Announcer 00:00:01  Welcome to the Corner box, where your hosts, David and John 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.

David and John 00:00:28  Hey, everybody, welcome back to the Corner Box, the podcast where two grizzled comic book veterans try to make sense of the art, the business, and the occasional chaos of the comic book industry. I'm David and John Hedgecock, one of your hosts, and with me, as always, is my good friend John Barber.

Are you trying out for something?

Yeah, I'm trying to be impressive. John, we have a guest. These are a very big deal. I want to do it right. With us today is Benjamin Percy, novelist, screenwriter. The reason why Wolverine still has fangs in his post Krakoa world. And right now he's bringing hellfire and highway horror to Marvel's Ghost Rider.

David and John and John 00:01:04  Benjamin's written Green Arrow, Teen Titans, X-Force, Wolverine a whole lot more somehow still finds time to write novels that make you question your moral compass. Welcome to the show, Ben.

Ben 00:01:15  Hey, thanks so much for having me on.

David and John 00:01:17  Is it Ben or Benjamin?

Ben 00:01:18  Benjamin on the page. Ben in person.

David and John 00:01:20  There you go. For those who don't know, Ben Percy is a critically acclaimed novelist, screenwriter and comic book writer. His career bridges literary fiction and pop culture storytelling with a signature blend of intensity, intellect and ganas. The career overview for Ben and Stop me anytime, Mr. Percy.

Ben 00:01:39  You can just be like, he's a, you know, the author of, critically acclaimed erotic haiku, and you just leave it at that.

David and John 00:01:47  all right. Well, I guess we're done now. so Ben's written, short story is short. Started out as short story writer. Some award winning fiction like The Wilding and Red moon. Got your comic book breakthrough? I believe on Green Arrow during the DC comics rebirth.

David and John 00:02:02  Did I get that right?

Ben 00:02:04  more or less. That was my first ongoing series. I broke in with a two issue Batman arc, in Detective Comics.

David and John 00:02:11  Okay, then went on to become a key player in the the modern X-Men Krakoa era, writing Wolverine and X-Force, which is where I sort of met your writing. And now you're currently writing ghostwriter, merging horror with superior storytelling and doing a fine, fine job. So again, welcome to the show, Ben. Thanks for joining us.

Ben 00:02:31  Hey, thanks for having me. I'm looking forward to bullshitting.

David and John 00:02:33  Well, you're in the right place. Yeah. So, Ben, we asked this question of all of our guests. What was the comic? If there is one that turned you from, like, a casual reader to a fanatic?

Ben 00:02:51  Oh good question. I mean, I read comics all throughout my childhood, somewhat erratically because I was always moving. So I never had like an anchor shop and oftentimes lived in the country. So I'd be picking up comics from flea markets, antique sales, antique shops, garage sales, grocery stores, convenience stores, like I have no understanding of Marvel or DC continuity as a result of this.

Ben 00:03:19  It wasn't until I started going deep into Dark Horse and growing up in Oregon, there were a lot of Dark Horse comics floating around that I really became obsessed, and I think it was actually the The Alien series that got me Aliens and Predator both. That's as close as I've ever been to a completist was when reading those and these days, you know, I read almost entirely trades because I'm impatient and I don't want to wait month to month for anything, but I'm just as enthusiastic now as I was in fifth grade. I just am able to afford giant omnibus volumes or fancier trade paperbacks with bonus material.

David and John 00:04:00  Yeah, that's the way to go. So you've kind of come full circle recently, then? If the aliens predator stuff was like sort of in your early mix because you're on like your third Marvel hero versus predator book right now, right?

Ben 00:04:13  Yeah. I contacted Marvel the very second that I heard about Disney's acquisition of 20th Century Fox, because predator was like a, you know, foundational story for me.

Ben 00:04:26  I watched it in 1987. I was way too young for it. I was like third grade at the time. And there's some kid in the neighborhood who had no supervision, and I would always seek over to his house and watch Rated-r movies, including predator. And from there, we just watched it over and over and over again, committing the story to memory. And then, you know, it inspired us to go play like Nerf gun warfare in the jungle. I was I was living in Hawaii at the time, so the environment actually felt very familiar to the set. Here I was reading Wolverine comics at that time while watching predator over and over again. So in my head, like Wolverine versus predator already existed. And so I pitched CB, at Marvel. Instantly I was like, you have to let me ride Wolverine versus predator. And he responded right away and said, no, man. And so I wrote, I put an alert on my phone, and every three months I would bug him.

Ben 00:05:23  I'd be like, what about now? What about now? What about now? And this went on for over two years. And finally he relented and just said, all right, finally. And there was a good reason for him saying no to begin with is because Marvel now had alien. They now had predator and they didn't want to rush things along. They wanted those titles to exist sort of on their own before they started to blend them together with the 616. But finally CB said yes, and I was able to make all my macho 80s childhood dreams come true by pitting, you know, the future against Wolverine, Hunter against Hunter. And and that book ended up being a big hit. I put a lot of heart into it. The art was fantastic, but I thought that was going to be it. I thought it was just going to be a one volume sort of deal, but it did so well that they're like more please. And so predator versus Black Panther came after that. And that's when I was able to develop my own continuity because before that I thought, oh, okay.

Ben 00:06:18  It's just, you know, predator versus Wolverine. I'll try to make this as evergreen as possible and also try to adhere to continuity as best as I can to make it feel like an authentic installation in the 616. But but then when they're like, do more, I was like, well, I need to be able to kill some people and make some trouble. And and I also sort of like felt like if I'm going to be jumping around and doing predator versus predator versus predator versus I kind of want predator to be pitted against the evergreen version of the character, that character that exists most vividly in my mind. Like with the current run of predator versus Spider-Man, Peter Parker works for the Daily Bugle, and he's with M.J.. And, you know, it's that iteration. And with the Black Panther storyline, like, Wakanda is off the grid, you know, nobody knows about what they're up to there. And and their vibranium arsenal beneath the grey mound. And so the predators turn it into a hunting preserve.

Ben 00:07:14  They go after the vibranium. Mayhem ensues. And and anyways, what starts to happen in predator versus Black Panther is like, the stuff starts to become consequential for the other books because we've been building towards this event that comes out in August, which is Predator Kills the Marvel Universe. Vibranium plays an important role in that. Kraven plays an important role in that.

David and John 00:07:34  That's awesome. I didn't realize there was more coming. That's great.

Ben 00:07:37  This final one, it will be. It'll be five issues. It's a little bit bigger. That's awesome. I need more real estate to kill everybody.

David and John 00:07:45  Yeah, it's great that they gave you that.

Ben 00:07:47  I guess nobody is safe, you know, like there's going to be no mercy.

David and John 00:07:51  I was telling the story. I think it was on the podcast. I was telling a story about Andy Helfer on Justice League. And they had just done the the big story cleaning of the DC universe back in the back in the 80s. So they were relaunching Justice League or they were going to relaunch Justice League.

David and John 00:08:06  And Keith Giffen, like every week was walking into Andy Helfer, the editor, Andy Hefner's office and just hissing at Andy Helfer saying, Justice League and every week and you have to be like, get out of my office. And then finally, after like six months of Keith giving, walking into his office every week, whispering Justice League, Andy Huffer said, all right, get in here. Let's let's talk about it. So it sounds like you had a similar trajectory just.

Ben 00:08:35  Being annoying to your editor in chief. Has a.

David and John 00:08:38  Lesson learned? Then you also have a career as a novelist as well. What's what's that like? How different is the creative muscle from writing a novel compared to writing a comic book?

Ben 00:08:50  When you're writing novels, it's all on you, right? So you're the costume department? You're the location scout. You're even the caterer. That's exhausting, but exhilarating. You know, knowing that this world belongs to you and you alone. And it's failure or success is on you.

Ben 00:09:06  But it's a lonely existence. It's also a marathon, you know. Pace. Writing a novel takes a long time. Pounding out all those sentences that become pages, that become chapters that eventually become a pile that is a novel, big, messy pile. It needs to be revised and revised and revised so it can take years. and writing comics, by comparison, is a sprint. It's just unrelenting. You get if you're involved with a few different series, you're getting between 50 and 200 emails a day, and you are constantly chasing deadlines and trying to make sure your artists get fed, and you're hammering out solicits and you're figuring out costume designs and you're. But the thing that makes me glad that I have both things in my life is that, you know, writing novels is a little lonely, so being able to have a team of people that you're working with, that's a great antidote to the loneliness and also, you know, makes you realize that all these people, just like on a film set, are really good at their jobs and you're all strenuously trying to tell the best story possible.

Ben 00:10:14  So that's good. That's good for me not just to be alone in my head, play with my imaginary friends all day. I like to join forces with others.

Speaker 4 00:10:23  When you first came over to Marvel, was that. Am I right that it was during the the X-Men relaunch? Or were you doing stuff before, before Wolverine that I'm.

Ben 00:10:31  Well, the way it worked was I got hired on first and Marvel to write a podcast series. So Axel approached me with, you know, no specifics. There was going to be an audio drama of ten episodes, and it was going to be about Wolverine, and that's all they knew. they wanted to launch a podcast universe. So, like, whoever took this over was going to be like a low rent Kevin Feige. And these audio dramas are, you know, TV shows for years. You know, Wolverine is my favorite character. So I was beyond geek to be considered for this. And I put together just a massive Bible figure. This might be my only shot at writing Wolverine, and I want to do the best I could with it.

Ben 00:11:11  And I swung for the fences and I got it. It wasn't like an automatic hire. It was me versus it was a bake off situation. But I got it, you know? So I lived in in Wolverine World for a long time.

David and John 00:11:23  Sorry. That produced Wolverine The Long Night and Wolverine The Lost Trail, right?

Ben 00:11:28  Correct. And those are available everywhere for free now wherever you listen to podcasts from there. Started writing X-Force. Hickman called me up. I was actually walking into the movie Halloween, the first remake, and I was super excited to see that movie, but it was Jonathan Hickman, so I decided it was worth missing the trailers for it. And I remember talking to him in the theater lobby, and he was like, talking about the X-Men, talking about relaunching it, and he's like.

Speaker 5 00:11:53  I think you'd kill it on X-Force.

Ben 00:11:57  So I was like, fuck yeah. I took him quite literally, you know? X-Force became the murder book. You know, I got invited out along with others like Jerry Duggan, and we spent several days just locked up in a windowless boardroom at Marvel HQ.

Ben 00:12:11  Brainstorming. And Hickman had written up this big Bible at the time about House of X, Powers of Ten and the relaunch and and he was basically like, here's the garden. What do you want to grow in it? And so, you know, we build stories. And out of that, you know, I was writing X-Force for about six months before. They're like, okay, now it's time for Wolverine. You've got it if you want it. And so, yeah, lifelong dream fulfilled right there. Being able to take on the Wolverine mainland.

David and John 00:12:42  Do you think the Wolverine part of it came about because of X-Force? Or because of the podcast, or because of everyone was aware of your burning desire to do that thing. What do you think it was that got you your quote unquote dream gig in comics?

Ben 00:12:59  Oh, combination of all of that. I mean, I yeah, I'd written over 20 hours of programming for the podcast. The podcast was did really well. It won some awards. It was one of Apple's top five of the year and blah, blah, blah.

Ben 00:13:14  And then, you know, with X-Force, I put Wolverine as the head of field Ops, and beast was the head of intelligence. So Wolverine was already prominently featured in X-Force. So it made sense for me to be doing both the team book and, you know, the solo ongoing. because of the coordination, you know, the synergy between those two series is such that my dream would be that one day they put together an omnibus that's like an X-Force and Wolverine omnibus, where, you know, they're intermixed. The two titles are intermixed.

Speaker 4 00:13:44  That was interesting with that whole that whole run when it launched, especially that seemed to be sort of the idea that was going on it. And then you had like, your own pockets. You became the Benjamin Percy pocket of the universe. So, yeah. No, that would be, that would be super awesome.

Ben 00:13:56  Yeah. Whenever I write stuff that is either, like, blatantly a crossover or is this sort of like a implied crossover, like you've you've heard of the X group, you're essentially always crossing over.

Ben 00:14:07  I want people to recognize that. Yeah, you can read this larger Krakow and landscape. You can pick up all these other books, and sometimes there's like 16 X titles. It feels like you can pick up all these other books and then go into X-Force or Wolverine and have a larger appreciation for the big narrative that's been fed to readers. But you can also just read my books and not be confused. That's always my goal. That's what I'm doing right now with Red Hulk. It's part of this One World Under Doom event, but you can just read Red Hulk and be totally fine. I know that it's always a comic book. Companies desire that people will have to buy more books, but I recognize the burden of that as well. So I don't want somebody to read my book. And it's like, oh crap, I have to buy this other series to understand what's going on. Percy owes me $4.99.

David and John 00:14:59  You know, you've been working as a novelist and sort of doing a couple series on your own, sort of creating things.

David and John 00:15:05  Whole cloth. What was that like to, like, be invited to till soil in somebody else's garden, as you put it, like. How was that experience for you?

Ben 00:15:14  I wasn't sure how it would be, but Hickman's a great boss. He's sort of a delightfully evil person. You know, I really he makes me laugh constantly whenever I'm around him. He's a great sense of humor. Sly sense of humor. He's a great boss. He never dictated anything to anyone. he would make suggestions. He'd be like, oh, well, what if you do this? What about that? But it was always like, you know, this is your plot of the garden. So do with it what you will. If readers aren't responding to it. And maybe it'll be done in five issues. but if you, you know, if you're if you're growing the right stuff, maybe, maybe you'll be around for 50.

David and John 00:15:49  Did you find that being placed in a specific plot in the garden confining, or was it just a different way to work? Was it freeing?

Ben 00:15:56  Oh, it was perfect for me because I don't know.

Ben 00:15:58  Marvel has done a great job of recognizing what I'm good at, and that they toss up the ball in an alley oop and I and I dunk it. So, you know, they're like, this guy's really good with hairy psychopaths. Whether that's, you know, Wolverine or Thunderbolt Ross or, you know, Johnny Blaze or it just got announced today that I'm going to be writing Punisher.

David and John 00:16:20  Well, congratulations. That's another good fit.

Ben 00:16:23  Yeah, I've I've had a good, good time with it where they are able to be like, okay, this is the sort of shadowy plot of land where you will live.

Speaker 4 00:16:31  I'm sure everybody will know this by the time this podcast airs, but, it's it's Frank Castle. So you're writing the actual Punisher? Like, no offense to the other Punisher. That's awesome. That's cool.

Ben 00:16:42  Looking forward. Yeah. I mean, I didn't want to do it unless it was classic Frank. And, you know, the black costume. What's cool? So it's back in black and it's a red band as well.

Ben 00:16:52  So it's going to get really gross.

David and John 00:16:55  Nice. Did they announce the artist for it?

Ben 00:16:58  Yeah, it's Julius Ota who I worked with on Wolverine, and we've been going back and forth now for, you know, months about it. And he's doing some great, great stuff with not just the designs of of Frank because, you know, we really wanted Frank to come across in a certain way, like his knuckles or hair, his back, his hairy. He's a scarred up beast of a man. You know, there's a brutality to just the the appearance of him. He's got trench coats. He's got, you know, big, heavy boots. And same thing with. I was about to mention another character, but I can't because that would be a spoiler. Well, there's another character in it, and he's the very definition of a big bad. And we had a very specific way we wanted to draw him as well. And then, you know, just talking about the aesthetic of the book.

Ben 00:17:47  We wanted it to be like, it doesn't look like New York looks now. This should look like New York from a 70s crime movie. You know, just like if it's filtered through the Punisher's mind. Like, everything looks grimy, gritty, graffiti, broken glass, you know, needles glinting and gutters. Oh, that's interesting around every corner.

David and John 00:18:08  He's only seeing the the bad in things, and we're seeing it through him. It's interesting.

Speaker 4 00:18:13  So what else would Frank Castle be seeing David and John?

David and John 00:18:16  To put the reader inside the character's head in a visual way is that I think that's a pretty cool and obvious way to do it that I would have never thought of myself.

Ben 00:18:25  I like that you go to Manhattan these days. It's like a, you know, resort, so it's not much fun.

Speaker 4 00:18:29  Yeah. Well, yeah. I always wonder what's Daredevil defending against $17 cocktails? You know, like it's a Hell's Kitchen is not $17.

Ben 00:18:38  Nah. Cocktails.

Speaker 4 00:18:39  Yeah.

Ben 00:18:40  Yeah. There'll be no more of them in Hell's Kitchen.

David and John 00:18:47  You're still working on ghostwriter right now as well, right?

Ben 00:18:50  That came to a close, actually. I had a great time with that really heavy metal, and I think that in part the work that we did on that, when I say the work I mostly worked with, Corey Smith is a great collaborator, like the work we did on that was so gory, so heavy metal that I believe that we're the reason Red band is back at Marvel.

David and John 00:19:08  Nice.

Ben 00:19:09  Like every issue, one of the fun things to do is like, how horrible of a transformation can we give Johnny Blaze in this issue?

Speaker 5 00:19:16  You know.

Ben 00:19:18  One like he starts to rip off his rip, open his cheeks and like the skull emerges from his broken jaw and another one, like entrails, like come out of him, come out of his torn open gut. But the entrails are hot chains, you know, like dragging out of himself.

David and John 00:19:36  For the listeners, this is the biggest smile that Benjamin's had in the whole show so far, describing these things.

David and John 00:19:43  What was that like when you're writing those descriptions and then seeing it come to life or you're bringing it to life for you?

Ben 00:19:48  Oh, delightful. I mean, my inbox was just blowing up with gross awesomeness every day. No, it's great when you're paired with an artist like Corey or like Joshua Cassara, like Julius right now, and Punisher like, there's certain artists where you just pair up and you're like, yeah, that's a good fit. Like, you achieve a kind of mind meld. You know, sometimes you work with an artist and they're really talented, but it's like you're not quite on the same wavelength. But I've been really lucky. I am really lucky right now. You know, we're working with Josh again. I worked with him on X-Force and on Ten Lives of Wolverine, ten Days of Wolverine, and now we're collaborating on Deadpool. Wolverine. And they were Julius on, on Punisher. Like, it's just like, I wish I had, you know, one ounce of your artistic talent, but being able to, like, dream up crazy things together and see you translate the words on the page into these bold, amazing visions like that is that is a high that I'm always chasing.

David and John 00:20:44  Yeah, that's a great way to put it too. You do find yourself chasing that high. I certainly find myself doing that quite a bit.

Ben 00:20:50  Ask them like, what do you want to draw?

David and John 00:20:52  Oh, yeah.

Ben 00:20:53  For sure. And then. And then trying to give them their best work. Like give them the stuff that they get excited about. They're going to put all their energy into it as a result.

David and John 00:21:02  How are you balancing all this comic book work with your novel work? You've got like 1 or 2 novels out in the last year or two, right?

Ben 00:21:10  I had it was essentially three books come out in the course of three years. I just decided that that wasn't actually the best pace for me because, you know, I'm not Stephen King or Colleen Hoover. Like, I don't have the novel audience. Fewer people are reading novels, and so it's better for me to have a novel out every 3 to 5 years, I think. You know, you build up anticipation, you are able to get media attention.

Ben 00:21:34  Like if you have a novel out every year, there's only so many reviews that can be run in a year. Book coverage is shrinking everywhere. There are only so many interview options available and people get sick of you, you know, so it's better for me to wait a bit and then, you know, focus on the comics work or focus on short stories, novellas, work, right? Audio dramas, screenplays, and then have a novel that every every five years or so. And that's my current game plan.

Speaker 4 00:22:02  You know, we skipped the whole origin from going from reading comics to working in. But what how did you start writing novels? How did you get into that?

Ben 00:22:09  So I went to grad school with the hope of becoming a writer. I was writing short stories. I was writing novels. The novels were failures at first. You know, I wrote four failed novels before publishing one. I had to do that work, you know, I had to put in those 10,000 hours. Almost every novelist has a few, you know, failed starts.

Ben 00:22:28  And so I was publishing short stories, and then I started, you know, writing journalism as well, and writing for magazines like GQ and Esquire and time and, and I just kept trying novels, trying novels, trying novels. And finally one Locked in called The Wild. And that was my debut, and that was 2010. That came out. and I broke into comics around 2014. Everything in my career is sort of incremental, where it's like, you know, you move up one rung of the ladder, then you move up another rung and you move up another rung, and there's a lot of failure along the way. So I broke into comics in 2014, but I was submitting comics from 2009 all the way up to 2014. And, you know, I published my first novel in 2010, as I just mentioned, but I've been writing shitty novels since 2001 and so bleeding all over the keyboard and and stubbornly working my way forward. It's I feel like bull headedness is as important as talent in this industry.

David and John 00:23:27  I couldn't agree more. I am certainly a testament to bull headedness in my career in comics. There's no doubt. So you started your pursuit of novel writing right at the beginning of 2000, but you didn't try to dip your toe into comic books until about ten years later. What was it that made you think, oh, maybe I want to try this.

Ben 00:23:45  So I was a professor at Iowa State University, and at the time I'd had two books of short stories out, and I was teaching classes on creative writing, and I was teaching a book of short stories by somebody else I really admired, and I started to become friendly with him. He was a teacher as well. He was a professor on the East Coast, and he was teaching one of my books, one of my short story collections. We were teaching each other's work. We started to correspond to by email, talk by phone. And he, one day attended an event at Barnes and Noble. And it was for an anthology he was a part of.

Ben 00:24:21  So he and a bunch of other writers had followed the prompt to write a story about superheroes. It was a prose anthology. So they're reading into this Barnes and Noble, and little did they know that a bunch of Marvel editors and DC editors were in the audience, and they came up afterwards and they're like, hey, you guys like superheroes so much, you should, pitch us. This author did, and he started to get work and I was like, dude, I love comics. Show me your pitches. Like, show me your scripts. Like, how do you even do this? It just it never occurred to me that I had a chance in that industry. And he was super generous. He shared a bunch of stuff. He introduced me to his editor, and that guy was Scott Snyder. Scott Snyder absolutely opened the door for me getting into comics like again, it took from 2009 to 2014. I pitched probably, you know, it was like in the 40s, the number of pitches I'd sent out.

Ben 00:25:10  But I finally, finally wore Mark Doyle down enough. He was the editor of the Vertigo when I was first submitting, and then he became the editor of the back group. And finally he was like, okay, I've got a two issue opening on Detective Comics. What do you got? And, yeah, I broke in with Batman, which sounds very auspicious until you realize that I've been turning away and trying to kick that door down for years.

Speaker 4 00:25:36  It was with JP Leon, right?

Ben 00:25:37  Yeah. In such a such a great collaborator, such a brilliant artist. It's sad as hell that he's no longer with us.

David and John 00:25:45  Yeah, so damn sad.

Ben 00:25:47  I actually have right above my desk here on the wall. he was, you know, so generous because of my first comic he sent me. He's like, what page do you want? And he sent me this two page spread from that Batman comic.

David and John 00:25:59  Oh, wow. That's fantastic. You said it took you a couple of years and you were banging on doors, sending 40 pitches.

David and John 00:26:09  What did that look like? For those who are interested in trying to break into the industry, quote unquote. Because there's a fine line between being annoying and being persistent. So what did that look like for you?

Ben 00:26:21  You know, you have to have a way in. You can't just have no track record and start writing for DC or Marvel. So I had established myself as a novelist. I had established myself as a short story writer. I established myself as a journalist. Right. Some people do the same by establishing themselves as TV writers or the more traditional route. You know, you start writing indie comics or drawing indie comics and you work your way up. Maybe you're, you know, publishing them on your own at first, and then maybe you get a gig at Sony or IDW, and then maybe you from there get a gig at DC or or Marvel. But it's not like, hey, I have an idea and I've never published anything and DC is going to it will not that will not happen.

Ben 00:27:04  So I had street cred, you know, in another medium, but it was enough for them to be interested to talk to me. And I also, you know, like Mark Doyle would meet with me like when I went to New York and was there for a book event, like Mark Doyle would come to the book event or he'd have coffee with me. It wasn't just a one way street. It was like he was trying to. He wanted me to write comics.

Speaker 4 00:27:24  Yeah, Mark's I mean, he's really big on. I mean, this sounds stupid reading. He's really big on, like, novels and stuff, and he's brought in a number of writers besides Snyder, but like the stuff he was doing at IDW when he was over there.

Ben 00:27:36  I mean, that's what these editors are all doing their their hunting. They want to work with different people from different mediums. You know, they're contacting that TV writer they like or they're right. you know, contacting that, that novelist that they dig or they're on the hunt at, at Comic-Con for like an artist who might be like, oh, look at this person who's relatively undiscovered.

Ben 00:27:58  Like, I think they'd be a good fit for this series. And everybody's always looking for collaborators.

Speaker 4 00:28:03  Yeah. Mark is probably more well-read than most comic book editors that I've met in terms of being up on contemporary fiction. I'd say, you know, and there's probably other people that are more into, you know, the whatever the TV side or something like that. It's sort of music about like finding the right, the right mix. You know, the person that's doing the thing you're doing.

Ben 00:28:23  Mark, give me my start. Yeah. I'm forever indebted to him for that.

David and John 00:28:27  John, I used to work at IDW, but we're both editor in chief at various points at IDW and, I think at the time it was a managing editor, I don't think was the editor in chief yet. And, Tom Waltz, who is the long time writer of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. What was also an editor at IDW at the same time comes into my office and throws his pitch down on my desk. He's like, man, you got to check this out.

David and John 00:28:49  This is really, really good. And it was a pitch for a G.I. Joe book. And I read it and I looked and I was like, man, this is really good. We're this guy confirmed. He's like, check out this prose novel that he did. And it was the superhero novel that Tom King had written. And I read the novel over the course of a couple of days with the pitch, the G.I. Joe pitch, and I'm like, man, this is really great. Like, you're right. And Tom Waltz has a particular knack for identifying writing talent like that's his superpower. He's a fantastic writer himself. I think that's why he's so good at identifying writing talent. So we're like, both really excited about this guy. And then but then we take it up to the higher ups, and it was just like banging your head against the wall immediately. Like it was like not. The response was like, who is this guy? We don't know who he is. I mean, the pitch is okay, but blah, blah, blah.

David and John 00:29:31  Like there's a million excuses. It's just.

Speaker 5 00:29:33  Like.

David and John 00:29:33  And you know, that guy was Tom King, like three years later, Yeah.

Ben 00:29:38  I mean, one of the reasons you paid attention to him, too, was he had a novel. Right.

David and John 00:29:41  Exactly. And also like that persistence from there. Like he continued those conversations somewhat. And then those those conversations led to other things, obviously, for him in particular. But it is interesting how these things come about, how these things do and do not happen.

Speaker 4 00:29:55  That did have the additional wrinkle when he was Virginia's stepson.

David and John 00:29:58  Yeah, I just left that part out. Yeah.

Speaker 4 00:30:02  Tom knew, knew his stepmom, from, from licensing stuff.

Ben 00:30:07  Nepotism.

Speaker 4 00:30:08  Tom and nephew Tom.

Ben 00:30:11  He's he's so stretched, by the way. He's so talented, Alice. With all those eyes and ears.

Speaker 4 00:30:16  That wasn't what? I actually don't even remember.

Ben 00:30:18  Didn't didn't deserve any of it.

David and John 00:30:21  Nepo, baby. Tom King I love it. That might be the name of this episode.

Speaker 4 00:30:25  Oh my.

David and John 00:30:25  God.

Speaker 4 00:30:26  No.

David and John 00:30:27  Yeah. So, Ben, are you like, issues deep on the new Punisher series? Are you guys. Because. Yeah, we're always working well in advance.

Ben 00:30:35  Yeah, I mean, you you have to if you want to have an artist, right? Like, you know, you need to be six months out. Really?

Speaker 4 00:30:43  I used to I used to edit X-Force for a while, and and I remember when issue one of the, Craig Kyle, Chris Yost, X-Force, the script had just been written. And this is like Greg Kyle was a producer at Marvel Studios at the time. He was the animation, the head of animation, and got called into David and John Bogart's office. Script. Just came in that week telling you how far behind we were on the art for X-Force number one. And, you know, for for, you know, David and John, like, we just fricking got the script, you know? Yeah, that's exactly it.

David and John 00:31:15  So how many issues in are you guys in on on Punisher at this point? Having just made the announcement.

Ben 00:31:20  Today, I'm working on issue three right now. Yeah. It doesn't come out till September.

Speaker 5 00:31:24  So yeah that's good.

David and John 00:31:25  That's great. And we're back to the traditional Punisher costume. Yeah. With the traditional skull. Not the horn skull thing.

Ben 00:31:33  No traditional skull.

Speaker 4 00:31:34  Nice sort of the Max costume looks like from the cover, right? Like it's not the set white glove, Frank.

Ben 00:31:40  No. It's the. Yeah. You can check out the. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Overall, it's pretty badass.

David and John 00:31:45  Oh, you got to do the cover.

Speaker 5 00:31:47  Yeah.

David and John 00:31:47  That guy's insanely talented.

Ben 00:31:49  Yeah. I mean, this cover is fantastic. It tells you everything you need to know about the series. There's no question about what kind of punisher you're getting.

Speaker 5 00:31:55  Yeah.

Speaker 4 00:31:58  You've been doing some work at RWA also.

Ben 00:32:00  Yeah, I've done two. Sometimes when I have an idea I want to chase, it's, you know, I write a short story, I write a novella, a novel. But I want to do more creator owned comics.

Ben 00:32:11  RWA gave me the opportunity to write these two series. One is called Devil's Highway. And, Brent Schoonover, my friend, was the artist on that. And it's about sort of like a serial killer syndicate in the country. And they're all truckers. Truckers are mobile. They're exposed to vulnerable populations. The FBI believes there are a dozen or so serial killer truckers in the country right now. So, yeah, I leaned into that dark underbelly. And then the second installment was with Juan Ozzie Ripp, who I later brought on and worked with on Wolverine as well. But it is called Year Zero, and it's a zombie story similar to World War Z. You know, these fragmented narratives going on all around the world, but it also takes slices of history and reinvents them.

Speaker 4 00:32:51  Oh, interesting.

Ben 00:32:52  Okay, realize the Black Plague was in part, zombie outbreak. You.

David and John 00:32:56  Oh, okay.

Ben 00:32:57  The Great Wall was built to keep out the zombie horde. That kind of stuff.

David and John 00:33:00  That's awesome. And when did that come out? And with one juicy rip on the art, that's fantastic.

Ben 00:33:06  A few years, a few years ago. Yeah. I'm talking talks right now with Matt Cave about doing some more creative stuff and yeah, excited to get some more stuff out there. And it's not just cape and spandex, even though I love cape and spandex books.

David and John 00:33:18  Is that what you think your career is going to look like moving forward? More of a mix of the of the two.

Ben 00:33:22  Like I think so, yeah. You need to have a balance of both. For sure. I need the right partner. I don't want to do the image DIY thing. You know, it's just it's annoying. I don't want to have to pay people and all that I want somebody else to sort of like. I want to take care of the storytelling. Have somebody else, you know, take care of the rest, but not steal my rights either, right?

David and John 00:33:41  Yeah. I published Brent Schoonover, his very first comic book work. Nice back in the day. So I beat you to Brent, but you beat me around, Jose.

David and John 00:33:49  I'm working with Juan Jose right now on a project, but. So you beat me to him.

Speaker 4 00:33:53  I think it's some back to the future comics together, too.

Speaker 5 00:33:56  Thanks, Brent.

Ben 00:33:57  Just about 40 minutes away from here. So we get together every now and then for beers. Or. He was actually with me that night when I was talking about when Hickman called. We were going to Halloween together.

Speaker 4 00:34:07  Man, that's actually imagining him sitting there like Benjamin. Where's he doing?

David and John 00:34:13  Did you miss some of the movie in that conversation?

Ben 00:34:15  Oh, I made it. I made it a time thing.

David and John 00:34:17  Okay, good. You're like, hey, look, this is great. This sounds like 2 or 3 years worth of work, but I got to go watch a movie. I gotta, I.

Ben 00:34:24  Gotta go aikman's not one for long conversations. He's got other shit to do, too.

David and John 00:34:29  Can you give me the name of that zombie book again? That. That you did with the.

Speaker 5 00:34:32  What was.

Speaker 5 00:34:33  What was it?

David and John 00:34:34  000. Okay, I might have to go look that one up, John. That one sounds like it's going to be up my alley.

Speaker 4 00:34:41  Sometimes you get people on here that are like, hey, you know, did the dirty secret about comics is once you start working on them, you don't keep reading them. I was always not that I eventually got into a place where that was, where I was, and it was not a good place. And I've certainly come full circle on it, but it sounds like you continue to enjoy reading comics, right?

Ben 00:34:56  Yeah, I, I mean, I have a, a night table that is just stacked with books and I'm always reading more than one at a single time. And I try to diversify my appetite as much as I can to be as omnivorous as I can. Because, you know, I write across mediums. I need to be exposed to different ways of thinking and different ways of telling stories so that I never plateau. I feed off this stuff like it generates ideas.

Ben 00:35:21  I'm reading a novel and I'm reading a memoir, and I'm reading a book of essays, and I'm reading the graphic novel. And then, you know, just like it's it's constant for me right now, the comic that I'm reading is manga and read manga, and there's no good reason for that. I just haven't been exposed to it for some reason. And so I deliberately set out. I was like, I need to check some of the stuff out because everybody's talking about it. And so I sort of pulled some people and they all said, oh, you know, you would love Uzumaki. And I do crazy creepy shit. That's the comic I'm reading right now. But I also have on deck All Star Superman. I'm excited to watch the movie. I'm not a huge Superman reader. My favorite Superman story. Just to show you what a dark hearted bastard I am is Red sun. But Steve down at Third Eye Comics, he really sold me on All Star. He's like, this is the book.

Ben 00:36:06  This is oh.

David and John 00:36:07  Man, you have.

Ben 00:36:08  A book. Grant Morrison, Frank Quigley, you're going to love it. And it's going to set you up perfectly for the film.

David and John 00:36:14  You haven't read it yet?

Ben 00:36:15  I don't really know.

David and John 00:36:16  Oh, you are in for a treat.

Speaker 4 00:36:17  The Gospel According to Lex Luthor was my all time favorite comic stories.

David and John 00:36:20  Well, yeah, we were just recently talking about how fantastic that book is. It's just I'm not a big Superman guy either. I just don't normally respond well to that character. And that All Star Superman is one of my all time favorite books. It's it's. It's a perfect, perfect book. Like, in almost every way, quietly is like in the like my top three pantheon God of artists. Because of that book. I'm excited for you. That's going to be fun.

Ben 00:36:44  I'm reading the nerd books.

David and John 00:36:45  It sounded like the way you said it, you have a fear of plateauing. What is that the only way you're fending that off by continuing to feed new things to you? Or are you doing other things to continue your growth outside of just studying and reading?

Ben 00:37:00  I mean, I feel like a constant student, and I think that's essential if you rut yourself, if you just read the same sort of shit and watch the same sort of shit.

Ben 00:37:08  You're just going to be a, you know, recycling that. So it's the same thing, you know, that happens when you're at the dinner. I don't like eating vegetables. I don't I hate vegetables, but I eat them because they're good for me. And I don't love everything that I read or watch. But oftentimes, like, I need to read a classic novel, I need to check it out. Why is this something that has lasted so long? Why is it something that people are still talking about, you know? So I'm, I'm always reading things not just to be entertained, but to, like, studying a greater storytelling arsenal.

David and John 00:37:37  Do you try to write differently? Like, do you try to stretch different writing muscles outside of like, I know you're working in different mediums, but in terms of like your voice, are you recreating your voice in different ways? Are you writing scripts in different ways?

Ben 00:37:52  Yeah, yeah. I mean, with some examples of this, you know, all of my novels are a third person limited third person limited, omniscient and have a cast of roughly 5 to 7 people that I'm rotating between.

Ben 00:38:05  And I've had success with that. But like, my next novel is going to be first person. Like, I really want to get inside the head and voice of a character and have that unreliable narration. So specifically set off to try something like that. And, you know, I watched the movie Memento and Pulp Fiction. I was like, I want to try a more scrambled, modular format of storytelling. I wrote a story called Suspect Zero. It was a short story that took like Murder mystery and flipped it on its head. Like you start off with a body and the story progresses in such a way you think it's a standard sort of setup, but it actually ends up being a story told in reverse. And anyways, like two examples of many examples where I'm like, I set a high bar and I try to jump over it.

Speaker 4 00:38:47  That's a good sentiment to end on, I think.

David and John 00:38:49  Agreed. Well, thanks, Benjamin. Mr. Percy, for joining us today. Has a pleasure getting to speak with you.

Ben 00:38:55  Yeah. Good talking to you guys.

David and John 00:38:56  Appreciate you taking the time. I hope everybody enjoyed that conversation. So I think that's it for this episode of The Corner Box John. All right. All right. Thanks everybody for listening. Thank you again for joining us. And we'll see you all next time on the corner box.

Speaker 4 00:39:09  Thanks.

Speaker 1 00:39:11  Thanks for joining us. And please subscribe, rate and tell your friends about us. You can find updates and links at court and we'll be back next week with more from David and John and John here at the corner box.