[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.

[00:23] David: Hey everybody, welcome back to The Corner Box. My name is David Hedgecock and with me, as always is my very good friend, John Barber. And we are about to embark on the second part of a two-part interview with legendary comic book writer, Steven Grant. Now, for those of you who don't know, Steven Grant is largely responsible for making "The Punisher" probably one of Marvel's most popular characters into the 80s and 90s and through today. Steven's also a long time scribe for a website called comicbookresources.com where he did a couple different weekly articles. So sit back, relax, and listen to the second half of this amazing interview with Maestro Stephen Grant. All right, thanks. Let's go. There's a thing you do in it. The art's gorgeous, but there's a thing you do in the writing that I don't see very much in the medium of comics, and I rarely see it in superhero comics and I really don't think I see it in 1980s, late 1980s, Marvel Comics.

[01:32] John: To the point that it never even occurred to me that this wasn't something that was there, because it's so far not there. But the Punisher in his narration is lying to himself about who he is and why he does stuff. The way that it ends with him laughing, they don't laugh at me. They laugh at the law but they don't laugh at me. My thumb was covering that up when I read that last page and then I like moved my thumb And I literally said out loud, "Holy shit." When I read that line.

[01:56] Steven Grant: That line totally encapsulates the departure.

[02:00] John: Yeah. - Yeah. Nobody wants to go to heaven, but everybody wants to die. Nobody wants to go to heaven, but everybody, yeah, right. The opposite of the way you'd think it would be. Just so twisted in the way he's thinking because he's already thinking they all wanna die because they're coming up. That's why they became criminals. Right, yeah. - I don't know. There's just little bits about him, like not waking up from the nightmare of his happy life with his family. By that point, you see, my concept with that, that I really would, had, I've been left entirely

[02:28] Steven Grant: up to my own device. My intent was to totally abandon his origin story. Not in so much that it didn't happen, but that he doesn't view himself as Frank Castle. In the miniseries, I came up with the name Frank Castle and his, you know, the original family name and stuff, simply because it didn't make any sense that they didn't know who he really was because he was in the military. in prison, they know who he was. So I came up with Frank Castle for that, and then everyone's calling him Frank Castle. Now, in my view, in his head, he doesn't think of himself as Frank Castle. Frank Castle is some guy who died with his family. If people want to call him that, that's fine, because my conception of the character is also he has absolutely zero interest in explaining himself to anybody. He doesn't care whether people understand him or not. It's is irrelevant to him. But he goes through return to big nothing with people calling him castle, and he doesn't care if they want to call him that, they can call him that, that's fine. But he does not view himself as the Punisher, and he doesn't have that connection to... I mean, there is no emotional connection to his family because he has no... He shut off that part of himself. That was a big element of what Mike and I did was that the art in it is very hot and the dialogue is very cold. The narration is very cool because in his head he's simply just reassessing things all the time. If he's got anything that can be resembled a superpower, he's basically a strategic genius on the fly. Not that I'd praise it like that necessarily, but it's, you know, he's a master strategist, but he's always analyzing his situation from a completely analytical point of view. But his body is the thing expressing all the emotion, but you know in his head it's like this such and such and such and such and such and such. And I, there's one thing that we really tried to get across and that for for getting his character across is that it's not a split personality, but there's a divide there. It's like he's the clinical definition of a psychopath, Which is he's totally divorced from his emotions. Yeah, I felt like this really led you to wonder

[04:44] John: Was he like that in Vietnam is his assessment of what he's like in Vietnam accurate? Or was this stuff going on even back then or how much that does and I don't mean to say that you like answer it But like that that comes up in that and just like that question of what that like as Above being just to punish her story and being a story about people. That's an interesting

[05:03] Steven Grant: Yeah, no, I have no answer for you.

[05:06] John: Yeah, exactly. No, no, no. I mean, that's the answer is the comic. And the answer is there is no answer. You know, I mean, I think.

[05:13] Steven Grant: You have to leave some things to interpretation.

[05:15] John: Yeah, right. In the midst of all of this, when did Whisper come out?

[05:23] Steven Grant: Well, it came out in '83. I started it a couple of years earlier, because this goes back to Madison. Some friends of mine, there was a thing that I worked at in Madison, a news distributor called the Wisconsin Independent News Distributor, which was alternative press. And they started distributing comics in like '76, and they brought me in to like just oversee it. And I took my pay in comics because I only went in for like an hour a week. There's no point in asking them for money. But I got all my comics and paperbacks and things from them. Because getting things for free was as good as getting paid. This is the benefit of being in college. Anyway, so when that broke up, A couple of them, Milton Griepe and John Davis, went on and formed Capital City Comics, you know, the distributor, Capital City Distribution. And after they'd done that for a year or so, they decided they wanted, you know, since independent publishers were starting to become this thing, they decided they wanted to put out their own comics. So they asked me if I would create a comic for them. And I said, well, I'd love to, but are you, you know, I mean, I can do it for free, but you'd have to be able to pay an artist. And they couldn't do that. they just didn't have money in the budget to do that. So I sent them off after a couple guys that I knew who were hot to do comics and I didn't know if they had any problems in those areas, in the area of getting paid, named Mike Barron and Steve Roode. So then Nexus ended up being the first capital comics and then it was followed by Badger, at which point they called me up and said, "Hey, we can afford to pay an artist now." So I did whisper for them. I'd come up with whisper actually on a train ride back to the Midwest for a visit because I picked up a book on ninjas and it was just all these weird stories and I thought there's something that could be done with this. You know, I mean I didn't buy into the whole idea of ninjas particularly but I thought, you know, let's do a fake ninja. That'd be fun. I mean I'm not exactly sure how it evolved but I already had the character name in my head before I came up with the concept. So we did that. So But at that point, other comics publishers were going, "Hey, if you're going to publish your own comics, we don't want to run our comics through your distribution anymore because you'll be biased for your own stuff." So they kind of did the math and thought, "Well, you know, there's a lot more money in distribution than in publishing comics, so we're going to have to pay a lot on that." So they ended up selling the comics line to first, sort of selling the comics line at first. But that's how Whisper came about, is they wanted me to do it. And I said, "Yes and no."

[08:00] David: Well, it sounds like you sent them along the path to make the money so they could afford to do it with you.

[08:06] Steven Grant: I don't know if they ever actually made any money off Nexus or not, but popularity of making money do not necessarily amount to the same thing in common. 100% agree.

[08:17] David: I kind of was hoping we could move on into the 2000s and talk about your time online at comic book resources. For me, probably for a lot of people, that was where my interaction with you probably came the most, which I think makes sense because you wrote a lot, a lot of columns. I didn't do even a modicum of research on this. How does that stuff get compiled in 2026? Let me set the stage first. Sorry. So, comicbookresources.com comes online. People discover the internet. And is it general? General Whalen. Starts Comic Book Resources and at some point brings you in. And I think you started with permanent damage, right? That was the first. God, a permanent damage is a second one. First one was a second one. Master of the obvious. Moto was the first one and then moved on to permanent damage. So I'm just interested in how that came about and what the history of that was and how did that, if you don't mind talking a little bit about it, was that a lucrative job for you? Lucrative? No, but it paid for itself.

[09:19] Steven Grant: No, because it was all I advise. where Jonah running his banner ads and you know, it was like a pay a hit or something like that. So 200 a month. All right. But how did that come about? Well, Gail Simone is actually a player in this. Gail had done a column on a, you know, her women in a refrigerator, if you're familiar with that. Right. Oh, yeah. I had made a comment to her about the subliminal elements of superhero comics is that they're all sex comics in that fighting is substitute for screwing. It's the old joke about, not really a joke, it's pretty much true, but about guys who are extremely belligerent are actually, you know, you could make an argument for burying homosexual impulses in fighting. And that's kind of the subtext of superhero comics, which superhero fans very rarely want to hear. But I had had a discussion with her about this, and this led her to recommend me to Jonah to write a column for him about, know, the inner workings of comics. I was more than happy to do that because this is one of the times in my career when it felt like my comics career had probably wound down. And so I didn't really feel I had much to lose. So, you know, I wrote a column and John was kind of startled by the first one because I just sat down and wrote the column, you know, as I just went straight into the thing. And he said, so he calls me up and he says, well, you know, usually when people start these things, they do a little introduction for themselves, and they talk about what the column, what the subject matter of the column is going to be. And I said, "Well, you know, why waste time with that? Just do it and let them find out for themselves." And that's how I approached the thing. So it was pretty much anything that I wanted to talk about, I talked about. And it was, this is how comics really are. And I did some political commentary and such in it. Eventually and I switched over to the permanent damage, which was kind of the idea of a compressed magazine every week. Several different columns in one column is what I'd amount to. And almost always I would, it was due on Wednesday, it came out on Wednesday, so I would think about it very little during the week, and then Tuesday morning I would sit down at my desk and I'd start typing. Often with no idea what I was going to write. And then whenever I had, by the time dinner time on Tuesday night, I'd send a Jonah. And that was how I, I could not tell you what most of those columns contained because I wasn't really paying too much attention while I was writing though. Like that's how that got better. It went on for 15 years, I think.

[12:02] David: Both those columns were pretty influential on me at that time, struggling, kind of a guy in one way or another during that time. And it was always, I found inspiration in those, with both of those I felt like I had some sort of inside track in a way of what was going on, peek behind the curtain kind of thing.

[12:18] Steven Grant: I really, really just wanted to demystify comics because they were an awful, I mean, people still do have an awful lot of delusions about what comics are, you know, how comics are put together and how decisions are made behind the scenes and things like that. Most of it is not what people think it is. And so I thought, yeah, well, why not just tell them? I did get some flack from a few people about, you know, giving secrets away out of school, but a lot of people in the business were just like, "My God, I'm glad someone's saying this," you know. So, you know, it had its benefits. I went back, there's probably a lot of stuff I would cringe at looking at, but I don't plan to reread them, so I'll never have that experience.

[13:03] David: It sounds like you are okay with or accepting of the fact that that stuff lives on the internet doesn't live anywhere anymore.

[13:11] Steven Grant: Oh, well, I mean, if somebody wants to pay me to publish them as a book for them, I'm more than happy to discuss it. It hasn't come up so far.

[13:18] David: It doesn't sound like it's something you're precious about. You understood the medium that you were working in even at the time?

[13:24] Steven Grant: It's probably more that I didn't care than that I understood it. Got it. You know, what happens happens. This is the worldview I've come to take is what happens happens for the most part. Doesn't mean I'm not going to try and influence things the way I want them to be, but if it It doesn't happen, it doesn't happen. This is one that, again, this goes back to pitching comics. When there's 94% of the things that you want to do don't get done, you figure out, okay, well, what happens happens. Yeah, you don't let any of it get too precious. Life goes on.

[13:57] David: Through those columns though, do you think that that extended your career in comic books in any way?

[14:02] Steven Grant: I mean, I don't know that I've had a brilliant career in comics since those columns, But I really haven't needed to. Yeah, you know, it didn't hurt. Let's put it that way. It didn't hurt.

[14:15] David: One of the things that I think was happening around this time was the publisher Avatar got the rights somehow to the original Frank Miller scripts of Robocop. And-

[14:25] Steven Grant: He was negotiated for them. I don't know how exactly, but he got the idea, you know, Bill Christensen got the idea that this would make money and nobody was doing Robocop at the time. And he thought, okay, well, why don't we... He found out that Frank had written scripts, the scripts, the movies that were made from the scripts were not scripts. They were... They had changed considerably. So he got permission and he did whatever the negotiations were and he got permission to do them and to adapt them into comics. And I had done a couple of books for him, a couple of series for him. So he knew that I knew Frank and he said, "Do you want to do this?" And I said, "Yeah, sure." 'cause he was paying me, sure. And also, I mean, the thing is, this is getting back to Classics Illustrated. One of the things that I found out about adaptations is that at one point, Howard Shaken told me that when he pencils, he has to really focus, but when he ain't seeking talk on the phone and listen to music or whatever, it's like he doesn't really have to pay that much attention. I found that doing adaptations of screenplays and things, this actually goes back to doing RoboCop 3 adaptation an Alien 3 adaptation at Dark Horse. I found that adapting film scripts is kind of the comics writer's version of inking. I don't really have to pay attention doing it, so it just kind of, you know, I can just watch it flow. So you know, I was more than happy to work on the things. I'd already adapted Robocop 3 once, so what the hell?

[15:55] John: Right. You're a Moorcock guy, you mentioned. Have you ever read his book, Letters from Hollywood? No. It was like an illustrated book. It's about him. He doesn't mention the name, but it's about him working for Irv Kirshner, RoboCop 2 director Irv Kirshner, and just the amount of frustration that he had in terms of like scripts changing and him coming back. As I always thought of that in relation to Miller's scripts that have been in that. But that's Hollywood. Definitely. A lot of people seem to think that the screenplay gets written in a movie gets made off of it.

[16:25] Steven Grant: And everyone sticks their fingers in along the way. If you can get your screenplay on the screen virtually unchanged, then it's a small miracle. It's not a medium to get into. If you have the idea that your work is sacrosanct, it's the worst business in the world for you.

[16:44] John: Yeah. Yeah. Brian Vaughn had this few years he disappeared from comics where he was writing screenplays that never got made, but making more money than he was making.

[16:51] Steven Grant: Oh, yeah. Now, that's a fairly easy thing to do.

[16:54] John: Yeah.

[16:55] David: Hey everybody, we're going to take just a break here for a minute and talk about my new book that is launching soon on Kickstarter. The best way for you to support the work we do here on the podcast is to buy the books that we make. Kind of a win-win for you guys. You get entertained here on the podcast and then the way to support is to get entertained by a cool book. That book is Miss Mina and the Midnight Guardians, books we have done. So we are kick-starting soon. It features the artistic talents of the Xiong brothers on interiors. They are an amazing art duo. They're It has a beautiful manga-infused influence to it that I find super appealing. I think you guys are going to love it. And we have some fantastic cover artists that we brought on for this one. We have Chuma Hill, who has been covering Absolute Wonder Woman and Absolute Batman, amongst other DC titles. Eisner Award-nominated Ludo Lullaby will return for another cover on this Mina. And we also have Tony Harris. Yes, Tony Harris of Starman and Ex Machina fame. gorgeous painted cover for us. So those are just some of the cool things that we have available for you. We also brought back Jonathan Mayberry, five-time Bram Stoker award-winning author and New York Times bestseller. Jonathan Mayberry is doing an original prose piece in the book that will accompany a backup story that is being drawn by Green Lantern artist Osvaldo Montpeller. Very excited for you guys to see it. The Kickstarter will launch in just a few weeks but the The best way to support us right now is to go to get.funtimego.com and can learn all about the book and you can sign up for our VIP package. The VIP package basically gives you extra special discounts and secret reward tiers that only our VIPs get to see. So it's the best possible way to get access to the Kickstarter campaign when it goes live is to have that VIP in your back pocket. So head over to get.funtimego.com and learn about the book and sign up for our VIP. Thanks so much. Let's get back to the show. Let's talk about the movies because you did have a movie, Get Made, based on a comic book that you wrote, Two Guns, right?

[19:01] Steven Grant: Right. Well, Two Guns was actually started out in like the mid-90s as this idea that I had out of the blue of an entire gang composed of undercover cops who don't know that everyone else in the gang is also an undercover cop. Because if you're an undercover cop, you're going to hide your identity, you know? And you're not going to walk up to other people and say, "Hey, are you an undercover cop? You know, you're just going to assume that they're criminals." I tried selling that idea both to movies and to comics with no-takers, absolutely no-takers. I mean, at that point, you couldn't sell a crime comic to save your soul because this This is when comics were in collapse and nobody wanted to do anything that wasn't ridiculously safe or that they didn't own. '97 or '98 or something, suddenly all the work dried up. And I was sitting there with nothing to do and I thought, "Well, you know, this is another thing that I really like this idea, so I'm just going to sit down and write it as a screenplay," which I did. That's where two guns came out. And I whittled it down to the two guys. That was the less wieldy way to do it. I put that together and I started shopping it around. In 2001, I had somebody very interested in it. And I drove to Los Angeles on a Sunday night for ready to have a meeting on Monday morning. I got up Monday morning about seven o'clock in the morning, took a shower and came out, turned on the TV. And there was footage that they're running on the TV, today's show of planes flying into skyscrapers in New York. and suddenly nobody wanted to talk about any action movies. Well, first of all, the theory at the time was that it's going to be a long time before viewers want to see violent material on screen again. But in the morning, everybody was in panic that of course, if the terrorists attacked New York, Los Angeles would be the next target, you know. And they closed down Disneyland and everybody was like scoring cases of water from their local stores. Everyone was going, "Oh my God, the terrorists are coming next." By the late afternoon, the mood had changed and everyone was getting a little pissed off that the terrorists hadn't come because they were taking it that Los Angeles wasn't important enough for terrorists to attack. So I found that rather amusing. But I squandered the week. So then I went home and puffed it away. And then about 2003, Ross Ritchie calls me up and he says, "Hey, I'm starting up this company called Boom. And I was wondering if you ever did anything with that screenplay you wrote." Now, I don't even remember giving Ross a copy of the screenplay, but I must have. I said, "Yeah, I still got it." He said, "Well, can we change it into a comic book? Adapt it into a comic book?" And I said, "Sure, go ahead." So I just sent them the screenplay and they actually, you know, did all the adaptation. I didn't have to write the book, so that was fun. No. Oh. Interesting. is to move into a movie production. So he went out and he sold the screenplay. And you know, it was one of the more fun projects for me because I didn't have to have anything to do with it. You know, I just sat there and benefited from it without actually having to... I mean, once I'd done the original screenplay and the screenplay they used was not my original screenplay, but everybody was very enthusiastic about the story. It actually went through several iterations before it ended up the way that it was. You know, I'd get a chat once in a while and just sat there and run, "Okay, fine." And Ross did all the work on the thing. I take no credit for getting it off the ground outside of I met with producers a few times. That's where it all came from. It was just another story that I thought, "This is a story I really want to do." So this is what I recommend to people when they talk about doing Hollywood because there's still, it's less now, but for a while there it was really people, "I want to do a comic so I can get it sold to Hollywood," you know, which is... And my advice for them was always just do the comic you want to do and don't worry about Hollywood because take it from me. Hollywood can screw up your story all by themselves. You don't need to do it for them. And it's still a hard concept to get across to people because they all want to bulletproof their stuff, but there is no such thing as bulletproofing your stuff. Right? First of all, you don't know what they're looking for next.

[23:19] John: Yeah. And "Engineer Dime" would be utterly wrong about what anybody wants to see anyway.

[23:24] Steven Grant: It's all a total crapshoot, so you might as well just have the fun, get the fun that you can out of it. Again, what happens happens, you know. Yeah, that's my advice for anyone doing comics is just do the comic you want to do, and don't worry about whether Hollywood will want it or not. 20,000 producers out there and one of them will at some point see your book and go, "Oh wow, this is really a great idea!" Or they won't. It either happens or it doesn't. For years you would see, and you still see it, is people going, "Hey, I've sold my comic for $250,000 for, you know, god, $250,000 fee for, you know, an option." And I was always amused by this because generally the option money that you get upfront, it used to be 10% of whatever they were offering you if you signed a deal. If you've arranged a $250,000 option, that means when they start making the movie, you'll get the money. Other than that, you know, so you'll get a check for $25,000, which of course is nothing to sneeze at, but they don't mention the amount that they're actually getting. They mention what the deal is. Over the years, the amount you'll get upfront has dropped more and more and more. These days you're just as likely to get $500 for an option, upfront money, so they can claim that they own it.

[24:46] John: I remember somebody, I don't want to name names here, but they're creators that you've heard of tracking down the money for a show that had gone to a network series. And then I found out the amount of money they were trying to chase down. And it not only wasn't life changing, it wasn't really month changing.

[25:04] Steven Grant: Everyone thinks Hollywood money is life-changing because you hear the stories about the people who sold a screenplay for a million dollars, which I don't think has happened in 20 years. But by and large, it isn't because they, like anybody else, they want to spend as little money as they can possibly get away with. And if they do want to spend money, they want to put it places where it will be more visible so that people are to attract people. Anyone who thinks they're going to get rich off of Hollywood, yes, it can happen.

[25:33] David: the odds are not good. It still doesn't suck to have written a thing that Denzel Washington is starring in. Oh no, I love it. I was very happy with the movie. It was not an exact

[25:51] Steven Grant: adaptation of what I'd done, but it maintained all the important elements. If they can't do more in a movie than you did in your comic, unless you've written a 20-part series or If they can't do more in the space of movie than you can do in your comic, they're doing something wrong. The space-time of comparative mediums is not comparable. -Yeah, they need a lot more material. ♪♪

[26:18] David: -John, I think we've kept Steven so long.

[26:20] John: -I really want to segue into how you managed to make the Count of Monte Cristo 44 pages on Netflix. -Oh, dear. -But no, no, no. We've probably taken up enough of your time.

[26:30] Steven Grant: Well, I mean, I can tell you in basically insanely. The comics journal described it as a runaway train, and I think that's probably the best description I could come up with. First of all, I mean, it's a story that's entirely subplots, interwoven subplots, and they all depend on each other. So I had to go through it several times. Basically, I played Jenga with it. You knock out this block, and you knock out that block, and you knock out that block, and you hope the towers is still standing. I don't know if it's the most insane thing I ever did, but it was quite an undertaking. If you got time for one more story, when first got the rights to Classics Illustrated, Rick Oliver calls me up. He's the editor right there at the time. He calls me up and he says, "Hey Steve, we just got the right to Classics Illustrated, so what classic do you want to adapt?" And without wasting a second, I just said, "Gravity's Rainbone." First? (laughs) He had silence on the other end of the phone 10 seconds. And Rick, who'd take a kind of a downbeat tone is a general rule anyway. I mean, it was just the way he talked. It wasn't really his personality. But he, you know, slightly exasperated voice. He says, "Ah, we were thinking of something more commonly considered a classic, Steve." And I thought about it for a couple seconds and I said, the naked lunch. Did silence for 10 seconds. Says, "I'll talk to you later, Steve." That was my idea of Classics Illustrated. Needless to say, it didn't really. But then, they, you know, eventually they asked me to do it. The only one that I did of choice, I mean, they asked me to do Hamlet and they asked me to do that. The only one I did of choice was the island of Dr. Moreau because nobody ever adapted the ending of it. And I wanted to actually have the real ending on the story because all the other adaptations, at least the ones I saw, end with him being freaked out and getting off the island. But the story actually ends with him getting back to London and looking around and seeing that all these people around him are exactly like the animals on the island and that they're just beasts waiting to resurface. That's the whole point of the story, which I loved as a kid. And so I wanted to actually get that ending in print, which I did. But that was the only classics illustrated that I really wanted to do. But I did Hamlet as a... Hamlet was interesting too. That's got like a third of the play in it. And probably, I don't know if I got 20% of the Connor Monte Cristo in it. I'm lucky. But 44 pages is not enough to adapt the novel of any length.

[29:14] John: I'm fascinated by them and I love those in just in the sense of like, it's just insane to see the compression and this like imagining if that had been what Moby Dick actually was, was the Bill Sinkiewicz adaptation. Like what was that? Like what kind of thing is that? How do you start and make that without everything that had to go into it? But your adaptation of Hamlet is really good, I think. I thought that was a very good one. I thought it was funny because it takes away most of the things I think make a good Stephen Grant story, like your dialogue. It's this adaptation of something that you have to be using other dialogue for. But when I was in grad school, I was doing graphic design, but I was like the comics guy. I was at this year-long course that I was going to school for. At that time, there were like six academic articles about comics. Yeah, I'm exaggerating, but it wasn't like today where there's like departments of this stuff. I remember, I quoted it in my thesis about your Hamlet adaptation where it compared you and Tom Andrake's adaptation with Will Eisner doing "To Be or Not to Be" and having this character kind of really exaggerating every line, you know, in a positive way, going to look at this adaptation where it's Hamlet walking down the hallway, the shadow's falling. It's a memorable page, at least for me.

[30:32] Steven Grant: My big revelation about Hamlet when I was doing it, because I read the play like six times before I stepped on it. My revelation is his soliloquy gets all parodied. It's not serious, which everybody always treats that thing as, oh, he's having this nervous breakdown, et cetera, et cetera. He isn't. He's waiting to kill the king. He's setting a trap for the king, and he's just blathering away, and he's acting as crazy as he can just to get people off balance. And he's not serious until Ophelia kills herself. That's when he becomes serious about the whole thing, because he realizes that his actions have repercussions. But prior to that, it's a lark to him. The whole play is a lark to him. It's a boy's adventure story. So that was my revelation about Hamlin. I don't know how well that carried into the adaptation, but... I thought it was one of the good ones. I have no real basis for judging my own work, and it's probably a good thing.

[31:29] David: I think your attitude towards your work is a healthy one. I think you've got the right attitude to pour it. I will say though that when John said the words Monte Cristo, you've been smiling and like animated this whole time and it's the only time that I've seen you start rubbing your face

[31:44] Steven Grant: and your temples. Because then is when John said Monte Cristo. Yeah, it was entertaining. Let's put it that way. I mean, I think I get a reasonably good job for being in 44 pages, but it was work.

[31:59] John: It was some cool Dan Spiegel art.

[32:02] Steven Grant: Yeah, Dan Spiegel did a great job on it.

[32:04] John: We ended up talking about Dan Spiegel a lot on the show. He's terrific.

[32:07] David: Well, Steven, it's been a delight. Thank you so much for taking this planned shot with us. We really appreciate it. That was a nice shot. Anything you need to plug or throw out that funny plug?

[32:16] Steven Grant: Well, I haven't really done much lately. I have written a whisper graphic novel that Comic Mix is going to publish sooner or later. has actually collected all the whisper issues in omnibus which are available on Amazon. So I guess I should mention that. Mostly these days I've been writing short stories for anthologies and things like what's over there. And I think all these are also available on Amazon. Legends of Indie Comics Words Only Volumes 1 and 2. There's a whisper story and one and a Twilight Man story and second one. These are all characters we, and it's all there's tons of people in these things. not just me. Dan Brereton and I created a certain sorcery character called the Scythian. Guess it's actually pronounced Scythian and I only recently found this out, but Scythian, which is set in sort of a quasi-historical quasi-mythological ancient Greek world. For his anthologies, swordplay and monster aristocracy. And there's another Scythian story in Robert Greenberg's thrilling adventure yarns. And all these things are available. I mean, You can get them through them or you can, like I say, they're all available on Amazon. I hate promoting Amazon, but that's where they are. Outside of that, I've also recently, like I'm doing a convention in Tucson in a couple of weeks, recently I have decided to take short stories that I haven't done anything with or old short stories that have returned to me. And I'm starting to create little booklets of them. I will sell at conventions because people keep walking. I mean, my big experiences at conventions are generally either people walking up and saying, you know, when I found out you were going to be here, I started looking through my collection to see what I could get signed. And I didn't realize you wrote all these things because it's a vast list and I'm fairly low profile and I understand this. I mean, it's like, I don't really expect anyone to remember what I wrote. That's fine. And then the other thing is I wish I'd known you were here. I would have brought comics with me so I'd have something you could sign. So I'm getting these little booklets printed up that are like 24 pages each and they can buy them and get them signed for the same price I would charge for an autograph. So it's basically just something that people can get signed. So I'm going to be doing those at convention appearances and things like that. So that's kind of what I'm up to these days, writing a lot of pro-shirt stories. And eventually, in theory, we'll have enough to stick a book together. So that's my current plan. So I still have my hand in comics here and there, and I'm still writing.

[34:58] David: So everybody, Stephen Grant, hit him up on Amazon and some of the other socials. Are you active on social media at all? Facebook, threads, and Blue Sky.

[35:10] Steven Grant: I'm actually on X, but I don't go there anymore. I just maintain the accounts and no one else can take it and under each of those it's yes, that's even grand Yeah, I'm fairly easy to find on social media. Thank you Stephen. What's can appreciate you coming on the show

[35:27] David: Appreciate you walking through some of that stuff with us. It's always fascinating to hear some of these stories how this stuff gets made John I think we're gonna be back next week probably so far so good. We haven't missed a week in over three years now, so

[35:42] 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