[AD] This is John from the Corner Box. In my daytime hours, I work at a company called Pan Universal Galactic Worldwide, and we've teamed up with a place I used to work, Marvel Comics, to put together an exciting new book that we're launching on Kickstarter. It's called Behind the Panels of Marvel's Secret Wars, an in-depth look at the art and process of making Marvel's 2015 Secret Wars series--the one by Jonathan Hickman and Esad Ribic--the one that's inspiring the upcoming Avengers film.

This is the first in our Behind the Panel series, and fellow ex-Marvel editor and all-around talented writer, Ellie Pyle, has talked to the minds who concocted that story, which is the big capstone to Hickman's Fantastic Four/Ultimate Universe/Avengers epic, the comic that ended the Ultimate Universe. It will take you from the Marvel summit planning sessions, through the spin-offs, and into the lasting legacy of the series.

Exclusive to this Kickstarter, we've got art prints, a red-blue 3D puzzle. The most exciting bonus--they're called bite-sized covers. These are miniature reproductions of the comic book covers. They're all the size of bridge cards, but super thick cardboard. And they come in a miniature short box with Secret Wars art. You can collect them, store them, or display them.

Check out Secret Wars Kickstarter, and it'll get you there in your web browser, and you can see what I mean.

Now, on to the show.

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.

[01:40] John Barber: Hello, and welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm your host, who's adjusting his mic as he talks, John Barber, and with me as always, my good friend--

[01:51] David Hedgecock: David Hedgecock. Ed's going to love you.

[01:52] John: Yeah. So, Ed, don't do anything to fix that, but the funny thing is, I said my name in a completely different volume than the word before it. So, even if he didn't edit it, it's going to sound like he edited it.

[02:06] David: Perfect.

[02:07] John: It's a no-win situation for everybody, and that's what we're here to talk about—comics.

[02:12] David: A no-win situation--comics. I've had an exciting week in comics, John. It's been all wins for me over here. So, before we get started, I want to just update all of our listeners. I know they're enthralled by the adventures of David in comic bookdom. So, I want to update everybody on what we've been up to. For Miss Mina Book 2, it's egregiously late, in my mind. I'm sweating bullets, because we don't have this book shipped out yet, but it all stemmed back from the fact that, in the summer, I decided to add 8 pages to the book, and a bunch of illustrations, and what I thought was going to only add a week or two to production time ended up adding well over a month of production time, actually. Everything's in. So, we're going to start doing picking and packing, but we just got these cool things in, and I'm just excited. One of the things that we did was a jade pendant of a jaguar. So, a jaguar head pendant. That was one of the stretch goals, and we hit the stretch goal, much to my amazement, because it was a big goal. So, those just came in, and man, they're gorgeous. They turned out so good.

We also did these gold doubloons, and they're so heavy. They feel like a pound, almost. They're so cool. It feels like, man, this is really gold. No, it's not, but it feels really heavy. I really love them, and the design on them is really cool. So, all that stuff is rolling in. So, I’m excited to have everything in-house, and starting rolling on Miss Mina and the Midnight Guardians Book 2 shipping. A ton of Miss Mina stuff came in, and then the other thing that came in, which I know you're going to appreciate, because I see you wearing them often on the podcast, is your 3D glasses, and now, I have my own set of 3D glasses, John. There you go. Perfect.

[03:51] John: […] 3D glasses. Guys, everybody listening, add to the mental picture you have, two guys wearing 3D glasses, like a bunch of Dr Jacoby's from Twin Peaks.

[04:03] David: My office manager, her name's Anna, and Anna is the office manager for our other business. I mean, she helps out with FunTimeGo stuff too, the comic book stuff too, but most of her work is not for comic book stuff. It's for the legitimate business that I run, that makes real money. So, she's in the office, we're trying to have an executive meeting, and going over financials, and stuff. As we're talking, all these boxes of stuff start rolling in, and I just basically kill the executive meeting, a very important discussion about finances--Not anything dire. Everything's going great, but still--Just so I can look at all these stupid little doodads. I'm way more excited about all that dumb stuff than any of the finance stuff. So, she was just shaking her head. She's like, “you're such a kid. You’re such a child.” Nothing else to it. I'm just excited to have all that stuff in.

[04:54] John: A funny thing, I was checking this, and I realized that it passed yesterday. The Angelica Theater by us does screenings of old movies a bunch of times, and in the last 2 months, and having missed both of these, they did Creature from the Black Lagoon in 3D yesterday, and then a week ago, they did—it was that Hitchcock movie that was in 3D--Dial in for Murder in 3D, and both of them, I would have loved to have seen. I wouldn't have been able to see the movie yesterday.

[05:24] David: You could have totally brought your own glasses. You're ready.

[05:29] John: The number of times, no joke, that it comes up sometimes, where it's like “but you don’t have 3D glasses,” and I've got 3D glasses--it's more than none. It's more than none that I feel like it is for a lot of people.

[05:44] David: Yeah. I was going to say, I think that's a you thing, John. I don’t know that that's necessarily most people's experience, but working in comics, that stuff happens. Speaking of the movies, John, you said that you played a little hooky today from work.

[05:58] John: I went to the theater and saw Guillermo del Toro's Frankenstein. As usual, don't tell anybody that I was doing that this morning. I was hard at work, entertaining America, or whatever. I really enjoyed it. Really interesting, fascinating take on Frankenstein, in the sense that parts of it follow the book extremely a lot, and parts of it totally don't, and suggest other Frankensteins. It's the ultimate del Toro movie. A thing that probably everybody in the world knows, besides me, but that I realized, as I was walking out, and I happened to look up, and see the name in the credits, is the head of the design department in that movie was Guy Davis, former B.P.R.D. artist.

[06:41] David: Yeah, I didn't know that.

[06:42] John: Marquis, Sandman Mystery Theater, going all the way back to Baker Street.

[06:48] David: Fascinating.

[06:49] John: Yeah. Here's a fact that I certainly should have known. I have no idea how I didn't know that, but he left comics in 2012, when he left the B.P.R.D., official leaving comics, and he's been working in movies ever since, and been working on del Toro movies, as well as other ones. He's been in every single one of them, I think, since then, like Crimson Peak.

[07:06] David: Interesting. Well, good for him.

[07:08] John: It wasn't the movie that launched del Toro, but a very early big del Toro movie was Hellboy 2. Again, as much as I think of Baker Street when I hear Guy Davis, probably most people think of the Mike Mignola-verse stuff, and it was cool he stuck around with that. I don't know. It seems like a good pairing, but here's the thing I was thinking about. So, I saw that, and I'm like, “man, good for Guy Davis. That's awesome,” but then I'm like, “well, why is that good for Guy Davis?” Obviously, it's good. It’s cool to work on really good stuff, but the world's poorer for not having Guy Davis comics.

[07:46] David: I think it's good for Guy Davis, because he's probably--God, I hope he's making more money. That's why it’s good for Guy Davis. He’s still in the artistic field, and doing sequential art of a type, and design of a type, but making more money. That seems like a good thing.

[08:03] John: Yeah, no, it totally is. I was totally joking about there being no way to win in comics, but it's sad that the win state of comics is to not have to do them anymore. Whether you're successful or not in comics, you probably have another job, besides comics. The other job might be working at a coffee shop, because you need to support your comics, or it might be writing the #1 show on TV, because that's the other thing you do, and you love doing comics as well, but also, the win and fail state are exactly the same. You no longer do comics. It's just everybody in between that's doing comics.

[08:43] David: Stupid comics. The frustrating thing about comic books is that creative talent is not being paid commiserate to the amount of work and the amount of skill that is necessary to create those things. It's not a good line of work. If you're lucky, if you're really fast, you're making $30 an hour, as an artist. You can make more as a writer.

[09:08] John: You can make more as a babysitter, David.

[09:10] David: Yeah, but you can do just about anything and make $30 an hour in today's day and age, if you just look around. So, it's frustrating that the level of skill and talent required is so high, and I think, personally, that it has more to do with the fact that the industry knows it can take advantage of the creative talent than it is a fact that there's not enough money for the creative talent, because we're in a day and age where comic books and graphic novels are pulling in over a billion dollars a year gross, and more than what is trickling down to the creative talent should be trickling down, and I think it's to the detriment of comic books, overall. That's why we don't see guys like Olivier Coipel, Travis Charest, guys like that, who are just hanging out in Europe and traveling around, and not doing art. There's no incentive. There's no incentive to do that. There's no incentive to kill yourself for an artform that's not rewarding you, if you don't have to.

[10:14] John: It's also funny that, I feel like the balance doesn't even fall into the stuff that should be. I guess, it's probably true with any artform. It's not necessarily the stuff that's most deserving. I mean, within a specific creator's career, or something. I’m thinking of Matt Fraction. He's somebody that left comics for a bit, a couple years, but he was show-running the Godzilla show. That's really cool, and that's an impressive thing to do, but Casanova was way cooler, and he's back in comics, and he's doing Batman. He's doing one of the top books now, and I think the two issues that are out, I think they're great, and it's still--Casanova's cooler. They're great.

[10:51] David: Yeah, right. Unfortunately, Casanova is not the thing that's going to keep the lights on.

[10:56] John: No, I didn't mean to go as dark into that, or anything.

[10:59] David: I think I pushed you into it.

[11:01] John: Anyway, they made a very nice-looking movie. It's also funny that Mia Goth has turned out to be that female answer to Eddie Murphy that we've all wanted for decades, somebody that in nearly all of her movies plays multiple roles. Once again, she's Norbiting it up in here, like she was in X.

[11:19] David: Fantastic. Norbiting it up. I need that to be a thing. Let's talk about some comic books. So, John, we have to talk about this first, because I feel like there's been a revelation. I feel like I saw the light. Have you read the new Skinbreaker comic book from Skybound/Image Comics?

[11:38] John: That used to be my favorite aftershave. Is it based on the aftershave, Skin Bracer?

[11:46] David: No, Skinbreaker.

[11:49] John: Oh, the David Finch/Robert Kirkman comic book.

[11:52] David: Yeah. I saw an interview, or I read an interview, from Robert Kirkman, who was talking about the process behind this book, and basically what he said was that this book took--it's an 8-issue series, and it's all complete already, except for some minor cleanup-type stuff--but they took 8 years to produce this comic book, and it's only 8 issues, and I was like, “oh, my gosh. That's a long time.” Especially, somebody like David Finch, he can be a monthly guy, or almost a monthly guy. He can really crank it when he needs to, but David Finch is definitely in the Top 10 of guys, over the last 10/15 years, who's been around. He just hasn't been around that much. Is it because he's been doing this one thing for 8 years? I don't know, but maybe. So, Robert Kirkman is saying David spent 8 years drawing this comic book, and the story evolved, and blah, blah, blah, and he was saying, “David's spending all this extra time on the art, and then he's drawing twice up.” For our listeners, most comic books are drawn on 11x17 sheets of paper, and the drawing area is roughly 10x15-ish. It varies a little bit, but that's it.

So, you're already--a normal comic book page, when it's being drawn traditionally, is being drawn larger than what you're seeing in print, by a pretty big margin.

[13:16] John: About 1.5.

[13:17] David: Thank you. So, when you shrink it down into the comic book format, and print it, it looks like there's a lot more detail. How do they get all that detail on? It’s because they're drawing on bigger pieces of paper, and it's shrunk down.

Well, David Finch, for this new book, Skinbreaker, is drawing twice that. So, his pages are essentially two regular pieces of large 11x17 artboard, taped together, and that's what he's drawing on for one single page. Crazy, man. Which means the amount of detail that he's throwing onto every single page is--I don't know. I'm not a mathematician, but it's probably 2,336% more detail than what you would put on a regular page. Something like that. I don't know. I can't do the math, but a lot more. I heard about this in advance of the comic book, probably because they were trying to sell the Treasury Edition, and what I discovered, at that time, was that not only was Skinbreaker #1 coming out, but they were also making a Treasury Edition version--almost a little larger-than-magazine-sized version of the book, called the Treasury Edition--and John, we've talked about these Treasury Editions on the show, and you've had a couple on. I think you've got Jim Lee's Treasury Edition of Batman. The first Batman issue that came out last April, or whatever. I'm still jealous that I didn't know about that, and didn't get one. I really want one of those so bad, but anyway, I wasn't about to be caught flat-footed this time. So, I ordered my copy of Skinbreaker #1, sight unseen as the Treasury Edition. I got a regular edition too, and man, it was worth every single penny that I paid for this thing. This thing was--I don't even know how much it was--$14.99. So, it was $15 for this thing, and I would have paid almost twice as much for this, because David Finch just reset the standard in the industry, as far as I'm concerned. Just the opening page--I wish, again, we were doing this on video, but just the level of detail, just on the opening page, and every single page to follow, is insane.

[15:23] John: Absolutely, and there's no figure on the opening page. The opening page is just background.

[15:29] David: Normally, as an editor, I have this thing about wasting a splash page on background. There's nothing I hate more than a double-page splash of a castle off in the distance with clouds and trees, and sh!t, and no action happening on the page. It's just establishing a setting, and that's the double-page splash. I hate that with a passion. If you're going to give me a double-page spread, or a full-page spread, there better be some hot action happening, and there better be all kinds of stuff in my face in that splash page. I want action. I want character. I want all that on that splash. That’s what you use a splash page or a double splash for. Not establishing a setting. Get out of here with that crap. No one cares. This is completely breaking my rule, and dude, I'm here for it, because it is incredible. There are 1400 different plant species on this page, dozens of mushroom spores, and vines, and strange animals, and I mean, it is just incredible. Everything rendered at a level that is just breathtaking.

[16:40] John: Yeah, if you don't mind, I mean, let's hold on that for just a second, because that's really interesting. Here's a blind item. A certain Marvel editor, after my time there, so you can't peg it on to anything like that, but a fairly high-up editor--As I understand it, there's a writer who does not work at Marvel anymore, largely because--or at least in the writer's estimation--because of this time that editor at Marvel, who actually wasn't editing his comic, got furious about a splash page that was the exterior of a building, mid-scene, or at the end of a scene--it was an end-scene cutout, and you see the building out there--and the editor was furious that they wasted a page on that. The writer felt like it added to whatever it was--whatever dramatic or comedic beat. I don't remember. I don't think I've ever read the comics. I don't even remember. I just remember him or her telling me not to give anything away.

[17:33] David: Do you know why you never read that comic book, John? Because the writer wasted a whole page on a side of a building. That's why. No one bought that book after that. The editor wasn't wrong.

[17:45] John: I would argue that there's a lot of exceptions, in the sense of, I think Brian Vaughan talked about this recently in his emails, or something--maybe I'm remembering something else--but sometimes you need to give the moment greater weight than would pay off in a single panel. We actually worked on a comic--and I never brought this up to you--you were editing it, and I was writing it, where the artist changed the pacing of the ending to make it move more fluidly, or the way I'd written it, there was a lot of it on one page, and then very little on the next page, which was the final page of the book, but I felt like we lost the emotional beat you get of having an entire page being that thing that happened right at the end that gives some weight to it, but a lot of times, that's not what's happening, and I also think that the first thing you see in a comic or a movie, or something, I've always had it pounded in my head that it's got to be pretty good. It's got to be pretty interesting. Your first line in the comic should be something that hooks somebody in. Your first image should be something that hooks somebody in, and people generally do not get hooked in by buildings and backgrounds, and there's a ton of comics that start out with pictures of buildings or backgrounds.

It always drives me nuts, even in movie trailers, when they have that first shot being “here's a tracking shot against the ocean.” You're like, “what the f*ck? I know what the ocean looks like. You've got 27 seconds of this thing that you have here, and you just wasted one of them on establishing that there's the ocean. I know that,” but in a movie, you get through it pretty quick, and you're on to the next thing. It doesn't hurt you too much, and same thing in a comic. You have the exterior of the Baxter building. All right, you know you're at the Baxter building. Even in Frankenstein, first shot was a track against the snow in the Arctic. Spoiler alert if you've never read the book, Frankenstein, but that's where it starts. Within a couple seconds, you're up, and you're seeing the boat. Again, this is snow. It wasn't unique snow. It was CG snow. It wasn't even real snow. There actually wasn't any snow, but that's probably my biggest complaint about the movie, though, but again, this panel here, I was looking at this, and I'm like, “man, what are they doing?” There's a lot going on here, even though there's nothing going on here. It's a little bit of, if you're having an establishing shot of the planet Pandora on Avatar. I don't have much interest in the Avatar movies, but if you do, you probably really like the planet Pandora, and having an establishing shot of that is probably exactly what's right for that movie.

[20:20] David: Yeah, the way I saw it, even from the very front, I opened the book, and I went, “look at David Finch showing off.” That's all it felt like to me. It felt to me like David Finch just raised both his hands, and just flew the bird at every other artist in the industry on page 1. He was just like, “I'm going to take the most boring stuff, and I'm going to make it incredible, and you can't touch me.” I'm like, “yes, you're right,” because it's amazing.

[20:49] John: Yeah. Not only is this the first issue of a series. This is your first David Finch page in 8 years. This isn't a setup to a punchline. I don't know the last interior David Finch page that I saw. I have no clue what that was, and it was a long time ago.

[21:04] David: He was at DC for a while towards the end, but the last thing that I really remember, and I know he did stuff since then, was the Moon Knight relaunch.

[21:14] John: Oh, man, okay. Yeah, I know he did Batman after that.

[21:17] David: Yeah, I know he did some stuff after that, but that Moon Knight really stuck with me. Anyway, I'm just blown away, man, and I'm so glad that I got the Treasury Edition, because I opened up the comic book too, and looked at the comic-sized version of it, and it's gorgeous in that as well. It's almost too much in the comic format size. This Treasury Edition size feels like it's the format that you're supposed to be viewing this in, because page 1 took him half a year, and then page 2 is a double-page spread, and we finally are introduced to probably the main character, or at least one of the main characters, and it's just more of the same. It's just this incredible level of detail. Here's another thing, man, about this book, and I know I'm going on, and I hope--I'm not kidding--Everybody needs to go out, and get this book, because I really do feel like David Finch laid down the gauntlet, in a way that nobody has done in a long time that I've seen. Try to get close to this. You can't. That's where he's at with this first issue, but almost matching him, I think, is the coloring by Annalisa Leoni, and I've worked with Annalisa on a book, a year or two ago. Fantastic woman. A joy to work with, and I think she's a very good colorist. That's why I hired her.

Man, I think she leveled up with this stuff, too. She is obviously spending more time with this than she would maybe with something else. I think she is appreciating the moment, and really diving in, because page 4 and 5, another double-page spread--and this is the moment where we have the first bit of conflict in the story--and look at these clouds in the background. They are beautifully rendered. I don't even know who the artist is that does clouds like this, but it's like an old oil painting, almost. I don't even know.

[23:19] John: […] is this?

[23:21] David: I don't know. Some master illustrator of old, and Annalisa Leoni's colors are really bringing that moment to life, in a way that is really complementary to this very immense task that is put before her. I mean, there's a tree with leaves, and I think every leaf on the tree is rendered. I don't think that's hyperbole. They're all drawn all the way through, completely, and not in a way that is annoying, but in a really cool, fascinating way. Anyway, John, I think I could talk about this book all day. Maybe we shouldn't, but I really think people need to check this book out.

[24:01] John: David Finch was drawing Ultimate X-Men, New Avengers, he had the run in Moon Knight, and that was a special unique case. That launched Moon Knight really big when he was on it. Eventually, he makes it over to Batman, which is the thing he always wanted to do, but I still think there's stuff about Finch that I don't think people appreciated. I remember reading Aphrodite IX, which was a comic he did at Top Cow.

[24:24] David: That's where he started. He was a Top Cow guy.

[24:26] John: Yeah. I remember, I was reading that on the subway with somebody, and she was like, “this doesn't look like the kind of comic you usually read, John.” I'm like, “no, but look at the design.” His design on it is so good. I feel like he hasn't been able to use that set of skills for 20 years, at least, in terms of when we’ve last seen him do it. I mean, obviously, he was working on this for eight of those years. So, I don't mean to put it that long, but he didn't design the Avengers. He drew them rather cool, and he had all the detail, and stuff, but you also had Brian Michael Bendis's scripting on that stuff. Here's a story. I don't know that anybody's ever talked about this in public. There's a sequence in New Avengers, one of the early issues, where Sentry grabs Carnage, and flies him into orbit, and then rips him in half, and leaves Carnage in orbit. Something like that.

The way Bendis scripts it, I'm not getting this exactly right, but it was, Sentry grabs Carnage, they're in orbit, next panel, rip in half, next panel, and Finch had drawn a page of Sentry flying upward, or something. It was a cool page, but Bendis was like, “no, that's not the pacing on it. I don't want that page in the book.” It wasn't like Brian is somebody that would be like, “you've added a panel. You subtracted a panel.” He's not like that. That's not a typical thing, but it was, as I understand it, just a situation where he felt like that just really threw off the pacing of the comic. There was an extra whole page devoted to this character flying up there, and the whole point was that he could be in orbit instantaneously, because he's a super powerful villain, and he's taking him apart, just split seconds, and then back into the action, which I think makes sense for the story, and makes sense for the overall world that was going on, at that point, where Brian's Avengers stuff was leading the whole Marvel Universe, at that point, and he was the guy that was going to be on every issue of that, blah, blah, blah, but you do lose track of the way that David Finch would tell a story then.

Maybe Kirkman wrote two-page spreads after two-page spreads. Maybe he didn't. I don't know. Either way, Kirkman's teeing him up to just hit this thing out of the park, in terms of art stuff, and this also is the first time you've seen him designing a whole world since Aphrodite IX. All the little orcs, or whatever they are, all the creatures in this. It's not like they're without antecedents. It's like reading Heavy Metal, or something, and seeing these Moebius designs, or whatever. I don't know if it's exactly at that level, but it's this David Finch visual world. It's really cool to see. Rus Wooton's lettering on it is real nice, too. He's terrific, and I feel like he's still undersung, and his lettering on Transformers is great, and his lettering here is really cool. Kirkman talks about a little bit of it being all these vertical word balloons, like manga, and that's interesting, too.

[27:18] David: It is an interesting choice, and I agree that Wooton’s lettering is really top-notch, and what's funny is, I'm also reading right now, I never finished Invincible, the comic book, but the TV show, I'll get back in there. So, I picked up all three of the omnibus books, along with the fourth omnibus. It's the collection, all the separate stuff, the Atom Eve, and stuff like that. I got it for a fraction of what the cover prices were, off of eBay. So, I really got a great deal. I was very happy with it, but I've been reading the first omnibus, the first several issues of Invincible. I think I'm up to Issue #6 or #7 of the book, and Rus Wooton is lettering that, and he's not very good.

[28:02] John: He was all right back then, wasn't he? He was one of Eliopoulos's guys.

[28:05] David: It's not that he was bad, but he wasn't anywhere near what he is now. It's very jarring to see where he's at now, and then go back to a point where he's pretty early in his career, I think, still, and see how much he's grown, because I don't think he was very good. I think he was average, at best, and I don't remember ever thinking that about him as I was reading his books. At some point, he became the Image letterer. He was lettering all the Image books, it felt like, and now I think he's specifically just Skybound. I don't think he does anybody outside of Skybound. I could be wrong about that, but he's fantastic, and he definitely didn't start there. So, it's nice to have those two things juxtaposed against each other right now, because it really is neat to see how much people improve, in their craft, over the years, when they really apply themselves.

[28:55] John: Actually, I believe I went from reading Skinbreaker #1 to reading Conan #25.

[29:02] David: Richard Starking's team is lettering it now.

[29:04] John: And that is the epitome of 2000s-era lettering. He was one of the most forward digital letterers around, just inventing a lot of the rules of digital stuff. A lot of that stuff is a little garish now, when you look at Marvel covers from the 2000s, and there's these different typefaces on it, and stuff. Starkings is and was, and continues to be, a really great letterer, but it's still funny to see that, and it’s like, “here's standard comic book lettering, and then here's this lettering that Wooton's doing just for this comic.” It feels like you don't feel that a lot of times, anywhere in comics. It isn’t one of those things you could put in the message, as “what if you guys looked outside of the direct market?” Lettering in manga isn't great. It's done very quickly. There's some very skilled people doing it, but it's not like people are building custom fonts for stuff, even where it would make sense to do that.

[30:00] David: Right.

[30:01] John: Usually looking at YA graphic novels, lettering ranges from good to appalling, and doesn't really go above good, with some exceptions. I'm kidding.

[30:15] David: Yeah, no, I definitely feel you on that.

[30:18] John: Didn't somebody tell somebody--

[30:21] David: How to do this? Yeah, come on.

[30:23] John: Don't use automatic on the lettering.

[30:28] David: Right. Nope. It's getting better, though. It's getting better. All these larger publishers that are stepping into this space for the first time, in a lot of ways, they're starting to understand the intricacies of things, like lettering.

[30:44] John: Yeah, but you're also seeing a new generation, like Hassan, coming in that's doing this pure digital lettering that is post-Comic Craft. It isn't trying to do the same thing that Comic Craft was doing. It's doing different stuff, and it's interesting to see Wooton, who was a rock-solid regular Marvel Comics lettering guy, turn into somebody that makes these custom lettering styles for all these comics, and it's nice to see the craft. It's nice to see the digital craft applied to it, and it's also nice to see somebody like Kirkman making the space for that to happen, because you don't have to. A lot of other places don't do that.

[31:21] David: I have to imagine that this particular project is Robert Kirkman's special little gift to himself. It can't be anything else other than that, because David Finch had to make money for 8 years. Maybe he was doing a lot of--I don't know—custom sketch stuff on the side, but I don't think so. I bet he was working on this the whole time, and Kirkman had to fund that. I think this is just Kirkman's little playground, his reward to himself for a lot of success over the years, and well-deserved, and I'm glad that this is how he's decided to have fun, because I'm thoroughly into it. I'm loving it. I can't imagine how this thing's going to make money, or if it's going to make money, but I'm sure happy it exists, man, because Holy crap, David Finch, man--I was not really a big David Finch guy, and I am.

[32:14] John: And it's the exact opposite of the thing I was talking about, about the reward for being successful is to not make comics anymore. This is somebody redoubling their efforts to make not only comics, but just all the little details. We've both been in positions where we've been making business calls that were not the following, and we both know why we make those decisions, and we both know how it is, but there's that fan part of you that's always like, “well, why don't you just let the guy take as long as he needs to draw it, and then put the issues out monthly? Okay, do that. Why doesn't the lettering look better? Okay, we'll do that. What about with the coloring? Well, why isn't it big? Well, we can make it big.” All those little things. I don't know. It's nice to see that. It is too bad there's no way you can keep up with Invincible now, though, or anything in that universe, David.

[33:12] David: Oh, man. You're getting good at these transitions. I love it. Yes. Well, actually, John.

[33:17] John: What?

[33:19] David: Yeah, actually, there is a way, and in fact, if you do like Skinbreaker, more than half the team that's on Skinbreaker is on another book from Skybound that I am super into as well, in a way that I did not think I would be--Battle Beast, from Skybound. Have you been reading this book?

[33:37] John: So, here's a funny thing. You might recall an episode of a certain podcast--well, this podcast. I'm sorry, […].

[33:45] David: This one? We don't listen to this.

[33:47] John: […] on the air.

[33:49] David: Oh, that's right, but have you continued to read them?

[33:52] John: I have not gotten around to reading that one yet.

[33:55] David: John, we did that two or three months ago.

[33:58] John: Oh, longer than that, David. What issue of Battle Beasts are you holding?

[34:01] David: This is Issue #6.

[34:02] John: Yeah. So, it was at least half a year ago, just mathematically, minimum.

[34:07] David: Yeah, I guess you're right. That does add up. I'm telling you right now, I'm glad that we're talking about this, because I mean, it sounds like I have to do a bit of an intervention. I should be reading this book. I'm not a big Invincible guy. I wasn't ever a big Walking Dead guy. I read both of those, but by the time each of those books got around Issues #30, #40, #50s in both of those series that Kirkman did, I fell off, and I never really jumped back on, and it's not that I didn't enjoy the books, because I was enjoying them. There were things I was enjoying more, and at a certain point, you put your money where you're having the most fun, but I picked up Battle Beast #1, and really enjoyed it, and every single issue since then has been better than the last, and the character, Battle Beast, starts out as 100% just a one-note character.

He is not that interesting, at all, and I think that's how he was in the Invincible books, as well. Just literally a Battle Beast running around the universe, looking for somebody strong enough and better than him in fighting, to kill him. He's trying to die. He's trying to get himself killed, but he refuses to die in an unworthy way. He wants to die by the hands of somebody worthy enough to kill him, able to kill him, but of course, no one's that good, and that's it. That's his whole raison d'etre. It's one note, and for a side character that shows up in Invincible, it's fine, but how do you make a whole book around this guy? They're doing it. Kirkman's characterization and development of the character over the course of the first six issues is really cool and interesting, and real subtle, but not so subtle that a careful reader isn't picking up on it, and seeing what's happening, and not where the changes are, and Kirkman's done a great job of building a cast around Battle Beasts, for various reasons, for them to be around this insane, murderous fellow, that makes sense, and gives the book a lot of extra fun and detail, and more characters that you can really glam onto.

I'm really loving it. I'm really enjoying the story, in a way that I don't think I've really enjoyed a Robert Kirkman-written book really ever. It's not that I don't like Kirkman, because I do. I like this one a lot more. So, it's Kirkman, Annalisa Leoni is the colorist, just like on Skinbreaker, and Rus Wooton is doing the lettering, just like on Skinbreaker. So, the only different piece is the artist, and the artist for Battle Beasts is Ryan Ottley, who is famously the artist of Invincible, for pretty much the entire run. It's weird that he drew all but the first six issues, and he's not credited as one of the creators of the book. It's Cory Walker and Kirkman that are credited as the creators, but anyway. Ryan Ottley is actually the creator of Battle Beast, and is credited as such, and Ryan Ottley's artwork in the book is amazing. Ryan Ottley seems to really to lean into the violence of superhero fighting, the gore, and the violence, the potential gore, and violence. So, Kirkman's basically just writing page after page of just the most brutal battles you've ever seen. Stuff's getting cut and clawed, and bit in every possible way. There's at least three gallons of blood on every single page, but I love it. I'm really digging it. I think it's a great book, and I think people should be picking this one up.

Skybound just--I don't know, man. I think Ben Abernathy is maybe the editor on this thing. Yeah, Ben Abernathy is the editor on this thing, and I believe he's the editor on a lot of the Skybound stuff. I think he might be the lead editor on all the Skybound stuff these days. So, whatever magic sauce he's bringing to the mix, he's really firing on all cylinders, putting teams together, and making stuff happen, and I'm sure Kirkman has something to do with it too, but Skybound is just crushing it, man. They're just doing a great job of putting out some really fantastic books. I'm really enjoying G.I Joe. I'm really enjoying Transformers. Battle Beasts is probably one of my top five favorite books right now. Skinbreaker, just incredible, gorgeous thing. So, my hat's off to Skybound. Kirkman and Abernathy, and the whole team over there, they're doing amazing work, and I couldn't be more interested in their offerings.

So, we talked about some modern stuff. Now, let's go old-school. I was reading a Comics Interview magazine from 1983 or 1984 over the weekend. The Comics Interview was interviewing a bunch of all the X-Men creators of that time, which is really fascinating, because it's around 1983. So, it's Louise and Walt Simonson talking about X-Factor, Chris Claremont talking about Chris Claremont, and John Byrne talking about John Byrne. All these guys that were all involved in the books around that time. I guess, it was more like ‘86 that this interview stuff came out. It was maybe closer to ‘86. Really cool stuff, but one of the interviews that I loved the most was the interview with Terry Austin, one of the greatest inkers of all time, really. Terry Austin's style, I think, was wildly aped for the entire generation of the 90s. Everyone was looking at his work. Fantastic inker, and famously inked John Byrne in X-Men during his first run on X-Men, along with a billion other things.

So, Terry Austin, though, I'd never read an interview with Terry Austin. He's a bit of a p*sser, man. He's a little cantankerous. I can't imagine he was very old in this interview, but he's very funny, and he's very interesting, and he says a lot of cool things, but the thing that he said that blew me away, and it made the whole book so perfect for me--I loved that I was reading all these series of interviews, because he said something that I thought was hilarious. So, back in the day, Terry Austin was inking at both companies, DC and Marvel, and every once in a while, he would have to ink a newspaper page, because there would just be a newspaper sitting on a crate, or something, in a background, or something, or a background of a newspaper thing hanging on the wall, and there wouldn't be anything in the newspaper. So, he would just create headlines, and what he did, which is fantastic, is he created a whole storyline that he just wrote himself, basically, in headlines of newspapers, in books that he would ink, and it was all about Jack Abel murdering Howard Chaykin, which I thought was hilarious, and I don't know how he came up with those two guys, why he chose those two guys. So, in the background of all these comic books from the 70s and 80s, across both companies, there's this story happening in the background on random newspapers, on the headlines, about how Jack Abel has killed Howard Chaykin.

So, there's ones that say--let me see if I can pull it up. There's ones that say, “Abel escapes the city jail cell,” and another one, it's “Abel confesses to Chaykin murder,” and it's just these random little headlines in the back, and you wouldn't even know. You would never know that this was happening, except that he explained it, and then Comics Interview puts out a checklist of all the places where Terry Austin has been telling this story, and man, I am so here for that. I love it. So, there's nine different issues. Terry Austin has been telling the story of Jack Abel killing Howard Chaykin, and it's big books, too. It's Superman vs Spider-Man #1, World's Finest #246, World's Finest #244, Defenders #53, Marvel Team-Up, X-Men Annual #3, Spider-Man Annual #13, the X-Men and Teen Titans #1. I don't know. It's just hilarious that he was doing this. It makes me love comic books, and that's such a fun thing for some artist to be sneaking in. What a clever, fun little trick.

So, anyway, I was thrilled that I read that in an interview. Sometimes, reading that stuff, I read it, because I feel like I should, not because I feel like I want to. I don't really care that much about the 80s X-Men stuff. X-Men was never really in my bag. I was like, “man, there's a lot of creators who are pretty big names, and they're talking about the creative process, and talking about some pretty historically important books. I should probably read this.” So, I was reading it in that frame of mind, and then I got to the Terry Austin thing, and I was like, “I love all of this now. I'm so glad I did this.”

[42:42] John: This goes from 1976 to 1982. This is spread out over […]. It's also funny that--I say this with love--Nobody asks the question, “well, why did he want to kill Howard Chaykin?” You’ve got to assume he had his reason.

[42:58] David: Right.

[43:00] John: I don't know if the whole interview was like this, but those pages you sent were about this. Terry Austin would famously draw Popeye into the background of scenes.

[43:11] David: Yeah, they talk about that, too.

[43:12] John: Right above that checklist, there's a panel from Marvel Team-Up. They're in the Daily Bugle offices, and Robbie Robertson is talking to Clark Kent. I've never read the comics. He's a friend of Superman's, which is a different company's character. They're not saying he's Clark Kent. Robbie Robertson is calling him a mild-mannered reporter, and then pointedly saying that he's from a TV network, because in 1979, Clark Kent was working for WGBS TV, not this Daily Planet. There's something fun about that.

[43:43] David: Yeah, it's fun.

[43:44] John: […] be able to do that again, nowadays. Somebody would stop you from doing it, or lose their job, or get yelled at for that happening now. I don't know. It's just that fun little thing of just those little--I don't know--fun little thing. Everybody knew he was drawing Popeye in there. Nobody was stopping him. You see that a ton of times. There'll just be characters in the background, and then, “oh, yeah, they're making a nod to the other company.” That was fun.

[44:08] David: Yeah. There's a panel right above it, too, that I think it's on a different shot that I sent you, and it's the one showing Popeye in X-Men/Teen Titans #1, but it's funny, because it's only Popeye's chin and his corn cob pipe. You don't see anything else, but you still immediately see, it's on the far left side of the shot. He's immediately recognizable as Popeye, but all you're seeing is his chin and the pipe. In addition to it being fun, it's also really clever, how it's executed. So, my hat’s off to Terry Austin for having fun in comic books. Well, John, I feel like I've dominated the conversation. Anything you wanted to cover?

[44:49] John: I'm good, yeah. Thank you all for joining us on The Corner Box. That's the show.

[44:54] David: Bye.

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.