read too many comics for a long time together. So, it's a super fun job, super fun place to be, and I get to work with people, like John, which is really exciting, and hear old Marvel stories, and that kind of stuff.

[34:06] John: Yeah, I feel the same way. I get to hear the […] from up at the Golden Apple store. That would have been right at the dawn of the modern superhero age of Hollywood. At the time that Ultimates is coming out, the Spider-Man and X-Men movies were going already.

[34:23] Mason: I mean, the funny things were, A, Warner Brothers decided that we were the resource for information about DC Comics and their characters. So, we would get calls from the development execs at Warner, or “hey, I'm X. I'm writing this project for Warner. They told me to call you. I have some questions about Batman,” or “we have questions about Ice,” and it would just be weird--you’d be like “I'm pretty confident--you guys own the company that published these books. I promise you, the person who wrote this would be happy to talk to you. I promise you, the editor of this book would be thrilled to talk to you, and just be like, ‘we have your number. It's easier. You guys know the answers.’” They would both buy the books from us--You would get a call, and they would just be like, “we need 30 copies of this random DC book.” I'm pretty sure you could call the company that publishes them. You own them now. “No, it's easier buying from you. Also, here's the list of questions. Can you take them?” So, sometimes, it would be my job to just go and be on the phone with the Warner executive, just answering these random DC Comics questions, sometimes with really cool--Wolfgang Peterson came in to talk JLA, when he was going to make the JLA movie. Sometimes, it was just their assistants, some development person, but it was wild that we would just get these calls, and it was just like, “yep, we own the company, but it's easier to call some guy at the comic bookstore to answer these questions.”

[35:53] David: That's too much power for one person. I would not have done that appropriately. I would have been feeding all kinds of weird information about Batman. I would’ve just had a whole different mythos from what--

[36:06] Mason: I think, it was so weird that they were making movies, and it was weird, in that they treated us with more respect than I was ever treated when I was on that side of the entertainment industry. No one respected anyone inside the building, but they really treated this like “this is a professional resource that—“ they didn't pay us—but “this is a professional resource that we go to get information about our char—weirdly, very respectful, except it felt weird that you're like, “well, the people who wrote this would surely talk to you.”

[36:36] David: As soon as they ask me a question about Justice League, or something, I just would have been filled with righteous indignation about where's Ambush Bug, or something that. More on-character, for me, I would have been talking about Captain Carrot. “Where's Pig Iron? This script is crap. Take it back. I don't want it. Don't bring it back to me until Pig Iron’s—"

[36:59] John: That's probably exactly why they stopped calling Paul Levitz.

[37:04] Mason: We had always thought they just never bothered, but it does now make me wonder if they used to do that, and then did, in fact, discover that we would just tell them the answer, and not also pitch them.

[37:14] David: Not editorialize.

[37:15] Mason: Yeah. Sans editorial.

[37:17] John: That’s the funny, inexplicable story, at the time, and then knowing what we all know now about intercorporate relationships. Did the movie side just not want to show their hand to the comic book side, that they might be doing something with those characters, because they were afraid the comic side would […]?

[37:30] Mason: I wonder. You'd also see, and this was probably almost a bigger thing now, because they weren't generally that big, but you also could always tell--and sometimes we’d get a head’s up--but most of the time, we wouldn't. You’d get these very attractive people that you didn't recognize, because they were not celebrities--these very attractive people come in, and have a piece of paper, and they’d just be like, “do you have any comic books featuring ‘Namorita?’” and you'd be like, “I think we can help you. Are you trying out for a part?” and they’d be like, “Yes.” “Okay, let's see what we can find for you. There's a lot of different versions, and also, we now need to order a lot of these, because a whole bunch of attractive, but confused, people are going to wander in here, looking for the information on—" it was always somebody crazy obscure. It would always just be a Namorita kind of thing, and it was funny to be like, “well, we know they're casting,” and none of those people ever got it. It was usually somebody you did recognize. I think the famous people who were doing that would always send their agents, or acquire the book somewhere else, because celebrities shop there all the time, but I don't think there was ever a case where it was clear that somebody was up for a part, was interested in that thing, and was buying books there. Either, they got them from the studio, or they--

[38:47] John: For people that are just casually interested in Namorita, this quarter bin would do, but if you're serious about the role, this $50 hardcover--

[38:56] Mason: The only way to really know. If you haven't read all of New Warriors, you're not going to get it.

[39:02] John: We had a similar book about Batman, and somebody bought that, though. What was his name? Oh, yeah--Michael Keaton.

[39:12] Mason: I think if there's anybody else--we helped John Woo do Bulletproof Monk, which is not something to be proud of, I guess, but it was funny, because we met him, briefly, then his assistant would come back in another time to ask some more questions for other properties, and things, which is also always weird. That's where I really should have leveraged things better. We should have just had like, “you should license John Barber's book.” That would have been a way better model.

[39:40] David: Quickly scribbling some stick figures on a piece of paper, “have you heard of Stick Man?

[39:46] Mason: “There's a comic I made when I was a child, called Tanky, about a tank who transforms into a robot, and we photocopied that. It’s at my dad's office. So, I have a few copies for you. It would make a great property,” but it's funny, because the assistant comes back, like “John would like to thank you. Seems like you're a big fan.” I’m like, “I'm a huge John Woo fan. Are you crazy?” “Would you want a signed poster?” “I would love a signed poster. That would be amazing. Thank you,” and then she stops, she goes “you probably don't want a Windtalkers one, do you?” and I was like, “huh? I don't know how to say, ‘I'm not going to turn one down, but also, that wouldn't be my first choice.’” She just looks at me, and she's like, “yeah, I think we could take care of you,” and then, 2 weeks later, a Hard Boiled one showed up, and I was like, “oh, yeah. She got me.” My wife doesn't love it, because it's the one with [Chow Yun-fat] holding the baby on the front, with the gun, and the two things she hates most in the house, the Comic Book Museum House, are the Chow Yun-fat holding a baby poster, that she's just like, “you have a poster of a baby? That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. There's no excuse for that,” and among the people who was the best people ever who came in the shop, and also a friend of the show, Kevin Eastman used to come in all the time.

The first day I started, or the second day I started there, Kevin came in, and I was like, “Oh my God—” and really the first comic person I had met outside of a convention experience—like, “Oh, my God. It's Kevin Eastman. That’s amazing. Blah blah. That's so cool,” and the guy who was with me was like, “It’s Kevin. He comes in all the time. Relax. It's not that cool.” Like, “no, it's so incredibly cool.” So, of course, the guy’s like, “Kevin, this guy, it’s blowing his mind that you're here,” and Kevin's super nice about it. He's like, “oh, no, man. I appreciate it. Here, quick, let me—"and he does this quick Ninja Turtle sketch, for me, like “holy sh*t. This is a Kevin Eastman Ninja Turtles. This is so cool.”

[41:46] David: That was day 2 of you working there?

[41:47] Mason: Day 2 of me working there.

[41:49] David: No wonder you worked there forever after that. I would have done the same, man.

[41:53] Mason: It was like, “this is the best. This is the craziest, coolest thing.” So, a while later—this was day 2. So, closer towards the end and me taking off—at one point, I was chatting with Kevin, and something came up, and I was like, “yeah, man. I still have that Ninja Turtles thing you did for me, the second day I was here, when you were just so cool about that,” and he's like, “I did it for you in 2 minutes, and you hung it up on your wall? You can't do that.” He's like, “f*ck that. People are going to think I can't draw.” He's like, “you can't do that.” I was like, “I'm not going to take it down. What do you want from me?” He’s like “all right. Let's talk Turtles for a minute.” I'm like, “okay, talk Turtles.” […] He’s like “cool. I may draw something you can replace that with.” I was like, “Kevin, you do not have to do this. I love it. It's a great story. It was great moment.” He comes back in a month later, with a poster tube, and he's like, “Listen, you’ve got to promise me two things. You're going to take down whatever that thing is that's on the wall, and two, you're not going to open this till I leave, because I got a little carried away, but it was just so nice to be drawing, that I just drew a lot.” So, it's this really great picture of Raph and Casey, and they're elbowing each other, the best friends, and a question mark exclamation mark above it, but my wife hates it. I'm like, “this is the most valuable thing in my house. It’s a Kevin Eastman original—cool—Yeah, it’s not a double-page spread, but it’s a really cool—” She’s like, “best friends? Ninja Turtles? My brother used to watch Ninja Turtles, and best friends?” I’m like, “The two coolest things I have in my house. What are you talking about?”

[43:35] David: That is awesome. Kevin's a really, genuinely good dude. I think I've said this on the podcast before, but if anybody was going to make, and then spend, $100 million, I'm glad it was Kevin.

[43:50] Mason: For a while, he was the person I would hold up as a person who entirely fulfilled their complete dream, because the joke at the store, affectionately, is he showed up at--what was her name?--Showed up one of her signings, as a fan, at the Golden Apple, where he first met Julie.

[44:17] John: Oh, Julie Strain.

[44:18] Mason: Julie Strain. He was actually at a signing at Golden Apple. Can you imagine?

[44:24] David: That’s how they met?

[44:25] Mason: That's how they met. It was my understanding--I was not there for that encounter--the story was that he showed up as a fan at a Julie Strain signing at the Gold Apple, and that's where he met her, and it was like, “you made millions drawing comics with your friend, and you went to the signing event of someone, and married--this is the man. If anyone deserved it, it was Kevin. […] That's the man. He knew what he wanted, and who.

[44:54] John: What did he say when you asked him about Margot in Badtown, though?

[44:59] Mason: Geez. I was going to. The other joke I used to have--I'd seen him at San Diego sometimes, and mind you, we'd seen him at the store all the time. So, you’d go by his booth at San Diego, and he'd be like, “come over,” in the middle of a signing with people, and he’d just want to bullsh*t about something, like “Kevin. You just signed three people’s stuff, while talking to me. You'll see me next week. It’s fine.” I'm not going to ruin someone’s San Diego experience.

[45:23] David: You're in a store all the time, Kevin--way too much.

[45:29] Mason: I won’t name names--there were some pros who came in way too often, to the point where it's just like, “I guess this is what you do when you can't write, or something.” They’d come in and organize the shelves--I'm not going to say--come in and arrange the shelves, and stuff, and it would just be like, “okay.”

[45:44] David: We had a similar experience at IDW, where there was a very famous artist who, when he called, no one wanted to take the call, because we're all very busy, and we knew that phone call meant that, for the next hour, we were going to be occupied, talking to that person. So, when you saw it was him, you're like, “it's your turn.”

[46:11] John: Ralph Macchio's job at Marvel, for a big part of it, was that he was the guy that could talk the artists down when they threw all their furniture out on the front lawn and decided they were going to quit comics, and there were a few people that he had on his schedule, that he would call, that weren't working on books that he worked on, but his job was to call them and make sure that they were staying sane, and he’d say things like, “you really want to draw Batman, huh? Okay, well, here's what you do. Draw a picture of Batman on your page, then turn it over, and draw the comic you're supposed to.”

[46:45] Mason: I was going to say, it feels the industry could use a hotline that you call when you're like, “I'm going to throw my furniture on the lawn and quit comics. I can't do it,” and you could just call that number, and they’d be like, “it's going to be okay. I mean, it's not, but it's going to be okay. Let me tell you a story. Now, turn the page over, and go back to work.” I feel like that would be a useful hotline for the industry.

[47:03] David: I think that's what we're doing with this podcast. 100%, we are that hotline. Anybody in need should just listen to us. We're wildly entertaining and soothing.

[47:13] Mason: I encourage anyone who's thinking about quitting comics to call in right now, and we will tell you why you should keep working.

[47:20] David: No, that's the opposite of what I would actually--

[47:23] Mason: Unless you’re one of the freelancers we have--in which case, please turn the page over, and get back to work.

[47:28] John: That is the thing, when you're drawing stuff at home, and you're sitting by yourself, that you don't have when you're at a comic book company, or at a store, or whatever. Even separated, like we are--we're on different coasts--There's still people that are going through the same thing you are, about the same things, that you could talk to, and you have to have those little sanity breaks, where we just get on and talk about the nonsense we had to deal with, or something. When you don't have that at home, and you just internalize that stuff, and when you go and tell your friends, “I had a rough day, drawing comic books today.” No. Your neighbors don't do that. Your neighbors have a worse job, but differently worse. I could see that. I could see having that comic bookstore that you just go into, and just remind yourself that somebody cares about this stuff.

[48:16] Mason: It was a safe space. It was a safe space to come in, and everybody loved comics, which is the idea, except that you had to meet the fans, which is probably--that's the side of working in the comic bookstore, that's the harder part, is you meet all the fans.

[48:28] David: Now, now.

[48:31] John: We're actually bumping up against our time limit for today.

[48:34] David: We're going to have to have Mason on again, John. We didn't get even a third of the questions that I know you had for him.

[48:40] John: No, I think this could be a recurring thing of the Tales of the Golden Apple.

[48:42] David: I love it.

[48:43] Mason: Happy to come on, talk Golden Apple, happy to come on, and talk--David had had an exciting list of comics we could have talked about, in lieu of this conversation--two of the three of which, I was very excited to talk about. The third of which, I’m going to have to go track down.

[48:55] John: The third of which, weirdly, I think neither of us had heard of.

[48:58] Mason: It was the nightmare of being on one of these things, where they're like, “I know you're a big comic fan. So, here we are. We're going to talk about this,” and you think, “I must know it by a different title, something,” and it turns out, no, I did not know that book existed. I have nothing to say. I could talk about the creator team, but I know nothing about that book, whatsoever.

[49:18] John: And the funny thing is, one of the biggest writers, one of the biggest artists of the 21st century, versus another one that is from a publisher that you've not heard of, that I've read twice--most recently, 20 months ago, and I read the novel on which it was based, and we talked about that on this show.

[49:40] David: One of the biggest selling books of the time, when it came out, you guys have no idea what it is, but the esoteric 4-issue series by a no-longer-existing publisher, you guys are all about it. […].

[49:55] John: Let me one-up it--one of the biggest writers in comics, who I invited to my wedding, and I've not heard of this comic.

[50:03] David: There's that, too.

[50:06] Mason: Thank you, guys, for having me on. This was super fun. Assuming that you don't get lots of complaints and objections, I'm happy to come back again, anytime. I'm not here to plug anything. So, I'll just--if you're listening to this podcast, tell a friend to listen to this podcast, and complain about it together later.

[50:21] John: […] O-T. The ‘T’ is silent in ‘Badtown’.

[50:27] Mason: That’s the tagline, right? The ‘T’ is silent.

[50:31] John: Maybe. I don't know. Actually, you know what? It's just written down. I'm assuming it’s silent. I guess, I have no proof of that. Thank you, Mason. Thanks for coming on. Enjoy seeing Thunderbolts this weekend, and I'll talk to you on Monday, and I'll talk to you next week, David, and listeners, we'll talk to you next week, as well. Thanks for joining us.

[50:49] David: Thanks, everybody.

[50:50] David: We're the Corner Box. 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.