[SPEAKER_01]: what's up everybody welcome to comic book club on Alex.
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm Justin and we got a bonus episode coming for you here with a special guest always excited to chat with this guy, leave a gentleman, Dennis, hopeless, Dennis, welcome to the podcast.
[SPEAKER_01]: Hey guys thanks for having
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for coming on and we are going to be talking about just brutal, which is coming out from ignition press.
[SPEAKER_01]: The first issue is out February 11th, so depending on your listening to this, maybe it's on stance now, who knows.
[SPEAKER_01]: Go get it.
[SPEAKER_01]: But before we even get into that, before we even get into like,
[SPEAKER_01]: the content to the book, and we'll talk about the plot of the book, what is ignition press?
[SPEAKER_01]: And I ask like, I know what ignition press is, but it's a relatively new publisher.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't think we've actually had anybody from ignition press on the podcast yet, so not to make you the ambassador.
[SPEAKER_01]: But what can you tell us about the publisher?
[SPEAKER_01]: Why did you want to work with them?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, so the publisher is a brand new publisher that is
[SPEAKER_00]: That's a terrible way to start with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I was introduced to the publisher through Jeremy Haunt.
[SPEAKER_00]: Jeremy Haunt is a good friend of mine.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's an artist and a writer who's had a lot of success.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's from Joplin, which is just a few hours south of Kansas City.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've known Jeremy forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he actually told me that he was going to be involved in a new publishing thing after Planet Comic Con like three years ago.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm thinking of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then, yeah, they started announcing it, not only is it Jeremy, but also Phillip Sablet,
[SPEAKER_00]: Jamie, who I almost worked with at very go for a while, who I have known long for a long time, and the three of them are kind of the creative heads of it of this new publishing venture, and for what I understand the idea is to like,
[SPEAKER_00]: pay good creators, they want to work with good rates to make the books they want to make.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's really exciting place to be because good mission statement.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, you just make what you want to make, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, which as a creator, that's what we want all the time.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: But no, I've been really loving all the stuff they're putting out.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think ours is technically part of Wave 2, so they've had like one season of releases that have come out so far and they've all been fantastic.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, they've had a really good lineup and just brutal definitely picks up on that and runs with it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So let's talk about the book.
[SPEAKER_01]: I rather than be give a summary because there's a lot of stuff that goes down in not just the first issue, but the second issue you're cutting up to pass those along.
[SPEAKER_01]: How are you pitching the book?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, what could you actually tell us about it?
[SPEAKER_00]: So I didn't come up with this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I have to give credit to Dan, who works.
[SPEAKER_00]: He's like the head of sales, a ignition, and I worked with him at Vault.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the way he put it when he was pitching it is it's Mitchell's versus the machines meets masters of the universe, which I've been trying to get this book made for 15 years, and that is the most succinct way.
[SPEAKER_00]: And of course Mitchell's versus the machines didn't exist 15 years ago, so maybe that's why I had a wait for it.
[SPEAKER_00]: But that's the best
[SPEAKER_00]: combined with the crazy like Saturday morning cartoon barbarian monster action of an 80s cartoon like master's universe.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, and what's interesting to me in here in that picture helps really crystallize in my mind is the tone.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like the, the family is like, they're aware they're in a comic in some ways, like they're very like in the story.
[SPEAKER_02]: And I feel like Mitchell's verse of machines has that a little bit toneally.
[SPEAKER_02]: How do you, how do you land on that from from storytelling perspective?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the characters, I really wanted it to be about this family that,
[SPEAKER_00]: feels realistic and have an interact with one another.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they live in a world that has gone completely insane, but not yet in a way that really affects their daily life.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like there's a thing that happened in Iowa that people talk about that they talk about on the internet, but like so far, it hasn't affected Colorado Springs yet in the real way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So they're just going on about their lives and dealing with
[SPEAKER_00]: like the parents have split up and they're going getting divorced is like a new guy in the mom's life the sister's gone away to school because she can't get along with the mom and like have all of this like normal family drama that's going on but then also there are like
[SPEAKER_00]: masters of the universe monster creatures through attacking all the stuff that's happening far away and they get pulled into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I really wanted to lean into what would it be like if this stuff exploded in our world and to what degree could you ignore it for a while and what happens when it shows up at your door?
[SPEAKER_01]: So why was this a story that you wanted to tell 15 years?
[SPEAKER_01]: I mean, I know knowing you and talking to you a lot over the years, you put a lot of yourself into every single book.
[SPEAKER_01]: So I imagine that's at least part of it,
[SPEAKER_00]: The funny thing is the original version of it was about a, it was based on Brett Farve retiring and unretiring.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's how long ago I was thinking of it.
[SPEAKER_02]: There was such a lot of comics about that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Glad you moved away from it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, there was a big Superman arc, I believe, definitely Brett Farve.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, that's a superman.
[SPEAKER_00]: Nine, twenty, eleven, something.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't remember.
[SPEAKER_00]: Whenever Brett Farve was retiring and then retiring from the packers,
[SPEAKER_00]: I read a Bill Simmons article where he was saying, you know, we give aging athletes a lot of crap whenever they, they won't decide if they want to pack it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: But if you had to stop doing what you love in the middle of your life and live the next 40 years, never being able to be graded anything again, maybe you'd give him a little grace for not wanting to hang it up.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I thought, that's a great character concept.
[SPEAKER_00]: Look, I want to explore that.
[SPEAKER_00]: How do I explore that?
[SPEAKER_00]: And the original pitch was just,
[SPEAKER_00]: a barbarian warrior that saved the world from a sorcerer 3,000 years ago and hasn't been good at anything since.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so like I pitched it as a pretty straightforward thing like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: At first, a long time ago, I don't remember even remember the original artist was, but I was working on pitches for that and couldn't ever really find the heart of the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then it was just in the back burner.
[SPEAKER_00]: That version was called Barbaric, which obviously that lost that title to a fantastic bar game comic years later.
[SPEAKER_00]: But then I was asked to pitch the shadow man book, whenever they were relaunching it for the first time at valiant.
[SPEAKER_00]: And my pitch for that was a kid who was raised by his white mom,
[SPEAKER_00]: is the inheritor of the shadow man powers, but knows nothing of his other side of his family.
[SPEAKER_00]: Never met his dad.
[SPEAKER_00]: Never understood any of that stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And now he's got this power, but his family all resent him and doesn't know him and doesn't trust him.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he's got to figure it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that
[SPEAKER_00]: pitch never like my in that book never happens.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had that in the back of my head as this idea of this a kid that inherits a crazy power set but knows absolutely nothing about it and it's completely unprepared for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So this version of the story was kind of a mix of those two things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Oh, I can take that idea of the dad and then mix it together with this and what would it be like if
[SPEAKER_00]: you know, like a teenager found out that his parents were secretly 3,000-year-old death dealing barbarian warriors and now it's his responsibility to deal with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Um, and then that's how I pitched it.
[SPEAKER_00]: God, before my kids were born, so I came up with the idea the parents were getting divorced, dads out of the picture, and all this crazy stuff starts happening and then the kid has to figure it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: But I didn't I wasn't divorced yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: I didn't have kids yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I really there wasn't a lot of me in the book yet.
[SPEAKER_00]: It was just an idea that I thought was kind of cool and I I pitched it.
[SPEAKER_00]: there and for years and like it almost hit it almost hit it vertical once when they were doing a vertical relaunch at some point I almost got it through um image didn't want to do it because of birthrights to similar to birthright but like I had a lot of people tell me they liked it and never figured it out and then I had kids and then I went through a divorce and like all of these elements of it that came a little more out of biographical which by the way didn't do those things to make with
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, it's good to say that is wild to have your life catch up to something that's in your brain.
[SPEAKER_00]: Right.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so now that I'm making it and we're almost, I'm almost on writing and we don't want to show up, it is really great that nobody ever let me do it before I really understood how to do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: because I get all of those things on the visceral level now, like I live with.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're not quite as old.
[SPEAKER_00]: I live with 11-year-old twins, but I understand what it is to have a sibling.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's nothing like you, but everybody thinks of you as a pair and to have
[SPEAKER_00]: two kids that are exactly the same age that are like one of our other of the parents.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so they drive the opposite parent, especially now that there are wars absolutely insane.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's just a lot of stuff yet that I was able to bake in and make it more autobiographical.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it became a really personal book just through that time and life and waiting.
[SPEAKER_02]: I just to follow up on that, because that's such a while.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you need creative experience.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, and doing that, since you had the idea sort of down, but not the experience, does it sort of like blossom?
[SPEAKER_02]: When you're like going back and rewriting, it's like, oh, now I can add these details, or you completely changing things.
[SPEAKER_02]: Like, how does that, how does having something personal happen affect creative in process?
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, absolutely.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the things that I realized like I could think about and talk about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like the kids being different wasn't really part of the storyline.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it made it so that it went from being a story about one of these children to a story about twins that are so different but know each other better than anyone else and like have can kind of lean on each other in that way.
[SPEAKER_00]: So as able to build that in all of the divorce stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like that's the thing, it's like having your arm cut off and then you have to regrow a new one.
[SPEAKER_00]: energy of that relationship, that co-parenting relationship you have to have after all of that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I really leaned into and learned a lot.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then my favorite character in the book is a guy named Gary Williams who's dated him all.
[SPEAKER_00]: And he just doesn't fit, but he's such a good guy.
[SPEAKER_00]: And like I have a steps on that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I my partner and I have kids on both sides.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I know what it is to try to build a relationship with a child you didn't know from birth.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so all of those things kind of crystallized into it and have, it's become a completely, it's similar plot-wise, but a completely different thing that, like, says a lot more, means a lot more to it.
[SPEAKER_01]: So do you think you went originally 15 years ago, you were the dad character, now you're Gary Williams?
[SPEAKER_01]: At the end of the day?
[SPEAKER_00]: I think on some level, I'm all of the adults and the kids, because when you watch a movie from childhood and all of a sudden you relate to the older characters instead of relating to the kids, it's kind of like that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I can dip into childhood trauma and what it is to not get along with your parents and not understand your parents as you're trying to come into your own, but then also relate to
[SPEAKER_00]: Okay, do you prepare your kids for the world as it is or do you protect them for the world as it is?
[SPEAKER_00]: Because either one of those choices, you're kind of leading them astray.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm able to do that with each character.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like one of the characters really wants to bring the family into this conflict and prepare them for this battle that he loves that's been going on forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And for the mom, it's like, no, we agreed to have these children of protect them.
[SPEAKER_00]: They matter more than this ship we've been dealing with forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: the different guy that I've been in different different times and even different times now into each one of the characters and then have them all argue about it.
[SPEAKER_01]: The other part of the equation is you have an amazing artist in Bram Reveal working on this book and not to keep part of it on the same thing.
[SPEAKER_01]: But given this was such a long process and lived it your head for so long, what changed, what was tweaked, what was difference, what you started to see, what Bram Reveal was putting out there on the page.
[SPEAKER_00]: We got to have a lot of a long conversation because I had written it so long ago, like I had a draft of it from 10 years before that I started adjusting or had a lot more in living in my head by the time that Brom came on and we were able to talk about like initially the more dorks that like magical monster people that.
[SPEAKER_00]: Farclare, the flesh just changes people into.
[SPEAKER_00]: They were a little more Lord of the Ringsy, a little more orchie, and we started talking about like this thing is inspired by my love of crazy action fantasy cartoons from the 80s and 90s.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, I asked him to think about
[SPEAKER_00]: The weird villain action figures that they made for those lines, so they just had monster after monster so they could sell more of those and how odd the Ninja Turtles villains were.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or the Masters of the Universe villains were not saying to you, do you have a favorite one from the 80s?
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, a huge question.
[SPEAKER_01]: A favorite villain or a favorite action figure, like favorite one.
[SPEAKER_02]: An on-sense villain action figure.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, because I remember there was these, I think it was him having things.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't remember the names of them.
[SPEAKER_01]: We're like, you could take all their limbs off and put the limbs on the other guy.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think that was a character who that happened to you.
[SPEAKER_02]: I mean, mine was Skunkor because he actually stinks, dunk.
[SPEAKER_02]: He continues to stink.
[SPEAKER_00]: He still stinks.
[SPEAKER_00]: He probably still stinks.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's something they put into plastic, right?
[SPEAKER_00]: Like put some sort of odd, like essential oil and the plastic to make it.
[SPEAKER_02]: It literally still stinks.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's my mom's house.
[SPEAKER_02]: And every time I go visit, I pick it up, I'm like, damn, they really got to see that.
[SPEAKER_01]: He really got to see that.
[SPEAKER_02]: He really got to see that.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, he's got to see that.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's like a 30-year stake.
[SPEAKER_00]: I really liked Mossman and Beastman, which were the same skull that I think, just one was like fuzzy.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, the other one was red plastic and then what was the spider like spider or something was the spider guy that had like a grappling Your guess is as good as ours, but that's gonna be spot on it was the sort of the first thought was the name in a lot of these villains.
[SPEAKER_02]: Yes
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was that was the fun thing is from when when I told him that he's like, Oh, okay, and then three days later, I got like 60 heads or he had just drawn like crazy heads.
[SPEAKER_00]: They're they printed him in the back of our cold open zero issue, all of the different designs.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I was just like, well, you completely understood what I was going for.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, in the book, there's
[SPEAKER_00]: he just goes crazy with it in so much fun and it feels like an animated series and has so much energy and like I said the drama like the human drama and I'm trying to make really realistic and the family trauma stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And whenever the monsters show up, they're just insane.
[SPEAKER_00]: In the first issue, there's a snapping turtle dinosaur with a VW beetle for a shell that has it like a guy inside of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just like, this is perfect, this is exactly what we want.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's wild, and the violence is pretty intense and real, but then the villains are like goofy one-eyed Saturday morning cartoons.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's such an interesting snap, snap back.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I, you know,
[SPEAKER_00]: I wanted to play with that like in in Star Wars in a new hope when Luke shows back up in his aunt and uncle are dead and like smoking corpses and then they just move on with the story.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like if you see a moment of grief and then it's never really addressed again.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I wanted to play with the trauma of that if these crazy things were real they'd be terrifying no matter how weird they are and if they exploded through the dining room window
[SPEAKER_00]: That would fuck you up and yeah, I really wanted to deal with what would this be like because in reality Where you know if you're the chosen one you're not going to be equipped to handle that Like you're not going to immediately pick up a magic sword and be a badass and go fight the bad guy You're you're going to be kind of screwed and I really wanted to deal with that
[SPEAKER_02]: Well, what I love about it is for some of the characters, it's not surprising, it's pretty mundane, it's just a way from it from a little bit, so it's not traumatic.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you see, for some of the characters there, like seeing this traumatized for the first time, others that they know well are like, hey, save the lamp, I love that lamp, but it's like, what, it's, it makes a nice, such a nice chaos that mirrors real life in a weird way of how it, what it's like to just move forward and be like, everyone seems normal about this thing that's fucking me up.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, a lot of that is what it is to be a parent.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, you could certainly not have to do anything.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, everything is new to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And you're like, well, that's common sense.
[SPEAKER_00]: No, it's not.
[SPEAKER_00]: You just got yelled at about it for 15 years.
[SPEAKER_00]: Now you turn the lights off, you do it.
[SPEAKER_00]: And in this case, the parents, their lives are really, really long and they've dealt with this stuff forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're more concerned about tolerating one another while being in the room than they are.
[SPEAKER_00]: What do you do when a giant monster tears through the wall?
[SPEAKER_00]: I know how to deal with that.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, it is a fun dichotomy there.
[SPEAKER_01]: I do want to take a little bit of a swerve because I think I think it was back in December that the cover day was January.
[SPEAKER_01]: This was the 10-year anniversary of spider woman number one, which definitely feels like what I want to ask you about, there's like, is that sort of like the flag planted for your career?
[SPEAKER_01]: Is that something that just gets brought up all the time?
[SPEAKER_01]: Did you see a turn or twist in your career from that?
[SPEAKER_01]: Because I certainly, from the outside, like there's lots of stuff we've really loved from you, but that's something that really felt like it brought you as a writer to another level.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I think that was my definitely my high water mark at Marvel for sure in that in that period of my career and I benefited from having fantastic artists on that book that made me really look good.
[SPEAKER_00]: But for sure, that's the thing people bring up the most I think and it's also had some legs and pop culture because you know the version of that character, our version of that character.
[SPEAKER_00]: showed up in the spite of her sequel and they made another action figure and it was a big deal.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it is the thing probably one of my cons that people bring up the most.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I learned how to do what I love to do within an actual comic.
[SPEAKER_00]: in that series, which I've taken to other things, and there's definitely, I think, spiritually, it's similar to this, and like the tone and how Jess was always just trying to make her real life work, but her job was insane, and so she had to deal with all of the crazy you know, marble action stuff going on, and you know, you see, you see shades of that in just brutal and other things that I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: So yeah, for sure, it's the thing I'm most proud of at marble,
[SPEAKER_01]: And you, you've kind of moved away from Marvel work at this point as we're talking about here with just brutal.
[SPEAKER_01]: What led to that decision?
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, there was a global pandemic and all of my books were paused for months and months and then they were canceled and I had two kindergartners who needed to eat.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I spent some time like chasing work at DC.
[SPEAKER_00]: I did a little bit of suicide squad.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I kind of had a just to come to Jesus' moment.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I need to make money doing something else.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not super prolific.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I don't write seven, eight things at a time.
[SPEAKER_00]: So chasing down, create a own books and trying to like, scrape together enough to pay my bills was gonna be challenging.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it was kind of just like, okay.
[SPEAKER_00]: This has always been a temporary job.
[SPEAKER_00]: You don't stay at Marvel as a full-time writer forever.
[SPEAKER_00]: So what do I do next?
[SPEAKER_00]: And initially it was just figuring out how to file like, how do I make these create our own things and try to make money on them?
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's where like hard eyes and she's running on fumes and the stuff I've done since then came from initially.
[SPEAKER_00]: Was I was locked down with two kindergartners with low school and COVID and when they weren't here, I had nothing to do.
[SPEAKER_00]: and realizing the finances of it.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's just not gonna work, like that's out of the money.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I reached out to a buddy about a marketing agency and kind of went and interned there and helped him with stuff.
[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of the stuff I've used to build my own brand and the market my comics, I was able to take that into there.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I transitioned from that to teaching a class on digital marketing and then parlaid that into a book marketing job for a little while.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then now I'm a marketing manager during the day.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I help market a company that sells websites to plumbers and lawyers during the day and then I just write my passion projects.
[SPEAKER_00]: So I just do one book at a time.
[SPEAKER_00]: It's all of the stuff I didn't have time to do while I was at marble that I can really take my time and lean into and figure out a schedule that works.
[SPEAKER_00]: And if I want to take six months and figure out a D&D campaign with my kids instead of writing a book like that doesn't make us starve.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, that's kind of where that came from, necessity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, the idea of it though, honestly, I was so burned out and had no idea.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I was on that hamster wheel and trying to do three books at a time, big two books, was exhausting, creatively and emotionally in a way that I didn't understand.
[SPEAKER_00]: And when I took a step back, I found that like, oh, I really like making stories.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I really enjoy if I have the time to let this stuff breathe and figure it out.
[SPEAKER_00]: This is like a passionate about this.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so it's been great.
[SPEAKER_00]: emotionally exhausting and you kind of lose your identity.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like I'm no longer comic writer Dennis Hopeless in all caps.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm, you know, dad Dennis Hopeless and marketing manager Dennis Hopeless who has this cool side gig where I get to make fun stuff with amazing artists and put them out on the world.
[SPEAKER_00]: But once I got over that they're like,
[SPEAKER_00]: existential terror of not being a guy more.
[SPEAKER_00]: I found that I don't need to be that guy Like I can make these books for fun and as a side thing and in my own free time and at my own pace and enjoy it And I don't have to be so terrified of what's next
[SPEAKER_02]: And if it feels like an pardon me for reading into this, that it's maybe easier or more of a full picture of the working on the creative now, because you're not so stressed about it.
[SPEAKER_02]: So you've like sort of divorced those feelings, creative and stressed.
[SPEAKER_00]: For sure, 100%.
[SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I love all of my comocreative friends, and I'm still on mailing list and message boards and I hang out with them.
[SPEAKER_00]: And the thing that we all have always had the most in common is,
[SPEAKER_00]: the terror of what happens when all this slows down or stops, you know, and we haven't, you know, there's a charity to help aging superstar comic creators pay their medical bills because there's no retirement plan.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like this thing just sort of slowly fades out and then you're a little bit screwed and I didn't realize how much I felt that because, you know, I was not really close to that, age-wise,
[SPEAKER_00]: until it was gone, and I still see it from them, and it's like, oh, I don't have to worry about that.
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm not going to worry about AI stealing my job, and we'll market call it.
[SPEAKER_02]: There are other worries.
[SPEAKER_00]: There's other things we can worry about.
[SPEAKER_00]: Pretty sure.
[SPEAKER_00]: But it does allow the creativity of it to be freeing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm not so worried about the next thing while I'm doing this thing, and that's amazing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, that was the big thing that I was going to say, I mean, I freelance for a living right now, and you know, it's not exactly the same things I'm doing at your tamarternals, but like I'm doing something right now, but one of my eyes is on the next 15 things that I have to do, and that's the low level, stressing me out under everything else.
[SPEAKER_01]: So it sounds like what you found is a certain sense of balance.
[SPEAKER_01]: You're able to actually put your passion, put your heart,
[SPEAKER_01]: into the creative thing that you're doing.
[SPEAKER_01]: And the rest of it, as you like you're saying, spend time with your kids, live a full life, and that's good.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and that's the thing, I think, once I unhooked from
[SPEAKER_00]: comic writer Dennis Hopeless.
[SPEAKER_00]: I also realized like my kids are only going to be in the house for a few more years and this stage of my life needs to be about them as much as it's about me if not more because I'm really going to regret it if they remember their childhood that I was on deadline stressed out at the kitchen table not talking to them.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it has given me the the like
[SPEAKER_00]: work-life balance, at least a little bit better version, where, yeah, I can't lean into that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And they're also getting to an age where they like my work, so I can talk to him about it and show them what I'm doing.
[SPEAKER_00]: And it's been great for that.
[SPEAKER_00]: And I think I'll, on my deathbed, I'm not going to regret having not chased more Spider-Man comics, but I would have really regretted not spending this time with my kids.
[SPEAKER_02]: It's really interesting looking at a lot of your work and like first big one of your first big things in Marvel Avengers arena young characters killing each other trying to get their spot And then you get like spider woman, which is about someone who's like sort of settling into life trying to live while also doing this crazy job And now you have just brutal which like feels like it's looking at your whole life and sort of being like work is annoying I have to work on my family
[SPEAKER_02]: Like you really, the arc is there, internal and external.
[SPEAKER_00]: I think the way my ADHD works is that I am obsessing over all of the worries and stresses and therapy and all the things that I'm doing all the time so much that I can't write a story without filling it with those things.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because yeah, I don't think about it.
[SPEAKER_00]: Like, this time it was obvious a little bit more.
[SPEAKER_00]: But the way that I dealt with the parenting, like the Yin and Yang of how I think about parenting and just infused that into both parents, I didn't choose to do that.
[SPEAKER_00]: happen while it was writing it.
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yeah, it isn't just that works.
[SPEAKER_01]: Do you ever feel a comic book idea about being a marketing manager or sort of percolating up and you're like, no, get out of here.
[SPEAKER_00]: Get out of here.
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
[SPEAKER_00]: I wouldn't work that part in.
[SPEAKER_00]: Because yeah, that I understand their parts of my life that are got awful boring and no one wants to hear.
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, just to get back to just brutal before we wrap up here, so we've talked about the first issue, but how many issues is it running?
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so there's six issues in the main series and then ignition does these cold open like zero issues sort of a thing and in our book because the characters.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can't really tell the story right before the story because the main characters don't know if they have a normal life of going on and I didn't want to give away too much of the past of the parents.
[SPEAKER_00]: What we did was almost like a side story prequel that shows the event in Iowa as it happened through the eyes of a character that will meet later when he was in high school.
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's just a kid who's going through a hard time goes to the Iowa State Fair the day that magic returns to the world and.
[SPEAKER_00]: has a crazy terrifying monstrous adventure.
[SPEAKER_00]: Awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: And so that's that's a zero issue.
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is available now.
[SPEAKER_00]: You can order that from the ignition website.
[SPEAKER_00]: And then I don't know when you're there this.
[SPEAKER_00]: I assume by next Wednesday.
[SPEAKER_00]: Which is when the main first issue comes out.
[SPEAKER_00]: So just brutal number one hits February 11th and you can get the zero issue now That's awesome.
[SPEAKER_00]: That's awesome.
[SPEAKER_01]: Dennis.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you so much for coming on.
[SPEAKER_01]: Thanks for sharing.
[SPEAKER_01]: Always great to talking to you and Whatever is next Yeah, mate.
[SPEAKER_02]: Just brutal last as long as skunk or stink That's the hope
[SPEAKER_03]: I'll let's just turn back to number one The reason they might get again I want the people that don't mind With their promises And it's turn now And it's all the same It's all the same
[SPEAKER_03]: They sit on crappy couches and they let us see what we can And he's just nothing, they'll let us special guests speak So grab your ring, hammer, don't be late for it though