[00:01] 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. Hello and welcome back to the Corner Box. I'm one host, John Barber, and with me, As always, to talk comics is my very good friend,

[00:32] David: David Hedgecock. I ask the hard questions first, David. Do you have any Kickstarters going on? It just so happens that I do have a Kickstarter running right now, John. And you know what? We have an amazing amount of liste ners to this podcast now. A shocking amount. It's three more people than I ever thought would ever listen to this show, which means we have three people listening. No, we've got a lot of people listening, and we don't have any advertising, as everybody knows, and as you and I certainly know. We don't have a Patreon. We do this out of the sheer joy and love of comic books. Let's not rule out any of these money-making opportunities. But yeah, for right now, all these facts are true. John, I'm creating art here, man. I don't need monetary influences, like cramping my artistic endeavor here. We're Artists with a capital A. This podcast is all about fine art form. Anyway, back to the shilling. As I was saying, we don't ask for any money. We don't do anything. We just do this out of the kind of our hearts. It does actually cost us time and energy and some money to do this thing. So if you enjoy the show, the best way to support us is to, when we do something like a Kickstarter campaign or we have some books out into the marketplace, go buy the books. Support us that way. It really helps us. Right now, I have a Kickstarter on Kickstarter.com, book three of Miss Mina and the Midnight Guardians.

[01:55] John: My favorite of your series, I love Super Kaiju also. The part, the serious one was.

[01:59] David: I'm pretty proud of the books that we make at a fun time go yeah yeah yeah so here's the thing if you haven't heard of Miss Minion in the Midnight Gardens before if you're just joining the show for the first time the year it's 1801 and Dracula's forces are raging across Europe and the only ones that can stand in Dracula's way and his minions way is Mina Murray and her team of monstrous misfits it's a steampunk action adventure series with a shockingly I don't know if it's shocking. Anyway, there's moves. We keep it clean, but barely. So anyway, it's a great fun series. I enjoy writing it so much. It's one of my favorite things to write. And the art is by the Zhang brothers, who are just an incredible talent out of India. They have a manga infused art style that is just gorgeous. And they're hardworking and super talented. And I am very, very lucky to have them drawing the book. The book is already done. So go to and type in Miss Mina in the search bar and it'll come right up. Or if you can't remember that, go to funtimego.com and there's a link. It'll take you right to the Kickstarter campaign. We're running until October 2nd. There's tons of cool stuff. And our books are all hardcover graphic novels with dust jackets. And they're slightly oversized. They're like magazine size. So it really shows off the art. So they're special editions. It's not just your standard comic book. So hopefully people go check it out. I think you'll really like it. I love making it. And again, if you enjoy the show, This is a great way to support the show. So thank you. David, we live in an AI hellscape. I don't know if you've noticed. You didn't use any AI. Hell no. No, adamantly opposed to the use of AI in the arts. I made a joke about this being an artistic thing, but it's a human experience and a human endeavor to create comic books. Can't imagine doing it with non-humans. I can't imagine ever doing that. Understood. Yeah, no, to me, it's like the process is the thing, and that's the fun of doing the thing.

[03:59] John: An d the rest of it's the nightmare. But we're not above, you and I, above making a joke with AI every once in a while. Or we might have AI write an intro for somebody and then, you know, read it out loud on this show. We've done things like that. I thought it'd be funny to ask ChatGPT what I should ask David Hedgecock about Miss Mina and his new Kickstarter. But I apparently accidentally typed it into the image thing. So instead of coming up with questions, it made a poster. And on this poster, David, are 36 36 questions that a machine wants to know about. Miss Mina. 36. David, are there any new artistic techniques or tools you're using this time? It's all stuff like that. Well, there is this good tip that we should use. Follow up with, can you tell us more about what was the most challenging part of? So it blew my bit. So that was all preliminable. Legitimate questions, though. So Miss Mina, this is a continuing story that kind of follows through issue to issue, right? or story of the story?

[05:00] David: Yeah, each book is 48 to 56 pages of story. And the stories are largely self-contained within each book. And then each four books is a full and complete story arc. Book three is completely done and book four is more than halfway done at this, well, almost halfway done at this point. My part is done. The art is being about halfway done. And so we will finish out book four, we'll finish out the first complete story arc. The hope is that you can jump in, on any book and sort of pick up and go backwards or forwards a little bit. And then each arc will definitely tell like a beginning, middle and end sort of satisfying story. But there'll be more with Miss Mina in particular. Because the book is successful, we've already committed, the Jean brothers and I have already committed to one another. We're doing another four book story arc once we complete this one. So we're at least going to have eight volumes of this when it's all said and done at minimum. And I've got story that would take it. If we did like the complete story and told the whole thing that I want to tell, it would take us out to about 16 books total. But for sure, we're going to do eight. So yeah, I'm super excited about the popularity of the book. So far, we got some really rabid fans already, which is fantastic. We've been getting emails from people who've read the first two books, and they're super excited and saying all kinds of nice things, John. It's weird. That's got to be strange. It's not something I'm used to. Sure. But people say all kinds of nice things about the book. So we're in it for at least the first eight books. But the first four books would be the initial big story arc. That story arc is called The Legend of the Golden Jaguar. So that's the first story arc. The next story arc is The Secret of Shangri-La. Have you ever thought about doing a crossover with Super Kaiju? They're different worlds. I don't think they would ever crossover. And also if I crossed them over, people would realize how similar the two stories are. So I don't want you to see how little I know about writing.

[07:01] John: I did want to bring up as we're recording this, Peter Cullen just died. It's been a horrible week for people dying. Tim Curry, Dolly Parton, of course, and Peter Cullen, who I have the most personal connection with of him through the character of Optimus Prime. One time I ran into him at LAX with his people. I was like, oh, I think we're probably both going to the same Transformers convention in Shanghai. So I kind of tried to like say hi to one of the, you know, one of the minders. And he was like, I was lucky enough to get to write a script that he performed. that he played Optimus Prime on. In this Transformers thing that I worked on, it was originally supposed to be opening in Treasure Island in Las Vegas as an experience. And eventually it opened in Chongqing, China, at a mall there. And they got all the original voices they could, including Peter Cullen as Optimus Prime, reading Optimus Prime that I wrote. And then they re-recorded all of it in Chinese, which is the only version of it that's ever played. Oh, no! That's a horrible ending.

[08:27] David: to that story. I hate that story. I don't want to hear that. Why did you tell us that story? That's awful. Somewhere out there, there's a whole other Optimus Prime, Peter Cullen recording. You got to do some Mission Impossible crap and get that recording and get it out into the world. That's your magnum opus. Magnum, Magnum Optimus? I don't know. In the Transformers Hall of Fame room, what is your proximity to the Peter Cullen statue? It's like when Leonard Cohen is talking about Hank Williams, and floors above him and the tower of song. Yeah, okay. All right. It's a nice memory for you to have. I hope that I truly do hope that that recording actually makes out into the world in some way, shape or form, because that's very frustrating. Yeah, man, it's been a rough week, and Dolly Parton really hit me hard. And I'm not like a particularly big fan of Dolly Parton, but by all accounts, she was a decent human being who was a good, the force in the world.

[09:28] John: Yeah, we really need more people like Jolly Parton in the world that do good things and manage to get people all on her same side. You know what I mean? Like, even Trump's tweet about her was about her. And all the flags in the country are flying in half mass because of her. Like, that's great. I agree. More of that, for sure. Tim Curry, who nearly played the Joker on Batman the Animated Series. I heard his recording, like he did some sort of test recording as the voice of the Joker. So you can kind of get

[09:57] David: a feel for what maybe his Joker was going to be like. It's pretty cool. It's hard for me to imagine it any other way than it is. No, it's funny. Like, even the role he didn't do was great, you know, because, like, Mark Hamill is the Joker. He's, like, the best Joker. But we've got a very, very exciting program for our listeners today. We've been preparing for this for weeks, John, weeks. And I don't know how this is going to work, so I hope everyone sticks around. You know, John, I like to experiment with the comic book collecting. That's not a thing that has been really a big thing in my comic book career as a fan. I was always just like fans of like certain creators and I just buy their books and I kind of like I would certainly throw them in bags and boards and you know put them in a box but I wasn't like actively like chasing collections or trying to find high-end like near mint copies of things and stuff like that. I was saving the books more because I knew I was going to go back and probably read them at some point. But in the last couple years, probably since the pandemic, I've sort of gotten into the, I decided to experience the collector side of comic books and sort of have some fun with that. And I have to say, it's fun. Like being a collector is also kind of fun. Like I'm enjoying that side of the hobby in a way that I didn't think I would. It's kind of fun to learn about, you know, whatever weird variant cover, you know, there's only 200 copies of Bad Rock number two, you know, and try to find that. So one of the new gimmicks that has come out in the last couple of years is the blind bag, John. Do you know what this is? Do you know what these things are? Yeah, I believe we've talked about it. Oh yeah, we opened them. We've opened them, but also we've talked about my experience with this. I don't know where this is going to go. Possibly the same comic. I don't know. That's right. That's right. Yeah, you got a copy of Terminal No. 1 Blind Bag. And in that, what did you get, Sean? I got Terminal No. 2. Which doesn't make any sense when you think about it, because you want to read Terminal No. 1. You got a copy of Terminal No. 1, and that's not what you got. No, I knew what I was getting into. Again, it was just the reality of it crashing down on me. Have you picked up a copy of issue number one yet? No, I always forget. I kind of mean to. And I've been to the comic book store every week since then. What a fantastic way for them to get you to buy two copies. Brilliant. So anyway, we're going to talk about Terminal, John. The new Skybound comic book by Robert Kirkman and a host of amazing artists. All basically former X-Men artists from the 90s and before. One is a superhero book for those who haven't checked it out. I read the first issue and I liked it. I don't know. Did you? Well, you haven't read it yet. No, no. So I thought it was really good. I thought it was a good opening. And it is very much a Kirkman book. You know, it's violent superheroes, basically. Even more violent, I would say, than what you came to expect from Invincible. Oh, wow. Pretty violent. Yeah, Invincible would get pretty violent. But this one seems to like right out of the gate, like just setting up like, We're going to go real heavy and real hard. The name is Terminal. And I think that that's, there's a reason why they called it Terminal. Is it all set in Terminal Island in Long Beach? No, it's not. It's Terminal because a lot of people die. It's Terminal. So Terminal number one is like, you know what, I'm going to jump in on this blind bag thing. I'm just going to go for it. But the reason why that really got me is that there is a Rob Liefeld blind bag variant that is only in the blind bags. There is a Rob Liefeld variant, that is a non-blind bag that you can get, but they're in the blind bag. There's a different cover that is only in the blind bags. And right when it came out that this Rob Liefeld blind bag cover was like 200 bucks, it was like 200 bucks on eBay. I'm like, I am not paying 200 bucks for that cover. That's crazy. And so I was like, well, what if I just buy a bunch of blind bags and then just cross my fingers that one of them will have the Rob Liefeld cover in it? That seems like reasonable. So I actually got 20 copies, John, of Terminal Number One blind bag. So we're, We're going to open 20 copies of terminal number one blind bags. Either we open all 20 copies or until I get the Rob Liefeld blind bag cover or realize this is super dumb and boring and we just stop and do something else. One of those things is going to happen real fast. So I feel like this is a visual bit that we're going to try to do on a podcast. You know what would be really funny is if they're really hard to open. Well, already it's like, yeah, it's not the easiest thing. Okay, so I'm opening up the first blind bag. And again, we're I'm looking for a Rob Liefeld cover. Now, essentially, I broke this down into three categories, the covers. There's 11 covers that I'm aware of that are available within the blind bag ecosystem. There's four covers that are only exclusive to the blind bags. And then there are all the regular and ratioed covers as well that you can buy off the stand or through your comic book shop, but they're also made available in the blind bag. So the four blind bag exclusives is there's a Rob Liefeld secret variant. There's terminal number two, which you got, is one of the blind bags. There's a terminal number seven by issue number seven. I guess it's the next story arc and the art is by David Finch. And then the last of the four exclusive blind bag only covers is terminal number 10. And that one's drawn by Art Adams. Oh, it is. No, well, I mean, maybe I got that wrong, but I think it's already. I don't know. I haven't seen one yet. And then there's the regular covers and then there's the incentive variants. So there's a one in 25, There's a 1 in 50 Rob Liefeld, which is different from the one I was just talking about. There's a 1 in 100 Frank Miller foil. There's a 1,000 wraparound foil. And there's also, which I guess might be CGC slabbed. I don't know, maybe that's not in the blind bag. And then there's a 1 in 2,500 original sketch by Andy Kuber that you can get. And then there's a couple connecting chromium covers that are available, both drawn by Andy Kuber.

[15:55] John: The first one that comes in. Ooh. Oh. John, first bag open. Look what I got. Whoa. Number seven. Terminal number seven with art by David Finch. Nice. I can't read this for six months. That was almost worth reading, like, the image month where they jump ahead 25 issues. You know what I mean? You can see what's going to happen. Yeah, it's like one of those. I feel like that's far enough ahead that it's interesting. Issue 2 is just going to be confusing. The thing that I was thinking about originally was like, oh, well, if they're just going to give you

[16:25] David: Like, how is that special? But what I've seen is they actually, on the cover, it says, Ultra Rare Advanced Edition. So, right out of the gate, John, this is worth $10. $10 raw on eBay right now. So far, that was a great opening. You're only down $95. I will say, so, well, okay, so, do you think it's open at retail if you went in a combo store? Each lineback is $5.99. All right, so, I didn't realize it was that much because I paid $4.00. And for the phones that I got. Which is still, and that includes shipping. So I basically, I paid $80.00 for 20 copies. Don't buy issue 7. Which I would never do normally, John, but I was like, it's a bit for the show. That's how I justified it. I probably would have done it anyway, but all right, we're going to do that. We're going to open up another one. That was a great open. Like, we all opened right with issue 7. Man, that's exciting. All right, let's see what's next. Oh, John. Terminal number seven. Nice. Two copies opened and they're both terminal number seven. Total of 14. All right, this is number three. Guess what I got, John? It's terminal number seven. I don't even know what to say, David. All right, so I have opened three blind bags of terminal number one, and I have three copies of terminal number seven. If you decide to stick around with the series, don't buy issue seven. I'd love to read issue seven. I would. I will get that to you. Okay, we're going to open this blind bag copy number four, everybody. I hope this. Are you guys excited? Look. Hey, I recognize that. It's number two. All right. I have opened up four bags. We've got three number sevens and one number two. I have yet to open an issue one of this book. I don't have an issue one. of this book. Four copies down. John, you're going to have to be the one that tells me when to stop. Here we go. Oh, look. It's Terminal No. 2. Another copy of Terminal No. 2. All right, five bags opened. Three of them are issue No. 7, and two of them are No. 2. I'm a quarter of the way through this, and I do not have a copy of Terminal No. 1 yet. I'm glad that I pre-ordered Terminal No. 1, the regular copy, but it's a good thing I opened it from Challengers Comics in Chicago, because I would be a little frustrated. Okay, I'm opening bag number six. We got the first issue. Woo-hoo! Terminal number one. So Andy Coubert did two wraparound covers and the wraparound covers connect to one another. So it's basically like a quad tick. It's four panels that are all connected together. So the cover A wraparound, if you open it up and lay it down next to the cover B wraparound, they form one image. And it's basically the good guys. facing off against the bad guys. So this is the cover B, I believe, which has all the bad guys on the wraparound. So cover B wraparound is what I think I just got there. Yes. It's really cool image, actually. And the bad guys are really cool looking. There's one bad guy in particular that they don't do anything with them in the first issue, but he's visually really cool. Looks like this weird alien sort of like gremlin looking guy with like these cool red like streaks in on his face. He's front and center in the wraparound cover. David, maybe he's got a starring role in issues two or seven. One can hope. Yeah. Odds are. Okay, so bag number, lucky number seven, John. Oh, guess what I got, John. I got lucky issue number seven. This is, I'm much less enthused about my first opening now that we're seven in and I've got four copies of issue number seven. Right into the quarterbox.club. As for a copy, I've got enough for at least every listener listening at this point of ish. Terminal number seven. So if you want one, just check in with us and we'll get it. All right. This is number eight, John. This is bag number eight. I feel like maybe after this, we should move on to something else. Yeah. All right. All right. This is the last one. Oh, there we go. Terminal number one. Oh, who's that? This is number C. It's by David Finch and Dave McCaig. It is also a very cool cover. It's got a giant eyeball on it, which does have something to do with the story. And it's got it. And it's the heroes of the piece, at least what I think are the heroes. Actually, it's a little in question. But the heroes are on the cover kind of coming at you in a coming at your pose. Cool. I like that one. Yeah, I'm happy with that one. All right. So eight down and we got out of eight blind bags so far, we've got four copies of issue number seven, two copies of issue number two, and two Two Copies of issue number one, different covers, cover B and cover C. I'm entertained. Yeah, how do we extricate ourselves from that? Hey, everybody, we're going to take a brief pause right here to talk about my new Kickstarter campaign. Miss Mina and the Midnight Guardians Book 3 is now live on Kickstarter. I'm super excited to share it with you. As you know, we don't do any advertising here on the show. We just do it out of the love of comic books. But if you have been looking for ways to support us, This is the way to do it. Head over to FuntimeGo.com. There will be a link there to take you to the new campaign. Miss Meena and the Midnight Guardians. What is Miss Meena and the Midnight Guardians? Well, it's the dawn of the 19th century and Dracula has nearly conquered Europe. His fangs are set on America's next. Only Mina Murray and her ragtag band of monstrous allies stand in his way. The vampire king is hunting an ancient Amazonian tribe, guarding a secret powerful enough to either crown Dracula the ruler of the world or end his The Race is on to discover the secret of the Golden Jaguar before darkness falls over the earth forever! That's the story. It is drawn by the incredible twin artistic group the Zhang Brothers. They have a manga-inspired artistic influence that I absolutely love, written by me, with covers by fantastic artists like Eisenhower Award-nominated cover artist Ludo Lullaby, Chuma Hill, and comic book legend Tony Harris. and check out the new kickstarter we're live until friday october 2nd 2026 miss mina and the midnight guardians book three live now on kickstarter thank you in advance for your support now let's get back to the show we were talking earlier about miss mina and how much i enjoyed like working on that book but we made the big announcement about cole right cole the conqueror yeah i don't know if we've announced the subtitle for that yet like officially but it's It's probably fine for me to announce it here. We were talking earlier about the new series that I'm working on. Like, working on it that I'm editing. We made the big announcement about Cole, right? Cole, the Conqueror. Cole, the Conqueror. John, have you ever had a book that you're working on where you're like, oh, this is special? And where it's like, I don't know, if you've never made a comic book before, like, making a comic book is like trying to hold a pile of sand in your hand and trying to keep it from all, like, sifting through your fingers and onto the ground. And then at the end of it, you're trying to put it all into a bucket so you can hold on to it. And as you're scooping it from the ground and putting it into the bucket, the sand is just falling out of your hands on all sides. And you're just frantically trying to get as much sand into the bucket as you can to make the thing. That's kind of how it is to make a comic book to me. It's the same sort of sense of futility of trying to hold sand in your hand and not let it slip through your fingers and get it into a bucket before it's all gone. How do you experience making books, John?

[24:18] John: when you're editing books. Somebody passed on to me an essay question they got as a job interview at a comic book company. And it was something like, what do you do if the artist is running late on the project? You don't think he's going to make the deadline. And it's like, well, that's a whole thing. They never do. I go about my day as usual because that's how it happens. The lesson that I learned when I started at Marvel. It wasn't like the sort of crushing of like, comics are business. It's not just about these characters that I love. I knew that. You know, it's not like, oh, it's hard work, I knew that. It was that everything is made under the worst possible conditions it can be made under. And I don't mean that's like directed at Marvel in any way. That's just like fairly universal reality. Like, I guess there are times where it's not. Like, I've heard of other people being like, oh, we're going to launch this book in August of 27. And it's like, well, we're way behind schedule on that. I'm like, what? It's August of 26. What are you nuts? If this was August of 27, and you were like, I don't know if we can get this book out in August of 27, I'd be like, it's going to be tight. You know, do it, but it's going to be tight. It's August 28th is we're recording this, but it got a whole weekend. There are certain books that I work on that everybody, I mean, at the company is going to be hammering on you that it's got to be out on time. And then you as the editor are sometimes like, well, yeah, it's got to be good. And here's a special one that, you know, no, you know what I mean? No, old man Logan is coming out when it's coming. and you're still going to be talking about it after a while. It isn't even that the ones that have to come out are like not special. It's just like sometimes that's just the circumstance of the book. You know, here's my bread and butter comic that's got to come out all the time. And it doesn't mean that it isn't really good or that when you get a fill-in issue on it or you get somebody else to draw an issue, it means you don't care about the book as much or you don't think the book is as worthy. It's a part of the worthiness of the book is that it comes out on a regular basis. And sometimes it's not.

[26:15] David: its main life is going to live after the monthly release of it and you don't want to mess that up no offense to Jim Aparo but you didn't want Jim Aparo drawing issue seven of Watchmen that fantastic Batman artist Jim Aparo by the way yeah I mean it was good and that wouldn't sure no no that would have destroyed that Watchmen wouldn't be Watchmen if something like that had occurred yeah so the reason I bring it up is because for me editorially it always feels like we were I'm used to that. We made that announcement about Cole, right? Cole the Conqueror. Normally. But occasionally you have a project that comes along. I don't know what happens, but you're like, oh, this is special. This has a potential for greatness, right? It's not just a, oh, this is going to be cool to do for, you know, the four issue series that we're doing. Everyone's going to have a good time and people are going to love this and then be entertained by it. It's like, oh, this one's going to win Eisner Awards, and it's going to be collected in a hardcover, and it's going to be a thing that's around for a while. Right, right. As an editor, I think you know that, like, real early in the process. Yeah. I'm telling you, John, that's where I'm at with Cole. Everything about it is like, oh, we're touching greatness with this thing, if we don't screw it up. So, like, the normal amount of, like, holding the sand in the hand is like, It's a heightened sense of, oh, dear God, don't fuck this up. Like, don't lose the sand right now. Because if everybody can do their jobs right, and it's the editor's job to make sure that everybody does their job right, right? Right. This has potential for, like, something really, to be something really special. So I'm feeling nervous, John, like, in a way that I haven't in a while, because it's like, oh, if we do this right, it's going to be real special. It's going to be a really impressive, cool thing. First piece of it was that, you know, Mark Buckingham comes on to, agrees to basically draw, draw the line. the book. And, you know, I was super excited about that. And, but now, now that he's like turning pages in, it's like, oh, wow. Like I've seen some really hot art in my career. And this stuff is so pitch perfect for what it's supposed to be. And just gorgeous. Like Mark is crushing it. I probably can't say who we've been reaching out to for covers, but we've been like shooting the moon for cover artists. and no one has said no. Oh, wow. Now we're getting like these cover artists who are like, holy crap, I can't believe they said yeah. It's like, you know, some guys say yes, and then you never, you never get it. These people are excited in a way it's like, oh, yes. And here's the rough for that before we even sign the contract kind of excited, like they are also excited. I just went through a whole thing about buying the projects that we work on. I hope people give this one a shot, not because I'm really rewarded monetarily directly for that, but because because I really hope people look at this. If it keeps going the way it's going, man, this is going to be an amazing series. Super excited for Cole, John.

[29:16] John: That's awesome. I can't wait.

[29:21] David: And with that, dear listener, we are going to pause this particular podcast. Man, tune in next time because what is going to happen? Does David get his coveted Rob Liefeld cover out of the blind bags? Or is it just an endless opening of blind bag futility that is going to hit all of us? a cold, wet fish to the face. Let's find out. We'll see you next week for some more nonstop terminal blind bag. All right. Thanks for coming, everybody. Bye.

[29:54] 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.