[00:00:00] Intro: 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.

[00:00:24] John: Hello and welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm your host, a Sora AI John Barber. Oh, wait, no, I got canceled. I'm sorry, AI doesn't exist anymore. I guess I'm just regular John Barber with me as always. You know, I think I'm still on location in Hawaii. What's the weather like?

[00:00:43] David: For some reason, I chose the time to visit Hawaii when they're having a once in a century... a mountain storm’s coming through here.

[00:00:52] John: You're living Point Break. It's the 100-year storm, David.

[00:00:56] David: It really is. There's like dams breaking and towns being flooded. It's, it's it's it's crazy up here. We have had 2 or 3 days of nice weather though, so I'm not...

[00:01:05] David: And I am not complaining. I'm enjoying my time. I'm telling you, John, I have gotten more writing done in the last week or two. It has really been satisfying.

[00:01:13] John: That's cool. We're here for a little, I think a little, looser episode than we've had, lately.

[00:01:18] David: We've had some very tightly scripted episodes. The last three episodes, man, we really drove deep. And our fans, John, our fans are responding very positively. John, I forgot to mention to you, people are listening to the show now. It's starting to get a little—make me a little nervous. We're getting more and more listeners, and I guess after you've been doing this for three years, people finally go, "oh, maybe that's the key. We just needed to hang in there."

[00:01:43] John: And that's half of it. I think that's half of everything. Don't die and keep doing the thing. I mean, yeah.

[00:01:48] David: Don't die and keep doing the things. You're right, John, it's a little bit more of a smorgasbord this week.

[00:01:55] David: We've been doing some heavy lifting. We thought we'd lighten it up this week, right?

[00:01:58] John: Yeah. We did want to introduce, I think, a new segment on the show that we maybe will do regularly. "What have you been reading?" We should have a theme song for that. What have we been reading? What have John and David been reading? I don't know what we'd call it.

[00:02:09] David: Yeah, "What John has been reading," I like that.

[00:02:12] John: And I don't know, maybe we've read in the last week or so and it maybe doesn't deserve a whole episode, but I...

[00:02:17] David: Like this. We both read a lot of comic books. I feel like this is a thing we can probably do.

[00:02:22] John: The past week or so, what I've been doing is have been going through a lot of short boxes I have under my desk, where I've packed in all of my unread comics that have accumulated, usually not the new ones. Sometimes I'll fall like a week or two behind on new comics, but but that's probably the maximum I get behind.

[00:02:38] John: Now, I make an effort to keep up, but I bought a, you know, a bunch of bunch of random stuff, like at one point getting like 15 Classics Illustrated seemed like a really good idea. And man, what a good deal, but those are yet to be read. So I've been kind of just grabbing a bunch of stuff and trying to trying to create my own version of those 100-page comics that I like.

[00:03:00] David: Nice.

[00:03:00] John: So I'll read an issue of Plop, you know, maybe, and then go into some Area 88.

[00:03:05] David: Nice. That's a good way to do it. I actually had to put a moratorium on my eBay purchases for the last couple of months, because I had such a back list of exactly that kind of stuff that I needed. I was like, I need to actually read, sit down and read all this stuff. I've actually done that. I'm getting to the point where I'm getting ready to jump back into eBay so I get more. I got a whole list of stupid stuff I want to read.

[00:03:28] John: That's good.

[00:03:28] David: This is not appropriate to the segment, but I just found the Kirby: King of Comics hardcover by Mark Evanier. Oh yeah. Yeah. So I just picked that up. That's on its way to me. I'm interested to give that a look. I'm interested to give that one read. So I might be talking about that.

[00:03:43] John: There's a funny thing about that. I used to have that and I don't think I do anymore, and I'm not sure what happened. I think I might have just gotten rid of it when I was, you know, moving or something at one point, but I never read it. Oh, I would like to read that. That's interesting. I guess I'm like constantly reminded of that because there's a picture of it on Evanier's website. So I think whenever I see that and I'm like, oh, I should have read that. Or I wonder if that's in some nook or cranny somewhere and I actually still do have it.

[00:04:08] David: Yeah, I'm interested in that one.

[00:04:12] David: But that's not what we're talking about. We're doing what John and David had read this week.

[00:04:17] Intro: Here's what John and David read this week.

[00:04:21] David: Let's hear what you can read this week. I'll let you start the show. But one of the things I pulled...

[00:04:25] John: Off the shelf that I hadn't read for a while was Alien: Salvation, 1993 Dark Horse Aliens comic written by Dave Gibbons, penciled by Mike Mignola, and inked by Kevin Nowlan with Matt Hollingsworth colors and Clem Robbins lettering.

[00:04:41] David: Man, that is a murderer's row.

[00:04:42] John: It's pretty amazing.

[00:04:43] David: Yeah, I didn't even know that existed.

[00:04:46] John: It was a $5 one-shot when it came out. I don't know if it's available. I mean, presumably it's up on, like, the Marvel app. It's got to be a part of the stuff that they've got the rights to. But yeah, it's a short 48 pages of a full-length story, but short in the grand cosmic scheme of things. Very Alien-y, a little more horror-y, I guess.

[00:05:05] John: During all my research, I'd been watching some Cartoonist Kayfabe stuff. They were talking about Cosmic Odyssey, which I read just a couple of weeks ago. Or like, I mean, I was intentionally sort out the episode that they were talking about, Cosmic Odyssey, which was a Jim Starlin, Mike Mignola story, but it does look a whole lot Mignola but like, he was one of those artists that you knew he was something unusual whenever he was doing an issue. You know what I mean? Like, he was never—he was always like, oh, you know, he's doing something. I think Mignola was talking about the inker, that it was kind of changing the art, making it more mainstream DC-like. But I don't know if it really exactly does that. That had me thinking about the different reasons you'd actually put somebody on as an inker on somebody, and that having been an editor, one of the big problems, if you're going into it with the assumption that it's a penciler and an inker, that I think in the 1980s and 1990s, very much was the case at Marvel and DC, and that it was very unusual for that not to be the case.

[00:06:05] John: It's very rare that you had like you had, oddly enough, Dave Gibbons, you know, doing Watchmen—like that was that was all him. But like, that's super rare, right? But if you had a Mignola, nobody draws like Mignola. That means nobody inks like Mignola. And that means there's no inker you can put on him that looks like him. Right? That's going to ink that way. And you can find people that are more or less sympathetic, but you're also interpreting the shapes and the lines that are on the page. And I can see where that creates some, some room. And somebody like Mike Mignola that maybe there isn't an intentional trying to mainstream him. Maybe there is though. Maybe there is. There are people that are just like, "hey, this you know, we want this to look more like a regular comic. So we got to get somebody that's got a regular comic it up a little bit."

[00:06:45] David: That's a good question. In 1993. That could still be a thing in 1993, right? No.

[00:06:49] John: It was. That was more Cosmic Odyssey-ish. Like that was like 1988. The one person who does exactly fit on Mike Mignola inking is Kevin Nowlan.

[00:06:57] David: Yeah. So brilliantly. I agree.

[00:06:59] John: I've heard Joe Quesada say that when Nowlan inked Quesada, that was when Joe realized what his penciling should look like. What Nowlan did with Quesada art brought out stuff that Quesada realized was what he wanted to be doing in a way that wasn't like aping Nowlan's stuff, but was like Nowlan pulling the stuff out of his own stuff and really highlighting it. Yeah. Alien: Salvation looks like a Mignola comic. The flat colors from Hollingsworth. I mean, I think Hollingsworth colored Hellboy for a while, didn't he? Or am I wrong? I can't remember who was the original colorist.

[00:07:31] David: That sounds right, but honestly, I'm not sure on that one.

[00:07:34] John: Yeah, I know Dave Stewart did a bunch—like unlike Cosmic Odyssey from a few years before, it looks very much like a Mignola book. It kind of looks a little Nowlan-y, but not like when Nowlan inked Superman/Aliens, where it was Dan Jurgens—that doesn't look like Dan Jurgens as much as it looks like Nowlan, this looks like Mignola.

[00:07:49] John: Look, it's more of a that kind of a situation.

[00:07:51] David: Interesting that Nowlan understands the assignment, you know?

[00:07:54] John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a nice, quiet little story. It's got, I don't know. It doesn't really quiet alien queens, you know, a bunch of, well, an alien queen. It's nice to see when you do a big, creepy alien, because he draws it really nicely, and it's very atmospheric. The story is a—this ship crashes on, like, a jungle planet, and there's, like, this era where Mignola was like your jungle guy, like Wolverine: The Jungle Adventure, you know, like like...

[00:08:20] David: Oh, that's right. Yeah.

[00:08:21] John: Like, I don't think of him as being the jungle guy, but there he was. It's also got a lady, lady robot, much like the last Predator movie had another instance of comics getting there 30 years earlier.

[00:08:34] David: Yeah. As usual. Definitely.

[00:08:36] John: I think one of the better Alien books to just pick up.

[00:08:39] David: You're a fan of the movies, right? The only two that were ever made.

[00:08:42] John: Yeah, both both Alien movies are, like, quite a bit. Yeah.

[00:08:44] David: I'm not a big Alien guy because I'm just not a horror guy. It's, you know, it's just horror in space. I'm definitely down to pick that up. Dave Gibbons... I mean, I know he's, well, most well known as a as an artist, but I like his writing quite a bit. Yeah, he's a really good writer when he does write. So that one sounds good. I'm gonna I'm gonna pick that up.

[00:09:01] John: I feel like around that time, too, is when Gibbons is writing a lot of stuff that was really good. Like, he wrote the World's Finest series that Steve Rude drew. That's right. That's a fantastic series. Yeah. He did a really nice Christmas Batcave story, that Gray Morrow... I think it's called Christmas with the Super-Heroes. It's like a Paul Chadwick Superman story, and Eric Shanower Wonder Woman story, this Gray Morrow...

[00:09:23] John: And there's a John Byrne in a story that's silent.

[00:09:26] David: Oh, wow. That sounds pretty cool.

[00:09:28] John: Yeah, it's a really, really good issue. Speaking of Paul Chadwick, and speaking of Dark Horse, a couple episodes ago, when we were mourning Mike Richardson's leaving Dark Horse, I was like, whatever happened to Paul Chadwick and Concrete? Dude, they're solicited right now! It's the new Concrete series, the first one in 20 years.

[00:09:45] David: Yeah. Fantastic.

[00:09:46] John: That's what's been happening. He's doing more.

[00:09:47] David: I'm excited for that one. I've always been sort of a... I'm not a huge fan of the comic, but I've always enjoyed it and I really like it. Artwork is is great, so I'm excited to see what he's doing 20 years on. My book of the week is Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller, Klaus Janson, and Lynn Varley. I really probably like, I don't know, once a year, you know, I pick that one up and read it.

[00:10:16] David: DC has been putting them out in facsimile prints just recently, but that's not what got me to do it. What got me to do it was that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that Frank Miller did the first cover for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles ever, right? Man, I really just loved that image that that they put together. In particular, Erik Larsen took the colors and pulled the background off and just had this, like, really bright yellow background over the turtles, you know, all stacked one on top of the other one. And it's amazing. Like Larsen nailed nailed it. Like he made it pop. Like, beautifully. Larsen was just doing it on his own on social media. He wasn't doing it for any other reason than he just was like, "oh, this is cool. I played with him a little bit" and he wasn't saying anything, you know, negative to anybody, it's just a thing that he was doing. He does that sometimes he'll go in and like play around and stuff.

[00:11:06] John: Yeah.

[00:11:06] David: Of that Turtles cover image got me super excited. I was like, man, I am really wanting to see some Frank Miller artwork. So I was like, well, Dark Knight Returns. I think that's the one, right? I read the first four-issue miniseries Dark Knight Returns, and then I read DK2. The follow-up. And Dark Knight Returns is widely regarded as one the best—well, the best Batman story of all time. It's probably true. I think it probably recreated and reinvigorated Batman. That makes Batman the thing that he is in 2026, in a lot of ways. Yeah, and DK2 was, I think, largely derided. You know, it was not something that was super well received. The coloring is pretty garish and the art is, I don't know, it was like Miller was looking at Sin City and then trying to get uglier, but almost purposefully, I don't know. That's the thing that confuses me about DK2 is I'm not sure how much of that is the ability of the artist in the moment, or the actual choice to do what he did.

[00:12:08] David: I would love to be the fly on the wall in Frank Miller's head to find out what that was all about. Anyway, yeah, rereading DK2, it does actually hold up better than I think people give it credit for. It starts out very cohesively, and actually it's got a really cool story to it. And it feels like between the first issue of DK2 and the third issue of DK2, it feels like there was a long period of time. And I don't know what the development process was for that one, but it does feel like the first issue is of a different quality and a different style and a different feel from the other two in terms of the way the story is being told and what the story even is and the artwork is being used. It's almost like Miller started that project and then put it on the shelf for a year or two, and then picked it back up, I don't know. It's probably not how that went down, but it sure feels like it.

[00:12:58] John: You know, it did happen in between? There was September 11th.

[00:13:01] David: Oh, really?

[00:13:02] John: Yeah, it came out in 2002, and I believe the first issue was done before September 11th, and then I'm not sure where that falls.

[00:13:10] David: If that's true, that tracks. I didn't know that. I'm just I'm just looking at the art and reading the story. And it seems to me like something changed or there was a period of time. So that—just looking at it—that explains a lot. I know that the attack on the Twin Towers meaningfully impacted Frank Miller. So anyway, I do think it holds up on the second read. He set up sort of some interesting stuff in DK2, whereas Dark Knight Returns feels like a complete story. Like a "this is the story I'm telling, and I'm doing it in four issues, and then I'm done." Yeah. DK2 feels like this is the start of a story that I'm going to be telling for a while, whether I tell it or not is not important.

[00:13:51] David: So when you get to Dark Knight III, which he co-wrote with Brian Azzarello and Andy Kubert with Klaus Janson, when you get to DK III, it makes more sense because I've started reading DK III now, and it all makes more sense. DK2 makes a lot more sense in the larger context of Dark Knight III existing at all. It's certainly not Dark Knight Returns because nothing can be that. I think it was derided more than it probably deserved to be. And it is a cool, interesting piece. It's not it's not as good as like, Sin City. It's certainly not as good as 300. It's a solid superhero romp. I think that's kind of what he was just trying to do. I think probably purposefully, he wasn't trying to hold himself up to the same standard that he had established with the first series, so that's my read. I really enjoyed it. And there you go, John.

[00:14:40] John: To tie it in with with how this how this all began... one of the things that I've been meaning to do for like, several years is I bought the Graffiti Designs Artist's Edition of Dark Knight Returns at Kevin Eastman's insistence that I'd kick myself if I didn't, because he was at the store with me at the same time.

[00:14:58] John: So I have this because of the Ninja Turtles. I've been meaning to, like, just sit down and, like, read the whole thing in black and white. You know, I've never... like that seems kind of interesting. And that, you know, the original art stuff. I think it's got the whole story. I think there's a couple pages that are missing the original art; those have the regular scans in the place of them. So you could sit there and read the whole thing front to back.

[00:15:17] David: That's cool. Rob Liefeld has been posting some Dark Knight stuff where he's been showing the inks from Klaus Janson and the reworked finished art that Frank Miller basically took the page back, right? Re-inked it. That's really interesting. Yeah, some of the choices that Miller made, that's kind of cool to see too. Is that in that edition that you have?

[00:15:37] John: I don't know if it if it just has what the final art looked like. You can kind of see the spots where, you know, some redrawing had been done or whatever.

[00:15:44] John: That's fascinating. Like I was also in my Cartoonist Kayfabe listening—I was listening, they were talking about an interview in Amazing Heroes that Miller gave where he kind of, I guess, disappeared a little bit after Ronin. There's a couple years of him being quiet, and then he comes back in the same year has Dark Knight, Born Again, Elektra: Assassin, and Year One starts getting worked on in that same time—like, that's like this crazy time. One of the things that I didn't know or I've forgotten if I knew it or I'm misunderstanding now, is that they were talking about Dark Knight when it was coming out, it was going into bookstores—that the Prestige format was immediately putting it into into bookstores. So the Kayfabe guys, that was a big piece of it, that it was like even Watchmen was a comic book. This was something that was existing outside of the world of comic books. It's real hard, I think, to ever follow up on that.

[00:16:38] John: That only works once. Like you only get to do "it's Batman, but what if it's for adults?" and then you wind up in a world where there's a ton of Batman stuff for adults, and when you do another one, it just becomes another piece of that. I am fascinated to read Dark Knight 2 again, though, too. I remember enjoying the first couple issues and then I kind of thought it fell apart in the end, but it is fascinating. Both the coloring and the drawing of how much of that was an intentional aesthetic that they were going for, you know, because there's a lot of stuff where literally was really intentionally making it look digital in a way that like by 2002, you kind of weren't anymore... like you were kind of in the realm of like Morry Hollowell type stuff at CrossGen already, you know, or like those guys that were really rendering stuff and in more naturalistic way. And the digital part of it was sort of disappearing.

[00:17:24] David: The whole piece feels like this crazy sort of outsider art.

[00:17:27] David: Yeah, sort of piece to it. Like the drawings are ugly—like, for lack of a better term. The drawings are ugly. I don't mean that they're not competent or professional. Just purposefully ugly. And the coloring is definitely purposely garish and ugly. It's a weird commercial outsider art piece. That's why I'm like, man, it feels like they did a lot of that on purpose. And I would love to be able to know more about it, that maybe there's been interviews and stuff about it. Maybe I'll do a little research on it anyway. It does actually hold up a little bit better outside of the trying to figure out the intention of the artist or the creative team.

[00:18:09] John: That’s...

[00:18:09] Intro: That's our segment. That's our reading this week. Well, there you go.

[00:18:17] David: And you want to bring up something. You know how they publish retractions? I saw that DSTLRY is back. I buried them too quickly. I have to apologize to everybody over there.

[00:18:28] David: DSTLRY is returning this summer as the publisher. They're back in business. They're just starting where they left off. It appears there's several issue number threes and fours in the works that are coming out this summer. So maybe they did legitimately just need to retool after the Diamond nonsense. So three seasons in and I made my first mistake.

[00:18:46] John: I'm super excited to see them back. That's great. That's good news.

[00:18:49] David: Another thing I'm super excited about. They announced The Amazing Spider-Man Artist's Edition coming from—imagine that—Scott Dunbier's new, new Act imprint. Yeah, man, I saw some of the sample pages. I am very, very excited for this book.

[00:19:08] John: That kid’s going to go places.

[00:19:09] David: That Steve Ditko he is. Not too bad. He is not shabby at all. This Artist's Edition is going to have Amazing Fantasy number 15, which is Spider-Man's first appearance, of course. I don't know if it's the whole thing, but there's certainly some of it.

[00:19:24] John: At least I think the whole thing is known where it's at.

[00:19:26] John: I think it's in the Library of Congress, actually. So I think that that's a big... I don't think people know where that came from. But I think that it is there now.

[00:19:34] David: That's fantastic. And then there's also three other issues that are totally complete: Amazing Spider-Man 20, 26 and 33, which 33, you know, many consider that some of his best stuff. Anyway, super excited about this one. And if you get a chance and get online to see some of the the sample pages that go out, man Ditko is so good in Amazing Spider-Man. He's so, so good. And I feel like we've talked about this before, but just looking at the artwork from Ditko in these sample pages—the original art—Ditko really does play Peter Parker as this schlub, nerdy kid. Like he's just a complete misfit. You know, we've completely lost that in the modern version of Spider-Man. But I do think that that was such a big appeal for that character. Looking at these pages, I'm kind of mourning that version of Peter Parker.

[00:20:27] David: Yeah.

[00:20:27] John: When Romita came in, he prettied him up. Romita just drew beautiful people. And even Peter isn't like the weird caricature that Ditko draws. You know, Peter's a good looking kid, you know? MJ, of course, looks great. The insect-ness of it, too, or the bug-ness of it... that goes away after Ditko too, and maybe kind of comes back with McFarlane. That was—thinking about that the other day, too—about how McFarlane doesn't have as much of an impact on a lot of the Spider-Man stuff you see as he did for a while. I really do think that, like, those two guys really brought a particular weirdness to Spider-Man that really added to it. I like the stuff that's weird like that, and I'm excited for this. And I know that this book is like... well, you know it too, that like, Scott's been trying to do this book forever.

[00:21:12] John: And he's worked... like, again, I don't know where this art came from. I know he's always been working really closely with the Ditko family and stuff, and it's always aboveboard as anything could be, because Dave wanted that book to come out, and I think Marvel has too. So it's cool to get that thing out.

[00:21:31] David: Yeah, yeah, I'm excited for it. I don't buy too many Artist's Editions these days because it's just... they're so big and I only have so much room. But I'm definitely... I think I'm on board for this one. I'm excited for it. Scott Dunbier continues to be out there doing Kirby's God's work, finding these pages and making them available to the masses. So definitely I'm excited for this one. Artist's Editions are always good, and this is definitely going to be one that I'm good to go.

[00:21:59] John: Yeah.

[00:22:04] David: John, did you know that Jae Lee is back doing interiors?

[00:22:08] John: That's exciting. What's the series?

[00:22:10] David: So the series is called In One Monster Racing League from Image Comics.

[00:22:14] David: But Jae Lee is kind of hit and miss with me, which is a weird thing to say. I always enjoy his covers and man his Namor stuff was like next level. I was like, "where did this come from?"

[00:22:26] John: I'm with you. And there are like issues of Namor where it looks like it was drawn in an afternoon. I was still so on board because I was kind of not necessarily reading a ton of Marvel comics right then. Like, that was when I was like, oh, I got to start picking this up. Just remember, there's been tons of silhouettes and gritted teeth against black things.

[00:22:45] David: Yeah.

[00:22:46] John: So the funny thing about Jae Lee is you got so good after that. You know what I mean? Like I love that stuff, too. I'm with you 100%, and like just being super excited for him... he drew Youngblood Strike File, the 16 pages of Hellshock that he came out in. And I—I love Jae as a person.

[00:23:02] John: Like, he's so great and he's so... you know that by that point, there's like this perfectionist Jae Lee that I'm sure he drew like 40 pages of Hellshock and threw out 24 of them. And I think that was the thing that caused like McFarlane to crack down on all the artists at Image. You can't have a 16-page comic book. Yeah. Like, knowing Jae, I know that he was—there's this like perfectionist side of him that had to have been his... Hellshock's got to be perfect. And you know, I'm not going to do the same thing where it gets done on time but it's all silhouettes or whatever.

[00:23:34] David: But eventually that's because you worked with him on Stephen King's Dark Tower stuff, and he he did a big heavy lift on that one, right?

[00:23:40] John: Yeah. And he drew virtually every issue twice. Chris Eliopoulos could tell stories about having to re-letter pages because he lettered them off of the pencils.

[00:23:48] John: And then by the time the colors came back from Richard Isanove, they were completely different pages. Isanove could tell you stories about that, too, of getting pages on the Friday afternoon where we're going to print that day, and it's a new page 23.

[00:24:01] David: Brutal.

[00:24:02] John: Yeah, it was all Jae trying to make the book better. It didn't always work. I think there's some pages where they were better, some pages where they were lateral moves and some a couple that weren't as good. He was definitely like trying to do that and trying to make the book perfect—it comes from the best place possible.

[00:24:15] David: I read an interview with Bryan Hitch talking about how he spurred on the therapy of his own head. And it worked. Yeah. Dramatically improved his speed. And his pages look just as good today as I think they've ever looked. So it's interesting how that can get in the way of your career.

[00:24:33] John: And how John was working on both of those books right then—like I was. Also, the same thing is true of Ultimates.

[00:24:39] John: There are a bunch of Ultimates pages that you'd see the pencils of, and by the time the inks came in, they were completely different. Same thing. Brian would just get in his head and be like "that page isn't good enough."

[00:24:48] David: They didn't shoot you?

[00:24:49] John: Yeah, well, there were a couple... the whole time I was there, there were a few pages from Ultimates 2 #1 that they'd just cut out of the book. Brian and I think with Mark, it was just like, "yeah, we're just not going to use these." And then those pages were sitting behind my desk for a couple of years.

[00:25:06] David: Oh, you should have kept them.

[00:25:07] John: Actually, you know, the other thing that was back there to bring it all full circle, also, the Nowlan Man-Thing story didn't come out for years. That that one was there at my desk. I didn't I didn't do anything on it. That was just happened to be where the pages were stored.

[00:25:20] David: Ralph Macchio used your desk as a storage space for art.

[00:25:23] John: No, I mean, I was in Ralph's office. When we moved offices, everything from Ralph's office had to move into the new office. One of my favorite moments of all time was on Dark Tower #1, sitting there with—it was me and Nicole who was the other one of the other editors on it—and we were sitting across from Jae with his layouts for issue one as John Romita Jr. went through it page by page and was like commenting on the layouts. Because Joe wanted to be really careful and get like, you know, one of the other top storytellers on there. So there's two people that are just masters of the form, but are completely different in the way they're telling stories. And, you know, John would be like, "I wish I could lay out a page like that. Oh, so you could do that? I can't do that."

[00:26:02] David: Oh, that's pretty cool. Yeah, that's not a bad day being part of that.

[00:26:06] John: Yeah.

[00:26:07] John: It was it was really nice. Anything you want to get...

[00:26:12] David: Off your chest?

[00:26:12] John: Yeah. I want to bring us all down. We lost Sam Kieth about a week ago as we're recording this. That's really got me down. You know, it's always sad when somebody dies. Sam Kieth is just such an interesting figure in comics and made so many comics that I really loved. Well, you know what? He was exactly like I was saying with Mike Mignola—that he was one of those artists that they'd pop up on comics here and there and he'd be like, oh, I know this is an unusual issue. You know, like, I know this issue of the Mr. Hyde issue of Incredible Hulk is a weird issue of Incredible Hulk. He he did a lot of stuff early on in this comic called Critters that Fantagraphics published. And they used to have, like, jumbo short stories, and there's a bunch of funny animal stuff. And he would do stories in there.

[00:26:57] John: So, you know, kind of I knew him from that stuff. I don't even remember why, but I read almost all of Critters—like, I got back issues, got a bunch of those. They might have been Usagi Yojimbo arriving at good comic, good Fantagraphics comic. But like his early stuff, he did the third Dark Horse Alien series, Aliens: Earth War, and it was definitely one of those ones where it's like, "oh, this—man, I love Sam Kieth. This is not what he should be doing. This isn't right." I think I didn't know until this week, though, he got Kelley Jones hired to do Alien stuff. Like he was friends with Kelley Jones. Like they knew each other. I knew they grew up together or something. They knew each other from being the same age or something like that.

[00:27:33] David: I do think that they knew each other as in their youth. Yeah, I think you're right on that.

[00:27:37] John: And like, Kelley Jones is like—like that's exactly. You should be drawing Aliens, you know. Like, that's exactly right. Yeah. And then, oddly enough, he also followed him onto Sandman, which I would argue... exact same thing. Sam Kieth was probably correct that he was not the right guy to be drawing Sandman, despite creating or co-creating the Morpheus version of the character. And then Sam, when when Kelley Jones came on—like he drew a definitive Sandman, you know? There were several of them that I think are equally definitive, but like, that was one of the "oh, that's what that guy looks like. That's how that cape works."

[00:28:10] David: Yeah.

[00:28:11] John: You know, when Sam finally got the thing that was the right thing with The Maxx. Incredible comic. What an odd, strange comic that still completely functioned and worked in the Image ecosystem of 1992 or 3, and became the breakout mainstream hit of any of that stuff, except maybe Spawn? Yeah, there's sort of a forgotten WildC.A.T.s cartoon, and nobody really talks about the Savage Dragon cartoon, but The Maxx cartoon got a lot of people in... the leg from The Maxx was on this show where your other stuff was all these like hardcore alternative comics guys.

[00:28:46] John: You know, it was up against Charles Burns, Art Spiegelman, and Richard Sallah, you know... and and then also this Image comic, you know. But but it worked, I don't know, crossed all those boundaries.

[00:28:58] David: Your recollection of him is very similar to mine. Yeah. The MTV Oddities show with The Maxx is sort of the feature. I mean, that ran for a long time, but like you said, it was like, what else from that early Image era got that level of acceptance, I guess, for lack of a better term? Nothing else broke out the way The Maxx did.

[00:29:17] John: If you were in comics in 1992, you were in Cyberforce and Youngblood and Savage Dragon, you know what I mean? Like, all of those things were the biggest things that were around in WildC.A.T.s. But if you weren't into comics and you weren't paying attention to that, there's still a bunch of people that came out of there with X-Men '92 and The Maxx, then maybe Spawn, the HBO Spawn show, right? But I mean, even at that time, like HBO was kind of a barrier.

[00:29:44] David: The only other thing that I don't think you mentioned was the Marvel Comics Presents. He had a nice run in Marvel Comics Presents where he was largely focused on Wolverine and, you know, nobody drew every single hair on that furry mutant's body better or more than than Sam Kieth. His version of Wolverine is one of my favorites by far. He's as true to sort of the core concept of Logan and the Wolverine character as any artist has come to render him: short and stocky and thick and hairy, even when he wasn't portrayed that way. That was what everyone said Wolverine was, right? Like in those early days. So I'm going to miss—certainly miss—seeing his stuff, his art. But he left behind a great body of work that I think people will be talking about for a long time. It's... it's sad. Lewy body dementia is what took him down. I didn't know anything about that.

[00:30:46] John: I hope he doesn't mind me saying this... friend of the show, Mason.

[00:30:49] John: His dad passed away from that.

[00:30:51] David: Oh, really?

[00:30:52] John: I don't know how well you knew Sam from the IDW stuff.

[00:30:55] David: I got to be on one call with Sam Kieth. Somebody sent the line to my line, and I ended up talking to him for, like, I don't know, 30 or 45 minutes. I just like random stopped. It was a great call. I really enjoyed it. I mean, I was busy at the time, I was always busy, but I really enjoyed the call. This was like, man, this is The Maxx creator you're talking to. But come to find out, apparently that was a thing that Sam did—like to chat on the phone. So I wasn't like some special recipient of any sort. I just got the the same special. So that was that was fun. And apparently that was not the only time that happened. I was not the only one.

[00:31:32] John: Yeah. I think he was very—I don't know what the right word—I liked "unguarded" about things.

[00:31:37] David: Yeah, that's that's a good way.

[00:31:38] John: Two funny things about that Marvel Comics Presents thing that I like... like the two little funny anecdotes. One is it's really interesting because that was a Peter David script. Like they're a funny pair to work together, but I think they did work together really great. I mean, that's like one of the all-time great Wolverine stories.

[00:31:56] David: It is. And I think at that time—it's crazy to say it—but Marvel Comics Presents, I think was like the number one or at least top three best-selling comics in all comic books when they were working on that story. So I mean, yes, it was a great pairing.

[00:32:11] John: There's a scene in there... I was looking around trying to figure out where I have my copy of it, and I don't know if I have it around here. It might be in the garage now. But there's a scene where—I don't remember the details—like Wolverine goes into the big boss's office and the big boss is sitting at a desk, except Sam Kieth draws it with no chairs. Right? There's just no chairs in the room. Peter David, like, adds a line of dialogue about like, "why don't you sit down?" So "there's no chairs" or you know, something like that. Like he turns it into a power move that the boss is doing on Wolverine.

[00:32:45] David: Nice.

[00:32:46] John: The other story... I don't know if this is true. I love this story. Working Marvel Comics Presents, a FedEx box arrives from Sam Kieth. They open it up and it's got seven pages in there. Not the full eight, but it needs to be. Where's page eight? So they call Sam Kieth. "We left out page eight. Or did you finish it?" and it's "no, it's in there." "It's not... you know it's not in there. Look in the box." So they look in the box and he's drawn page eight on the inside of the FedEx box.

[00:33:15] David: That's insane.

[00:33:16] John: That was the story.

[00:33:17] David: That's pretty funny.

[00:33:19] David: Also totally wild. Yeah, I can definitely see that. That's right.

[00:33:23] John: Yeah, I think that that was everybody's experience and stuff like that and just kind of like a, you know, something with like, you know, Jae Lee and the art... in a real good-natured way. You know what I mean? Like, nobody—I don't know anybody who's ever like complaining about Sam Kieth doing that weird... the weird stuff he'd do. He'd just be like, "oh, man, he inked two-thirds of the page, colored a third of it, and it's done." But, like, yeah, sure, he can handle that now. You know, that's fine. You can do that. I think there's a lot of stories like that. I know, like he'd stepped away from comics. I didn't know... I don't think anybody, maybe outside of some really close friends, knew about the situation. It certainly wasn't well known among people that even knew him reasonably well.

[00:34:04] David: I was surprised to hear that's that's what he was dealing with.

[00:34:07] John: Way too young. And then for one of the all-time greats.

[00:34:11] David: Yeah, great. Way too young. Great.

[00:34:14] John: Yeah.

[00:34:14] David: All right, John.

[00:34:15] John: Get a complete Maxx set out there. I'd love to be able to sit there and read all of The Maxx in one format.

[00:34:20] David: Ooh, a Maxx omnibus. That would be nice. A Maxx omnibus doesn't exist already? Yeah, we definitely need to get that out there. This is morbid... well, maybe, you know, maybe I shouldn't bring it up, but I'm wondering what happens to The Maxx as a property now. What does that look like?

[00:34:34] John: I'm saying this with absolutely no inside knowledge. Other than Scott Dunbier was the guy that made the announcement. I hope this—again, this isn't any knowledge I have—it's like I hope Scott, who had edited the series at IDW (the reprints of it that Ronda Pattison did the colors for), I hope and suspect will work behind the scenes.

[00:34:55] David: That would be really nice.

[00:34:56] John: Honestly hope... that is not a thing I've talked to Scott about. I don't know.

[00:34:58] David: Sure, sure, sure.

[00:34:59] John: I know he was close to Sam and...

[00:35:01] David: Yeah, that's how I found out. I think that's how most people found out about it, is that Scott announced that. Scott Dunbier.

[00:35:06] John: Yeah. Now is not the time, I guess, to think about it, but like, yeah, I do I do like to hope that the catalog of stuff—legacy—is in hands that are going to respect it and help out his wife, who he'd been married to for 43 years, but like hopefully get some money to his estate, people he's leaving behind. Yeah, hopefully.

[00:35:24] David: All right, well, there you go, John. There we go. I think we did a good business.

[00:35:27] John: We'll miss you, Sam.

[00:35:28] David: The good news is, is that you left behind a huge body of work, and people will be able to hopefully enjoy it for a long time to come.

[00:35:36] John: And a lot of people with really good memories of him as a person. Sam was a very endearing guy.

[00:35:40] John: All right. Next week we'll be back. Yeah. Thanks, everybody. Thanks for coming. Bye-bye.

[00:35:46] Outro: This has been The Corner Box with David and John. Please take a moment and give us a five-star rating. It really helps. And join us again next week for another dive into the wonderful world of comics.