Welcome to The Corner Box with David Hedgecock and John Barber. With decades of experience in all aspects of comic book production, David, John, and their guests will give you an in-depth, and insightful look at the past, present, and future of the most exciting medium on the planet—comics—and everything related to it.

[00:23] John Barber: Welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm one of your hosts, John Barber. We're going to go into the continuation of our interview with Kirt Burdick. So, it'll be David, for a little while, and then he has to run off--maybe to Paris--and Kirt. We just left off talking about David's Sugar Bomb comic, and superheroes, and horny porpoises, and goodness. So, here we go. Part 2 of our newest interview with Mr. Kirt Burdick.

[00:53] David Hedgecock: You've been hitting the convention circuits. Is this the first time you've been doing conventions?

[00:56] Kirt: It's the first time I've done back-to-back out-of-state shows. I usually do WonderCon. I share a table with a friend of mine, because it’s just really hard to get a table, and then whatever other local shows in SF, I'll do some of those, usually just with some friends, some signings here and there, but yeah, this is the first time, one week, I went to one city, then the following weekend, I went to another city.

[01:24] David: Was there a purpose behind that, or was it just that they were just lined up that way, and you wanted to make sure you attended both?

[01:29] Kirt: It was just lined up that way.

[01:31] David: Did you have to take a week off of work?

[01:32] Kirt: I took off Friday. For the previous one, I was still furloughed, because I got furloughed for the summer. I came back the following Tuesday. That was my start date, and then I took off Friday and Monday.

[01:50] David: You got brought back to work for three days, and you're like, “I’ve got to take a couple days off, guys. I'm exhausted. I need a couple of days off. This work thing is really hard.”

[02:00] Kirt: Luckily, I already put in those requests before I got furloughed. So, […] early.

[02:08] David: So, they knew what they were getting into.

[02:09] Kirt: So, I just let them know about that. Yeah, I like the East Coast. I like Baltimore, Washington, DC area. On Monday, I had a pretty late return flight. So, I went with a buddy to the National Gallery of Art, which is always just fantastic, and all the galleries there, like the National Gallery, all the art museums, the zoo, and stuff, they're all free, which is amazing.

[02:40] David: Nice.

[02:41] Kirt: It's a really great experience, checking that gallery out, for sure--that museum, the National Gallery of Art.

[02:49] David: I agree. It's a pretty inspiring place to be. Anytime you get to look at some high-end art like that, it's always inspiring, for sure. The museum in Chicago, in particular, for me, was just like, “man.”

[03:01] Kirt: Is that at the Chicago Art Institute?

[03:04] David: I think so. It's been a few years. I don't remember what the name of it is. It's just the big art museum in Chicago. There's some amazing pieces in there.

[03:13] Kirt: I’ve never been to Chicago. Maybe that's my next.

[03:16] David: Yeah. I think that's where Starry Night is--Van Gogh's Starry Night. I think that's where it is. I think that's where I saw that, and there's a bunch of other Van Goghs in there, and I was never a big Van Gogh guy, until I saw it up close, and I was like, “oh, that's what everybody's talking about. Now, I get it.”

[03:34] Kirt: They're really impressive, in person.

[03:36] David: Incredible.

[03:37] Kirt: I was fortunate enough to be in Amsterdam, and go to the museum there, and see his work. That was a long time ago, but it's real interesting, with Van Gogh, because you definitely see the influence of Japanese prints, and the way he […] that into the usage of his compositions, and his paint, his color compositions, and stuff, and I think, at that place, they even had his last painting, the one that he either committed suicide, or fell on his gun, or got shot by a kid, or something.

[04:13] John: I actually just learned about that last part, of the very high probability that he didn't actually kill himself. That's super interesting. I was, for some reason, trying to explain who he was to my daughter, a few months ago, and then wound up looking some stuff up, and I was like, “I'd always heard the suicide angle,” but it seems perfectly reasonable that these kids accidentally shot him, and he didn't turn them in.

[04:39] Kirt: Yeah, that's the other theory, I believe. It's hard to judge if that's just, people are uncomfortable about the issue of suicide.

[04:51] John: Yeah, I don't mean to say that this is my investigative reporting, or something. I just didn't know about it, until recently.

[04:57] Kirt: I'm going to get to the bottom of this. I'm going back to Amsterdam.

[05:01] David: If there's one thing we're known for, here on the podcast, it’s our investigative reporting. So, if it's said here, it's truth.

[05:09] John: I guess, it's time to Van Gogh to Amsterdam. I put on 3D glasses, everybody at home.

[05:16] David: It was a great visual.

[05:18] Kirt: It is a really cool David Caruso. […] he's feeding into mystery.

[05:28] David: Kirt, we've gone too far off track. We have to get back to the important stuff. Tell us about Death of Power #7, what it was creating this one, what you were thinking. Before that, though, you've done a couple of conventions now, Kirt.

[05:40] Kirt: Yeah.

[05:40] David: Let's hear your sales pitch for how you describe Death of Power to a potential person who wants to buy it.

[05:47] Kirt: “Hey, kids. You like Superman? I see you’ve got a Superman shirt. Oh, that's your name? Here, check this comic out. It has Superman in it.”

[05:58] David: Perfect.

[05:59] Kirt: That's the pitch. I actually put a warning sheet, just in case I'm busy and someone tries to pull up, a little kid lifts up. So, it blocks the section that things usually get crazy, in my books, which sometimes is Page 2. So, I usually make it clear that it's either X-rated or extreme, in some way, and that it's a Death of Superman doujinshi bootleg. So, then I'll explain what a doujinshi is.

[06:39] David: Right.

[06:40] Kirt: But I didn't have to do that at SPX. Everyone was just like, “oh, cool.”

[06:46] David: Nice. There you go. Know your audience, I guess.

[06:53] Kirt: I do miss having a comic I can actually sell to kids, though. I did this one Mexican wrestling comic, called El Mano, and it'd be El Mano versus Germanic Bat Slug, or El Mano versus the Headless Horseman, etc.

[07:11] David: These were the things that you could sell to kids?

[07:14] Kirt: Those were really violent. So, no, not to those, but I had one where El Mano had La Niña, which was—obviously, I'm a gringo. You can tell in my accent—It was his little sister, and it was her secret schoolbook. It was a notebook, a grade school notebook, but somehow, the FBI grabbed it, and made it top secret, because it was revealing truths about the El Mano family. My friend that drew the El Mano comics, he drew it with his left hand. I had another friend of mine color it with crayons. So, it was a kid's book. It was really nice, and kids did like it. It was really fun, to have that as an opportunity, because people do bring their families to these things, more so with WonderCon and Rose City, and the more mainstream […].

[08:15] David: Yeah, that makes sense.

[08:16] John: I never went to SPX. What's the one in San Francisco, the Small Press Expo?

[08:21] Kirt: The one in San Francisco is Fan Expo.

[08:26] John: Did SPX use--No, it was always in Bethesda, right?

[08:28] Kirt: What you're thinking of is APE—Alternative Press Expo.

[08:33] David: And that eventually moved out of San Francisco, to LA, I think.

[08:38] Kirt: I think, that one, the guy who owns Slave Labor bought it back.

[08:41] David: He brought it back.

[08:42] Kirt: He bought it back from ComiCon.

[08:45] David: Oh, okay. I didn’t know that.

[08:46] Kirt: […] in San Jose.

[08:50] David: Oh, that's right. It was in San Jose. Dan Vado was the founder. I just saw something from Slave Labor Graphics. I saw an advertisement, or something. I think they're putting something on Kickstarter. So, I guess Dan Vado's coming back. He's going to bring back his imprint, in some way, which I think is great. I thought Dan was always a really fantastic proponent of comic books, in general, and SLG put out some really quality stuff, over the years.

[09:17] Kirt: Johnny the Homicidal Maniac.

[09:19] David: Yeah.

[09:20] David: Lenore.

[09:21] Kirt: Yeah, and I think Jim Rugg's Street Angel, or one of his comics was.

[09:26] David: Yeah, Street Angel.

[09:28] Kirt: Yeah, through them. So, the more publishers that can get stuff on the rack is, I think, the better.

[09:35] David: I don't know that he's--I mean, I looked like it was going to be a Kickstarter thing, which isn't that much different these days, but me, personally, I look at Kickstarter as a distribution platform, just like Diamond was, or Lunar is. It's all the same thing. The only difference is that Kickstarter is a better distribution platform than those other ones, as far as I'm concerned.

[09:54] Kirt: Do you guys use a fulfillment service, or do you fulfill?

[09:59] David: FunTimeGo is still doing fulfillment. We're handling it, internally.

[10:04] Kirt: Yeah. I haven't used any fulfillment services.

[10:07] John: PUG does use a fulfillment center. There's been some tricky stuff with it. We've switched places. We were using a place that Cryptozoic was using in LA, because they're sister companies, and it's nice to not have to sit there and do stuff, but it's also its own headaches of tracking things.

[10:28] David: Yeah. For me, I still want to give--in my head, the whole concept of what I'm trying to do is white glove service for comic book fans. Comic book fans, historically, have been treated so poorly that I want to do it differently. I want comic book fans to experience something, in a way that makes them feel appreciated, because I do appreciate them, and I don't think that we, comic book fans, get a lot of appreciation for our fandom. So, I keep it in-house, because I do stuff like this. This is one of the stretch goals, and on the back, I'm signing it, and I'm doing a fun little remark, and I can't do those kinds of things if I'm farming that stuff out. That personal touch is not available, and I want that for the people that are buying my stuff, because all comic fans deserve that, but my comic fans doubly deserve it, as far as I'm concerned. Those are my people. So, I want to try to take care of them, as best I can.

[11:28] Kirt: I feel the same way, and I would be a little concerned--if there's any issues, if someone didn't get something, I can immediately resolve it, directly with them.

[11:40] David: Exactly. Here's my e-mail. Here's some cool ways to connect with me. If there's any problems, we're going to respond to that right away, and I'm the one, or one of the other folks that work with me, we're the ones that are taking care of it. So, I know it's going to get done right. I can own the mistake, too. Tell us a little bit, Kirt, about what we have to look forward to. I'm eagerly awaiting Issue #8. I'm dying to find out what happens next.

[12:07] Kirt: Again, Issues #7 and #8 were originally thumbnailed out to be one issue. It'll read better once you have Issue #7 and #8. So, it's like Issues #4 and #5. Although, #4 and #5 were thumbnailed as separate issues, but this one, because of all the double spreads in Issue #7, I just had to cut it in the middle. So, yeah, the plan is just to pick up right where Issue #7 leaves off. So, my goal is to get Issue #8 out, hopefully by December, and I don't know if I'll launch the Kickstarter in December, because December is usually the worst.

[12:51] David: Yeah, I would not. I tried to like, “we'll do counter programming. Nobody else is doing anything in December. So, I'll do something in December,” and it was rough. So, we managed to do well, but I think I would have done much better if I had not done it in December.

[13:10] Kirt: If I get it done by November, I'll do it sometime in November, but it's probably not going to be done by November.

[13:18] David: How far along are you with Issue #8? You have it all thumbed out, you said.

[13:23] Kirt: Yeah, it's all thumbed out. I'm about 7 pages in. So, I’ve got 7 pages drawn. Each book is 20. So, I’ve got 13 more to do.

[13:35] David: And your workflow is a little different. I don't think anything's unusual, these days, but it seems a little unusual, to me, I think. You're working in that Mike Oeming style, where you're just doing a panel, and then photoshopping that panel into the page later.

[13:51] Kirt: Yeah, well, I do the layout all on one page, but then I cut out the panels and blow them up, and work on them, individually, yeah.

[14:02] David: Are you working traditionally, or are you working digitally?

[14:04] Kirt: For the line art, the final line is a traditional pencil cleanup line. A little bit different, but similar to how Frank Quitely and then Joe Mad did his stuff, but I mean, obviously, there's quite a bit of difference.

[14:24] David: Is Quitely an influence of yours?

[14:25] Kirt: Yeah.

[14:26] David: Who are the guys that inspire you? I don't think we've asked that question.

[14:31] Kirt: Everyone really inspires me. There's so many. I just am always blown away by the different artists and writers, and just the level of work that's available and out there is just always inspiring and mind-blowing, to me.

[14:56] David: What's a book that you return to every year, where you read it every year, because you just enjoy it so much? Do you have one of those?

[15:04] Kirt: Maybe I don't return to it, but I think about. Honestly, that's stuff, like From Hell. I'll think about that one quite a bit. The art in it's just amazing. Some of Chris Ware's stuff, like Jimmy Corrigan and the opening of Rusty Brown. Really loving all of Rafael Grampá's work.

[15:30] David: Oh, my God. He's so good, dude.

[15:31] Kirt: I actually have to read James Harren's second volume.

[15:36] David: Ultramega.

[15:37] Kirt: Yeah. So, I loved the first volume. It's great, and I have the issues. They're on my stack to read. Also, I've been thinking a lot of Gilbert Hernandez, the Palomar series. I return to that, but artistically, the person I probably go back to the most is Bernie Wrightson. Definitely love a lot of Bernie Wrightson. José Luis García-López, I've been really loving a lot of his stuff, and Alfredo Alcala, who is an inker on John Buscema for Savage Sword of Conan, and some of his other Filipino comics. I really love that stuff, too.

[16:16] David: You probably don't know this, but Chase and I are the archive editors for all things Conan-related. So, we've been working on it for the last year, archiving 50 years of Conan. So, I've been looking at so much Alfredo Alcala artwork, and man, what a pleasure.

[16:32] Kirt: It's so good. He's such legendary embellisher. I would put him beyond just being an inker. Obviously, he's an embellisher, because when you see an Alcala piece, you know it's Alcala, and it's so good that you can still see the framework of John Buscema, or whoever else he's worked on top of. Al Williamson is another one. Man Without Fear, the Frank Miller, JRJR. You forget that Al Williamson, I believe, inked that. It’s just gorgeous. I also think a lot about Mignola, but with P. Craig Russell inking him.

[17:13] David: When did that happen?

[17:15] Kirt: Cosmic Odyssey.

[17:16] David: Oh, P. Craig Russell inked Cosmic Odyssey?

[17:18] Kirt: I believe so.

[17:19] David: I didn't know that.

[17:20] Kirt: I'm wrong. It was Carlos Garzone. Oh, it was the Phantom Stranger. That, P. Craig Russell did. I believe it was Phantom Stranger. So, I got the wrong--

[17:32] David: Well, look, we've already established that we're the investigative comic book podcast. So, whatever you say is 1000% true, and there's no need for anyone to look up anything, because what we say is truth. So, let's just go with that.

[17:47] Kirt: Mignola is such a legendary name, just as a name, and his signature’s--

[17:54] David: Yeah, his signature is great.

[17:57] Kirt: Yeah, P. Craig Russell inked Phantom Stranger. That stuff. Really, Bernie Wrightson--I've been going back to Bernie Wrightson. Oddly, John Byrne, I've been going back to. I think he's such a good superhero artist, and I don't know if--there's probably some nostalgia there, because I think he was drawing that Superman book, and whatever. I really do love that late-70s--Neal Adams, obviously. I would definitely go back, and look at a lot of that stuff.

[18:30] David: Yeah, I was just looking, again--we talked about this on the show a while back--but I was just looking again, in the last two weeks, at the Superman Muhammad Ali. It really is probably one of most gorgeously illustrated comic books ever. I mean, people say that, and I think it might be true.

[18:49] Kirt: I've been enjoying them reprinting the Treasury Edition comics, like the Ra's Al Ghul Batman one. It's awesome to see Batman in full Batman gear in the desert, and then he's skiing in the Batman suit. He must be so dehydrated, especially the Bat suit in the desert. I don't care about the Lazarus pit.

[19:17] David: He's got one of those Dune things going on, where he's feeding his sweat back into his nose, or whatever is going on. Not dehydrating, at all.

[19:25] Kirt: “Just pee in the suit, Robin. It will absorb the water. You need it.”

[19:32] David: Exactly. Well, boys, I have to scoot. I’ve got to interview somebody. We've got another job we're trying to fill here at the non-comic book business. So, I'm going to bow out.

[19:41] Kirt: All right. Well, it was great talking to you.

[19:42] David: Thank you, Kirt. It was a pleasure talking to you. John, pleasure as always. I will see you guys on the other side. I'm going to be off the podcast for a couple of weeks, John.

[19:50] John: Yeah, again, super dramatic. You're not even leaving between episodes. We've actually got the part where you're getting on the plane. Right now, you're at the airport.

[20:00] David: Yeah, exactly.

[20:01] John: You'll always have Paris, David.

[20:06] David: Exactly.

[20:09] John: All right. Thank God. Now we can get down to business. This is probably a weird connection to make, maybe, but one thing that your stuff really reminds me of is George Miller on Mad Max: Fury Road, and I mean that in the sense that it's all real. It's all hand-drawn in your case, where it was all real cars running around a desert, but then the treatment of it afterwards, you did not shy away from the digital technology to make it something even more unusual.

[20:36] Kirt: I do think that stuff is when it looks the best, at least with film. With comics, God, I think probably, if you're just really good with traditional inking and watercolor, that usually still looks the best.

[20:50] John: I was excited about digital technology when it really started to come in, and I was excited to be able to try to draw stuff on the computer, and stuff, and all that, but I think maybe you're starting to see some of this turn around a little bit now. The thing that it really did is, it makes everything possible. You can just as easily paint something yourself, scan it into the computer, and you're not at the mercy of a stat camera getting the colors right, or whatever. You can adjust things, so it looks like you're painting. It doesn't really take away any of the things you used to be able to do. As a society, we acted like it did, for a very long time--maybe up to now--but I don't know. I'm excited when people use this stuff differently than is normal.

[21:34] Kirt: Yeah. Well, that's great to hear. I mean, I do like that hybrid process. I mean, I definitely try to do a more traditional style of comics. That is what you're taught to do, or when you read about “this is how you set up a page on a 11x17, or maybe a little bit larger,” and it just never worked, for me. For whatever reason, it never clicked, and just out of a need, I developed the process I go about making my pages. There's some things I really like about that. There's certain things, because I do a pencil cleanup, that I can do, that would be very hard to do with pen and ink, or I would have to be of a higher skill level, maybe, to do similar techniques. I just love the dirtiness of it--working in pencil--and I also love the fact that I can go from a really nice, clean, sharp line into a fade of value, and then start playing with shaping a figure via value. I mean, you can do that with ink, too, with washes, and stuff like that, but I've really enjoyed the process that I've been doing.

[22:59] John: Yeah, it turns out great. I think there's a level of quality of inkers around, like Alcala, Al Williamson, Tom Palmer.

[23:05] Kirt: Also, J.H Williams. That was another person I return to. I think J.H Williams III is probably the greatest living American illustrator right now in comics. One of them. He'll be up there. I mean, just because of what he's able to do with the comics page, with sequential storytelling, and with the image itself, going from traditional, flat comic style to a fully rendered style. It's mind-blowing. That's another person that I return to.

[23:42] John: Yeah, I've always gravitated towards the people that treat the page like a unit, like that. Have you ever read--this is a weird one. I just happened to reread this--Peter Kuper’s Give It Up, his Kafka adaptations?

[23:54] Kirt: No, I haven't read it.

[24:00] John: I remember reading it, at the time, and I forgot about it. I had it. There's an interesting Jules Feiffer introduction to it, which I did remember. I'd forgotten how complicated and interesting some of the storytelling that he did in that was. It's all these super short Kafka stories, not like Metamorphosis, or whatever. Just the ones that are a couple of paragraphs long, or something.

[24:19] Kirt: 14 stories--Yeah, I think that's it. Franz Kafka adapted by Peter Kuper. Oh, wow. I'll have to check this out.

[24:27] John: That's probably the better version of it. I've got an older one that I think has fewer stories.

[24:32] Kirt: Oh, yeah. There's one called Metamorphosis.

[24:34] John: Give It Up is the one I was talking about.

[24:36] Kirt: Oh, Give It Up?

[24:37] John: But I don't know if the Kafkaesque has the—Interesting. Wow. All right. Anyway, sorry. That had nothing to do with anything. You can see some of the images online of how he--

[24:45] Kirt: This is great. Oh, wow. He did a Classics Illustrated of The Jungle. 

[24:49] John: Yes. That got re-released as a book by itself, too. For some reason, I'm super into those Classics Illustrated, the first comics ones.

[24:59] Kirt: Do you get the Bill Sienkiewicz Moby Dick?

[25:01] John: Yes. Not only do I have that--I love Moby Dick. I think Moby Dick is an amazing book. It's the Watchmen of Men's Adventure seafaring stories. It's so weird and goofy, but the idea of compressing that into 40 pages, or whatever it is--44 pages.

[25:17] Kirt: Yeah, it's not long.

[25:18] John: Yeah, that's one, in particular, I looked at, and I'm like, “man, the way that the story is told in this. What if he deliberately did that?” Not out of the necessity of having to turn this 600-page book into 40 pages, but out of writing a story, where you're going to tell a story in comics, and one of them is just going to be a page about whaling. That's it.

[25:38] Kirt: And it's an impressive book. That was a great series. That Classics Illustrated was in the 80s/90s. It was really good.

[25:46] John: As I understand, it was the thing that killed First Comics, though, because they—

[25:50] Kirt: Wow. Maybe it wasn't that good.

[25:52] John: Well, no, it was good. They shipped them all off into bookstores. My understanding was, when they got the returns from the distributor, they hadn't counted on there being a bunch of stuff coming back to them, that they weren't getting paid for.

[26:05] Kirt: Oh, that's brutal. Also, were they just sending the 48--

[26:10] John: There's no other format of them.

[26:13] Kirt: I think you definitely have to have that in the trade format.

[26:18] John: Yeah. This is--whatever this was—’89, or something. There weren't rules for that, yet.

[26:22] Kirt: They didn't really have a strong marketing strategy. I mean, that's how I came across Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen--through going to the bookstore.

[26:31] John: Yeah, but that was such a weird time, where you had those two books that would sell, and you’d just see all the publishers trying to find the next thing that would be like that. Warner Books put out a bunch of stuff that isn't DC stuff, but I got a John Sable Freelance paperback. I remember getting it at B. Dalton at the Orange Mall.

[26:49] Kirt: Oh, yeah. I remember that. I got Shatter.

[26:53] John: Right. […] That's a great example of it. “You like Dark Knight? You like Watchmen? Here’s Shatter.” I mean, I love it, but you're coming from a different place, probably.

[27:06] Kirt: Did they ever do that with American Flagg!?

[27:08] John: No, I think American Flagg! only had the graffiti graphic novel size reprints. Yeah, I don't think they did, but I don't know. Mister X.

[27:18] Kirt: Oh, yeah, Mister X was huge. That's something that's forgotten of the indie scene, because that was early indie comics. That's where Jaime Hernandez—he drew the first six episodes, or issues.

[27:34] John: Yeah. It's wild, at that time period, when you didn't have that hard division between what was going to be the indie comics guys going into mainstream comics, and the indie comics guys going into what Fantagraphics is now.

[27:47] Kirt: Yeah, because Fantagraphics also, in that period, they were printing Stan Sakai.

[27:52] John: Yeah, Critters.

[27:54] Kirt: I couldn't imagine them printing now. I mean, maybe. It seems like the brands have more solidified into specific target audiences that they really understand.

[28:07] John: Yeah, I enjoy that free-for-all era. I actually had a thing I wasn't going to bring up, because it's so crazy, but you brought up Shatter. I live here near Miramar, Fighter Town, USA. So, I've got Osprey flying over me all the freaking time, and I like that the robo-tech ships in your comic were Ospreys.

[28:26] Kirt: Yeah.

[28:26] John: Here's what happened. I let somebody borrow my copy of Iron Man: Crash. Carlos Guzman never returned it, and I'm like, “man, that's got to be a billion dollars,” and I look online, and they're $6, or something, and I'm like, “okay, I'll get a new copy of it.” What I thought was hilarious about it is that there are Osprey in Iron Man: Crash from 1987, because that's when they started developing that damn plane. It didn't go into service until the 21st Century.

[28:53] Kirt: Yeah, it took forever to get that.

[28:55] John: You provided a link to Mike Saenz. So, I had to jump in there on that.

[29:00] Kirt: I was so excited. There was Iron Man: Crash in there, and there was Batman: Digital Justice.

[29:05] John: Yes.

[29:06] Kirt: Batman: Digital Justice is Pepe Moreno.

[29:08] John: Yes.

[29:09] Kirt: It wasn't the guy who did Shatter.

[29:11] John: No, Mike Saenz. Pepe Moreno was an assistant on Shatter.

[29:15] Kirt: Oh, he was?

[29:16] John: He was a well-known Heavy Metal artist, Metal Hurlant.

[29:20] Kirt: Yeah, he's amazing. That guy is incredible.

[29:25] John: He was at San Diego Comic-Con, selling hand-drawn versions of Digital Justice.

[29:35] Kirt: Dude, with his marker style, that would be amazing. I would love that. It's so interesting, just because you're not going to see illustrations like this. It was a very 1980s idea and representation of the cyber future. God, I wish they were right. I need anything other than what we’ve got. I guess, we do have our own alternate worlds we go into, but it's no different than reading a f*cking book. I feel like we are a society run by meme now. It's just, we don't really research or read articles. We just look at whatever meme we find funny. Then, we just accept that as truth.

[30:30] John: Yeah. Look, I don't think human nature has changed, but we've just gotten so efficient at that process that you don't need a newspaper to convince you to start the Spanish-American War. You need an algorithm and a meme, like you said.

[30:44] Kirt: I need to get that algorithm to start pumping my comic.

[30:48] John: There you go.

[30:49] Kirt: Make these kids insane off of Death of Power.

[30:52] John: That's probably a good place to end it here for us. Thanks a lot for coming on. I'm glad you woke up.

[30:56] Kirt: I'm so sorry. I'm glad I just got in. I was talking to my friend, and I was just like, “oh, yeah- Holy sh*t.” Just panic mode, but yeah, I got everything in. Oh, I haven't watched all of it, but Alien: Earth is surprisingly good.

[31:14] John: This is actually the perfect bow to tie on this whole thing, because I mentioned in the beginning that I finally finished watching Andor. I understand they're similar, in the sense that they're good versions of the thing that they're TV shows of.

[31:26] Kirt: Yeah. So, it's a good follow-up to Andor.

[31:31] John: Looking forward to that. I always thought they only made those two Alien movies, and I never understood why they didn't make more of them, and now maybe there's a TV show for me.

[31:40] Kirt: Yeah, that's exactly right. Don't investigate that, at all. Just realize that you're correct, and […] show that you can revisit, and find out what happened after Aliens.

[31:51] John: All right. Thanks a lot, everybody, for joining us. Thanks, Kirt. Come back next week. We'll have more Corner Box, with no David Hedgecock, but it'll be me and Chase, and who knows what. Thanks a lot for joining us. See you next week.

[32:02] Kirt: Awesome.

[32:03] John: Really nailed the conclusions here.

This has been The Corner Box with David and John. Please take a moment and give us a five-star rating. It really helps. Join us again next week for another dive into the wonderful world of comics.