WEBVTT

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[SPEAKER_01]: Once I've everybody welcome to Comic Book Club on Alex and we've got another bonus episode for you here with a fantastic guest.

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[SPEAKER_01]: He is the creator behind a lot of different things, but the specific thing that we're going to be talking about today is Wolverine, weapon X, and exploration, which is part of the Marvel Age of Comics Line.

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[SPEAKER_01]: It's coming out June 11th from Bloomsbury Academic and I'm very excited to talk to the writer behind it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Jim Rogg,

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[SPEAKER_01]: thanks Alex happy to be here happy to have you here and i really enjoyed this book uh... it's a weird thing i was trying to think about questions and i was like oh i don't want to do that because the spoiler but there's no spoilers here it's an exploration like the title says of weapon acts and the history we talked to folks from the series before and there basically deep dives

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[SPEAKER_01]: It depends book to book, but they're usually like on something very focused in comic book history.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Here we're talking about mostly, you widened out a little bit, widened the lens, but the Barry Winsersmith weapon X series, and I know you talking about this is the book right of the top, but why this and why Wolverine?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I was reading this whenever it was first published.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it was published in Marvel Comics Presents.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I had read an article about weapon X a couple of weeks before it was published.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I was a big fan of Wolverine.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I was probably 12 or 13 at the time.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So,

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[SPEAKER_00]: Wolverine always had the coolest artist that was what I was most interested in, but I was also new to comics and I didn't have a comic book store and whenever I saw the preview article about weapon X and I saw Barry Windsor Smith's artwork for the first time.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Nothing would have made me more excited at that point because I think he's one of the great, maybe the best figure artist to work at Marvel Comics and I hadn't seen his art before and he was drawing my favorite character

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so I was anticipating that book before it came out.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I bought all the issues.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It was a 13 part serialized over 13 issues, ran six and a half months, and I loved it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I had never read a comic like that before.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so when the Marvel Age of Comics editorial staff approached me about writing a book, I gave them several ideas.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And weapon X was one of those top ideas.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a story that I've revisited as an adult.

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[SPEAKER_00]: and I think I like it and appreciate it a lot more now than I did even as a kid and I loved it then.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And that's rare, you know, people change a lot.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So I read this for the first time 35 years ago and it was before I was a professional creator, it was before I really knew very much about comics history and it appealed to me a great deal, but as I've gotten older and I've revisited it every time I appreciate it more.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So the chance to kind of dive in and write about it,

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[SPEAKER_00]: was really appealing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't written a long piece of comics criticism like this before, so the stars just aligned and you know, weapon X was the perfect perfect subject matter for me.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I feel like this is going to be an impossible question, certainly it would be an impossible question for me to answer, but you touched on the fact that, like, yes, you are now at a accomplished designer, you're a accomplished artist, you're a accomplished creator, but I assume you're a little bit unformed at 13, so what was it specifically that you responded to in this book?

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[SPEAKER_00]: At that age, it was so violent, you know, I liked Wolverine and his origin story was unknown.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It was a big part of his, it seemed like it was a big part of the popularity of the character was he was kind of mysterious.

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[SPEAKER_00]: We didn't really know where he came from.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The comics code was still a thing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I was buying comic books at a new stand in my town.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So that's mostly Marvel and DC Comics, very PG, you know, kind of almost all ages at the time.

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[SPEAKER_00]: is brutal.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's both brutal and beautiful, but it's brutal.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's very violent.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Wolverine is abducted early in the story.

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[SPEAKER_00]: He's heavily drugged.

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[SPEAKER_00]: He's experimented on by kind of this paramilitary industrial complex that's

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[SPEAKER_00]: adding metal to his bones and testing him out against wild animals, testing him out against humans quite frankly.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And that level of violence, you know, I was watching our rated action movies and our rated horror movies at the time.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And what the next thought a lot more like those horror movies than anything else I had seen in comics.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So a big part of it, you know, was, wow, I've never seen a comic like this.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think it's, I

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[SPEAKER_00]: Winger Smith is an absolutely beautiful artist.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So on one hand, I'm looking at it as a fan and I'm trying to copy panels and the Wolverine poses look cool.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I'm just marveling at like, this is one of the most beautiful comics I've ever seen.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And on the other hand, I'm like, I can't believe what I'm seeing.

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[SPEAKER_00]: This feels like an R-rated like a slasher movie at times, which was also very appealing because that was a lot of the content that I was getting outside of comics.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So I was a comics fan for,

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[SPEAKER_00]: maybe fun stories, but really for the artwork.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And a lot of the stories I liked, I was finding elsewhere.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And weapon X kind of brought some of those elements in.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I was reading Stephen King and authors like that at the time.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So to see something that was a little bit more like body horror and slasher film like,

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[SPEAKER_00]: that was just awesome to me as it that age.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I was the perfect reader for it, you know, based on my other interest and there weren't other comics that I had access to that were like that.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Certainly I have found other comics like that, you know, since then, but it was just very, very different and different has always appealed to me.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You mentioned in the introduction, you know,

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[SPEAKER_00]: If you look at my body of work, it's very different, the stuff that I've done in my career, that's always been appealing to me.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I've said it before, but the easiest way to hire me is to ask me to do something I haven't done before, which is something that this book was very appealing whenever it crossed my desk.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so that was probably one of the biggest appeals of

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[SPEAKER_01]: But I'd love more of it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: First of all, you have a much better recall of big 30 that I do because my answer would be like, I don't know.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Let's go it on then.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But I wanted to ask you about this one specific thing you mentioned in there.

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[SPEAKER_01]: At that age, were you aping the drawing?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Is where you sort of like looking at them and trying to copy them at that point?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Is that how you started a laundry road of training yourself to be an artist?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, 100% and I would copy everybody.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I remember copying topic, Farland Spider-Man number one cover, which a lot of the stuff that I liked was very hard to copy.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it was very detailed.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It was a little bit wonky.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But I tried copying Barry Windsor Smith's weapon X artwork from comics scene magazine before the book was even published.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Like I saw a couple of the promotional images,

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[SPEAKER_00]: I think it was a cover to issue one was one of the images in there and I have a vivid memory of trying to copy that first cover, you know, he's half in costume and half naked in front of a skull and yeah, that's exactly what I would do is try to copy these artists or these images that I found appealing.

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[SPEAKER_01]: you've already been touching on this a little bit but certain stories have kind of a gravitational pull for the characters like you think about Spider-Man it's usually his origin story he's always coming back to that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: This obviously is a origin story or part of the origin it's not Wolverine origin but

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[SPEAKER_01]: It really is the thing several years into Wolverine being a character that keeps pulling him back, writers keep going back to that story, artists keep going back to that story.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So why this in particular, I mean I know that's what this book is about, but why does this story have that gravitational pull?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I think you nailed it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Superhero characters are often identified in known for their origin.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Superman being an alien that comes here and is kind of this American immigration story.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Batman, seeing his parents gunned down whenever he was in an impressionable age, spider-man's origin, with great power comes great responsibility in the radioactive spider.

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[SPEAKER_00]: These characters are often defined by their origins, which is part of what made Wolverine so unique.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, when this story comes out, Wolverine had been around for 15 years and was probably, you know, right behind Spider-Man for Marvel's most popular characters in 1991.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And to make an origin that holds up that we're talking about 35 years later, I think is a remarkable achievement.

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[SPEAKER_00]: and you have to think about who Wolverine was as a character and what type of origin would make him that way.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And as a character, he was a raging animalistic killer.

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[SPEAKER_00]: to be that character, to be that as a superhero, imagine what sort of trauma the character has to go through to come out the other end in that state.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And this is a character that's known for healing from practically any kind of, you know, wound like there's no moral wound you could give Wolverine that he can't heal from.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And yet he's never overcome that origin, you know,

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[SPEAKER_00]: to a base primal level as they're trying to like mind control him.

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[SPEAKER_00]: They're not just trying to make a weapon or a military killing machine.

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[SPEAKER_00]: They're trying to erase the man inside of it.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And to do that, they're giving him drugs.

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[SPEAKER_00]: They're torturing him.

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[SPEAKER_00]: They're in every way de-basing him.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's a really impressive feat I think by Barry Windsor Smith to actually find an origin that explains this killer that was so popular and remains popular, you know, in Marvel lore to this day.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Not an easy achievement and not especially an easy achievement whenever you think about how integral most origin stories are to these superhero characters.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think that's part of why the story has remained.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Viable, you know, it's been reprinted so many times.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like it's probably one of Marvel's most in-print stories.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, it's constantly new additions coming out.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I think it's because it really fits that character very well.

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[SPEAKER_00]: As dark as that may be, but the character is a killer.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, the origin is going to be pretty dark.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about actually making the book itself.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Like you said, this is the first time you've really done something like this.

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[SPEAKER_01]: So what was the process like what were your challenges?

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[SPEAKER_01]: Where did you reach a hiccup where you're like, oops, I did that wrong and kind of have to back up and do it again.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, so I, you know, this is the first time I'm writing something like this, and it was early on in the Marvel Age of comics development, so in the proposal stage, I submitted a really detailed proposal in hindsight, I would say I wrote half of the book in the proposal.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The book is 13 parts, just like the original weapon X was serialized in 13 parts, and I wanted to come at it from every angle that I could think of to appeal to as wide of an audience as possible.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So if you're coming here because you love Wolverine, I have chapters on Wolverine.

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[SPEAKER_00]: The character who the character was at the time, you know, the book came out.

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[SPEAKER_00]: If you're coming and you have an appreciation for the art form of comics, I get into some of the more esoteric elements of that because we have a master cartoonist Barry Winsersmith and I believe this is his masterpiece.

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[SPEAKER_00]: We talk about Barry Winsersmith, so that you get some of the comics history behind this particular work.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I basically just brainstormed out, I think I even started in a sketchbook of kind of like writing weapon X, you know, in a circle in the middle and drawing balloons out of like all these different thoughts I had about about weapon X.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And of course, I reread the story with the idea of, what do I see in this story that I would want to write about in highlight?

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[SPEAKER_00]: And I just started almost like I start most projects and trying to brainstorm, you know, kind of take the editor cap and take that off and put it somewhere else for that first, just idea dump.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And then you start to shape those ideas.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'll be honest, it was not

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[SPEAKER_00]: There wasn't a moment that I hit where I was like, oh, I don't know how to get this in or the editors are fighting me on this.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It was a really pleasurable experience.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It makes me want to write more, but it was very much kind of this method of

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[SPEAKER_00]: don't everything out, you know, on a piece of paper or in a word document so you can kind of see it and then you start editing and kind of grouping things together as to how do these make sense.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I knew pretty early on the structure that I wanted to do 13 parts to parallel the original story.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Some of them I knew right away, you know, I want to talk about Barry Windsor Smith.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I knew that was going to be a chapter or a section.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And some of the other ones would just kind of form based on ideas that I had put down on paper and I thought, you know, coloring and lettering those things are kind of.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Not often talked about, you know, if they're done well, you might not even notice them as a reader.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So those ended up in a chapter together.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So it was a variety of topics and, you know, being a little bit insecure as a first-time writer.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I did want to try to take the 20,000-foot view of this work.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, how does it fit in pop culture?

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[SPEAKER_00]: How does it fit in Marvel Comics history?

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[SPEAKER_00]: Superhero Comics history?

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[SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, try to come at it as thoroughly as I could.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Uh, one of the things that I really like about this series is you could feel the voices and the backgrounds of the different people who are tackling them.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm blanking on one, but there's one written by somebody who was heavily involved in editorial and gave from it at the subject from an editorial direction, getting to the chapter in the book where, oh, of course you're doing a chapter about color egg and letter egg.

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[SPEAKER_01]: You want to look at for the design perspective.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I love seeing that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That's all.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Not a question.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Well, thank you.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate that.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Was there anything that you learned that you didn't know about weapon X going into this project that now you were surprised by while you were working through it or know you knew everything?

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[SPEAKER_01]: You were good.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm sure there was a lot.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I had read it a few times before this in more of a pleasurable way going through this time.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I was paying closer attention to kind of how everything was built, you know.

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[SPEAKER_00]: the storytelling, so to speak.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I was familiar with some of that stuff because I do remember reading Barry Windsor Smith interviews, you know, and I went through those again to pull material.

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[SPEAKER_00]: One of the things that I kind of figured out in the process of writing the book is early on, I read interviews with him and he talked about.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Chris Claremont who wrote X-Men for 15 years longer now because he's come back to the characters many times, but he wrote on Canie X-Men for 15 years, he took that book from obscurity to the best selling comic book, I guess in Marvel history.

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[SPEAKER_00]: he had his own ideas on Wolverine's origin and Barry Windsor Smith was doing weapon X for Marvel Comics presents which was outside of the main Xman editorial offices.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So Barry Windsor Smith worked outside of the Marvel system and would just come in with like here's an 8-page story of weapon X, here's a couple of 8-page stories of weapon X.

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[SPEAKER_00]: and the editors would go through and make sure everything was okay and he was already working on weapon X whenever Chris Claremont found out, hey, Barry Winsersmith is doing an origin story about this character that had been writing for 15 years and as a result they talked about Chris Claremont's ideas for Wolverine's origins.

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[SPEAKER_00]: He had some, I don't think he ever got around to telling them, but he had very specific ideas on who gave Wolverine his claws and who bonded the metal to his bones

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[SPEAKER_00]: And so Barry Winsersmith.

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[SPEAKER_00]: kind of use that character we never see that character but there is a character that's like a mastermind who the characters within weapon x program are answering to at least the leader of the weapon x program that we see and we never see this other character but his presence is felt and I never saw this in print like who the actual character was because Chris Claremont leaves X men I think in 1991 so he never gets around to telling that story and

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[SPEAKER_00]: pretty obscure in the way he handles this character, but there are references he says in the story.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And from rereading it, I decided that character was Apocalypse.

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[SPEAKER_00]: A pretty well-known mutant character in the X-Men world, but I couldn't find it anywhere.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't find proof of that anywhere, and I even interviewed the editor Terry Cavanagh, and he said he wasn't sure about that.

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[SPEAKER_00]: After the book was printed, I found out there's a spanish supposedly, I haven't seen it, but someone told me this, there's a Spanish collection of weapon X, and there's an interview in the back of that, and they, Barry Winsersmith, reveals that it was indeed apocalyptic, or it was supposed to be apocalypse.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I think continuity went in a different direction, so that never, that's never come to pass.

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[SPEAKER_00]: But that was something that I didn't really know before kind of diving in and really

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[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that is very cool.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I gotta look into that one myself.

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[SPEAKER_01]: This is taking you step back and not the subject of the book, but just while we're talking about Wolverine, origins of things, not to put you on the spot.

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[SPEAKER_01]: But do you have a take on the whole Roy Thomas putting his name on Wolverine and claiming ownership thing?

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[SPEAKER_00]: I haven't read the actual transcript of what Roy Thomas said, so I don't have a strong opinion on there.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I do remember seeing John Ramita drawings of the Wolverine, like, you know, the design of the costume and stuff.

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[SPEAKER_00]: And to my knowledge, I don't think John Ramita is credited as a creator of Wolverine, but I think he may have created the visual look of Wolverine in a comic book.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, that's a big that's a big part of the character.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So I don't know.

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[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I could see that being reasonable.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know how much Roy Thomas was involved with plotting like the way the editor's role in comics.

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[SPEAKER_00]: It changes from company to company.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I think it changes from editor to editor.

18:48.367 --> 18:54.996
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it changes from editor and chief to editor and chief in terms of how much influence does the editor have over the stories.

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[SPEAKER_00]: and shaping those stories early on.

18:57.843 --> 19:02.449
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, sometimes an editor shows up to a writer and says, we are doing this with a character, give me a pitch.

19:02.830 --> 19:05.734
[SPEAKER_00]: And so part of the story is kind of handed to you.

19:05.774 --> 19:09.560
[SPEAKER_00]: And I don't know exactly what Roy Thomas's role was in that.

19:10.121 --> 19:14.948
[SPEAKER_00]: So, you know, the timing, I don't think looks great.

19:16.029 --> 19:17.912
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, waiting until the,

19:18.449 --> 19:24.268
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I think when we and her trippy, we're always considered the creators of Wolverine.

19:24.950 --> 19:29.826
[SPEAKER_00]: So waiting until they pass to then lay claim to the character, I think is probably

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[SPEAKER_00]: It's not ideal timing.

19:31.500 --> 19:39.132
[SPEAKER_00]: It doesn't look great, but again, I have not read his statement and I certainly have no idea how that creative team worked.

19:39.332 --> 19:40.434
[SPEAKER_00]: So I can't really say.

19:40.454 --> 19:45.322
[SPEAKER_01]: All right, just curious since we were talking about Wolverine history, that's what you're all this about, like I said.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Let's get back to this book.

19:47.846 --> 19:49.709
[SPEAKER_01]: So I will say this.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Yes, please.

19:50.630 --> 20:15.490
[SPEAKER_00]: There's some great weapon X information in that first appearance of Wolverine in Hulk-81, and I think even in Hulk-180, like the little cameo first appearance, the weapon X program is discussed in that early appearance, and it's right in line with what we think of as Wolverine's origin, what was in the weapon X program, it's kind of amazing, and I do reference that in the book a little bit, because

20:16.094 --> 20:23.303
[SPEAKER_00]: There wasn't a lot of information about Wolverine's past up to that point, but the stuff that was there and like the first appearance

20:24.093 --> 20:38.566
[SPEAKER_00]: it fits well, it's kind of interesting how well it fits, because I don't know that those creators had anything like very Windsor Smith's weapon X in mind, but it really fits like a glove, from a looking back on a perspective.

20:38.986 --> 20:47.814
[SPEAKER_00]: And Barry Windsor Smith talked about the reason he'd wanted to do this story as he thought it would allow him to be free of Marvel continuity, something he was not interested in.

20:47.834 --> 20:54.100
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, it lines up perfectly with what little bit of information was there,

20:54.080 --> 20:55.442
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah.

20:55.462 --> 20:58.987
[SPEAKER_01]: We're about a month away from the release as we're taping this.

20:59.027 --> 21:11.263
[SPEAKER_01]: So this is way too early to be asking you this, but now that you've gotten the weapon X book out of the way, do you have another one in mind or give it what you said earlier about never wanted to do the same project twice or you're like, nope, I did it.

21:11.403 --> 21:11.744
[SPEAKER_01]: I'm good.

21:13.406 --> 21:15.509
[SPEAKER_00]: I would be open to doing another book like this.

21:15.629 --> 21:21.437
[SPEAKER_00]: I've actually met with Marvel about doing some other books because those aren't.

21:22.042 --> 21:40.371
[SPEAKER_00]: too far along, I don't want to get in any details about them, but I do expect to write more about comics history and do a little more comics criticism because this was such a good experience, and there's certainly a lot of subjects I'm interested in from creator backgrounds and kind of

21:40.351 --> 21:52.750
[SPEAKER_00]: almost monographs of different creators to even multimedia, you know, like painting and comics and mixed media and comics is a topic I'm interested in and you know touch on a little bit in weapon X with some of the coloring stuff.

21:54.733 --> 21:57.737
[SPEAKER_00]: So, yes, I would be open to doing more of this.

21:57.938 --> 22:00.141
[SPEAKER_00]: I have had conversations about doing more of this.

22:01.002 --> 22:02.865
[SPEAKER_00]: We'll see what actually comes to pass.

22:02.925 --> 22:03.707
[SPEAKER_00]: It's so early.

22:03.787 --> 22:08.053
[SPEAKER_00]: I'd be silly to say anything's actually happening right now.

22:08.594 --> 22:09.295
[SPEAKER_01]: Sure.

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[SPEAKER_01]: What else is happening though?

22:11.440 --> 22:13.486
[SPEAKER_01]: You always have a lot of stuff going on.

22:13.907 --> 22:20.202
[SPEAKER_01]: We recently talked to Steven Beset about Tyrant, which I believe you worked on, which is an awesome project.

22:20.884 --> 22:21.927
[SPEAKER_01]: So we've got a whole podcast.

22:21.947 --> 22:25.275
[SPEAKER_01]: People can listen to about that, but what else do you want to plug if anything?

22:25.694 --> 22:31.084
[SPEAKER_00]: Well, I'm still doing the design for this Stephen beset tyrant books, there are two books that we're putting out.

22:31.324 --> 22:34.570
[SPEAKER_00]: And I, I don't know, about 75% of the way through there.

22:35.371 --> 22:41.743
[SPEAKER_00]: We've actually closed the book because Steve has been going through his archives and uncovering amazing stuff.

22:41.943 --> 22:44.648
[SPEAKER_00]: And we've gotten to the point where it's like, we have to kind of like,

22:44.628 --> 22:48.914
[SPEAKER_00]: We've got what we can include unless something unbelievable shows up.

22:50.036 --> 22:53.561
[SPEAKER_00]: So that is wrapping up, I expect to have that finished in the next month.

22:54.222 --> 23:14.432
[SPEAKER_00]: I just sent my next zine, I make a lot of zines in addition to comics, I just sent my next zine to press this morning, and that is warning, graphic violence, the Jim Rogg Blood Squad 7 covers.

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[SPEAKER_00]: by Jocacy and Paul Fry, it is kind of...

23:19.289 --> 23:32.770
[SPEAKER_00]: It's similar to Youngblood in a lot of ways, and what Joe hired me to do was very it covers set in a fictitious 1992 version of this book, which turned out to be one of the funnest jobs I've ever had.

23:32.810 --> 23:41.985
[SPEAKER_00]: I ended up making 15 covers total, and they are referencing things like the Rob Life Out Extreme Studios, which I was a huge fan of at the time.

23:42.946 --> 23:46.512
[SPEAKER_00]: That's Stephen Platten, Jay Lee, and Rob Life Out himself.

23:46.492 --> 23:51.039
[SPEAKER_00]: And just kind of an attitude, you know, that stuff was really bombastic and dynamic and colorful.

23:51.881 --> 24:02.357
[SPEAKER_00]: So I had a really good time making these covers and I wanted to show off the original art and sketches and kind of the back and forth between the writer, Joe Casey and me is we would put these covers together.

24:02.337 --> 24:08.346
[SPEAKER_00]: So, I have a 48-page full-color glossy zine of that coming out that will debut at Heroes Con.

24:09.108 --> 24:11.291
[SPEAKER_00]: And my full-time job is now making comics.

24:11.371 --> 24:19.664
[SPEAKER_00]: I went back to work after 20 years as a freelancer, and I am now working for Gary Vaynerchuk on his comics line called V-Friends.

24:19.924 --> 24:21.407
[SPEAKER_00]: And I started their last fall.

24:22.008 --> 24:26.775
[SPEAKER_00]: I think I have written and drawn four comics for him so far.

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[SPEAKER_00]: and written for other comics with artists, which is the first time I've written for other artists.

24:33.545 --> 24:42.639
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's been kind of a just a mind-bending experience working this way, you know, it's not the way I've made comics in the past.

24:42.659 --> 24:48.667
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if you're familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk, but he is he moves a thousand miles an hour.

24:48.708 --> 24:53.775
[SPEAKER_00]: It's been very exciting kind of working closely with him.

24:53.755 --> 25:09.233
[SPEAKER_00]: I've gone to work retreats where we kind of will plot out stories and stuff for upcoming issues and I come home all kind of like I stuck my finger in a light socket and my wife's like what you know what happens and it's like I had no idea how much I don't know about comics.

25:09.213 --> 25:11.497
[SPEAKER_00]: And that is an amazing feeling.

25:11.557 --> 25:15.082
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I've been making comics since 2000, almost full time.

25:15.122 --> 25:16.925
[SPEAKER_00]: I quit my day job in 07.

25:16.985 --> 25:18.968
[SPEAKER_00]: So I've been making comics full time for 20 years.

25:19.048 --> 25:26.580
[SPEAKER_00]: And to kind of be having this many new experiences at this stage, it's been a great thing for me creatively.

25:26.560 --> 25:31.829
[SPEAKER_00]: So that one takes up a lot of my time, and I think that's probably the main projects.

25:31.910 --> 25:36.638
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm probably forgetting one or two, but that's what I've been working on lately, Alex.

25:37.740 --> 25:46.476
[SPEAKER_01]: Well, that's all awesome stuff, and just reminded for people out there, Wolverine, weapon accident exploration is coming out June 11th from Bloonsbury.

25:46.536 --> 25:49.581
[SPEAKER_01]: So you can order it right now at your local store, Jim.

25:49.561 --> 25:50.242
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you.

25:50.302 --> 25:51.904
[SPEAKER_00]: I have another thing I forgot.

25:52.084 --> 25:52.304
[SPEAKER_00]: Yes.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I'm so sorry because that's a really big one.

25:55.288 --> 25:56.329
[SPEAKER_00]: Power pulp comics.

25:56.769 --> 26:05.219
[SPEAKER_00]: Power pulp comics is a collective of self publishers that I joined last fall and it's been amazing I think there are 40 over 40 members now.

26:05.800 --> 26:18.775
[SPEAKER_00]: We have all of our comics available from one source power pulp comics dot com what that does as allows All the listeners out there right now to try a bunch of comics and pay shipping from one source rather than if you went to all these individuals and

26:18.755 --> 26:21.538
[SPEAKER_00]: shipping is everybody knows is very expensive these days.

26:22.419 --> 26:25.142
[SPEAKER_00]: But you can also sample a lot of work very easily there.

26:25.343 --> 26:29.768
[SPEAKER_00]: We are also selling that wholesale to shops and retailers.

26:30.288 --> 26:35.614
[SPEAKER_00]: So it's allowed us to kind of act as a distributor and I come from self-publishing.

26:35.875 --> 26:37.196
[SPEAKER_00]: I've returned to self-publishing.

26:37.276 --> 26:38.838
[SPEAKER_00]: I absolutely love self-publishing.

26:39.399 --> 26:42.282
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's some of the most creative work that is out there.

26:42.262 --> 26:47.628
[SPEAKER_00]: And these are some of the best self publishers working, including names like Rick Veech recently joined.

26:48.268 --> 27:04.165
[SPEAKER_00]: I've made some videos for that as well, you know, anybody unfamiliar with me, I spent six years doing daily videos on Cartoonus K-Fab with the late Ed Piscore where we just talk comics, interviewed creators, kind of dove deep into comic history and the craft of comics.

27:04.646 --> 27:07.729
[SPEAKER_00]: So I have even made some new videos for PowerPulp.

27:07.709 --> 27:28.193
[SPEAKER_00]: comics that are available on the Power Pop Comics YouTube channel, including finding a self-publisher who published one comic with his brother in 1984, and when I found it, I fell in love with it and tracked him down and got to make a video about him and kind of his life and his experience making that comic and what he's up to since then.

27:28.233 --> 27:31.557
[SPEAKER_00]: So Power Pop Comics is a really

27:31.537 --> 27:38.869
[SPEAKER_00]: I think it's an exciting new initiative that I'm thrilled to be a part of and we're just about to celebrate one year anniversary of PowerPulp Comics.

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[SPEAKER_00]: So that's something I'm really excited about and I can't believe I almost forgot to mention it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: I'm glad you did.

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[SPEAKER_01]: That sounds awesome Jim.

27:45.640 --> 27:46.902
[SPEAKER_01]: Thank you again for chatting.

27:46.942 --> 27:50.848
[SPEAKER_01]: Really appreciate your time and I'd say looking forward to the book, but I read it.

27:50.989 --> 27:51.429
[SPEAKER_01]: I loved it.

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[SPEAKER_01]: Everybody should check it out.

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[SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much Alex.

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[SPEAKER_00]: I appreciate it.

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[SPEAKER_02]: Let's just stand back to number one Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah One week, there's no gonna mind We'll take time and see ourselves And it's time now, ready Let's take our own blessings I'm not a bird

28:33.907 --> 28:49.131
[SPEAKER_02]: They sit on crappy couches and they let us see what we can And he's just a monkey, they're like fast, they're so fast So grab your ring, hammer, don't be late, or it goes back