[SPEAKER_00]: What's up everybody?
[SPEAKER_00]: Welcome to Comic Book Club.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm Alex, and we've got a special episode for you here with two special guests there, the two guys, behind or two of the guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: Behind Universal Monsters, Phantomly Opera No.
[SPEAKER_00]: 1, which is coming out February 25th, from Skybound and Image Comics, ladies and gentlemen, Martin Simmons and Tyler Boss, welcome to the podcast.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for having us.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, thank you.
[SPEAKER_00]: Very excited to talk about this book.
[SPEAKER_00]: I got an advance look at it and I won't necessarily get into spoilers that you don't want me to get into, but for those who know about the Universal Monster series, this is per the name an adaptation or expansion, I guess is probably a better way of describing it of the classic movie.
[SPEAKER_00]: Martin, I know you've worked on one of these before, just to start off with that, obviously Tyler is different.
[SPEAKER_00]: for you.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean I was absolutely conscious of not not repeating the same art process really with it with this as opposed to Dracula.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I mean Dracula, I mean obviously other than working with the different writers, I'm not on a different different title, it's probably the biggest difference for me would be the art approach really.
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, Dracula used color sparingly, shall we say it was something that we brought in at certain times, whereas with a fan to the output, obviously it's a color film, the book's going to be a color adaption.
[SPEAKER_01]: We still use colors at all, but in a different way, certainly for the singing scenes, the vocal scenes and, you know, enhancing that.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I was very conscious of it not the spin of kind of reproduction of that art style.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, you can still obviously tell
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, but you know, trying to take a little bit of a different approach, touch to it really.
[SPEAKER_01]: Um, yeah, yeah, that's kind of...
[SPEAKER_01]: the way fair enough.
[SPEAKER_00]: Tyler, I mean, for you, you are, well, you've been really expanding greatly as a writer lately, but you also come and things as an artist.
[SPEAKER_00]: How does that help when you're setting up a project like that when you're approaching something with Martin?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you sort of separate the two has yourself?
[SPEAKER_00]: So this is the writer part of you, or you're still talking to him and working with him as an artist.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, I really visually, I made a big sort of like swipe file of paintings in different photographs and art that I like to sort of send a Martin and, you know, as sort of a start of like here's some cool things that might be inspiring, but
[SPEAKER_02]: really it's thinking about how Martin's approach to a page works and trying to make sure I'm leaving as much open for his strengths and what he's amazing at to shine through from atmosphere to
[SPEAKER_02]: you know, environments and character design.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so it's funny because me and Martin, I think couldn't have two different of approaches to telling comic books.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like my stuff is maybe a little bit more cartoony and sort of, you know, more based in lunacy than where as Martin
[SPEAKER_02]: don't think you could ever mistake Martin's work for being cartoonish, but the emotionality and acting is still I think maybe the the the the connective tissue to between what we really both like to bring to a story in in our work and so that touching on that and then also weirdly enough to you wouldn't think of it with Martin but Martin does like to do high panel count pages which is also a thing I like doing but he does it a lot which is maybe something you wouldn't expect
[SPEAKER_01]: Martin, you put him in, there was pages where I gave you six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six, six
[SPEAKER_01]: telling the story visually slightly different.
[SPEAKER_01]: They were sometimes warrants having extra panels.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I wouldn't admit there's a page which 24 panels in one of the issues, which is kind of crazy.
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's the same with any project really.
[SPEAKER_01]: When you get the script, you take your panels, you take away panels.
[SPEAKER_01]: You play around with it's still an organic process.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I kind of like those peaks and troughs, so you have expensive pages, but you've got spreads, you know, it was all open, but then you contrast that with, you know, really tight, closing at 9 panel grid, and things like that, and really formal.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think those contrast worked really well, but I wouldn't say, I don't know about liking paint them.
[SPEAKER_01]: They might say, see, I'm a good idea at the time when you start painting something, actually, this is a really bad idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: I do want to go to the counter of the book, but I'm curious to ask about a 24-panel page.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do you tackle that?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, how do you first approach a page like that?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, it's a stupid notion to try and do it in the first place, really.
[SPEAKER_01]: I can't remember what the original panel count was on it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's probably close to, I think it was an 8-panel page.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yes, it's 24.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, it's kind of jumps between mainly head shots but jump between that and then like some hand shot to somebody sort of handling some food.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's kind of like as all turn up shots throughout most of it if they're really really small square panels.
[SPEAKER_01]: But bizarrely, there's still room to have two fairly large panels within that page as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: So, you know, it's kind of, it's an interesting, so it's, we just did not, not to go too long.
[SPEAKER_02]: This is a scene in a shithoric that we just wrapped on, so it's always fresh in our mind.
[SPEAKER_02]: But the intent with the scene is, it's a very intimate scene, but there's, there's a, there's an undercurrent of sort of, um,
[SPEAKER_02]: Cat and mouse games sort of happening in it, but what Martin doesn't that high, makes the high panel count work for it is, and me doing it in a panels, I was trying to sort of lean, give space for the dialogue to have, whenever what Martin did was leaning in was on the action, right?
[SPEAKER_02]: It was this spoon moving a bit of soup, or this person's math, so like decompressing a moment by expanding the panel count.
[SPEAKER_02]: In that particular instance, really heightened the sort of emotionality of the scene, and maybe the intimacy of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: Whereas if we had kept it to eight panels, I think you would have lost sort of how quiet that moment.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's kind of happening.
[SPEAKER_01]: You put much better than me.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, to get into the content of the book, like I said earlier, I think you're probably aware of this.
[SPEAKER_00]: Most people know Phantom of the Opera nowadays because of the musical.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is not the musical.
[SPEAKER_00]: So in your mind, what delineates them other than obviously not breaking out?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, you were still kind of, I was about to say no musical numbers, but there are musical numbers.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, no, it's funny when I first approached the book, I mentioned it to a friend of mine, I was like, oh, I'm working on the, you know, Panama the opposite, they're like, oh, how are you going to do a musical comic book?
[SPEAKER_02]: And I was like, no, it's the other thing.
[SPEAKER_02]: But music is, you know, music is always a big part of my work and comics.
[SPEAKER_02]: And you do some of my other books really music is so tied to it.
[SPEAKER_02]: That it was a fun approach trying to
[SPEAKER_02]: figure out how we incorporated in that book, but going to the first part of the question sort of differentiating from that.
[SPEAKER_02]: will be really tried to do beyond obviously adapting the 1943 version of fanom was we really wanted to make a horror story.
[SPEAKER_02]: I feel like there's so many different adaptations of fanom that while there may be a gothic romance or there the musical or there's moments of suspense.
[SPEAKER_02]: There's never been a very scary fanton.
[SPEAKER_02]: You know there's there's I can think of two attempts that may be too much will we get there that try to go into body horse stuff that Dario Gento
[SPEAKER_02]: But with us, we were really trying to make this a scary, gothic horror version of Phantom, while still having, you know, it's, you have this amazing haunted house of the pelican here that, you know, you couldn't ask for a better setting to try and do that with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, I think part of it, to throw it out there, and I'm sure you know this part, but he's not a fan to most of the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's just a guy who lives under the opera and has kind of creepy about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, how, again, I've read it, so I have a fair idea, but I'd love to hear from you, how do you infuse that horror into it, given that he's just a man who loves opera and Christine?
[SPEAKER_01]: going to put it.
[SPEAKER_01]: You don't really get a good view of him for that first issue really that much until the very end.
[SPEAKER_01]: But I think that's that kind of thing that kind of kind of good the word, but like things, everything's vague and everything's mysterious and I think that's that's that's the strong point of that's the horror point of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But when you when you contrast that with all the kind of you know, the surroundings and things, I think that highlights
[SPEAKER_01]: the darkness in him, when you see him, when you see him, just like this weird.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I am biguous, dark figure, and you know, in the background and stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think that, I mean, for me personally, that's kind of like the, it's the contrast of that that makes him like that, you know, that dark character.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what also want to kind of understand that, I think one of the interesting things with this book,
[SPEAKER_01]: is the way that we show music.
[SPEAKER_01]: Because it's like, obviously, that's something that's kind of visually, it's a very hard thing to do without without it being the obvious kind of musical note kind of thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I think,
[SPEAKER_01]: the kind of, the interesting part of that is finding out that way of using that colour and things and those double imagery and abstraction to make that something interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: And I think when you have that kind of musical stuff and that the bold colours in contrast to the Phantom, Lizzy Stark, kind of like ambiguous character, mysterious character, I think that heightens both really that contrast.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and I think just to add on the one thing, you know, we started with the idea of it's particularly in the first issue, the way we sort of pose the question to ourselves of how do we
[SPEAKER_02]: You know, show the fandom was we wanted we wanted the idea of sort of when you walk by a room too quick and you think you saw something out of the corner behind you turn back and it's not there and so that was sort of okay how do we do that then in a still image in a sort of static medium and I was sort of how we started there and then kind of built from from that question.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's leaning more into the Phantom part of the title basically yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: what about the universal monsters part because when you think universal monsters you certainly think about I mean I will speak for myself I certainly think more about the first slate of books like you think about Dracula you think of Frankenstein etc so what makes Phantom of the Opera the Phantom apart of this like is there a through line between them that you see or is it just there's a movie it was made by
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think, I mean, you look at each of the, you know, I know people are pissed.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's not Wolfman, but these, but you know, you look at that too, where you have a, where Wolf, you have a vampire, you have a, um, creature from the black lagoon, you have the mummy, and then honestly, what we have is we have the ghost.
[SPEAKER_02]: We have the only universe amongst her who's sort of that, you know, if the mummy
[SPEAKER_02]: Besides invisible man, we are the only one where it sort of starts from the place of like, you know, this is a real human being who then morphs into something else.
[SPEAKER_02]: And, you know, obviously the Lon Cheney is sort of iconic for its role, but I think the Claude Reigns version, the one we're pulling from, you know, it brings some really interesting ideas that I think,
[SPEAKER_02]: We got to expand upon in a really great way that maybe I think other universal monsters titles you've seen across the line to where it's whether it's a visible man sort of being a prequel or You know with Martin and James did with Dracula to sort of take it to rep from Renfield's perspective and build it from there
[SPEAKER_00]: This may not be your department, it may be more of a skybound editorial question, but they've started releasing these black and white versions of the universal books.
[SPEAKER_00]: Is that something you would all have on your mind when you're approaching this or is it just you're creating the art and then they go back and sort of give this raw form of it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, actually, when we started to interact, I had no idea they were going to do these black and white versions, so didn't even come into my mind then.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm assuming they're still doing it with this one, but that'd be interesting to see how that goes.
[SPEAKER_01]: It's like, you know, I mean, the film is like, it's shop used for it's really vibrant film, the colour when it's amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think we're trying to bring some of that into this comic book.
[SPEAKER_01]: So seeing that, I don't know how that's going to translate into a black and white or gray scale version.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know, it'll probably require some, you know, playing around with it and stuff and getting it to work.
[SPEAKER_01]: But yeah, that's such a big thing in this book, certainly with all the musical scenes as well.
[SPEAKER_01]: It'd be interesting to see how that happens, really.
[SPEAKER_00]: Speaking of musical, I know we're not talking about the musical, but have you seen the musical
[SPEAKER_01]: I saw it, I'd must be 10 years ago now and I mean, I remember it when it was around a lot earlier than that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Never had to see it when I was a kid, but I remember seeing it that 10 years ago.
[SPEAKER_01]: And it seemed like musical, it seems quite dated now, it all seems like sort of really 80 style synth elements to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: As always, there's come about around, come back around there, I'll put um,
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, I mean, that's probably my first thing I think of when I think of fans in the opera, would be that musical, would be Michael Paul for straight away, that'd be the thing I'm to think of.
[SPEAKER_01]: But you know, even from the point of view of the set design and that, I think that's incredible.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think I still would draw from that in the imagery and the book in some way.
[SPEAKER_01]: Maybe subconsciously, but I think it's still there.
[SPEAKER_00]: Are you going to have a really slowly moving Shandal here at some point in one of the issues?
[SPEAKER_02]: It just do the whole issue of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: They're going up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, don't pat it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: They built that up a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: I remember being little Sega.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was like, this is going to be so cool.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was like, great, great, great.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
[UNKNOWN]: Oh.
[SPEAKER_02]: And that was, I saw when I was, I saw in Toronto, when I was probably, I don't know, in 3rd or 4th grade.
[SPEAKER_02]: And so at that point, I just couldn't understand where this dude who's got a sick cape and a mask wanted a girlfriend.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, you got this awesome layer.
[SPEAKER_02]: Nope, you don't pay rent.
[SPEAKER_02]: But no, I really enjoyed it when I was the, when that synth kicks in, you know, the opening and this is a kid or the opening, like sort of auction part of like, oh my god, what are we watching?
[SPEAKER_02]: What is this?
[SPEAKER_02]: And all of a sudden the synth kicks in and, you know,
[SPEAKER_01]: Ah, it's interesting.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, actually, funny enough we have, I can't say anything about it on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it's never gone further than a very sort of initial discussion with a lot of other people.
[SPEAKER_01]: There would be something possibly I'd be delighted to do whether it's even feasible I don't know, but I can't say what they is,
[SPEAKER_01]: You know, yes, it just means this was on this mention in policy, but there is something that we would like to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and Tyler, what about for you?
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you have a dream follow up universal project?
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe I think we do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think we do.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I've been constantly meeting any any number of them.
[SPEAKER_02]: I, I, my roots are comedy.
[SPEAKER_02]: So I would love to do a comedy.
[SPEAKER_00]: I would love to see that guys.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for coming on.
[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you for chatting.
[SPEAKER_00]: I love the book and I'm looking forward to the rest of the issues.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.
[SPEAKER_03]: I let's just turn back to number one There is music and I get it I want the beat That no don't mind We've been coming to see ourselves And it's been now already And it's all over the city It's all over the city
[SPEAKER_03]: They sit on crap, they doubted, and they left the secret loop And he's just a monkey, they're like fast, they're your destiny So grab your ring, hammer, don't be late, or it goes there, go!