[00:00:02] 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] David: Hey everybody, welcome back to The Corner Box. I’m one of your hosts, David Hedgecock. And with me as a host is my good friend God damn it. I’m David Hedgecock and with me as ho is my good friend and transformer Hall of Fame writer, Ed. Oh, John, damn it. I forgot my name. John Barber.

[00:00:43] John: John, how are you doing, sir? I’m excited to see what Ed edits that into.

[00:00:47] David: I’m doing all right. Yeah. How about you? Doing good. I’ve been very busy. I’m getting, we got a Kickstarter coming. In case you didn’t know, uh, comics are very hard. Like you spend like a lot of time writing and drawing and lettering and coloring a comic book and like spending a lot of time doing design work and getting covers and wrangling artists and honing your craft and that’s just like not even 30% of what you got to do. That’s just the icing on the cake. Like the cake is like all the other stuff. Like I got to wrangle printers and get quotes for you know printed costs and figure out shipping costs and Kickstarter websites and all the design elements behind that and figure out all the pricing for a Kickstarter. Then there’s the whole marketing of the thing and that’s what I’m in right now, John. And man, that’s a lot of work. It’s a lot.

[00:01:37] John: Marketing comic books is a lot. It takes probably no coincidence that many of the most famous comic book creators were great marketers of themselves. Yeah, that’s a big part of being at a certain point of things. It seems hard in the world of marketing just as a whole thing is in a weird place I think. Even in the

[00:01:57] David: last year and a half, two years, the things that I was able to do a year and a half ago I can’t do today. The algorithms for on all the social medias are so dialed in now, so tuned in, like you can’t put a link to anything anywhere unless you pay for it. And then there’s just the general signal to noise that you have to compete against. So you have to really have interesting Compelling reasons for people to look at your stuff these days and even when you do it’s hard to Make that case like it in a cogent way with the one sentence that you have to do that With people’s attention spans and just you know the fact that these algorithms are so dialed in that yeah They’re only gonna allow certain things through so anyway John There’s a couple things we want to talk to you about but then I thought maybe we dive into a little bit of a comic book Publishing 101 like I thought I’d walk people through sort of the trials and tribulations of marketing specifically marketing for a Kickstarter campaign Yeah maybe try to help people out in Learning some of the shortcuts that I’ve figured out over hundreds and hundreds of errors and mistakes So other people don’t have to go through all that. So is that a thing? Is that a thing?

[00:03:05] John: We should do all right. I don’t know if the listeners want to hear it David, but I do

[00:03:09] David: Well, there you go. We’re probably hearing it in ourselves, John. That’s already been made very clear.

[00:03:13] John: Well, yeah, I guess so. Like you said, the rules that everybody had adapted to over the proceeding, like 10 years, all have disappeared in the last few in terms of using social media. Even if you do pay for the stuff, I don’t think the eyeballs are there to make that a really worthwhile thing. I don’t know. Do people go onto Twitter or X or any of the other sites try to find out about stuff still?

[00:03:39] David: That’s a great question and I don’t know the answer to that, but I’ll get into the numbers with you in the audience. We can kind of like maybe suss it out together. But before we get into all that, John, we had an Eisner-nominated journalist on our podcast last week, David Harper. I feel like we did not maximize the potential of that. I agree. I felt like I was off last week.

[00:04:02] John: So much stuff I learned asking. I was a little frustrated at the end.

[00:04:05] David: It was like, Oh man, we blew it man. We were like amateur hour big time. David Harper was a joy to talk to and I really hope that he’s willing to come back because I did not want to just talk about the Eisner nominations. There’s so many other things I want to talk to him about. So hopefully people got had a little fun listening to that though. It’s kind of fun to deal with Eisner talk every once in a while, but I don’t know. I wish we had, uh, I wish we had used our time a little bit better. There’s a lot more things that I wanted to ask David about what he’s up to than the Eisner’s.

[00:04:37] John: Yeah. I feel like this is the first one of these move really, uh, at least talked about where it was like, I feel like we didn’t live up to our potential there, David.

[00:04:45] David: Through no fault to David’s though. David was a, David was a true nerd at all. And yeah, he, he did great. It was, it was us that maybe dropped the ball a little bit. Man, the time just crept up on us. So we just did not realize how fast things were going. I guess time flies when you’re having fun.

[00:04:59] John: - Yeah, that happens. This will take forever though then.

[00:05:05] David: - So anyway, did you hear the news, Johnny? - What’s the news? - Martel’s got a new head honcho.

[00:05:12] John: - I know a few people would say this. Like Dan was, Dan Buckley was probably the best manager I ever had, one of the best bosses I ever had. He’s somebody I’d follow to the gates of hell. Sorry to see him going. I hope he’s going off and doing something good. and fun and spend time with his family and do all that.

[00:05:30] David: I’m sure there was a bit of a pushing out the door, but it also seemed like it was not entirely Dan’s decision. Like it sounded like more of a, I mean, the dude’s been doing it for 25 years. It sounds like maybe it’s more of a time for me to do something else or just be on vacation

[00:05:46] John: for the rest of my life. Yeah, but it does get into some of the same stuff I think we were talking about with Mike Richardson leaving and that sort of shift from my comic book people to media people running stuff. Which is kind of funny because I think if you look at DC that’s not what’s happening. I think Marie Javan is a comic book person, totally. This is weird, I know we’re supposed to be talking about Dan. Marvel. But James Gunn was probably two career instances away from being Greg Pak, like being somebody who’d worked in film, but then really made his name in comics. And I bet he’s aware of that, not aware of it, but maybe he thinks that way too, but he definitely has a respect for the comics and the people that make them and the things that make the comics interesting and not just tie-ins to the stuff he’s doing. That’s my biggest worry, is that this stuff goes further into that direction.

[00:06:38] David: The Dan Buckley is not a was not a comic book guy when he came in into Marvel, right? He was a corporate guy, right? No, no, he was at Marvel in the 90s. Oh, he was? Yeah. He was part of the

[00:06:48] John: Marvel drinking crew in the 90s. Like him and Sven Larson just fell over. Where did he come

[00:06:54] David: up from? What part of the company was he coming up from? He might have been in marketing. That was

[00:06:58] John: in the era when the marketing department was Peter David. You know what I mean? Like those are comic book people there. I’m not saying that he wasn’t a smart business person. That’s why he wound up going there. But he’s also somebody that understands making a comic soup to nuts and and lives in that world.

[00:07:14] David: I always assumed Dan Buckley was coming from an outsider sort of perspective, like maybe general publishing experience, but not comic book specific. So that’s interesting to note. I didn’t know that.

[00:07:25] John: Yeah. I mean, I think he had other experience. You left Marvel, went on to other stuff, came back late-Gemma era, I think.

[00:07:33] David: Yeah, that sounds about right.

[00:07:34] John: Yeah. And you became publisher. It was after Gemma’s left again, Guy Caro took over as publisher or took over that role president, publisher, whatever it was at that role. And then he left and Dan kind of assumed that, kind of him and Joe were sort of the main forces. Like Dan tried to stay out of the creative stuff and work on the business stuff.

[00:07:52] David: - The new people that they’re bringing in seem like they’ve got good experience. It’s outside of the comic book stuff, much like what we saw at Dark Horse as well. But it seems like they’re competent dudes with good experience. - You know, at this point for Marvel in particular, try anything, try it all right now because Marvel’s just not clicking, for me at least. Correct me if I’m wrong, John, but I think I just read that DC’s got, has now got the largest market share. It’s hard to get these numbers now, you know, because we’ve got multiple distributors and whatnot, but I think that’s probably safe to say that DC’s probably got the largest share with the Absolute Line and the DC Compact Editions. I think it’s safe to say that they’re probably number one right now. And I don’t think that’s ever happened in the entire history of me reading comic books. I don’t think that, I think it’s been a rock solid like 40 year run of Marvel being at the top. So this is a wild change in the order of things.

[00:08:50] John: - Yeah. - Unlike Rob Liefeld, I don’t blame Matt on Dan. I could definitely see business wise wanting to make some moves on that. I mean, I don’t know. I don’t know, it’ll be interesting to see how things shake out. Disney right now has two big tent poles, neither of which are functioning the same monetary heights that they were when they were at their heights with Star Wars and Marvel. And they’re both like sort of separate entities, you know, Lucas and Marvel are still maintaining a great degree of independence. And I wonder if they’ll ever make a move against that, you know, kind of pull the main line into Disney. DuckTales doesn’t have its own publishing

[00:09:23] David: division, you know, should Spider-Man? I don’t know. It’ll be interesting to see where it goes with these new hires. It certainly seems like having Marvel move closer to just being absorbed fully by Disney seems like a more possible thing today than it was two months ago. Not saying that that’s gonna happen. I still don’t think that’s quite where things are at, but certainly that is a direction that it could be heading. I wanna give us some flowers, John, because there’s a couple of things that we talked about recently. one, Dark Horse. Michael Richards is then stepping down as the publisher of Dark Horse. And the announcement of that that came out of Dark Horse was for me the most corporate speak announcement, like, you know, like full of words like synergy that I’ve ever heard or ever read. And it was amazing. And it’s a corporate speak. I don’t know if it was the intent of the press release, but my immediate reaction to that, as we discussed, was Dark Horse is not going to be a this vertical tentpole strategy across different media’s thing. And that was the worry. And it seems like, unfortunately, it might be already starting to go that direction because Dark Horse has announced that they’re shuttering all of their, the last three of their comic book stores, things from another world, I think was the name of the stores, it stinks. That’s three less comic book shops, which right away stinks, but in a larger sense, in the language that came behind the shuttering of those stores was, “Oh, we’re not going to spend any time on this comic book shop thing because we’re going to be busy making games and video games and movies and stuff. So we don’t have time for these little comic shops.” That’s a bummer. That pulls the focus away from comic books and puts it on something else. That’s a bummer to me.

[00:11:17] John: I could also imagine there being new management coming in. You sometimes find things that were very important to the management before. There could be financial sinkholes. It could even just be as simple as that. I was looking through the Dark Horse solicit for the month and they’ve got some big announcements in it, like Tom King is coming over with the whole crew that did Vision over at Marvel. I think they’re launching some Marvel books that Chris Riles edited. Sorry, I see them closed.

[00:11:44] David: It does seem like they’re doubling down on some of the comic book stuff, launching new comic book stuff too. So maybe there’s energy there and I don’t want to cast too many aspersions. The jury’s still definitely out, but I was sad to see that. Just if anything else, three last comic book shops in the world is no good for anybody.

[00:12:00] John: Totally agree.

[00:12:01] David: The other thing I think we should give ourselves some flowers on, John, you know, we had David Harper on the show and our listeners know now that I’m a big fan of David and I subscribe to his blog or his website, sketch.com, s-k-t-c-h-d-e.com. And I listened to his podcast. He’s got a really cool podcast called Off Panel, where he interviews a bunch of people. And so his most recent interview on Off Panel was with comic book writer Mark Wade, who we’ve kind of been talking about recently. I wanted to listen to it because we’ve been talking about him and how you and I were saying like, man, it’s pretty impressive. This guy has been around for 30, 35 years. Still at the top of the pile. That’s a really hard thing to do for anybody in any job. And he seems to still be doing it with ease. So I wanted to listen to him talk and David Harper asked him point blank that, that exact question, like how are you staying? How do you stay relevant? Essentially? How do you, how do you keep getting jobs? You know, after doing this for so long, his response was character, which I thought was interesting. His focus has always been on the characters on these big companies. You know, his plot is a less important thing to him. He’s focused entirely on characters. So that was interesting. But the thing that he said that I, where I want to give us some flowers as he was talking about David asked him what’s it’s like working at DC right now. And Mark said that it’s never been better. And, and he gave sort of all the credit to Marie Javans, the current editor in chief, and you and I called that out like a year ago at this point where we were seeing, you know, the needle, you know, sort of pointing up for DC. And we both, I think agreed that that comes from a place at the top. Marie’s been in that seat for a couple of years now. It takes a couple of years for your influence to sort of show up when you’re an editor in chief. And so I think we’re just now seeing the fruits of her labor in the last year and a half, starting with the absolute line, the cop act editions, all the other stuff, now this new first wave. But Mark seemed to be confirming that in his interview, saying that it’s never been a better time to work there. Of course, he’s biased because he’s getting a lot of work there, but he said editorial seems all like for the first time in the entire time he’s been working with, ever worked with DC editorial team all seems like they’re on the same page, they’re all rowing in the same direction, and they all seem to be enjoying the work.

[00:14:17] John: And they seem to be doing a great job of not jettisoning things that work well. This isn’t like when a new regime comes in at a TV network and they’re like, “Okay, all the shows get canceled.” There’s a few things that are still going. I know they’re doing another Mark Wade, Chris Sommey, Batman Robin year one.

[00:14:35] David: I didn’t know that. Is Sommey coming on again? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, fantastic.

[00:14:40] John: Yeah. I feel like they’ve been doing a good job in going through the line of their young and middle grade and young adult reader books and re-releasing some of those, you know, and putting some of those back out. I think that’s really smart. Like, especially at a company that’s been around as long as DC has, there’s some stuff that just gets like locked away in the vault and you kind of forget about it. I think they’ve been doing great and changing the stuff that hasn’t been working, doubling down on the stuff that has, and taking, you know, cool chances and stuff. Here’s the funny thing about Mark Waid. I was reading a bunch of weird comics last week or so, random stuff. One of them was this book that I’d read before, which was Secret Origin Special Number One from 1989, which was the Batman Villains issue. It has this Brian Boland cover. I remember that. Yeah. Great issue. Edited by Mark Wade. And here’s the package that Mark Wade put together. In 1989, the year of the Tim Burton Batman movie is Neil Gaiman writes a framing sequence and a Riddler story. The Penciler is escaping me, but Kevin Nolan inks it. Then there’s an Alan Grant, Sam Keith, Penguin story. Then a Neil Gaiman, Bernie Muralt, Matt Wagner, Riddler story, colored by Joe Matt.

[00:15:57] David: Fantastic.

[00:15:59] John: And then a Mark Verheiden, Pat Broderick, Two-Face story. What an issue.

[00:16:03] David: That is a rock solid creative group right there, yeah.

[00:16:06] John: I bought that when it came out and I was buying my copies of Starlog magazine to see the photos of what Michael Theiten was going to look like in the movie. I was in middle school, like right in the middle of junior high. And then here’s Mark Wade now. Both of us excited about him writing another Chris Sommey comic, you know, like, all right.

[00:16:27] David: It’s impressive, man. The guy had a really rock solid run. I think if Guerrilla Comics had actually become a thing, like he would be even bigger than than he is and he’s pretty big. - Yeah, John, do you remember the Prince Batman soundtrack?

[00:16:39] John: - So I still have a ringtone on my telephone because I never turned it off after people stopped using ringtones, right? I still have it. My ringtone is a clip from a B-side to the Scambellus sex suite, an EP that came out off of the Batman movie soundtrack. Do I know the Batman movie soundtrack, David? Oh boy. Let me set the way back, machine. And in the summer of 1989, If you were really into house influenced pop music on the subject of Batman, there was a can’t miss album that summer. So go ahead and tell us about it, David.

[00:17:12] David: No, I think I want to leave that to the experts in the room. Not me. I just remember you were talking about the Starlog images. I remember the magazine where it was like, like you were like, man, what is it going to look like? What’s it going to be? And I remember the Batman soundtrack coming out before the movie. And that was like a big deal because there was also a Batman video that was attached to it. And that was amazing. That stuff was amazing.

[00:17:36] John: With Gemini, it’s a character Prince was portraying in the video.

[00:17:40] David: That’s right. Pretty bad about that. Oh man, that’s amazing. We should talk about what we read last week. I keep saying last week, but I think it’s what we read this week.

[00:17:53] Outro: Here’s what John and David read this week.

[00:17:59] David: You gave me a little preamble to what you can talk about. I was instantly excited. So I feel like you need to go first because I can’t wait to hear about your reading adventure this week. What a fine, fine, fine, fine choice you’ve made. I couldn’t applaud you more. I completely forgot about this publishing run.

[00:18:16] John: I read the first issues of a line of comics that came out in, uh, I think 1993 called Razor Line that came out from Marvel Comics. The idea was that Clive Barker, horror maestro, hellraiser creator, and writer-director, we would create four superhero concepts, then other creative teams would make into comic books that would come out. I don’t know why I didn’t read these. You know, I mean, I was reading a lot of stuff in those days. I was into Clive Barker in those days. I think it might have just been that he didn’t actually write any of them. The creators weren’t necessarily big names. A couple of them would go on to be very big names.

[00:18:55] David: the seats it was a Steve Scrochi in there yeah yeah so it didn’t like one of the Wachowskis like yes how it wasn’t one of the Wachowskis and I can’t remember I think that was the one that I actually read that one the four comics

[00:19:08] John: were a hokum and Hacks coaches by Frank Levine and Anthony Williams with Andy

[00:19:14] David: Lanning no inking so you know who that is there’s so there you go good old Andy love that guy we should have Andy on the show sometime have you read any of these It’s horror, so I wouldn’t have read it. As soon as you said it, I remembered that whole line. Yeah. Even back in the day, I was sort of interested in it, even though it was horror. But I think the way those books were talked about at the time made me not dive in. Because the fact that Barker wasn’t actively, like super actively involved in writing them, seemed to cast a pall on the whole line, at least, you know, peripherally, like people who weren’t reading the books. I don’t know what experience was if you were actually reading the books that they were good or not, but the media coverage for what it was a comic shop news and you know, whatever Seemed to like disparage the fact that you know, oh is just some outside movie guy not a comic book guy He’s not even writing and he’s just throwing out some of his, you know Secondhand concepts for you know Marvel to try to turn something into so it just felt like the momentum of those stories was like, I don’t know, DOA.

[00:20:19] John: And there’s also the fact that they’re all like batshit crazy and impossible to describe. That couldn’t help either. Well, yeah, maybe there was a- I mean, “Hokum” and “Hex”, what do you guess that’s about?

[00:20:29] David: Uh, I’m gonna guess “Buddy Cop” film with a horror bent.

[00:20:32] John: No, there’s a single main character, nobody’s named “Hokum” or “Hex”, that’s not even a phrase that’s used in it, it’s just sort of a general descriptive term of the sort of

[00:20:40] David: thing that might happen in this comic. Fantastic, and I’m much more into this already. So there’s a lot of decisions like that.

[00:20:46] John: You know, and Hokep and Hex is actually pretty good. Frank Levise wrote Atomic City Tales for Ed Epic. He wrote some Hellraiser stuff, I think, or some– because Epic at that point had the Hellraiser license, so they were doing these Hellraiser anthologies, sometimes with super good people, because of Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean’s story in there. I keep bringing up Neil Gaiman like it’s OK.

[00:21:05] David: I mean, in 1989, it was OK. Yeah, Neil Gaiman was OK in 1989. Well, at least we didn’t know he wasn’t OK in 1989.

[00:21:12] John: He’s not involved in this. One of the things that really holds up about the Razor line of comics is Neil Gaiman’s non-involvement.

[00:21:20] David: That’s good. Wait, so why did you bring him up then? I’m confused.

[00:21:23] John: He did work on the Hellraiser stuff. I was just saying the quality of the Hellraiser stuff.

[00:21:26] David: Oh, okay.

[00:21:27] John: Then there’s a Saint Sinner, which reads the comic book adaptation of the summary of the comic, if that makes any sense. It launches with this thing called First Cut that has four short stories from each of the creative teams. And then the actual comics round robin each have a preview of a different comic. So you can get the same comic book stories just by reading all four comics, but you don’t have the one that you’re in. Right? So before you go any further, I gotta ask,

[00:21:56] David: did you just buy like the entire how did you get your hands on this people need to know.

[00:22:00] John: So I was buying something else any day. And I was looking to see what else I could get mixed in with my shipping. If I was gonna buy anything, it gets even sillier. Actually, There’s a 90s comic called Mavericks that’s a Youngblood sort of looking small press thing. And all the stuff that we’ve been talking about with this made me interested in that. And searching for that led me to the Maverick series that I had never been aware of that Wilfred Santiago drew. And I’m like, “That’s weird.” Like I didn’t know he did like Marvel Comics and this kind of looks kind of cool. So I was looking at that and I’m like, “Oh, hey, Ecto Kid. I’d buy it. I wouldn’t mind reading the first issue of Ecto Kid.” And I was like, “Well, what if they have the other ones?” And they did. So I just bought the first issues of all of them. Each issue is printed on non-metallic, right? So it’s all exulfamic metallic. Some of it not metallic-coated, though. And then an incredibly, incredibly elaborate embossing. Like a–and this is like stunning embossing. I’m not kidding. The character is drawn just a black silhouette with stars on him. He has abs in the embossing.

[00:23:04] David: His chest muscles are popping out of the cover, even though that’s not rendered in the line art itself.

[00:23:10] John: And excellently. Like, I’m not, this isn’t like one of those things where it’s like, “Do you believe they did this?” No, I mean, it’s like, wow. Somebody really put some effort into that, did it just right. It looks great.

[00:23:19] David: Do you think they had some sort of underdrawing as a guideline for that thing?

[00:23:22] John: I don’t know. And I don’t know why. It doesn’t help anything. Like, this guy having, like, his hair texture being embossed doesn’t do anything.

[00:23:30] David: Oh, wow. Like, this guy’s got a luscious head of long black hair and it’s fully rimmed, embossed. Like, the strands of the hair are embossed. That’s amazing.

[00:23:41] John: I was working on a, as we’ve mentioned here, I do sort of advertising type work that involves comic book stuff. And I did this incredible bit of production on one of the comics where this thing printed in black and white and the black and white printing is excellent. Like what I did was real smart and it worked really well. And why? Is anybody ever going to pay attention to that and say, “Hey, John, this thing your name isn’t actually attached to. You did a great job on it.” No, no, no, I just did it. Somebody had to have done that with this and just been like, “Man, I really care about this. I really care about how good the Epto kid cover is going to be. And I’m going to knock it out of the park.” And then they did. And everything worked right on these covers. These covers are terrific. Say what you will about chromium and all that stuff. And this is right in the height where the intersection of Clive Barker fans and people like mad about embossed covers and metallic ink and all that kind of stuff were busting totally at crossroads. You know, like a year later maybe there’s the issue of Invisibles that has the “dehanced” cover where it’s printed on grocery store paper with a “veteranzine,” you know? I gotta think this thing that turned out great had to have been at cross purposes with who might have been reading this comic. But “Hokkaman Hex” is about a stand-up comedian who winds up getting these magical powers and has to fight an alien invasion. “St. Sinner” was kind of the one I was most looking forward to. It’s got this really dark art by Max Douglas. Elaine Lee wrote it. She wrote “Starstruck” that Mike Kaluta drew for a long time. You took the essay in the “Razor Line” first cut that Clive Barker wrote, explaining what the premise of the series was. And maybe that’s all Clive Barker wrote. I’m a little fuzzy on that. That literally been what the thing was. It just lays it out there. Like a character gets imprisoned for seven years, and then the door opens and he’s like, “Oh, I’ve been imprisoned for seven years.” You know what I mean? Like there’s not like the story of him finding out how long he’s been imprisoned for or something. You know, it’s all those like weird little short beats that aren’t there, just goofy. Hyperkind, it was sort of the attempt to do a straight X-Force style superhero team. - But with horror? - All of these are superhero, but they’re horror influenced, except Saint Sinner, Which obviously isn’t. But the rest of them are… St. Cenner, a guy that has a demon and an angel in him and they both fight for control over him. You’re sorta kidding. But in a roundabout way. Clive Barker was really always more of a dark fantasy writer after you got out of Books of Blood. This just kind of moves that over to doing superhero-ish stuff. The premises are good. And then the execution isn’t bad either. Spoiler alert to get to the end of this thing. This is Fred Burke who worked with Clive Barker. He wrote the Clive Barker Illustrator books.

[00:26:27] David: He wrote this one. You’re not a comic book guy though.

[00:26:29] John: No, but comic book adjacent. But yeah, my snobbishness about comic book people. I don’t mean to be like a gatekeeper on that.

[00:26:36] David: I’m totally gatekeeping, especially in that era.

[00:26:38] John: Paris Cullen’s pencils it, but there’s a special thanks to Mark Picella. Mark Picella is the guy that took over X-Force immediately after life. I’ll stop insulin. Yeah, he did. Life-lotted stuff. Doom 4, which I’m sure you have original art from.

[00:26:53] David: I don’t have the original art, but man, I wish I did. Of the Extreme Studios guys, there’s two guys that I can’t seem to, like, I don’t know if it’s my luck or what, but one is Possela and the other is Chapie. I cannot get his stuff. And I’ve actually conversed with Chapie over email. Like I’ve managed to get his contact information. And he responded to me like we had a nice conversation over email and he was willing to part with some stuff, but that was the end of it. I could not pull anything out of them. I got the impression that Chap had the stuff like in a plastic bin somewhere and it was just too much work to actually get into the garage and get to it.

[00:27:37] John: That’s hilarious.

[00:27:38] David: I don’t know. I’m just making that part up. I have no idea. It was a thrill to talk to him, but I wasn’t able to get anything out of him. Back to Hyperkind. Paris Collins, Mark Picella. Special thanks to Mark Picella, and I don’t know what that means.

[00:27:53] John: My guess is one of two things, either Mark Picella laid out or helped lay out the books because this reads like a Mark Picella book. I mean that in the best way possible, you know what I mean? Like I actually really enjoy those books. Like Liefeld Extreme kind of stuff. Oh yeah, I don’t know how you can extreme studios. I just mean like the extreme camera angles and close-ups and stuff. But with this, like a sort of, I don’t know what to, I don’t know the right word to describe it like the sort of eyes and arasque lack of panel borders and stuff like it isn’t like stuff breaks panel borders there just simply aren’t any and you kind of have to follow where the story goes but this isn’t like this isn’t like when somebody comes on and does those two image comics will just do draw it terrible like this isn’t what’s happening here this is being drawn in that style so either either Priscilla did the layouts or Paris Cullen’s just like full-on embraced that this is the style I’m gonna do to the degree that he he He had to thank him.

[00:28:43] David: I mean, I had to know. Let’s put it in context. These books are coming out between ’93 and ’95. There was no… Everyone was copying the Rob Liefeld Extreme Studios stuff at that point. Yeah. Everyone was trying to figure out what the secret sauce was there to sell books. Nobody was moving more books than Rob Liefeld in that moment. Between ’93 and ’95, he was on top of the heap.

[00:29:04] John: Yeah. This thing is just… It is nonsense. It’s a bunch of teenagers. But it like oddly oddly under control in a lot of places but like a bunch of teenagers But all seem as though they’re written like you or I just sat down and wrote teenagers right now Not trying to be like naturalistic about it, but really trying to be like, uh, you know, hey six seven You know like all this stuff. It’s like a few years out of date or a few months out of date There just makes it so out of date. Yeah, I don’t know something like that. This is a The thing that I think of when I think about this comic now is that here’s this sequence where this dude with the beard gets blasted or something and then this other dude with the beard shows up. And then one dude has a white beard and the other dude has a brown beard. They’re not related, they just have beards. That’s a similarity between them, right? It isn’t like they’re twins or something, but they look the same. And then in this sequence, I believe the wrong one starts telling the story of the history of the world and a two-page spread. Because they colored the beard drawn? Possibly. It looks a little bit more like the other guy’s beard. So I think Paris Cullens might have drawn the wrong guy. Or…

[00:30:09] David: Okay. Perfect.

[00:30:11] John: Or Fred Burke misinterpreted the drawing and scripted it the wrong way. Whatever the case, I believe the wrong guy is telling the story in the bonk to himself on the following page.

[00:30:21] David: It’s not just those small oops either. It’s a double page spread with a giant head on one side of the page clearly defining who is talking and also a large amount of exposition on that page like explaining stuff. So it’s not a small error here that we’re talking about people. We’re talking about a big, big problem. Oh man. And this was the most overtly superheroy. It’s

[00:30:42] John: very 90s superhero. And the backstory is that there were pre-90s style superheroes. The modern stuff definitely threw the lens of Clive Barker. And the last one is by far the best. This is one that I definitely want to check out more of. It’s a Ecto kid. Steve Scroci, as he said, did the art. The first three issues of it are actually written by James Robinson, who would shortly after this go on to write Starman. And he kind of, I feel like his star really started to shine on Firearm at Malibu. Like that’s when people started talking about him. This is like a better book than you

[00:31:16] David: were going to think it was. That’s a deep cut. Firearm from Malibu. That’s a deep cut. It was

[00:31:24] John: It was an artist that was good, they got people to look at it, and then they started to wear Robinson in terms of being better than you needed to be. But then Lana Wachowski comes on on issue four, writing it, “The time is Larry Wachowski.” And that was way before Bound, obviously before The Matrix movies. Thus began a long-running collaboration between Scrochi and the Wachowskis.

[00:31:46] David: Yeah, that’s crazy. That’s gotta be where that relationship was formed, right? Like I can’t imagine it was coming before that.

[00:31:54] John: This stuff’s definitely the most coherent and well-rendered, I think. Not that Paris Collins isn’t good or whatever, but that book is so goofy. It’s this kid that can see a mystical world out of one eye and the regular world out of the other, and he’s kind of, in this issue, he’s just getting his powers, so he’s just figuring out how that works and stuff. One of the funny business things about this, like looking at the copyright page or the Anisha is that all of the material is copyright and trademark Clive Barker, except for Razorline, which is owned by Marvel. But like nothing in it actually refers to Razorline. There’s nothing in the stories that that is related to. It was just a brand name or something. Theoretically, Marvel could go out and publish other Razorline books.

[00:32:39] David: Yeah, it just wouldn’t have the Clive Barker brand inside of Razorline.

[00:32:42] John: It could almost be like a sub imprint. It seems to be ownership wise the same way, I don’t know. Dave Stevens didn’t own Pacific Comics when he was doing the Rocketeer.

[00:32:53] David: You’ll never see these books reprinted, Dan, because these are all, Marvel doesn’t own this stuff. So they’re never going to reprint this stuff.

[00:33:01] John: Well yeah, I’m curious what the deal with Clive Barker on it is, especially seeing Boo just launched a bunch of, they had their big hellraiser relaunched, but their new solicit three facsimile editions coming out of that set. Yeah, so if you want your facsimile edition of Pinhead number one, that’s common.

[00:33:22] David: Maybe we’ll see it in that way. Yeah, if Barker owns it, it’d be great.

[00:33:26] John: And these really are. They’re interesting, weird concepts that I think got like kind of dashed against the beach of there being way too many comics out there. They’re not being an audience for this kind of comic. And it launching it like it was going to be a huge thing in the sense of having these chromium covers and all this stuff. Like when that was not what it was, this could have been a quieter vertigo kind of thing. You know, like a vertigo take on superheroes or something, not a splashy in your face competing with Ultraverse and Image and Valiant and everything.

[00:33:59] David: Hey everybody, it’s David and I want to take a break for just a second to talk to you about my new book, Super Kaiju Rock and Roll of Wry Fun Time Go, Ooji Pangu Flames. This is the story of Harmony, Lyra, Melody, Cadence, and Viola, a gown on their luck all-girl garage band, turned Rolodervy Divas, who just might be the only people on the planet that can save it from total annihilation at the hands of giant kaiju monsters of mass destruction! Super Kaiju Rokon-Rolodervy Funtime Go is a glorious mash-up and revitalization of 70s pop culture beats, from Black’s exploitation films to Saturday afternoon kung fu cinema to kaiju movies. a wildly successful Kickstarter original graphic novel series featuring incredible creative talents such as myself and the amazing interior art of Rolo Maata. The book “Three Kickstarters” is now live. We have some great cover artists that have joined us for this one. Chuma Hill, who has been covering Absolute Wonder Woman, Absolute Batman, and Superman recently has done a cover for us. We also have works from Netadeas, the lead story artists for The Uncanny X-Men and of course the all-time great Jean Brothers who are the interior artists for Miss Nina and The Midnight Guardians. Go to git.funtimego.com that’s git.funtimego.com and check out everything about the book. Also we have a very special VIP offer if you want to throw a dollar our way. The VIP offer basically gets you access to a 30% discount and also there’s some special pledge tiers this time that only VIPs are going to get access to and we’re doing special limited edition items that only the VIPs will have access to. So that’s get dot fun time go dot com. Book three Kickstarter campaign is live right now. If you have enjoyed the show, the best way to support John and I are to buy our books. Thank you so much for listening and thank you in advance for your support. Get dot fun time go dot com. The Book 3 Kickstarter campaign is live. Alright, thanks everybody. Let’s get back to the show. I’m trying to remember back to that particular time, and I think there was a lot of just a glut, right, of stuff that Marvel’s throwing out. Like in retrospect, Marvel was reeling from losing its six or seven best storytellers. Like DC didn’t lose that amount of talent, seemingly all at once, and Marvel did. DC got hammered too. Image Comics was the number two publisher for a while there in all of comic books with seven titles to DC’s 60 titles. And it was embarrassing, right? But Marvel had the added problem of trying to replace all of that. And it took them a minute before they got Andy and Adam Kuber and some of those other guys really firmly entrenched and up to speed.

[00:36:53] John: Yes. But I do feel like there was this– I don’t know how much of a hit X-Force took when Liefeld left, as opposed to it just being additive.

[00:37:02] David: I mean, the X-Men or stuff was still super hot in that era.

[00:37:05] John: It was still like the, I don’t know.

[00:37:06] David: I don’t know what the sales numbers are, but I bet by the time you hit like issue six or seven of X-Force, it’s dropping like a rock. Really? Yeah. About the time, because Liefeld was still plotting, I mean, essentially, I think what happened was, and I don’t know this for sure, but I think Liefeld plotted out the first probably issues like 12 some of it. Yeah, you might be right. It might be more than six. He plotted out several, let’s say a year’s worth of stories. But I think some of that was varying degrees of plot to like probably earlier issues were more detailed plots and then you know, kind of got looser and looser. And you could I just remember reading the book at the time and thinking it was losing its voice. There was a very strong direction that it was all going to. Yeah. And then by the time you get into the end of the first year, you could just feel like it had lost its voice and the new people coming in either didn’t know what direction to go because Liefeld didn’t tell them or they just didn’t care to go in that direction and tried to go somewhere else. Because by the time you get to like issue 20, you’ve got Tony Daniel on there and Tony Daniel’s a fantastic artist, but it’s early Tony Daniel and he’s just trying to be Greg Capullo 2.0 and Greg was trying to be Rob Liefeld 2.0 and it just so it was all just a mess. Just looking at X4 it’s like Liefeld leaves the art,

[00:38:29] John: great when Mark Piscilla comes on, Mark Piscilla goes to image, Greg Capullo comes on, Greg Capullo goes to image, Tony Daniel comes on, Tony Daniel goes to image. All of them getting hired up by other by other artists. I don’t mean like they’re coming in partners or whatever. Steven Platt did five issues at Marvel and then was gone and over at image, overdoing studio stuff. Like they were pulling these artists so fast and there was just like such a rush to get books out. Here’s what I think the problem is, and let me go through the bullpen bulletins real quick here, because this might be just kind of interesting. Here’s what came out that week, that Ecto Kid #1 came out, was Avengers #366, an anniversary issue. Avengers West Coast Annual, Okay. Bloodseed number one. That’s from their wild Frontier line. Okay. Conan issue three of Cyberspace 3000. Okay. Dark Angel number 14. Dark Angel number 14. Well, Death’s Head two pops up everywhere. So Death’s Head two is a hearing in there. Because oh yeah, Marvel UK. They started publishing all the Marvel UK junk here. I don’t mean that it was all necessarily junk. But when you just pile that on to what was already coming out of Marvel and then have these like, you know, oh, we’ve got Death’s Head, we’ve got X-Force showing up. Deadpool number two. Oh, that’s actually the Joe Madd Deadpool one, all right. Death 3, number 104, the description of it here is, “If it’s got a number in the title, it must be British.” So Death 3, did they misprint Death’s Head 3? Is that when Death’s Head 3 came out? I don’t know because right under it is Death Said 2 and Die Cut, number two of four. So understand the character’s name is Death Said 2 and Die Cut, that’s another character. All right, then Doctor Who number 201, Doom 2099. Oh yeah, there’s the 2099 line and they were expanding that all the time too. Okay, Ecto Kid number one, Excalibur number 69. Nice. Fantastic Four Unlimited. G.I. Joe, Incredible Hulk, Mad Dog #5, Marvel Age #128, Marvel Comics, I believe that’s Marvel Comics present. This is one week? This is one week. Marvel Tales #277, Morbius #13. You’re Lord! Punisher #82, Savage Sword of Conan #213. So if you want a Conan book that we got two choices. Spider-Man #38, Spike #3, Spike fights his arch-nemesis. No, it’s not Sugar, it’s Sonya. I don’t know what that is. Super Soldiers #6 with Nick Fury, The Trouble with Girls #4. Oh yeah, because they’re doing a bunch of like, eternity comics, also at Epic, I guess. Warlock and the Infinity Watch #20, What If #53, Wolverine, Bloody Choices, graphic novel. And X-Men #24. That’s that week at Marvel. That’s, I think, a big part of why they were having trouble launching new things, or it seemed like there was a potentially a glut of vaguely British superheroes you’ve never heard of coming out every week.

[00:41:45] David: Yeah, you might have a point there. That might be the bigger problem. I’d do the elephant in his room. That was a lot of stuff I’ve never heard of. I was buying and reading a lot of comics in that moment.

[00:41:58] John: Yes, I was too and ten years later I was working at that company and I I don’t know what most of those things are

[00:42:06] David: Two things stood out in that though Avengers 366. Mm-hmm I think that’s when they were also doing like metallic foil embossed covers I feel like that was and then that warlock in the infinity watch that that actually I kind of like that Was that like was that Tom who’s the hardest on on that warlock in the infinity watch? I Tom Wayney? I feel like it was Tom Wayney.

[00:42:30] John: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you’re right. Okay, I was thinking, yeah, that seems right. Yeah, the number of times there would be a random metallic cover issue is a lot is the number. You know, like, but you know, you got to celebrate the 366th issue of Avengers.

[00:42:50] David: It was Angel Medina on Warlock Engine. He was gonna guess. Let’s see. I thought Tom Wayne was gonna guess. Oh, right. Yeah, he was a good guess. Well, there you go, John. That’s the Razor Line. That’s a great poll. I’m thrilled that we talked about this. And now I’m going to have to go pick up some Razor Line. Oh, none of that stuff lasted very long, right? Like that whole line didn’t last very long. Couldn’t have.

[00:43:13] John: It couldn’t have. Like it lasted long enough to get a second writer that wound up directing The Matrix on one of the John Mates.

[00:43:22] David: Just long enough to do that. Yeah, I vaguely remember being interested in Hyperkind because I kind of like Paris, well not kind of, I like Paris Collins, and I vaguely remember wanting to be interested in I think an Ecto Kid, but I don’t think I actually ever picked it up and bought it, so I might have to check that one out.

[00:43:39] John: Interesting premises, you know, even making fun of them on any levels of stuff, it was still better than a lot of the other stuff that I’ve read from that time period. The concepts are genuinely weird and interesting, you know, they’re weird and interesting now.

[00:43:52] David: Are you recommending this as a read? A corner box? I don’t know. How many corners are you going to give this? Ooh, that’s pretty good.

[00:44:01] John: It’s definitely not a lost masterpiece, but I… So this is something I’ve been really thinking a lot about, is I’ve been kind of… As we’ve been digging into some of the weirder, more esoteric stuff that we’ve been talking about in terms of goofball stuff from the ‘80s and ‘90s, the Floating World comics. Floating World, yeah. A reprint. But there’s definitely a gap between these things and Dark Knight Returns or Watchmen that you’re not like, “Oh my God, this should have been as big as Watchmen,” or something. There’s the interesting stuff from the stuff that was good that wasn’t great, or the stuff that didn’t become canonical, where there’s a lot of interesting digressions into things stylistically or whatever. These things that kind of just… I used to think of them as evolutionary dead ends. It’s just opportunities. I don’t know. They haven’t been followed up. I don’t necessarily mean like a specific character or something. I just mean, here’s a storytelling style that you don’t really see, but that’s actually interesting. There’s stuff you can pull from that and use from that and be inspired by that or whatever or be amused by if nothing else. You know? Definitely that. Yeah. So these are enjoyable. I had a good time reading all of these, although possibly not reading them all in one night would have been a good idea. I was not falling asleep, so I was taking advantage of it, but…

[00:45:12] David: Nice. Sometimes you just want to get to it. I’m going to add that to the list, but the list is very long right now. I think we’ve talked about this a lot lately, but I, and I said I was going to curb my comic buying habit a little bit because I think I have a problem. But if I told you how much money I just spent, uh, with my pre-order over at Challengers Comics, you would probably faint John, because I’m not cutting back, John is the problem here. I think I’m cutting back and I’m not.

[00:45:37] John: I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:45:39] David: Uh, but I’m just reading and I’m, and I’ve got like pop pile that I, that I really want to read. I really want to read this stuff. I don’t have a lot of stuff right now going, “Oh my God, I wish I hadn’t got that.” I’m like, I hardly have anything like that right now. I’m excited about just about everything I got. There’s only so many hours in the day. And most of those hours are spent talking to you on this podcast.

[00:45:59] John: Yeah, so far this one, you’re good.

[00:46:04] David: I think we’re going to have to say the Marketing 101 thing for next time. My read this week is an eight issue miniseries published by the now defunct Action Lab Studios or Action Lab Publishing, which I guess has a bit of a stained history around it. I’m not a hundred percent clear on it. They published an eight issue miniseries by Corey Kalman and Brockton McKinney. They’re the writers and the artist for seven of the eight issues is Devon Roth and the letters were by Dave Dwonch and it’s called America Roddy. John, I think this might be one of my highest recommendations. Really? Of these like trashy comics that we’ve been, we’ve kind of been reading lately. Okay. And not trashy is not the right word, but just these like off the wall, sort of like oddball.

[00:46:49] John: Sometimes it is the right word, David.

[00:46:50] David: Yeah. I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain this, this book. And it’s like Team America, world police mixed with the art style of American dad, right? Okay. And just a dash of like Rick and Morty humor, like thrown over the top of it. He’s the wildest stupidest to come. Look, it is basically just like, think about all those like really bad 80s action movies that you watch, you know, like the straight to VHS or about 80s action, basically the entire Chuck Norris catalog of action movies from the 80s, right? Like from like around like 82 up to like 93, like before he got on Texas Walker Ranger and Can in films like the Canon films catalog. Yes. Yes that Canon films like it’s that in a comic book, but very self aware of what it is. So the whole story is about this like kind of macho Rambo ask you know character who basically solves the world problems through karate like that’s literally like Like the, you know, the heads of the world organizations, you know, call him in and they’re like, we got problems and we need some help. And he’s like, I’ll solve it with karate. The story opens up with a guy on his back in a backpack. And the guy that’s with him has no arms, no legs. And you learn that that guy is his brother. And almost immediately, his brother is killed. And so this just turns into this weird revenge story around, it’s just wild. And that’s just the first issue. And each issue just like gets more absurd, more weird. And he’s battling like weird, crazy villains, like in the most James Bond-esque, the wildest James Bond-esque villains that he’s battling. And again, everything is solved with a karate chop to the face. It’s just I really, really enjoyed it. Like I say, it’s so self-aware. The humor is fantastic. The artwork is great. I think this Devin Roth guy, I don’t think he’s done any other comic books, but he’s clearly got an animation background. He’s got some great storytelling and his art is really fun. It’s very much in the vein of like American Dad or a Rick and Morty art style. And also the same sort of sense of humor, like blending of those two shows. The writers, Corey Coleman and Brockton Rockton McKinney, he wrote the movie, I think he wrote all the movies, Ginger Dead Man. Have you ever heard of that movie? No. Ginger Dead Man.

[00:49:30] John: Oh, okay.

[00:49:31] David: Ginger Dead Man starring Gary Busey. So I kind of went down to Rabbit Hole and watched the Ginger Dead Man movie. There’s like seven or eight of them. And they’re just as frickin’ insane as this comic book, if not more insane. So it was a fun read and it sent me down to a weird rabbit hole of movies as well. So I definitely recommend this one, AmeriKarate. It also weirdly has photo covers. April O’Neill, the actress April O’Neill. Great. - Oh, okay. - She’s in porn. But also April O’Neill, isn’t that the turtle’s–

[00:50:04] John: - Yeah.

[00:50:04] David: - Girlfriend or whatever? She’s so, anyway, it’s all very confusing, but it’s very fun and it’s very cool. And the story is great. The art’s great. Definitely recommend it. If you can find it on eBay. I can’t imagine they reprinted these things. Maybe there’s some trade paperbacks. I got the single issues. They’re a delight. I cracked up and then just the added bonus of the Ginger Dead movies was sort of the cherry on top. So recommended definitely picked this one up. That was my read of the week.

[00:50:32] John: John Brock McKinney. If you did write some Rick and Morty, at least some comics, right? Oh, did he currently you can get it for $3 and 45 cents on Amazon,

[00:50:42] David: but shipping $5 all eight issues.

[00:50:46] John: No, the paperback of it.

[00:50:47] David: Oh, the paper. It might be two trades because was eight issues. So I might just be the first trade but

[00:50:53] John: But yeah, but it’s not there you don’t get prime with it and I thought I had a good corner box tip for everybody But that’s that’s that’s getting pretty close to cover price. I’m gonna read the mains of these ginger dead man films

[00:51:05] David: There’s ginger dead man. There’s ginger dead man to passion of the crust Ginger dead man three Saturday night cleaver. There’s a ginger dead man versus evil bong There’s lots to dig into here folks. You’re welcome. Let us know what you think. It’s fantastic. Couldn’t have been more than 10. So there you go, John. There’s more recommendation for the week.

[00:51:28] John: That’s pretty great. When you see it, it could be good and it could be really bad. Seeing single images of the comic art does not let you know if it’s going to be good or not, if that makes any sense.

[00:51:40] David: It is good. The Devon Roth art is really good. The coloring is great. I think he must have done the colors too, because there’s no colorist credit. the dialogue’s snappy and fun and it’s just super dumb, but in the best possible way. Neat. Alright. Brockton McKinney maybe has something to do with that idea comics now, maybe? Oh, yeah, okay. Sorry, Lucian, we sort of set you up for talking about Kickstarter marketing, but I think we’ll save that for next week. But I promise to talk about that. In the meantime, if you’re listening to this, you’ve already pledged to the Super Kaiju Rock and Roll Derby Funtime Go Kickstarter campaign that’s live right now as you’re listening. But if you haven’t, please head over to Kickstarter and just type in Superkaiju in the search engine and the graphic novel will pop up. We have the first three graphic novels are available so you can start anywhere you want. Choose your own adventure. We got some really cool stretch goals. We got some cool mouse pads and trading cards and t-shirts and all kinds of fun stuff that you can check out. So please go do that. You can also just go to get.funtimego.com and that will take you over there as well. Thanks for your patronage. So hopefully if you enjoy the show, that’s best way to support John and I is to support the stuff that we’re doing. So if you head over to Kickstarter type in super guide you find your new favorite thing. Looking forward to it. Yeah. John’s already done it at this point. Thanks everybody for coming. We appreciate you listening. We’ll be right here. One week from today, same bad time, same bad channel. Every week, like we have for three years now, John, we’re close to wrapping up three years, uh, here on the Corner Box.

[00:53:20] John: That’s, I was old enough to purchase alcohol, right? I won’t get old. You have to be, I forget.

[00:53:26] David: This is not enough for you to drink it. No, at least, at least according to my parents.

[00:53:29] John: No.

[00:53:31] David: Hey, thanks for very listening. Uh, well I can subscribe and we’ll see you here next week on the Corner Box.

[00:53:37] Outro: 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. And join us again next week for another dive into the wonderful world of comics.